Labor says the Turnbull government has lied about its $6.1bn “omnibus” savings bill, tacking on measures that were not part of the opposition’s costings in the lead-up to the election.



The manager of opposition business, Tony Burke, told the ABC on Tuesday morning Labor had not gained access to the proposed legislation until late on Monday and it was already clear the proposal was more wide ranging than the government had flagged.

“First of all the claim the government made that there were 21 measures in it is wrong,” Burke said on Tuesday. “We said we wanted to wait until we saw the bill because we didn’t trust that it would be as they described. It’s turned out we were exactly right.

“I’m told there are 24 measures, not 21. They are not all measures that Labor had included in its costings.

“So the government has been entirely deceptive with this and if their first action is to lie to the Australian people about what was meant to be their centrepiece bill that really tells you what the Turnbull government is going to be about.

“Playing a game of lying about what’s in the legislation isn’t going to get them anywhere.”

The government has built up the importance of the savings bill in the lead-up to Tuesday’s opening of the new parliament and the prime minister declared in the first Coalition party room on Monday that budget repair was “a fundamental moral challenge”.

But the government’s failure to produce the text of the bill early on Monday meant the Labor caucus was not in a position to assess the measures – which means if the government is relying on Labor’s support, which it says it is, proper debate on the bill will not be able to get under way this week.

Strong internal debate is continuing in Labor over whether the opposition should support some of the measures in the omnibus legislation, including a proposed cut to pensions and Newstart, courtesy of the abolition of an energy supplement – a saving worth $1.4bn over four years.

A meeting of the left caucus in Canberra on Monday was dominated by concerns from MPs about axing the energy supplement, which affects people living below the poverty line, and two additional measures – a $1.3bn saving Labor has booked from abolishing the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) and a potential cut to children’s dental programs.

Burke, the environment spokesman, said Labor’s policy before the election was not simply a cut to Arena but also a commitment of an additional $300m in investment in renewables. “It was moving money form being used in one way to being used in another,” he said.

Burke said in the omnibus proposal the Coalition was asking Labor to support the cut without any commitment to the reinvestment. He said the two elements of Labor’s policy went together.

The omnibus proposal also includes a cut to welfare benefits for people held in psychiatric confinement that Labor rejected during the last term in parliament and did not nominate as a saving during the campaign.

It is not clear when the package will move to substantive debate but the backbench briefing note about the omnibus bill makes clear the abolition of the energy supplement needs to happen during the spring session of parliament, because the schedules take effect in March and July 2017.