Claims of black holes and dark lies dominate day's campaigning


Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 29/08/2013

Reporter: Chris Uhlmann

As the final week of the federal election approaches, the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader have been positioning themselves on healthcare, foreign investment and costings amid claims and counter-claims.


LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Accusations of black holes and dark lies dominated day 25 of the election campaign as the inevitable argument over costings raged on.

The Government claims it's found a $10 billion gap in the Coalition's budget numbers based on work done by Treasury and Finance.

The Opposition says Labor's fabricating figures and this afternoon the departments of Treasury and Finance shot the Government down, releasing a statement saying they've never costed Opposition policies.

It all comes in the wake of the Prime Minister signalling a significant shift on the Government's attitude to foreign investment in rural land.

Here's political editor Chris Uhlmann.

CHRIS UHLMANN, REPORTER: Tony Abbott is mixing his sports. And proving that there are some thoughts that don't bear contemplating.

WOMAN: And just on behalf of us we have a body suit here which is signed by the current Diamonds team. You can put it on if you like.

MARGARET AITKEN, WIFE: Maybe I will have that.

(Laughs all round)

CHRIS UHLMANN: But almost any idea is up for grabs in this campaign. In a leaders' debate last night, Tony Abbott shifted ground on the Coalition's plans for Labor's 61 health care hubs.

DAVID SPEERS, MODERATOR: You're not gonna shut Medicare Locals?

TONY ABBOTT, OPPOSITION LEADER: No, we are not shutting any Medicare Locals.

DAVID SPEERS: Do you accept that?

KEVIN RUDD, PRIME MINISTER: That is the first time I have ever heard that.

CHRIS UHLMANN: That's because just a week ago Tony Abbott's position was more equivocal. The Coalition plans to review the hubs.

TONY ABBOTT (Aug. 22): Can I say that absolutely no Medicare Local will close? I'm not gonna say that.

CHRIS UHLMANN: But he did hold the line on a question that divides the Coalition.

QUESTIONER: With the sales of land to foreign investments and foreign companies, does either party have any thoughts of stopping those sales?

TONY ABBOTT: I think it's important that we maintain control of our own country, but the one thing that no-one can take away is our land.

CHRIS UHLMANN: The Opposition Leader said if foreign investment in agricultural land was in the national interest, then it should go ahead and the arbiter of that was the Government's investment umpire.

TONY ABBOTT: Under a Coalition government, should we win the election, the threshold for Foreign Investment Review Board of foreign land acquisitions will come right down from 200-odd million to about 15 million and we will publish a register of foreign land and agribusiness holdings.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Here it was the Prime Minister who sprung a surprise.

KEVIN RUDD: I'm a bit old-fashioned on these questions and I'm not quite as free market as Tony on this stuff.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Kevin Rudd floated a significant shift in Labor's thinking on foreign investment in rural land.

KEVIN RUDD: I think in the future if I see a good model for how we should develop some of our undeveloped agricultural lands or some which need a whole lot more investment, I reckon joint venture approaches are much better. But I am a bit nervous, a bit anxious, frankly, about simply an open slather on this.

CHRIS UHLMANN: That's not how the former Trade Minister saw it.

CRAIG EMERSON, TRADE MINISTER (Aug. 25, 2012): We are a country that is dependent on foreign investment, always have been, always will be because we've got a relatively small population and a vast continent and that means we do need the savings of other countries.

CHRIS UHLMANN: But the protectionist shift in language fits with the Prime Minister's newly-discovered fiscal world view.

KEVIN RUDD: I am an economic nationalist.

CHRIS UHLMANN: This is the latest in a series of economic incarnations. In 2003, Kevin Rudd described himself as an old-fashioned Christian socialist. That sits reasonably comfortably with this description:

KEVIN RUDD: I am a committed social democrat.

CHRIS UHLMANN: By the 2007 election, experience had transformed him.

KEVIN RUDD (ALP advertisement, Oct. 2007): We've all learnt from the past. That's why I'm an economic conservative.

CHRIS UHLMANN: In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, Kevin Rudd rediscovered his socialist roots and was asked how that sat with economic conservativism.

KEVIN RUDD (Jan. 31, 2009): I've always called myself a social democrat before you go on any further. Including during the election campaign.

JOURNALIST: They don't fit particularly comfortably together, do they?

KEVIN RUDD: Of course they're entirely consistent propositions.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Thankfully the one constant in economics is arguing over numbers. Today the Government took aim at the Opposition's $31 billion in savings.

KEVIN RUDD: It is quite clear that there is now a massive $10 billion hole in the $30 billion that they are claiming. And beyond that, what are the rest of the cuts necessary to make up the $70 billion which Mr Hockey and Mr Robb have claimed unnecessary for the Coalition for the future?

CHRIS UHLMANN: And the traditional fight in any campaign is claim and counter-claim over the ability of the contestants to add up.

PENNY WONG, FINANCE MINISTER: There is a deliberate strategy by the alternative government to hide the cuts to come from the Australian people.

CHRIS UHLMANN: The Government released documents from Treasury, Finance and the Parliamentary Budget Office to back its argument. The Finance paper shows shedding 12,000 public service jobs saves $2.5 billion less than the Opposition claims. A Treasury minute shows a $2 billion difference in scrapping the low-income superannuation contribution.

CHRIS BOWEN, TREASURER: This is advice given to the Government prior to going into care-taker period. Of course the Minister for Finance and I are authorised to released advice to us when we choose to do so.

CHRIS UHLMANN: But estimates are contestable and depend on starting dates and assumptions. The Parliamentary Budget Office advice includes an expiry date and the Finance document has all but one of the caveats blacked out.

MATHIAS CORMANN, OPP. CAMPAIGN SPOKESMAN: The costing was prepared using a rule-of-thumb methodology. I mean, that is bureaucratese for on the back of the envelope. I mean, what the Government is doing in their desperation now, less than a fortnight away from the election, they are compromising the public service.

CHRIS UHLMANN: The public service was clearly stung by the political use of its advice in an election. Treasury and Finance issued a statement saying at no stage did it cost Opposition policies and points out that different questions will yield different answers, and the Parliamentary Budget Office weighed in, saying it was inappropriate to claim it had costed the Opposition's policies and unless all specifications were identical, estimates could vary markedly.

PENNY WONG: We did ask Treasury and Finance to cost the Opposition policies on the basis of what the Opposition had said publicly. Obviously we don't know all the detail of their policy because they're not telling Australians the detail of their costings or their cuts.

CHRIS UHLMANN: But the Coalition is winning some converts.

STUDENT: I voted for you.

TONY ABBOTT: Did you? Oh, wow! We better appoint you to the authorities if you did.