The process of costing election promises for next month's territory poll is in chaos after Treasury produced vital documents containing a basic mathematical mistake.
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The Canberra Liberals have described the bungle as either ''grossly negligent or malicious'' and are now refusing to commit to the costing process.
Treasury's top official acknowledged yesterday that an error had been made, but said that it did not impact on the overall costings and that the correct numbers had been available to the Liberals in electronic form.
But Liberals' Treasury spokesman Brendan Smyth blamed Treasurer Andrew Barr for the blunder while accusing Treasury of ''playing games''.
Department officials failed to add up all of the figures on a key table in one version of the documents correctly, leading to a shortfall of about $18 million across the $4 billion budget.
Under new rules agreed just before the Assembly rose last month, parties can submit their election promises to the Treasury Directorate for an accurate idea of how much they would cost.
It was agreed that Treasury would first issue political parties with a ''standard costing parameters'' document containing basic figures needed to put dollar figures on their promises. But the papers sent to the parties contained an $887 underestimation of the overall cost of each government worker's salary.
Mr Smyth suggested that Mr Barr may have used Treasury to sabotage the Liberals' costings.
''Andrew Barr's own department is thousands of dollars out on their calculations of staff costs at different levels, and should they apply this to the ACT public service, the total underestimation is $18 million,'' Mr Smyth said.
Mr Smyth said his party now had a problem trusting Treasury to cost opposition policies in the run-up to the October 20 poll and would not commit to participating in the costings process. ''When we're sure Treasury aren't playing games and their numbers are correct, we'll consider it,'' Mr Smyth said.
Mr Barr said the Liberals were using a ''cut and paste error'' to avoid scrutiny. ''The real issue here is that the Liberals have failed to provide any policies for costing by Treasury,'' he said.
Under-Treasurer Megan Smithies issued a statement to The Canberra Times yesterday acknowledging the mistake. ''I can confirm that there was an editorial error in part of Attachment A of the standard costing parameter document which I issued,'' Ms Smithies said. ''This error was not present in the electronic versions uploaded on to the Election Costing web site Monday afternoon. While unfortunate, I would like to provide an assurance that this does not impact on the outcome of the costing process.''
Ms Smithies said she had apologised to all three party leaders and provided additional resources to allow them to put process on their costings. ''I have written to the leaders today apologising for the error and providing updated copies,'' Ms Smithies said. ''We have also now made available Attachment A on the Treasury website in Excel format so that it can be used by parties as a working template to assist them with their costings.''
An ACT Greens spokesman said yesterday that the party was aware of the mistake and that it was something that could be ''easily worked through''.
