The government did not ask the Treasury to conduct any modelling on its pledge to create 1.25m jobs over five years, according to the department.
On Monday Labor released a response to a freedom-of-information request revealing the Treasury has no documents or modelling relating to the announcement made by Scott Morrison on 29 January.
The prime minister made the pledge at the start of a four-day tour of Queensland, but the government fumbled the announcement when the assistant treasurer, Stuart Robert, suggested the jobs would all be full time before backtracking under questioning.
The freedom-of-information response confirms evidence to Senate estimates in February that the Treasury only became aware of the pledge when it was announced and had not received any “specific requests” for modelling.
The shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, said it “exposed” the Liberal party’s 1.25m jobs pledge “for having no Treasury modelling to support it”.
“The Liberal party is quick to get Treasury to model and cost Labor’s policies but they couldn’t be bothered getting their own policies modelled,” Bowen said. “It’s lazy and reckless.”
On 20 February Meghan Quinn, the Treasury’s deputy secretary of the macroeconomic group, said the department provides “briefings on the labour market regularly – [of] both current and future expectations”.
Quinn said that in order to create 1.25m new jobs, the Australian economy needed to achieve employment growth of 1.9% a year.
On Monday Bowen said the Treasury had “distanced itself” from the pledge because it was “completely at odds with Treasury’s own budget figures”.
“When asked about the government’s jobs target, [Quinn] confirmed the government’s target would require annual jobs growth of 1.9%, which is higher than the 1.5% or 1.75% assumed in current budget figures,” he said.
At estimates, the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, defended the jobs pledge, arguing that it was wrong of Labor senators to suggest the government “is not in a position to make these sorts of commitments”.
Cormann said the Coalition had first pledged 1m jobs over five years from opposition “and delivered it in government”, with the creation of 1.1m jobs.
