Anthony Albanese has vowed to “continue to look for savings” while ruling out cuts that “hurt people”.
Both Labor and the Coalition have pledged tens of billions in taxpayer dollars to fund their campaign commitments, prompting a caution from global analysts that Australia’s AAA credit rating was under threat no matter who won Saturday’s election.
With the last budget forecasting $178bn in deficits over the coming four years, the Prime Minister said on Thursday he had not given up on surpluses and that he “didn’t promise to deliver a surplus” but ended up delivering two.
“And this year’s deficit is $27bn but that’s almost half of what was anticipated,” Mr Albanese told Sky News.
“So we’ve worked really hard on budget savings, over $100bn that we’ve delivered during this term.”
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Pressed on whether his government could get the budget back in the black, Mr Albanese said he would not “speculate”.
“We’ll continue to look for savings where they’re appropriate, but not savings where they hurt people, and savings where they will have a negative effect on the economy,” he said.
As of reporting, the Coalition had still not released its costings but promised it had found $10bn more in savings than Labor.
The opposition also said it would be able to reduce forecast debt by $40bn over the next four days, with finance spokeswoman Jane Hume pledging to “restore discipline, reduce debt and deliver cost-of-living relief that doesn’t fuel inflation”.
The Coalition’s flagship cost-savings policy is to slash some 41,000 Canberra-based public servants – a move experts have said would be impossible without cutting essential services.
More to come
