Under the South Australian agreement, the lessee can elect to own any infrastructure it spends more than $2 million replacing. If the state wants it back at the end of the agreement, it would have to pay the private company full value for the assets. LNP Treasurer Tim Nicholls cannot rule out that Queensland will have to buy back its assets after their lease period. Credit:Glenn Hunt Treasurer Tim Nicholls, who also couldn't answer the question in November, said Queenslanders didn't need to know all the answers yet, only that the government had a "strong plan" for dealing with its current debt. "We will have negotiations, of course, with the proposals of those around those issues, but at this stage of proceedings what we are really saying to the people of Queensland is, here is the plan for how to deal with these problems that we face," he said on Monday. "We have a $80 billion debt problem. We have to pay that debt down if we are going to be able to invest in job creation infrastructure and we have to able to invest in that infrastructure to create the jobs of the future. And that is the issue that the people of Queensland have to deal with."

When pressed, he said the final agreement was not the issue. "Our view will be that these are the commercial negotiations that the experts that we engage, that have advised us so far, will undertake. But the issue seriously is this, that a government that has a clear plan to raise the funds to pay down the debt, to invest in the job creating infrastructure, and also provide cost of living relief of $3.4 billion, saving the average household about $577 over the next five years, is a clear plan, that they can understand and have certainty about." The Opposition seized on Mr Nicholls' answer. "It's astonishing that he is willing to authorise millions of taxpayer dollars be used to promote his plan with advertising yet he cannot answer a simple question about whether or not Queenslanders will need to buy assets back," shadow treasurer Curtis Pitt said. "The Treasurer has previously suggested that any conditions placed on the buyers won't be known until after the election, so he's essentially asking people to just trust him, and Queenslanders have no trust in this Newman government after three years of broken promises. "Not only are the LNP's plans risky because they may not be able to sell the assets, Tim Nicholls is refusing to reveal if Queenslanders will need to fork out tens of billions of dollars to buy assets back after the LNP get their one-off sugar hit."

The government has criticised Labor's economic plan to quarantine two-thirds of the government-owned corporation revenue for debt repayments, saying it will create a $1.3 billion "black hole". The Opposition, meanwhile, has said the government will create a $2 billion revenue "black hole" by off-loading the assets that create the revenue. Both sides are relying on hypotheticals to fill the gap, Labor on growth and the LNP on the savings made in interest from the debt paydown. The government refuses to release the scoping studies it ordered on the assets it plans to off-load, saying it would impact on commercial negotiations if it received its mandate to go ahead. The campaign continues.