Inflation crisis? What inflation crisis?
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Several weeks ago, Brendan Nelson declined to back Malcolm Turnbull when Treasury Secretary Ken Henry handed out one of the biggest don’t-argues ever dealt by a bureaucrat to a serving politician. Turnbull had claimed that Treasury recommended a specific minimum wage increase in the Government’s submission to the Fair Pay Commission. “These claims are false,” Henry immediately said, in a rare public statement. Nelson, asked at the National Press Club whom he believed, said he preferred Henry’s version of events. Turnbull was humiliated, and it was naturally seen in the context of the Liberal leadership issue. But today Nelson has fully signed up to Turnbull’s agenda as shadow Treasurer, arguing that there is no inflation crisis and that there is no need for cuts in government expenditure. The entire focus on inflation, Nelson reckons, is a Rudd-Swan plot to discredit the Coalition’s economic credentials. The anxiety of the Coalition leadership to prevent damage to the Howard-Costello economic brand is motivated by a worry that, like Labor under Beazley, a successful discrediting of their economic record will make it even harder to present as a credible alternative government. They also still hold hopes that the inflationary effects of the Government’s reversal of Workchoices can be established as a credible narrative – even though they themselves have declared Workchoices dead. It’s clear, amidst all the mixed messages emanating from the Government, that it won’t tackle the big ticket items of Howard-Costello spending in middle-class welfare, health and defence because of Kevin Rudd’s me-tooism in 2007. So Lindsay Tanner is stuck trying to find savings at the margins. The chances of any actual reduction in government outlays next Tuesday looks minimal. So, really, this is a fake debate. The Government and the Opposition are arguing the toss over expenditure reductions of a couple of billion dollars when neither will seriously contemplate taking the meataxe to spending that Rudd promised. |
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11 Comments
John James, well why don’t they? How does a baby bonus solve their location issues?
What’s ‘rich’ you ask? I’d like to know how you define ‘paupers’ and ‘kings’. Or should you just stop exaggerating?
Almost all the the ‘family payments’ are already means tested (naturally enough). They either work on sliding scales, or they’re bracketed.
I love youse all! (Yes, I can spell but it appears that you lot cannot think).
Gee, thanks Keith. I’ll tell that to the ATO when next they ask me about why I’m not paying any tax! And when I’m being prosecuted I’ll comfort myself with the thought that its all meaningless.
PS; You didn’t write for the Socialist Review some time back, did you Keith?
Arsehat.
Geez, Nick, turn it up! If you ‘re going to start whacking people cause they’re “rich” you’re going to be nailing alot of Australians who are doing it quite tough. A farmer with assets of 2 million dollars who is up to his armpits in debt after the drought or a dad with 2-3 young children and his wife working at home , living in Sydney, with an average mortgage, on $100,000 a year, could be defined as ‘rich” on the basis of gross income or assets’ value, but no-one, except maybe Swan, would regard them as’ rich.”
The baby bonus doesn’t solve a stay-at-home mum’s “location issues” as you put it , but it does help offset her loss of income, when the hard work she is doing raising those young children is such a tremendous contribution to the future of this country and it is generally not recognised as such. The family benefit payments were developed by the Howard government particularly with that group in mind.
Who’s that Turner guy? I meant Turnbull, of course. Sorry. Freudian slip. Or something.
Turnbull is arguing that, unlike economies in the UK and States, which are bordering on recession, the inflation “genie” that Swan advertised as being “out of the bottle” is a consequence of a very strong Oz economy with sound fundamentals, that indicators of demand are slowing, that the RBA has already belted everyone about the head and that Swan can achieve his surplus of 1.5-1.6% of GDP ‘on his ear ‘without the need to belt the already concussed mortgage belt further.
The other demographic who are being hammered and, given all the talk about midle class welfare and family payments/baby bonuses being means tested, look likely to be hit again, are mothers who are working full time, and usuallly very hard, at home, with 2-3 young children.
I feel distinctly uncomfortable about the ‘politics of envy’ emerging in Labor rhetoric. “Lets get the rich” is becoming a frequent theme in Swan’s doorstops. Whats “rich”? A pauper in Sydney can live like a king in most of the rest of Australia.
John, i’m not whacking anybody - you asked ‘what’s rich’…i asked what’s a ‘pauper’ and what’s a ‘king’. you can’t claim the terms (of your own phony catch-cry btw…which is a laugh) are loose, then use other terms more loosely. a farmer with assets of $2 million who is ‘up to his armpits’ in debt, doesn’t own those assets, they’re mortgaged in one way or another - that’s common sense and he is not rich. BUT if he still has an annual income of $150,000 and can’t service his debts, he has overextended - and that would be his fault - and no, he doesn’t qualify for Family Tax benefits , which are income tested, not asset tested. he could own a $50,000,000 farm outright and still qualify for Family Tax benefits if his annual income is low enough. so then what’s your point? that you think a couple living in Sydney earning $100,000p/a are struggling paupers? get real
no-one, including Swan, regard them as rich - but no-one regards them as paupers either (except you evidently).
(And it appears that my fingers do strange things on a keyboard.) To continue, budgets and their surpluses and deficits, are merely projections that “they” hope that “they” can justify are meaningless unless they are adhered to and refer directly to concrete revenues and expenditures. They become totally meaningless when expressed in terms of accrual accounting and multi-year expenditures. In other words, “Pie in the sky” becomes “Virtual Pie in the sky”. What a waste of space and ink!
Nick,not all the family tax benefits are currently means tested. In terms of definitions, I agree the definitions are “loose”, but thats my point. A family in other parts of Australia, with the same income as the couple in Sydney, would have more disposable income. The cost of living in Sydney is alot steeper. Swan, in a number of his doorstops, has referred to “the rich” needing to be “targeted”, and my question is: to whom is he referring? And why single out a nebulous group if, as we seem to both agree, the definition is very fluid.
Turner and Nelson’s agenda is more short-term than argued above. They seek to deny there is an inflation problem simply to clear the decks for an all out attack on the cuts in the coming Budget. It is an extremely unsophisticated brand of cynical opportunism and is designed to set themselves up as the bleeding hearts of politics who will lend a shoulder for anyone aggrieved after the Budget to cry on. Nelson’s much-ridiculed “every baby is equal, every sperm is good” address to the nation was a dry (or damp??) run for what is to come.