The LNP government in Queensland is launching a massive and expensive campaign to persuade voters to accept the sale of publicly owned assets. This follows an earlier campaign by the Bligh-Fraser Labor government (remember how well that worked out!) and looks likely to make the same claims, with the additional (self-contradictory) claim that the Labor government, whose policies the LNP is now adopting, drove the state to dangerous levels of debt. In particular, the LNP campaign repeats the central error of Labor’s, namely the claim that selling assets provides a way to fund public expenditure without taxation.

Technology moves own. Whereas Labor gave us a printed pamphlet (reproduced on the web), the LNP offers an interactive website where we can make our own choices. This would in principle, be quite a useful contribution to public debate. If it were available generally, it would be possible for voters to weigh up various proposed initiatives, and assess whether new public services are worth the revenue measures that would be required to fund them.

Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, this version is rigged. The website claims that it is necessary to reduce gross public debt by $25-30 billion and offers three ways to do so: raising taxes, cutting spending or selling assets. The more we do of one, the less we have to do of the others. I assume (and will check later) that the amounts listed for the tax and spending measures are derived from the forward estimates (four years). By contrast, the asset sales are a once-off measure.

The real dishonesty in the setup comes at the end. If we do want the government wants and agree to all the proposed asset sales, the estimated proceeds are $34 billion. The reward is a $1.7 billion saving in interest, which we are then invited to spend on desirable things.

There’s just one problem. The calculation has omitted the fact that, if we don’t own public enterprises any more, we forgo their earnings. Fortunately, there’s a relatively easy fix. The 2013-14 Budget Paper 2 has a section devoted to public non-financial corporations. The total Earnings Before Interest and Tax of these enterprises was $3.7 billion. Of this sum, $1.2 billion was paid to the state in dividends, about $500 million in tax-equivalent payments (state-owned enterprises aren’t subject to company tax, but make these payments in the interests of competitive neutrality) and the rest was either paid in interest on debt or retained to finance future investment.

How much will the public lose from the asset sales?. Most obviously, we will lose the dividends, which virtually wipe out the proposed interest savings. The tax equivalent payments are a loss to us as Queensland citizens, but (assuming the private owners pay similar rates of tax, which is not guaranteed) are offset by a corresponding benefit to the Commonwealth. And the debt calculation almost certainly includes the debt held by these enterprise, so part of interest we save is has already been covered by their earnings which will no longer be available. Finally, retained earnings contribute to future growth and are a real loss when an asset is sold.

So, if we sold everything, we would forgo $3.7 billion in income, far more than the $1.7 billion the government suggests we can gain. However, a close reading of the options indicates that the proposal isn’t for a complete sale. Electricity transmission and distribution assets are going to be retained, with some form of private participation. This is supposed to save $28 billion, whereas an outright sale would fetch more,

Still, an honest presentation of the proposal would have the asset sale yielding a net loss of up to $2 billion. Like its predecessor the LNP proposes to cash in the proceeds of privatisation and ignore the loss of revenue it entails