Rudd’s plasma and pokies package
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It’s a good time, declared one influential lobbyist yesterday, to buy shares in Harvey Norman and Aristocrat. Much of the Government’s economic stimulus will go into new plasmas TVs for low and middle-income earners, and poker machines played by pensioners down at the club. Let’s call it the plasma and pokies package, and be damned for our cynicism. Cynicism has been thin on the ground, actually. We’re all too stunned — or would be stunned if we had time to think between press conferences that casually announce revolutionary policies and dramatic interventions. Everything we’ve read, written, pondered and discussed since November last year is now moot. All that stuff about narratives, about Rudd’s focus on nation-building, and empowering consumers, and taking his time to nut out the best policy options — all gone. I jokingly speculated a while back that we needed a new version of the neocon phrase “September 10 thinking” to describe the world before the financial crisis. Well, the world really has changed and we need to reset our brains to how we thought before the long boom carried Australia into the “miracle economy” league. Henceforth, we’ll just be an ordinary economy, with all the budget and employment problems of an ordinary economy. Which is OK because there’ll be plenty of others for whom being an ordinary economy will for a long time be the stuff of dreams. Now the speculation is of budget deficits. Several reasons to be a bit cautious about that. Until we see definitive evidence that Chinese growth is slowing significantly — like, you know, from over 10% to below 5% — it’s hard to see the commodities boom turning into a bust that would seriously slash mining profits. We’re also likely to see a significant increase in winter crop harvests this year, even if they’re below initial estimates. And unemployment is coming off a very low base. Lindsay Tanner’s latest round of savings measures are also yet to be deployed, even if they won’t come close to making up for the billions in revenue lost from the economic slowdown. Still, at best there won’t be much if anything left after the pokies and plasmas. But we don’t know. Presumably Treasury, and Wayne Swan on the phone from Ground Zero at Wall St, told the Government’s assembled leadership on the weekend how seriously bad things were likely to become — sufficient to prompt Rudd, the economic conservative, to undertake two radical and unprecedented interventions, despite our relative economic strength. The Opposition is right to ask the Government — as Turnbull did in Question Time yesterday — for detail on the current forecasts for growth and employment. Everyone other than the senior leadership of the Government are operating in the dark. We know things will be bad, but not how bad, or for how long, and where it will be particularly bad. As a consequence, we’re looking to any indicator that might help. The insane lurches of the stockmarket have been taken as some sort of proxy for the crisis. Last week we were heading into a depression, and never-ending falls in equity prices. This week — until this morning at least — everything was going brilliantly. It’s like asking a jabbering lunatic to tell you what the weather’s like. “It is my job to level with the Australian people,” Rudd said last night, adding — for the umpteenth time — “I don’t intend to gild the lily.” If there’s one thing absolutely crystal clear about the Government’s response to the crisis, it’s that it has been decisive — we know because “decisive” was pretty much every second word Rudd said in announcing the stimulus package — and that no lilies are in danger of being gilded. Indeed, the chances of the lily-gilding industry getting any assistance from this government any time soon are pretty much zero. But Rudd hasn’t levelled with us — not on what the Government expects will happen over the remainder of this financial year and the next. It might have been OK in years gone by for us to wait to see what MYEFO told us. But everything has now been accelerated. That’s one the fascinating ways the world has changed lately — everything seems to have been sped up as we watch Wall St and European banks fall over, rescue packages hastily assembled, markets react instantly. The Prime Minister should use today’s National Press Club address to release Treasury’s preliminary estimates — and that’s all they’ll be and all we could reasonably expect — of the impact on growth and employment, and the consequences for budget revenue and expenditure. It would reinforce the Government’s commitment to transparency, and allow a more mature and realistic debate about the efficacy of the Government’s response. Read Bernard Keane’s report on the Prime Minister’s Press Club address this afternoon on the Crikey website. |
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13 Comments
Jane, I feel for you and I’m happy that good things will come of your share of the booty, but…
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My point is not that people will spend frivolously, it’s just that unless a few million of us pool our share to build a railway or a dam or a few wind-farms, then the nation’s money will have been p-ssed against the wall. I think Rudd has grabbed the opportunity to be a short-term hero, at the expense of his chance to be a long-term visionary. And we all miss out as a result.
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Good luck with the kids.
2008 could have gone down in history as the year we started the (for example) 2nd Sydney airport, or the Sydney-to-Newcastle VFT, or the Western Sydney Suburban Rail network, or the Great National Reforestation project, or the Murray/Darling Rescue operation or…. the possibilities were endless. Now it will go down as the year Grandma got her new digital set-top box, and Kylie & Shane were finally able to start building the 18-room McMansion in Bella Vista. Gotta love the vision, Kev.
What a fortunate coincidence. A decent health system is exactly the sort of thing you could buy with a $10 billion dollar surplus. Or, of course, you could send the money to random beneficiaries, 99.9% of whom will not have stories this worthy and you can blow the rest on propping up housing debt. Its a woeful policy, and the fact that many people can use the money doesn’t change the fact that it is going to cause more pain in the long term.
May I say what an insult Bernard. Are you as is Barnaby Joyce judging us by what you would do with $1,000 to $2000 payment. Yes there will be some people who will do the wrong things, but don’t judge us all by the lowest denominator.
The first homebuyers grant has been used for years by shonky lenders to lure young people into taking on no deposit home loans they couldn’t pay back. Isn’t that what caused the crisis in the US in the first place?
We will now have people lining up to use the grant to help buy homes being sold off after being repossessed from people who used the grant to buy…….. you get the puicture.
Bernard: who’s the influential lobbyist who concocted the ‘plasma & pokies’ slogan…oh yes, of course you can’t say…mmmm…such a cheap shot would normally come from Ackerman or Bolt….& as for the slogan’s origin, do you really think you can deflect its origin from yourself. This is dimwitted analysis…you have done a lot better than this populist tripe.
AS for Stevo the Working Twisted, Stevo & Graham H, it’s revealing that you all provide your analysis as it shows you to be not only economics trogs, but current affairs ones as well. Heard of the National Infrastructure Plan? It appears not…been living in a cave? Or are you more of those Liberal Party boosters who just can’t get used to the fact that YOU LOST the last Federal election.
I think the Narnargoon School of Economics should be closed.
Finally, as a general commment I’m no longer surprised that in almost all cases, the most biased, dilatory comments on Crikey are posted anonymously……says a lot really.
The comment about unemployment coming of a very low base appears to be skewed by the 457 visa issue. There is a large buffer of skilled migrant workers (temporary) who will lose their jobs without any contribution to the unemployment figures. Once we eat through those ranks (and remove their contribution to consumption which is often proportionally larger for people establishing a new home) and start into the ranks of the voters, unemployment might move up quite quickly. Last months 0.2% rise may be an indication of “the quickening”.
I am with Stevo the working twistie, millions of aussies spending their individual share of Rudd’s booty isn’t going to build a better future Australia, it might continue to fuel the insane urban sprawl and growth of “home entertainment systems” but at some stage this country is going to have to deal collectively with some of the problems we face or suffer the consequences. This would have been a good time to do it but you would probably need to have politicians with a little more vision and courage of their convictions than we currently have. Health, education, water, transport, environment…actually why don’t we just toss the idea of doing anything collectively out the window and just let individuals make their own way in the world, you know like the free market on Wall St.
Another most incisive contribution Bernard. Anyone with any common sense must ask for the rationale on which Swan and Rudd have dished out this largesse. Has anyone done an assessment of where the $10.4Billion will end up? As Bernard says, a large %ge will undoubtedly finish up with the Japanese manufacturers, and the Casinos. Hopefully a bit of it will help a few people who really do need it., but there is now an urgent need to understand the likelihood of double digit inflation, and 17% interest rates. But Paul Keating taught us all what to do about that - just have a recession.
At least the expenditure on the pokies should have a close to zero increase on green house emissions (unless you take into account the Holden Statesman having it’s rare trip out of the garage to belch smoke all the way to the pokies venue). As the pensioners will probably expend more than payment and struggle to pay the utility bills, it may actually reduce emissions. It’s a shame that the same can’t be said for the plasmas though.
Didn’t we hand control of money supply over to the reserve bank precisely because governments are so bad at terminating inflation by reducing supply? Howard et al seemed not to like that independence when, for every rate rise on the one hand there was a tax cut on the other. Now Rudd has dropped $10.4 billion in unmarked bills into circulation, which looks a bit like adding another few tenths of a percent to what the reserve has already done. So we still have this collusion between citizens who want to become magically rich by owning shares/houses/credit cards and governments who want to look magically competent by taking credit for it. Always had to convince people you are not responsible for the bust, of course, or the 10% inflation which eats peoples attempts to pay off debt afterwards.
POKIES & PLASMA??? ANY bonus I get from the Government will give my daughter the $6000 operation she desperately needs - my two foster daughters their “FREE” education @ $280 each - and enough left over to get some counselling and specialist care for my foster son who has Tourette’s but at 15 isn’t considered by the Dr’s as a PRIORITY!!! - your cynicism should be directed at Mr Rudd’s vote gathering - and not at the beneficiaries who struggle with 5 teenage kids as thereis no PLASMA in their future unless it’s through the Health system!
I want to take issue with Bernard’s story yesterday in which he said the opposition has the right to question the stimulus package. In today’s crisis, that makes them unpatriotic financial terrorists.