Ashton Hurn and the State Liberals must come clean on what they intend to cut to fund their commitment to strip more than $2 billion a year from the State Budget.
The fledgling Liberal leader was part of the shadow cabinet that signed off on her party's centrepiece election commitment to phase out stamp duty in South Australia ahead of its complete abolition by 2041, with no plan to recover the shortfall.
We are now only 10 weeks before the start of the election campaign, and they have provided no further details around the timeline of the stamp duty phaseout or explanation for how the revenue black hole this creates will be filled.
The Liberals themselves have variously put the total annual budget impost of this proposal between $1.6 billion and $2.3 billion, but that is not accounting for inflation over the next 16 years.
The Liberals' budget wrecking ball represents up to two years of funding the entire SAPOL budget and up to six times the total annual budget of the CFS, MFS, SAFECOM and SES combined.
Detailed analysis of the impact of the Liberals' centrepiece stamp duty commitment shows the folly of the Opposition's 'she'll be right' attitude to recovering the budget shortfall simply by 'growing the economy'.
Recovering the lost revenue from payroll tax without any accompanying change to tax rates would require the payroll tax base to increase by around 80 per cent!
To do this, SA's population and labour force would need to increase by the same quantum, which means increasing our current population by around 1.5 million people, while adding around 783,000 people to the total employment base.
Based on average wages, it would require around 384,000 additional people to be employed in businesses liable for payroll tax, and for these businesses to pay an additional $33 billion a year in wages.
Alternatively, raising the lost revenue through payroll tax would require rates to increase by around 80 per cent. On average, this would represent taxing every grouped business in SA an additional $166,000 each year.
After the 2025-26 State Budget, credit ratings agencies S&P and Moody's reaffirmed SA's credit ratings at AA+ stable outlook and Aa1 stable outlook respectively – the second-highest or equal second-highest ranked jurisdiction in the nation.
These ratings were based on the view that the Government would continue to exercise strong financial management, including the delivery of operating surpluses and containing net lending deficits.
The abolition of conveyance duty revenue with no replacement revenue stream would erode the state's budget position and fiscal metrics, increasing the state's net debt in the order of $8 billion and inevitably prompt a downgrading to the states' hard-fought-for credit rating.
Moreover, scrapping stamp duty for all properties with no replacement tax, such as a broad-based land tax, will largely flow through to an increase in prices, limiting any affordability improvements.
It is expected the abolition of conveyance duty in SA could increase property prices by up to 4 per cent, with most or all of this increase benefiting property vendors rather than improving affordability for prospective homeowners.
In addition, first home buyers would lose the current advantage they have to compete for new homes as a result of being exempt from stamp duty.
This is why the Malinauskas Labor Government has been focusing on increasing the supply of housing through making more land available, building new housing and building the critical water infrastructure required to enable thousands of houses to be built.
Ashton Hurn and the Liberals responsible for this policy – including reported next Shadow Treasurer Ben Hood, who with his new leader has been proudly promoting it – must immediately explain how they propose to make South Australians pay for it.
As put by Tom Koutsantonis
They may have a new leader, but it's the same old Liberals – and Ashton Hurn's first order of business must be to explain how this dangerous economy-wrecking policy will be implemented and funded if she becomes Premier in March.
This ill-explained stamp duty policy represents more than $2 billion a year in lost revenue.
Well over 70 per cent of the workers employed in the SA public service are categorised as frontline – there's simply no way the Liberals can afford this shortfall without impacting frontline workers and services that benefit all South Australians.
The South Australian economy has made great strides in the past four years, but the chaos and dysfunction of a Liberal government would risk undoing these significant gains.
South Australians can't trust the Liberals to manage the economy – they can't even trust each other!
And Ashton Hurn and Ben Hood were senior members of the Shadow Cabinet that signed off on this dangerous and poorly-detailed policy, and both have been proudly promoting it.
Whether it be cutting services, sacking frontline staff, defunding agencies, increasing debt or raising taxes, all South Australians will end up paying for this policy.
We have worked hard to put our state on a solid financial footing, with a record number of South Australians in jobs, a spate of major banks giving us a strong tick of approval and the national Business Council of Australia endorsing our state as the best place in the nation to do business for three years running.
A vote for the Liberals could undo all that good work. You can change the leader, as the Liberals have three times since 2022, but it's still the same old Liberal Party.
