Treasury boss pulls cabinet secrecy veil over LNP’s $6.8b savings plan

Queensland’s top treasury official says cabinet confidentiality restricts him from outlining how the Crisafulli government could have met its plan to fund $6.8 billion in election promises amid an ongoing increase in consultant and contractor spending.

In its 2024 election costings, then opposition treasury spokesman David Janetzki said an elected LNP would stabilise spending, with a staged cap delivering savings to fund $7.1 billion in promises.

But the government overshot that $3 billion spending cap by $1 billion in the 2024-25 financial year, as this masthead revealed, with now-Treasurer Janetzki outlining in estimates documents that spending was tipped to have risen again to $4.2 billion in 2025-26.

This increase places the government spend on consultants and contractors more than $1.5 billion above its pre-election proposed cap for the most recent financial year, taking the total overspend to more than $2.5 billion.

Responding to questions on Tuesday from Labor’s treasury spokesperson, Shannon Fentiman, Under Treasurer Paul Williams told the budget estimates hearing that the government had “kept its commitment to stop exponential growth”.

Pushing back on use of the word “cap”, he said that under the trajectory of 20 per cent annual growth averaged between 2021 and 2024 under the former government, spending could have reached $5.4 billion in the last financial year.

He said the mid-financial year 2024-25 budget update early last year showed savings as part of the government’s election commitments were reflected in an overall improvement to the operating balance.

That update, which included only the net balance of spending and savings on election campaign pledges, accounted for a $1.49 billion boost to the budget position to the end of 2027-28.

Last year’s budget used an updated estimate of what could have been spent – $4.5 billion – to turn an overspend into a lower-than-planned $500 million saving. The government has largely dropped talk of caps on such spending.

Asked if he could explain how the savings had been made, Williams said such decisions were covered by restrictions around cabinet confidentiality.

“I’m very limited in what I can say with regard to the question and any of those proposals that were put forward to executive government,” he said.

A spokesperson for Janetzki told this masthead last month the government considers the election commitment “has already been met”.

Ratings agency S&P Global said in October that the Crisafulli government’s successful implementation of plans, including reducing consultant costs, would be “crucial to maintaining our ‘AA+’ credit rating”.

Any downgrade would further lift interest payments on still-growing state debt, which is currently on track to hit $7.7 billion a year by 2030.

Williams told the estimates hearing his department spent $2.9 million on consultants last financial year, with contractors costing $59 million – a $61.9 million total that was lower than the $74.9 million spent in 2024-25.

Simon Ling, chief executive of Queensland Treasury Corporation within which the government’s fledgling Queensland Government Consulting Service has been established, was unable to immediately outline the dollar value of the service’s work to date, or the number of projects involved.

Janetzki later said the service had received indicative fees of $2.6 million charged at a cost basis, which was not reflective of the actual market value of the work.

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