All the Coalition was trying to do was be helpful. It just wants Labor to tell the truth.

True lies

It is always unfortunate when you are insisting that someone else tell the truth that you don't provide a demonstration of how it is done.

The Coalition's figures included an estimate that the cost of Labor's promises "so far" over the next four years was "$30.4 billion".

As a general indicator of the sloppiness of this work, it includes a $4.39 billion figure for "reversing the government's superannuation package" when in fact Labor is supporting about $2.5 billion of measures.

All the Coalition is trying to do is be helpful. It just wants Labor to tell the truth.

The government has also estimated the cost of restoring "Labor's preferred timetable to increase the superannuation guarantee rate to 12 per cent" at $6.73 billion, even though this an aspirational goal at this stage not a clear timetable to be done before 2020.

Morrison and Cormann are claiming scrapping the backpackers' tax will cost Labor $720 million, but they themselves have booked it as a $500 million boost to the budget – despite subsequently announcing the measure would be deferred.


It has included spending on the Ipswich Motorway $200 million – which the Coalition has also committed to.

It has listed a $500 million cost of a "smart investment fund", which is off balance sheet.

It also appears to have double-counted higher education reforms.

Costly errors

All in all, the list of errors or wild assertions about promises alone is worth, conservatively, at least $10 billion out.

When you add mistakes in claims Labor wants to "restore" about $35 billion of spending, it gets really embarrassing.

The most spectacular road crash remains the Coalition's insistence there is a $19.27 billion cost to Labor's commitment to returning foreign aid to 0.5 per cent of national income.

Morrison and Cormann persisted with this on Tuesday, despite Labor's Tanya Plibersek releasing a policy on Sunday limiting the increase to just $800 million more than the Liberals over the next four years, and that the Coalition's own policy is also for a return to 0.5 per cent.


The point about all of this is that, despite outlining a range of measures to fund its promises, Labor still does need to provide a reckoning on how they stack up, particularly over the next four years.

But in so spectacularly over-egging the case, the government has destroyed its own authority to critique Labor's numbers later in the campaign.

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