ACT election 2020: Liberals won't say how promises will be delivered

They have promised a raft of costly new services and spending, from expanding the bus network, improving roads, increasing Catholic school funding, and increasing the scope of the Canberra Hospital expansion project.

All the while they say they will freeze rates, abolish stamp duty, and reduce car registration.

It equates to hundreds of millions in new spending and lost revenue.

So every press conference, Opposition Leader Alistair Coe is dutifully asked by journalists: "But how are you going to pay for it".

The explanation is always simply that they will "grow the pie".

They claim they will make Canberra so much more enticing to live that the population will grow and their tax revenue will too.

He's been repeatedly asked how many people would need to come to the territory to fund their promises, or if he has any modelling of this theory.

He has not answered that question, reverting to talking points about how they will make Canberra the best place "to live, work and raise a family".

READ MORE:

The Liberals clearly think they don't need to give a real explanation, people will only care that they're promising to reduce their bills.

Considering most Canberrans would only have a surface level engagement, there's a good argument slogans and consistent messaging could pay off for the Liberals.

Marketing expert, and senior lecturer at ANU, Stephen Dann says the Liberals are trying to pick up on people's uncertainty and fear from the coronavirus pandemic, with people concerned about how they will pay their bills.

But he said it might not be as effective as they hoped.

"Because they keep saying, 'We'll lower taxes', people start to ask 'Well does that mean you're going to sack people?'," Dr Dann said.

"The message of 'We're going to reduce costs' can translate to 'We're going to get rid of people'.

"They're not intentionally going out and saying that, but at the moment there's real heightened sense of job insecurity."

He said the Liberals could also be playing a two-election game, seeding the idea now assuming they would lose.

If Labor wins, it will have to deal with the economic and social fall out from the coronavirus pandemic.

"These guys can come sweeping in and say we can fix Labor's problems and repeat the slogans back, and it will be in people's minds," Dr Dann said.

He said he didn't believe the messaging around people fleeing Canberra would be effective, due to the territory's often transient population.

"If people have left Canberra they've left Canberra for a reason, not because their rates are high," he said.

Dr Dann said it was a defensive campaign that served the purpose of not getting backed into a corner.

"If they won, they have an entire term to say 'Here's some of the ways we'll make it better next term'," he said.

READ MORE:

The campaign has also been centred around high level messaging.

"Someone in the campaign would have memories of John Hewson's Fightback," Dr Dann said.

"There was too much detail and everyone tripped over the policies and no one got the general messaging."

Labor sees it as a weakness, with Chief Minister Andrew Barr taking any opportunity to present himself as the capable and safe leader.

"Every day that the election campaign goes on and the more the Liberal parties' unfunded commitments rack up, the more people are asking [how they plan to pay for it]," Mr Barr said this week.

"This will continued presumably right up to the last day of voting."