Jim Chalmers says it’s time the Coalition releases its costings, including the impost of its nuclear reactor plan.
“If you think about the roughly $10 billion of commitments that (Labor has) made in this election campaign, $4 billion of that was already provided for and provisioned for either in the budget or the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook,” Mr Chalmers said.
“And the other $6 billion has been more than offset by the two budget improvements that Katy has identified.
He called on the Coalition to “come clean” on its planned cuts.
“They need to come clean on what their secret cuts for nuclear reactors means for Medicare, for pensions, and payments, for skills and housing, and other essential investments in the budget.
“We have put our costings out on the Monday of the final week of the election campaign. We call on the Coalition to release their costs and their cuts immediately.
“By our count, they have committed more than $60 billion in this election campaign and in their policy commitments, and that’s before we get to their $600 billion of nuclear reactors.
“So the test for the Coalition – who should release their costings and their cuts immediately – is whether or not the costings that they release includes all of those tens of billions of dollars of commitments they’ve made.
“Don’t forget that David Littleproud said – and I’m quoting – “We’ll startbuilding the first nuclear powerplant the very first day after a Coalition government’s elected.
”That means that any costings released by the Coalition which don’t have their hundreds of billions of dollars for nuclear reactors will not be worth the paper that they’re written on.”