Open letter to Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop
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Dear guys, I know it’s hell being in Opposition generally and particularly hellish during periods of crisis when people only really care about what the bloke in charge is doing. But you’re also both intelligent, reasonable people — particularly Malcolm, who’s got a brain the size of a planet. So I know you’ll take my comments in good part. As you know, the budget is in deficit. Not officially, but we all know it is, even before the stimulus package that will come out very shortly. But every time the word “deficit” is mentioned, you get a glint in your eyes, and suggest, ever so subtly — and sometimes not so subtly — that this is the Government’s fault. Now, however unreasonable this is, no one can blame you for this, because in Opposition you live off scraps. Half-truths, deliberate misinterpretation and wilful obscurity are every bit the staples of communication that they are in government. For a couple of months last year, around about the time Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan were refusing to talk about deficits, you were saying we shouldn’t be going into deficit. When they suddenly started talking about deficits — not so much acknowledging the elephant in the room as recognising that it had deposited an enormous pile of dung right in the middle of it — you changed tack and started saying deficits should be a last resort and that it was the “quality of the spending” that was important. I’m not sure what “last resort” actually means. Does that mean the Government should boost taxes before a deficit? Slash spending before seeing red ink? Wait until unemployment is over 10%. Anyway, we won’t dwell on that. But in case you haven’t noticed, just about every economist on the planet is calling for massive government spending to replace at least a small part of the huge gap in private demand left by the financial crisis. This spending will, at least for some Australians, mean the difference between having a job and not having a job. If we learned anything from the last recession it’s that unemployment is a bastard of a problem to fix and pernicious in its effect on our social fabric. Playing political games with the deficit is grotesquely irresponsible. Other conservatives are being rather more sensible. Barry O’Farrell this week proposed cutting payroll taxes and sending the NSW Budget further into deficit to help employers. And the Canadian Government — that’d be the one led by Stephen Harper, who wants to be John Howard so much he plagiarises his speeches — has just announced a stimulus package that will take Canada US$30b into deficit. But you seem determined to maintain the fiscal hairy-chestedness. As part of that, you like to maintain that when you were in Government, you were the height of fiscal responsibility. That’s complete bollocks and I’m sick of hearing it. The first two Howard Budgets were excellent. They cleaned up the profligacy of the last Keating budgets and began seriously implementing a small-government agenda of the sort a lot of us had been looking for for years. But after that, you dropped the ball. Subsequent budgets got slacker and slacker, especially once the mining boom kicked in. After 2001, your budgets got downright bad as you shelled out money to buy votes. After 2004, you were shovelling money out the door so fast slow-moving people were getting buried under it. If you’d had just a little regard for the longer term you could have used the boom years to hand out tax cuts and built the surplus up further, or make a serious start on fixing our infrastructure, or get an ETS up and running so we had it built into our economy before the crisis hit. But no, you died vomiting money to anyone registered to vote. You also completely abandoned the small government agenda. This was a profound betrayal, one that has left Australian with a legacy of middle class welfare and a handout mentality that will take years to undo — if any politician has the guts to try to undo it. You could have used the boom years of full employment to wean voters and businesses off government handouts. You’re the conservatives. You’re the ones who are supposed to keep government in check, to reduce the burden of government on a free society. But instead your reached hitherto undreamt-of heights of profligacy. So don’t give us this “keeper of the fiscal flame” act, because it’s rubbish. Julie, you’ve just come back from America, and declared that the Americans had “moved on from focusing on the malaise to what they do when the economy turns — how to get the government out of the market”. Not sure what America you actually went to, but that description of the United States couldn’t be more wrong. Moreover, I simply don’t believe you when you talk about reducing the role of Government anyway. You and your colleagues had 12 years to show what you were made of on that issue and you did exactly the opposite of what your party philosophy says you believe in. I will never believe the Liberals again when they talk about smaller government, not until they spell out what programs and expenditure and welfare and pork barrelling and handouts you’re going to nix when you get into government — and then do it. Having wasted vast amounts of money when times were good, it seems you’re determined to criticise the Government for taking us into deficit when things are at about their worst since men wore hats, the world was in black and white, and FDR had a permanent lease on the White House. I’m starting to worry that if I turn on the radio, Roy Rene will be on. Instead of pursuing this deficit-is-evil rubbish, why don’t you get creative like other conservatives, and start arguing for clever ways of generating a lasting stimulus to demand rather than demanding tax cuts we’ll all stick on the mortgage, retooling the economy for greater efficiency and competitiveness when growth returns to the world economy, and ensuring unemployment doesn’t become a poverty trap tearing our social fabric and damaging our economy? It’d challenge the Government, and you’d be more credible on that stuff than trying to tell us what great fiscal managers you were. Beause, quite bluntly, you weren’t. |
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13 Comments
What a well-founded appeal to Turnbull Bishop & Co who indeed are acting on behalf of themselves and not the clientele. Gutted by their own recession you’d think they’d be empathy charged for those left to mop up. When the party for business went out of business and the world did much the same global economies united in the spirit of the times but over at Turnbull Bishop and Co au contraire. Their salve for the nation is political dissidence. Right now Turnbull Bishop & Co are busy taking care of themselves - a case they’ll argue at the next election.
Earth to Bernard. this strong article marred by a glaring flaw
A sell assets to your mates campaign such as that Howard Jull and others embarked is not a ‘small government agenda.’ It was the beginning of corporate welfare on a grand scale.
Well done Bernard. Unfortunately the myth of the Liberals being better economic managers will be hard to lift because the nongs who believe it aren’t interested in political or economic debate.
To prove that point, some are now denigrating the $10b package from December and calling it worthless. Well there is $10b in the economy that wouldn’t be there now if it wasn’t done. At an average rate, about $2b to $3b or so of that will come back as tax receipts from the expanded profits of the business, and god knows how many jobs are being held on to because of the extra breathing room that created. If they had done nothing then everyone would be whinging, and the fact is that the money went to the groups in society most likely to spend it. No-one can say with authority what would have happened without the stimulus, but you can say with some certainty that there is more money in the system because of it.
And of course not one of the naysayers have come up with anything remotely like an alternative solution, but no surprises there.
The message to the Liberals is loud and clear. They also participated in the events leading to our nation’s involvement in the global downturn or depression. Now in Opposition the Liberal/National coalition steered the ship for more than a decade using its hands-off policies to keep us on course with other economies headed for disaster. No doubt its politically desirable to use the all care but no responsibility taken way out but they went hell for leather to curry free-market monetary policy that led to the world market collapse. Critique from a back seat while the nation fights to survive their legacy is also cowardly but not politically surprising. You just hope for once that political parties in dire times could put people and economies ahead of their own agendas.
Excellent letter, Bernard and will link to it on my blog. I have been getting frustrated with Malcolm Turnbull for quite a while now. He seems not to understand the basic premise that he is not going to be able to either win the next elections or to contribute to the debate meaningfully with thought out, credible policies. Instead, all we have been getting is a bunch of knee-jerk political reaction with no coherent thread thorugh them, and supplemented by not much else but a reliance on Malcolm’s personal charisma. That is not good enough.
Vladimir Putin said this about Barack Obama the other day: “I am deeply convinced that the biggest disappointments are born out of big expectations“. Malcolm would be wise to keep this in mind.
http://beatsandpiecesblog.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/expectations-and-disappointments-malcolm-turnbull-edition/) a line
I would be happy to be a co-signatory to your letter Bernard, a small point though, even if punters use a tax cut to pay off on their mortgage, is not that money helping re-finance the banks and allowing them to increase their lending. In any case not all have mortgages to handle.
I don’t dislike Malcolm Turnbull - au contraire! It’s the latent lair in him which I admire as much as his obvious intellect, the latter, of course, setting him apart from the rest of his party, just as it does the (sadly) pedestrian Rudd. I think that, often, MT is on the money, but not now.
I couldn’t give a rats about petty point-scoring and one-upmanship at the present. What I, and I believe, many Australians want to see, is a concerted effort by all politicians, irrespective of party, to confront and confound the serious and dangerous problems challenging our economy.
My son, who has an honours Arts degree from the University of Melbourne couldn’t find work last year except as a builders’ labourer. Fortuitously, he actually enjoyed the physical exertion and really delighted in his resultant, firmer, stronger body, his newfound practical knowledge, and the freedom of working in an outdoors environment. Just before Christmas, however, he, and his colleagues, were told that there was no more work. At 26 years of age, he was horrified to see big, burly, hard men burst into tears, crying for their families’ futures.
My opinion is that, whatever government can do to assist ordinary, average Australians to keep putting bread on the table is to be encouraged and endorsed.
So what, if we go into deficit? We’ve been there before and will be again. This is a high expectation society and Australians really aren’t so dumb that they don’t know that they’ll have to pay to continue to receive government support and buffering. For better or worse, that is the ingrained Australian Way, and if one wishes to blame anyone, blame Governor Arthur Phillip!
And why have we forgotten the $600 billion plus foreign deficit (March ‘08) which Australia inherited from Howard/Costello? Without that burden, our problems would be much lessened. Methinks that Mighty Malcolm and the Liberals might address that, too.
Excellent little letter. One of the reasons I like reading Crikey is that you get the other sides feelings on what the pollies are up to.
As you mention, Bernard, the Libs started off well - however it really is tiresome now to constantly hear about how good they were at managing the economy.
Sure, hindsight is a wonderful thing. However even prior to the election result and the financial crisis, their lack of vision and prudent investment (which lead to skilled labour shortages, buckling infrastructure etc etc) coupled with their cynical porkbarelling, was both obvious and infuriating!
Not that Rudd’s got it much better. “Environment and Climate Change and all that … lets invest in making cars”.
Well said!
It always strikes me as funny the State fails to invest in the things that will actually advance it. For example, why is it on the hottest of days when the call on airconditioning is at its greatest, we dont take advantage of the sun at its hottest to cool us down! The present system has power companies paying spot rate (about double) for power the sun could deliver very efficiently for free! That is even with our present level of “unclassified” technology. There are many things we could be doing as a country that would ween us off crude oil and which would reward those with the initiative to set them in train.
So, Opposition, get some imagination! Inspire the people rather than frightening the heck out of them.
I couldn’t agree more with you on the Howard years and the bullsh*t spouted by Turnbishop in recent months. But I reckon you let Rudd & Co off the hook too easily. At least when Howard was in charge you could literally see the contempt he held for the Opposition. Rudd spouts endless crap about bipartisanship above the desk whilst leaning underneath to kick Turnbull in the balls.
Why doesn’t Turnbull get stuck into him for the $10 billion wasted at the pokies? Why doesn’t anybody care that all of that money was wasted? It was TEN BILLION DOLLARS, not change left over from a Labor fundraiser. And now he wants to spurt out a few more billion, no doubt all nicely backed up with facts and figures, when BLIND FREDDY can see it will bribe people to vote Labor.
The $10.4 billion pre-Christmas stimulus package was a waste of taxpayers’ money. It delayed, but didn’t prevent, the downward economic trajectory. However, it is money which has now vanished and is unavailable for the infrastructure spending which is the best thing the government can do to help get the economy going again. The other thing the govenrment can do is to encourage private investment in new and green technologies. Malcolm’s biochar, solar, wind, wave, tidal and geothermal initiatives are the future which could give Australia an edge. If young workers fill those fields, we’ll avoid a decade of high youth unemployement.
Bernard,a sound effort.
Will you publish any response from the addressee?
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Tax cuts, yes, but surely in the form of reducing GST for the lower end of the income rainbow. That ought to satisfy the moralising “It all goes to the pokies brigade. After all, every one else received tax cuts aplenty in the previous regime,and look where that got us?
Incidentally, none of the Pokies Billions recipients of my acquaintance spent their bananza on the pokies.Or purchased plasmas.
Interestingly, several invested in good quality garden tools or rainwater tanks that are normally off budget
Which leads me into saying that in this case I’m with Bob Brown . I believe his suggestion of retrofitting existing homes with solar panels and insulation amkes excellent sense on a number of levels: employment and reskilling,technology development , and, Oh yes, the future energy policycould be responsibly shaped.