Vincent Tarzia and the SA Liberals have presented a stamp duty thought bubble riddled with backflips and empty cliches but completely devoid of policy detail or economic modelling.

Incredibly, he has committed to wipe out around a third of SA taxation revenue with no detailed policy document whatsoever.

In the most threadbare possible announcement of a multi-billion dollar annual budget hit, the Liberals failed to release costings, a detailed timeframe or any substantive detail of a policy that is the financial equivalent of removing the entire public school workforce from the state’s economy every single year.

Instead, Mr Tarzia merely released a brief media statement while making some motherhood statements about tax inefficiencies and “growing the pie” – but his dearth of detail will instead leave South Australians asking: “Where’s the beef?”

The only vague semblance of a commitment made by the Liberals under this bizarre and uncosted announcement is to “begin adjusting the brackets of stamp duty within five years, and within 15 years, the tax will be totally abolished”.

In other words: no substantive change under the entire first term of a Tarzia Liberal Government, and no clear timeframe or modelling for a supposed stamp duty phase-out. The only firm commitment is the eventual abolition of stamp duty – but only if the Liberals win the next four state elections.

Mr Tarzia has also not addressed suggestions his party is deeply divided over his stamp duty agenda – with his Shadow Treasurer Sam Telfer failing to attend his media conference yesterday. Nor did he reveal what he’d cut to pay for it or explain why there were whispers that the policy was initially intended to include a broad-based land tax to offset the $2 billion-plus annual revenue hit to the state’s economy.

That’s on top of the Liberals already throwing out two different estimates of the annual impact of this policy to the state economy before they’d even properly announced it.

In the space of 24 hours, their much-vaunted stamp duty policy lurched from a $2.3 billion revenue hit to $1.6 billion, with Mr Tarzia unable to explain the confusion or clarify key details about his signature commitment. There was no modelling at all of what annual stamp duty revenue would be worth by 2041, when the policy actually kicks in.

The chaos, dysfunction and obfuscation around the simple announcement of a tax policy tells South Australians all they need to know – Vincent Tarzia will say whatever he can think of to get elected, but his SA Liberals are unfit to govern.

Quotes

Attributable to Tom Koutsantonis

A policy that costs the state economy well upwards of $2 billion a year should be properly costed, mapped out and explained – instead we got a media release with no real information, a speech full of motherhood statements and nonsensical cliches and a media conference with no answers.

Vincent Tarzia talks about “growing the pie” – but his major tax policy is nothing but pie in the sky.

There has been no explanation of how the Liberals will pay for their plan to strip up to a third of annual state taxation revenue out of the SA budget, and no detailed timeline of how they propose to phase out stamp duty over the next 16 years.

This is one of the most threadbare policy announcements I’ve ever seen – it’s a one-notion thought bubble with seemingly no genuine consideration of either the practical implementation of this cynical concept or the dire consequences it would wreak on the state.

South Australians must be scratching their heads and asking: “Where’s the beef?”