The bulk of Labor's commitments affect payments, including both spending and savings measures. These comprise a large number of payments measures that would reduce the underlying cash balance, partially offset by 15 savings measures. Labor’s platform also includes 10 commitments that would affect taxation receipts and 17 that would impact non-taxation receipts (noting commitments can affect all of payments, tax and non-tax receipts). Overall, the impact on receipts would have a positive impact on the underlying cash balance.
The Labor commitments contributing the most to the decrease in the underlying cash balance are Cheaper Child Care (ECR115) and Fixing the Aged Care Crisis (ECR146). They are estimated to have a net cost of $5.1 billion and $2.5 billion respectively over the forward estimates. These impacts are driven by increases to administered payments.
Labor’s commitments with the largest increases to the underlying cash balance primarily feature higher taxation receipts, with Extend and boost existing ATO programs (ECR161) and Plan to ensure Multinationals Pay Their Fair Share of Tax (ECR167) improving the underlying cash balance by $3.1 billion and $1.9 billion over the forward estimates, respectively. There are also significant increases to the underlying cash balance from Savings from External Labour (ECR170), a measure to reduce Australian Public Service spending on contractors, consultants and labour hire companies, which would reduce payments by $3.0 billion over the forward estimates.
Further information on significant election commitments is provided in the Medium‑term budget impacts section below. A detailed table outlining the source and budget impacts of each of Labor’s election commitments is provided at Appendix B. Costing documentation for Labor’s election commitments is provided at Appendix F.
Interactions between election commitments
Seven of Labor’s commitments would be expected to interact with each other. In particular, the expected savings from Ending the 10% upfront fee discount (ECR116) would be larger than originally costed when accounting for its impact on 2 other Higher Education Loan Program commitments – 20,000 More University Places (ECR113) and Rural Health and Medical Training for Far North Queensland (ECR173). Interactions between these proposals would increase the underlying cash balance by $2.3 million over the forward estimates period and by $2.8 million over the medium term.
While the PBO has also identified 2 other potential interactions across 4 of Labor’s commitments, these are either offsetting or unquantifiable, so no additional financial implications have been outlined in this report. More detail on these interactions is set out in Budget analysis of interactions between the Australian Labor Party’s election commitments (ECR178).
Medium‑term budget impacts
Tables 2 and 3 in the Summary of major party budget impacts section show the net impacts of Labor’s election commitments over the medium term, which are broadly consistent with those over the forward estimates period.
Figure 6 summarises Labor’s largest election commitments over the medium term. The full list of medium-term impacts for each commitment is provided in Appendix B.