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AAP
AAP
Politics
(A)manda Parkinson

Pollies bicker over dollars and cents as election looms

Chief Minister Eva Lawler has cast her ballot early for Saturday's Northern Territory election. ((A)manda Parkinson/AAP PHOTOS)

Chief Minister Eva Lawler has cast an early ballot in the Northern Territory election as policy costings became a key issue on the campaign trail. 

Ms Lawler dropped her ballot in the box on Thursday, joining almost half of NT voters to pre poll ahead of Saturday's election.

She then took aim at Country Liberal Party economic policies which she said, based on treasury costings, would result in the loss of frontline workers.

"Treasury and finance have put out their costings for the election today, what we've seen is that the CLP government have lied to Territorians in their costing, there's a cut of $185 million that means cuts to the public service, cuts to the front line," she told reporters.

"So whether that's teachers, police, probably about 400 public servants. If you have a cut of $185 million that's what we'll see from the CLP."

Ms Lawler said Labor had watched very carefully the opposition's election commitments and "they come up to about $600 million…the CLP are misleading Territorians. They're lying to Territorians."

Lia Finocchiaro
CLP leader Lia Finocchiaro says criticism of the party's policies is just a scare campaign. ((A)manda Parkinson/AAP PHOTOS)

She also reminded voters that under the previous CLP administration teachers were sacked and power prices increased while sporting fields and the Darwin Port were privatised. 

The CLP has come under fire in recent weeks for not providing costings of their policies in the lead up to the election but leader Lia Finocchiaro described the criticism as "scare campaigns". 

"We've been really clear that we need a strong public service to help us deliver our reform, " she said. 

"We know that Labor are out there with scare campaigns and tactics designed to, in their desperate days, to try and swing voters.

"The information provided by Treasury speaks for itself, Labor continued (to) rack up debt on the credit card without any plan."

NT debt has increased from $1.8 billion to $11 billion under Labor in the past eight years.

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