Labor Treasurer Curtis Pitt has accused the Newman Government of deliberately "fattening" up the state's SPER debt, to make it more attractive to outsource collection to private contractors.
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The LNP introduced a plan last year to have the debt held by the State Penalties Enforcement Registry - money owed in fines, unpaid tolls and the like - managed by private debt collectors.
In 2012, the debt pool sat at around $771 million.
In 2013, Mr Nicholls was forced to write off $100 million in "unrecoverable" unpaid fines, but by 2014 the SPER debt had grown to $850 million and was forecast to hit $1 billion by 2016. That forecast has changed, with the $1 billion figure due to be surpassed sometime this year.
The LNP saw the only solution to recover the unpaid fines as sending in private debt collectors.
Mr Pitt said that was "privatisation by stealth", with $25 million in taxpayer funds set aside for the plan.
But he blamed the former government for allowing the debt to reach such high levels in the first place, by allowing all outstanding toll road fines to be automatically referred to SPER in the last budget.
"In the first eight months of the 2014-15 financial year, there was $92.3 million in tolling debt registered with SPER, which is more than triple the 2013-14 levels," he said in a statement.
"This was part of an orchestrated campaign by Tim Nicholls and Jarrod Bleijie to fatten up SPER in a deal that reeked of their disastrous Strong Choices asset sales plan."
Labor has scrapped the private debt collectors plan, but at the time, Mr Nicholls, who had first flagged the idea in 2012, said he had been left with no option, with so many outstanding debts and SPER warnings just being ignored.
