Colin Barnett accused of breaking election promises Liberal leader Colin Barnett with wife Lyn after winning the 2013 state election. Tony Abbott at the launch of the Liberal's WA election campaign. Picture: Colin Murty Source: News Limited PROMISES, promises. They are the politician's stock in trade - but this week they have placed West Australian Premier Colin Barnett in the political stockade. Just 70 days after sweeping back into power, Australia's longest serving Liberal premier stands accused of already breaking five major election pledges across a smorgasbord of issues including tax cuts, utility prices, major projects and policing levels. And somehow, even the allocation of $400 million for a new road and $500 million for new rail in Tuesday's federal budget managed to cause the premier pain, while an innocuous advert in Tasmania's Saturday Examiner signalled more to come. The political heat was already rising after last week's announcement of a four per cent rise in WA's power prices, which appeared to disregard the Liberal election pledge to keep any rise "at or around" the inflation rate of between 2.5 and three per cent. While Treasurer Troy Buswell insisted he was comfortable with those numbers, the general public was not, and the eternal opposition cry of the broken promise began exceptionally early in a fixed four-year term. Following accusations a pledge for a 24-hour police presence in suburban Perth had been forgotten, the leaders of Australia's boom state were then forced to admit budget pressures meant it needed to go into austerity mode. As federal Treasurer Wayne Swan's bet on black came up $19 billion in the red, Mr Buswell announced a spending halt on new stationery, advertising and consultants - blaming unprecedented financial pressures from falling GST income, volatile royalties and lower tax yields. None of which had been admitted to ten weeks ago, when the Liberal's election package was found likely to add $1.2 billion to the state's debt, while also needing around $3 billion of federal funding to complete. A chunk of that money dropped into Mr Barnett's lap courtesy of the federal treasurer's expected Tuesday swansong, including a surprising $400 million donation towards the Perth to Darwin Highway, another key plank of the Liberal election shopping list. Even before the money had been officially confirmed however, Mr Barnett said the state could not afford to match it - as had been suggested pre-election. And then after it was delivered, the premier said he would have preferred it in another pile, as his airport rail plan was a higher priority. "The Commonwealth called your bluff," baited state opposition leader Mark McGowan in parliament. You got exactly what you asked for, and now what do we see - 'we don't want that anymore, that is not our priority'. You are a redefiner extraordinaire. Never have so many broken promises been made by so few in such a short period of time. The timeline for the touted plan to weave a light rail track through the northern suburbs was the next victim of circumstance, with the ten-year period for federal funding meaning the stated 2018 finish date was now not guaranteed. And those redefinitions reached a peak when it emerged government belt-tightening would extend to the scrapping of a plan to abolish a legislated small business tax that had been set to save business owners $120 million a year. "We have not increased taxes - we have decided not to reduce taxes," insisted the premier. And we made no commitments in the area of stamp duty during the election campaign ... so it is not a broken promise. We have not, and will not, break election promises. So when is a promise not a promise? Perhaps Mr Barnett should ask Tony Abbott. Among the premier's long and loud critique of WA's share of the country's GST revenue, Mr Barnett has painted the federal opposition leader as the state's white knight, who will listen and act to redress the balance if he wins power on September 14. But a front-page Abbott ad in the Tasmanian press last weekend stating that "the Coalition fully supports the existing GST arrangements. We will not change them" made truly uncomfortable reading for Mr Barnett. "You could see the blood drain from his face," claimed Mr McGowan, who then made his own guarantee. Our GST share will fall further if Tony Abbott becomes prime minister in September. If that is to be believed, then Mr Barnett's political future promises to be filled with more tricky weeks, and even trickier language.