If Labor wins the Northern Territory election it would need to delay or cut more than $223m in already committed government projects to afford its election commitments, costing have revealed.
The findings, released on Thursday and analysed by treasury, also predicted a Labor government would reduce net debt by $18.88m – to more than $3.07bn – by 2019-20, compared with the CLP’s $35.77m.
Labor’s capital commitments totalled $523.5m, and treasury found a capacity of $300m to support new or expanded projects beyond the $425m already required for CLP-committed programs.
Based on that outlook, a Labor government would have to delay or deprioritise $223.5m of CLP projects pay for its commitments.
The under-treasurer, Jodie Ryan, said such a level of reprioritisation “may be difficult to achieve” but Labor has pledged there would be no financial blowout and it would make “tough decisions” on projects before it spent over budget.
The opposition leader, Michael Gunner, said on Thursday the party had three choices to deal with the overcommitment.
“We could defer on our promise to remote territorians around housing, we could borrow more money, or we could reprioritise CLP infrastructure projects on the forward works,” he said.
“For us the decision was pretty easy. We will prioritise those CLP forward works and we asked for a list of what those forward works are, but treasury has advised that is a cabinet document.”
Among Labor’s savings is a reduction in government agencies from 31 to about 20, including the loss of 26 executive jobs with an estimated $9m in total salaries, and another 40 positions absorbed back into the public service, filling positions lost through natural attrition.
Another estimated 40 positions would go in a 75% reduction to the government’s communication and advertising bureau, and in the introduction of increased five-year contracts for non-government organisations.
Labor’s figures include spending $100m from the infrastructure fund set up by the CLP after the lease of the Darwin port.
Gunner rejected criticisms by the chief minister, Adam Giles, that Labor’s plan would jeopardise the fund’s viability and would see the loss of up the $4.5bn in private sector investment.
Gunner said the best way to spend that money was a “difference of opinion” between the two parties, and Labor believed it was “critical to spend that $100m on stimulus projects to keep jobs in the territory”.
The costings do not include running costs for the royal commission into child protection and juvenile detention, or the implementation of its eventual recommendations.
The set-up cost of $7m has already been committed, and there has been no official agreement between the federal and territory governments over the split of further costs. Both the CLP and Labor have said they would split the estimated $50m evenly, but it has not been decided if the territory’s $25m would be paid in cash or in kind.
$15m has been budgeted for the two years from 2018-19 to replace the Don Dale juvenile detention centre.
Gunner also accused the CLP of an “outrageous cynical betrayal of trust” and of backflipping on its remote housing strategy this week, by releasing reduced funding commitments for new houses after most remote-living territorians had voted.
Gunner said the CLP’s figures fell short of the promised $1.6bn over eight years by $285m.
He also dismissed the CLP’s promise of 24,00 jobs, figures he said were “unfortunately misleading”.
“Treasury made it clear during the pre-election fiscal outlook that jobs growth is much smaller than what the CLP are forecasting,” he said, noting that resource industry figures for the potential jobs created through an onshore gas industry were about 1,000 less than the 7,200 promised by the CLP.
The Labor party has pledged a moratorium on fracking should it win power, which the CLP said had already cost jobs due to the uncertainty it created for businesses.
Labor’s costings included a large number of projects and commitments without allocated budget, which Gunner said were “real promises that would be delivered” but did not require new funding.
Gunner would not be drawn on whether he expected a public backlash over Labor’s plan to scrap a popular renovation grant scheme if it took office.
The CLP said the $20m home improvement scheme had already generated $15m in work for tradies.
Nor would he detail how a Labor government would achieve its target of 50% renewables by 2030.
Treasury also released its analysis of the CLP’s costings on Thursday, finding its commitments overshot capacity by only $21.5m, and would lead to a $35.77m reduction to net debt.
Before the treasury analysis, the CLP had pointed to its debt reduction and compared it with Labor’s capital commitments, but the two treasury analyses released on Thursday show a difference of about $17m to the net debt by 2019-20.
Gunner noted the next government would be a difficult time, whoever won. The Northern Territory is facing a downturn with falling house prices, shrinking GST revenue, and the winding down of construction of the $34bn Inpex plant.
