Accusations fly as Northern Territory Election Commitments have been released

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The costings of the major parties' election commitments have been released just two days out from the poll. It led to Labor accusing the Country Liberals of planning cuts of nearly 200 million dollars to the NT's public service.

Transcript

00:00Casting a ballot to save her own job.

00:06Eva Lawler's seat of Drysdale, shaping up as a key battle on Saturday.

00:10Our electorates are so small, when you have 5-6,000 people in your electorate, you just

00:15need to get out and talk to people.

00:17But you'd be forgiven for thinking she's campaigning against her predecessor's record.

00:23Lear and I I think have done seven debates.

00:25I don't think Gunner did one debate in 2020, and I think he did one debate in 2016.

00:30The Chief Minister at one moment praising Lear Finocchiaro's campaigning, then slamming

00:35her the next.

00:36Lear and the CLP are misleading Territorians, they're lying to Territorians.

00:42Accusations flying over Treasury's costings of the CLP's election commitments, showing

00:47the party plans to make $185 million in savings to fund its promises.

00:54Where's that $185 million going to come from?

00:57Is it going to come from out of the health budget, or the education budget?

01:00It's the two biggest budgets that we have.

01:02A lot of the savings we've identified are around wasteful spending, but also they're

01:07around interstate consultancy fees.

01:10The public sector union saying it has the CLP's commitment in writing.

01:15Government jobs are safe.

01:16If they ultimately take a different pathway forward, then they risk broken promises post-election.

01:22We've been really clear that we need a strong public service to deliver our reform agenda,

01:26and that is why public service jobs are safe.

01:29Treasury's costings of Labor's commitments show the party will push out a budget surplus

01:33by a further two years in order to deliver their promises.

01:38The CLP in contrast says it will deliver a very narrow surplus from next financial year.

01:45But the business community says neither party has taken significant steps to address the

01:50Territory's $11 billion debt pile.

01:53With these estimates that have come out today, the current debt position will be increasing,

01:58and by 2027-28 we'll be paying something like $750 million in interest per annum.

02:05That's more than we spend on police and fire and emergency combined.

02:08Challenges that will have to be confronted for whoever is Treasurer on Monday.

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