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June 14th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Queensland’s new government may have to break its promise to return the budget to surplus by 2014/15 on the back of a damning report on the state’s finances.
Former federal treasurer Peter Costello will on Friday hand down an interim report showing the state’s debt will hit $92 billion in four years.
Queensland Treasurer Tim Nicholls said it would hit $100 billion by 2018, and Labor had grossly misrepresented the state’s true financial position before the March election.
Asked if the LNP government’s timetable to return to surplus by 2014/15 was under threat, Mr Nicholls cited Labor’s failure to fully disclose Queensland’s financial woes.
He said the picture was much worse than the LNP was told before the election, when it committed to the 2014/15 timetable.
“We’ll have to adapt to that,” he told ABC Radio.
He said the government was determined to return the budget to surplus and start paying down debt, but he did not attach a timetable to that.
Mr Nicholls said the Costello report found Labor’s unsustainable spending had “jeopardised the financial position of the state”.
He said the real deterioration of the state’s financial position began in about 2006/07, before the global financial crisis.
“Debt started spiralling, expenditure grew out of control … pre the global financial crisis,” Mr Nicholls said.
“The government at that stage took a policy decision that they wanted to spend, spend, spend. And as a result, we’ve got debt, debt, debt.”
Mr Nicholls said the state’s interest bill was hurtling towards $5.3 billion, which was close to what Queensland spent on education each year.
“… the fastest growing item of expenditure in the Queensland state budget is interest payments on debt,” he said.
“The speed at which the interest bill is going to increase is much higher than the speed at which we are increasing payments for things like health and education.”
Mr Nicholls again left the door open on the sacking of permanent public service positions to rein in debt.
“We’ll be working to preserve as many jobs in the public service as we possibly can … that was our pre-election commitment,” he said.
Mr Nicholls said the state “may well face another credit downgrade” but the government was working to avoid that.
If a downgrade did occur, he said: “The cost of that is $100 million, on average, a year.”
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