Robb and Hockey go the lazy route on savings
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Kevin Rudd has had his way. The reckless spending has indeed stopped. And yesterday the Coalition began reckless saving. It’s hard to overstate just how badly the Coalition had handled the costings issue. Forget about the theatre about the Charter for Budget Honesty, a piece of legislation that has rightly been torn up and discarded by both parties. Forget about having a “mid-tier” accounting firm (as one Fin journalist snarkily described it) sign off on the costings — and ignore the smearing of that firm by some who suggest that having an old link to a Liberal politician somehow means they can’t, or won’t, add up correctly. Labor has done similar things in the past. But at every stage the Liberals have acted like they have something to hide on Budget savings, and Tony Abbott has run a mile from the issue. He handballed it to Joe Hockey in May, and Hockey handballed it to Robb. Robb, who effortlessly eclipses Hockey every time the two are in the same room, has had the issue ever since. Yesterday, in a much-delayed press conference that barely allowed the commercial networks time to put together coverage, the final package was unveiled and, not to put too fine a point on it, it was rubbish. You can expect Labor to cry “blowout” and “bungle” — Wayne Swan has done nothing but over the last five weeks — but there are two serious methodological flaws under major savings entries: the overestimation of interest saved from not committing to the NBN, which appears to be worth $800m, and the underestimate of the cost of the expansion of the education rebate, which the body Andrew Robb was citing yesterday as an authority, NATSEM, suggests is around $350m. But both are the sort of flaws that occur when you don’t have access to the bureaucracy, and so can be forgiven. There are other problems that can not so easily be ignored. One is the gimmick of the Coalition awarding itself a $260m “border security dividend” from closing Christmas Island, but not allocating any expenditure to the reopening of the offshore processing centre on Nauru, costs for which will start on Sunday, presumably, when Tony Abbott makes his first phone call as Prime Minister to that tiny speck in the Pacific. Scott Morrison ducked questions about the cost when he gave a press conference on the subject, but we know from previous assessments of the cost of the Pacific Solution that offshore processing is extraordinarily expensive, perhaps $200m a year. Perhaps that means Nauru will have to bear the full cost of running the processing centre and flying over and accommodating Department of Immigration staff needed for its operation. Then there’s the fiddling of the accounts masquerading as a “conservative bias allowance adjustment”, reducing the standard over-allocation by Treasury for spending programs, from a party that has repeatedly ridiculed Treasury for failing to be perfect in its forecasts. Under the Coalition, magically, Treasury will acquire the ability it certainly never displayed under the Howard Government, of accurately predicting future expenditure, including which lapsing programs will be continued by politicians. That in effect swaps risk for marginal political gain: for the sake of boasting now that it will have a slightly higher surplus in the future, the Coalition increases the risk of a budget blow-out once it is in government. That’s worth over $2.5b. Then there’s the efficiency dividend on the Public Service, increased to 2%. There may well be, as Stephen Bartos separately suggests today, room for large agencies to accommodate such a hit — they’ll just dip into large, unspent programs to fund it, although as an ex-Finance senior executive, Bartos might overestimate just how much program funding is sloshing around in line agencies after the first Swan Budget imposed a 3.25% slug. But that rise punished smaller agencies, and the Coalition’s 2% will repeat the dose. Small agencies don’t have large programs to dip into and their corporate overhead costs per staff member are higher, meaning there’s very little fat to trim before you have to start sacking bureaucrats. There will be a procession of small and medium-sized agencies coming to government and asking for assistance once this is imposed. But the efficiency dividend, coupled with the two-year recruitment freeze, will be imposed at the same time the Coalition proposes a significant expansion of the Public Service to undertake its own programs, including hundreds of extra Customs, hospital board and Crime Commission staff, a new “Broadband Commission”, a new Ombudsman, new ministerial committees that need to be serviced — a conservative calculation is that the Coalition will need to immediately employ an extra 1000 public servants to implement its programs. That means an awful lot of HR staff in smaller agencies are going to have to be retrained as Customs officers and Crime Commission staff and health bureaucrats. Given the recruitment freeze — which, by the way, means no Commonwealth job ads in The Weekend Australian and the Friday Financial Review for two years, cutting a key revenue source for the ailing national print media — there isn’t any logical alternative to such transfers of staff. Still, as Kevin Rudd showed before the 2007 election, there are lazy savings to be found in declaring you’ll cut bureaucrats. The only worthwhile saving identified by Robb and Hockey yesterday was to propose cutting the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme by $200m a year. Peter Costello had a proud record of reforming the PBS to curtail its explosive growth in the early part of the 2000s and Robb and Hockey have continued that tradition. It’s also likely to be an issue Labor will hammer over the next 48 hours. But with a Budget laden with middle-class welfare, with handouts and pork-barrelling across so many portfolios, think of what a John Hewson or a Jeff Kennett could achieve in ripping into expenditure. Instead, Robb and Hockey went the lazy route. |
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61 Comments
What’s going to be the net result to our fragile economy if the Libs get their way?
Aren’t we supposed to spend our way out of recessions? As in, err… the opposite of what they will implement.
Madness.
I can see why the Libs are known as the party of superior economic managers.
/facepalm
Would it be accurate to say that counting “savings” such as the contingency reserve is only possible by having their policies not costed by Treasury? If so, it means that they only put together their costings after last Friday, or they had made the decision to no submit to treasury long before then.
Yes Mack, the very question I posed to Mr SBH this morning!
As for the Nauru solution, that may play out differently and the costings will be adjusted accordingly. Insiders tell the tale that Tony is a man of a previous generation he appears to be in a muddle over Nauru. We will have to wait for the carefully scripted, gospel truth about Nauru after the election. It seems Tony thought Nauru was housed at the top of a large building at 80 Collins street in Melbourne and the President’s name is Sir John Moore.
The costs of sticking refugees in there has been proven by the Victorian Public Service as less than other available alternatives.
Last time Nauru cost $1.5 billion. That would mean that closing Christmas Island and opening Nauru would cost over $1.2 billion
“Robb and Hockey went the lazy route.”
And anyone expected anything else? Really?
Hockey looked scared that someone was going to ask him about where he hid his grandmother’s body, while Robb droned on, bumbling through sheets of paper as if any of this charade actually meant more than a soundbite.
“Our surplus is bigger than theirs” indeed.
God, spare us this farcical show, what did we do to deserve it?
I’m intrigued by this term “middle-class welfware”. What does it mean? Is there something wrong with the middle classes? Who are they? Are they bad?
They don’t need welfare Troy, the Australian typifies them as poor little luddites earning $150,000 per annum..
As for surpluses, when is someone going to point out there is no basis for having a surplus. It is systematic theft of taxes without supplying essential services and that is not what the constitution allows.
Yep , the Mean and Tricky party living up to their name. Poor old sloppy Joe and Robb , left with job to sell abbotts mess. Abbot’s travelling the country hiding from hard questions and his fate with “Road kill ” only a couple of days till Aunty Julia moving into the Lodge . The fridge is stocked up ready to party.
Troy, I think Marilyn’s reply is basically correct (although the term ‘luddite’ has me perplexed in this context), and the Howard protocol (if I can glorify it thus) was to bribe the electorate at election time with un-means tested welfare. So sure, the ‘needy’ got it, but so did the patently ‘un-needy’, and this template has been getting a flogging ever since.
Maybe you’d be forgiven for thinking that the political strategists have assessed that it works a treat? Judging from the shameless “what’s in it for me” questions at RootyQ last night, they’re probably right on the money…ahem, so to speak.
Howard ‘poisoned the well’ over boat people and he poisoned this one too, and the irony is that it was Costello who loathed what Howard was doing (ie buggering the budget in the long term), but never had the guts to challenge him over it.
Oh, what might have been.
Abbott won’t make it, folks. He’s right off the boil.
But he always has his cycling and running and ducking and weaving and changing his position to keep him occupied in Opposition. Maybe he will re-read his own book “Battlelines” and see why we didn’t believe him. And he might even meet some real people instead of the constantly tightly controlled Lib supporters (“the men and women in the street”) he’s been mixing it with for the last three weeks.
How refreshing it will be to have a Labor government with a Green controlled Senate. So much better than the Libs, including their surrogates, Fielding and Xenophon blocking everything flat out. Perhaps, moving forward, the government with the mandate will be allowed to govern, in spite of the fact that the party chosen by God has lost yet again. Funny how God can get it so wrong, so often!
No Abbot has just cleared up the matter on ABC Radio “Costings for Nauru are not required because he is going to stop the boats”
Economic genius!
@LESSHYPE. Jesus sniggered. At least I did, when I heard Robb - really- utter that profundity.
Troy middle class welfare is supplying assistance to those who have an income that negates needing welfare. It also means as in the case with Abbotts parental leave giving more to those who have more and less to those on struggle street. Think giving the first home buyers bonus to a couple who are going to purchase a million dollar home. Thats why means testing is a good way of getting more assistance to more people who actually need it. There is nothing at all wrong with middle class people, quite the opposite, just that they are not in a situation where public purse assistance is justified. Welfare means helping those who need of assistance.
One point about middle-class welfare is that it means higher taxes are needed across the board to pay for services that the aren’t essential. It’s smoke and mirrors.
@ Mack the Knife
But we aren’t in a recession, are we? In fact, the high level of public expenditure sloshing around in the economy generally has led to a rapid increase in interest rates from their mid-GFC lows. While this has been good for sustaining employment etc, continuing on a similar path now that the immediate threat of recession has passed would be irresponsible. Neither party is proposing to do so, and we should at least be thankful for that.
MALCOLM STREET, like what? The health insurance rebate, the purpose of which was to take load off Medicare and prevent blowout of costs to the taxpayer. School funding, the alternative being to fund many more public-school places at much higher cost. Superannuation tax breaks, the purpose of which is to avoid paying more old-age pensions.
So-called “middle class welfare” measures are all optional incentives designed to modify behaviour, where the alternative to the desired behaviour is even more cost to the taxpayer. The very phrase “middle class welfare” implies the recipients are high income earners, and therefore usually high tax payers.
They won’t lose a cent in ad revenue from an Abbott government, in fact they will gain lots as Abbott reintroduces tax payer funded party political advertising to eclipse Howard’s 2 billion.
Has the Coalition put down government advertising as a cost or a saving?
MOBIUS ECKO - That’s the kind of knee-jerk thinking that’s going to deliver government to Labor on Saturday. Like a chess player looking only one move ahead. All you see is the cost of taxpayer funded political advertising. What you don’t see is far greater cost of special-interest groups exerting financial influence over government at the expense of everyone else.
“Rentseeking” is the technical term. I think “legitimized corruption” is more expressive. Ross Garnaut claims it has crippled the process of government and progress in this country:
And all you’re concerned about is the cost of advertising to the taxpayer?
Now I see why Labor is going to win. Hands down, no contest. I give up.
At least you have been examining issues as they occur Mr Keane although I wish crikey would carry more political insight as it once did.
The Aussie voter has been poorly served by the media in general in this election. The underlying mantra that the election campaign has been ‘boring’ or repeated mantras that it’s a contest between two Opposition parties ( some so-called ‘political’ reporters have no shame as they fall into line) and has reduced a very important matter to tabloid tosh.
It has set the rules and the pace on the assumption that we are in a sort of political beauty contest rather than a serious battle of forces that will set the course of how we are governed.
News Corps’ pathetic campaign on behalf of a deposed Kevin Rudd-as if they have ever cared for a left leaning politician- has set the tone and the once reasonable Fairfax Media and ABC have pathetically followed that course as we descend in to the gutter of fluffy personality pieces (budgie smugglers, hair styles and other nonsense).
If someone can point to one serious media examination of the proposed mining tax either pre or post Rudd, I’ll eat my hat. And the reporting of a bunch of billionaires protesting in Perth doesn’t meet that criteria.
A pox on the media. The sooner many of the timeserving hacks are relegated to the dole queue the better. Of course Labor will be returned without a massive loss as predicted.
If anyone believes the Australian electorate has such a short memory that they will ditch a government they elected less than 2 years ago when nothing dramatic has happened that should change their minds, then they have rocks in their heads.
Hockey sweats like a porker and Robb is slow, but Swan is worse, so we are all fooked
make that less than 3 years ago.
It looks to me as if both major parties made a side deal with prison contractors. Either Nauru or East Timor or Curtin Base… anything to build a shameful infrastructure. Can’t we have a fast train, instead?
Powerlite, at it again?
“…and therefore usually high tax payers.” So that’s a mark of entitlement?
Yep, they get their taxes handed back in spades so they can enjoy private education , childcare, and health while the lumpen proletariat get rundown public services or are priced out of any?
Nice.
@Oscar Jones. Testify, Brother! Amen.
Hockey getting anxious,next I’m expecting him to say we was ROBBED with which I concur,it is COSTING them the election.
OSCAR JONES - Well said.
A few years ago I recall there was a lot of trade talk within the press about whether journalism should be considered a “trade” or a “profession”. I think this round of election coverage answers that question pretty clearly. Every year there is less reportage and more opinion, less background education in things like science or economics, and more time spent trawling through other popular media for talking points, in a closed loop of the bland leading the bland.
The future of current affairs reporting will probably be something like onlineopinion.com.au where a small team of permanent editors take submissions from members of the public - probably for free -selects a range of interesting ones, conducts some cross-checking for accuracy and credibility, and publishes them online. Contributors will generally be people with intimate knowledge of what they write about, who only write occasional articles for the sake of being heard and influencing society, and who expect no pay.
Apart from the major agencies like Reuters, and a few specialist roles, the full-time journalist - who once had a monopoly on the mass-printed word - will largely follow the lamplighter into technological redundancy.
All avoidable, if the journalistic “profession” cares to start acting like one one, tell their editors to choose between quality and quantity, take up night school, learn to analyse policy instead of just opining about it, and write one article per day instead of ten. The balance of column space to be filled with readers’ letters or op-ed contributions.
Swan is simply the worst Treasurer in Australia since Keating and his 21% interest rates and the “recession we had to have”
He did some good things, but was a failure.
Swan is just a failure - fiscally responsible he told is in 2007, when Coalition were running the $96b debt that Keating left.
Now Swan has had a $74billion reveral on budget outcome in less than 3 years and racked up $90b debt, all saying it was to save Australia from the GFC.
His reckless spending and waste obviously saved some jobs and created jobs for the shonky insulation installers, but we will be paying interest and replayments through the wazoo well beyond 2014, cause the double dip GFC will wipe the smile off his face. Better get the spin ready on that now Wayne.
I guess in retrospect, Swan presided as Treasurer when the ATO let Graham Richardson off the hook on his tax investigation.
ASTRO - Can’t entirely agree with you there. High debt yes, but there was a lot more to Keating than the recession Bernie Fraser had to have. Actually it was in large part Keating’s reforms which led to Australia being one of the strongest economies in the world in 2008 and surviving the GFC so well.
CHRISTOPHER DUNNE - Well, yes actually. Some people have more to offer society than sneering after all, and if they earn more rewards than you do, what’s that to you?
ASTRO
Do you realise how inane that statement you made sounds ? Costello dog paddled while enjoying the hard yakka that the Keating/Hawke years provided. Even Howard eventually had to concede the merits of what Labor had done. Took a long time mind you but even his ego had to concede that point. Hockey, Robb and Abbott have all agreed that they would have had a deficit if they were in government when the GFC hit. Mind you to have a credible assessment of where the coalition would have been in similar circumstances Turnbull also agrees they would have had to be in deficit just on government receipts alone. Astro the government debt is about 80% loss of revenue and 20% stimulus.
I admire someone supporting their side of politics but wild accusations are just like breaking wind, no substance but you know one has been dropped.
BTW it was Howard who had 21% Keating had 17%.
No Powerlite, government has no right handing it back, it’s not an ‘earned reward’ it’s electoral bribery. It’s those on $40k/pa subsidising those on 150k/pa.
But you’re too thick to understand the difference, apparently.
Great article on the current ineptitude of the coalition Finance troika- Abbott, Hockey and Robb. I agree with you Bernard that Robb will/would know the specifics of what he is/was talking after being tutored by the Treasury bureaucracy for a month or so.
If the Coalition does slip across the line, they will cry Labor “black holes” and the need for an emergency financial review. This will give them a month or two for the bureaucrats to explain the financial choices realistically open to them.
I suspect you are right that the coalition will ultimately go the politically populist and lazy road to deficit reduction.
I thought Rudd and Swan did pretty well on financial strategy for the most part- even though I am very suspicious about the viability of the Labor business case underlying the NBN.
@ Geomac
Obviously you did not have a mortgage when interest rates were 19 or 20% under Hawke/Keating government, of have the bitter recesion Keating said we have to have in 1991/2.
Your comments are foolish.
Costello was the best Treasurer in modern history, if not all.
The best thing Hawke / Keating did was have the 4 bank pillars (that saved our banking system) and dividend imputation / franking credits (that meant low - medium well off Aussies did not pay tax twice on investments)
@ Astro-
You really are sounding foolish now- go back and check your bank statements!
look at the historical Data- interest rates were higher under little Johnny than Keating- typical conservative history revisionism!
I like the way you completely ignore the fact that the Liberal party have stated thatthey would be in deficit “just not as much as the Labor Government”. Which is to say they would not have spent as much, but misses the point that more people would have become unemployed, therefore transfer payments would have increased. In reality the deficit would probably be comperable at this point in time, however with more unemployed, less people making taxable income/ more funds being redistributed, the deficit would still be increasing.
You conservative lot really do not understand economics.
@old skool
Home Loan interest rates have never been higher than they were under Keating in the early 1990’s, when from memory they were 19% or so.
They have never been at these levels under the Coalition under Howard / Costello.
This article is an example of how the press have confused “the economy” with “spending and saving”.
Ross Gittins nailed it today:
No one’s really interested. The press had no trouble pointing out that Kevin Rudd had crippled the review by declaring GST off limits. And they had no trouble repeating again and again that Rudd adopted just two of its points, implemented a party-joke version of a third point, and ignored the other 135 points.
But very few journalists showed any more interest in, or understanding of, Ken Henry’s report than Kevin Rudd did. Despite being constrained by Rudd’s GST straitjacket, Henry has provided a blueprint for some very interesting reforms which could profoundly raise Australia’s productivity and standard of living.
When Abbott says he will be going through it a lot more thoroughly - and also reviewing the rate of GST - very few journalists are listening. They only want to talk about “saving and spending,” the left and right columns of the government ledger, and whether the figures all add up. Labor even ran an economically illiterate scare ad about a possible rise in the GST rate, suggesting that they don’t even understand why it’s so superior to the other taxes it would replace.
Hockey talks about competition law, same thing. No interest, just snores from the gallery. But we’ve got major problems in competition policy. This has been recognized for a long time and there have been other reviews which, quite frankly, were set up to fail and amounted to nothing. That doesn’t mean our problems have gone away. I wonder how many readers realize that the ACCC has partly nationalized two freight railways owned by BHP and Rio respectively, to let competitors use them for a “fair price”. Sounds great. Only problem is, they built their own railways solely in order to gain competitive advantages over other companies that didn’t have railways. If BHP and Rio had known what the ACCC would do, they would not have built those railways in the first place. So don’t expect too many more private railways to be built anytime soon.
Is anyone interested? You all want more commuter trains, but how many of you realize that ships are lining up for weeks in the waters off our ports waiting for bulk commodities to be shuttled across vast inland plains in little diesel-guzzling trucks? Same with food and other cargoes.
I’m not blaming the public for this ignorance. I blame, with a few notable exceptions, the press. For those who remember the 1993 election between Hewson and Keating - a mighty clash between two economic giants about ways of truly renovating Australia’s economy under the bonnet - it’s a long way from this campaign, which the media have helped turn into a penny-counting exercise.
That’s right Astro because of the Hawke Keating reforms and macro factors outside the control of any Australian government. It is simply dishonest of you or any party to make such a straightforward causal link.
By the way the corollary of these low interest rates was a ten fold increase in house prices which we will pay for our whole lives and will permanently and generationlly shut some people out of affordable home ownership. I had a mortgage then and now and even though I earn four times more now than then, my current mortgage (courtesy of the much vaunted low interest rates) is much harder to service.
And Costello the greatest treasurer of all time? Look. I’m a one eyed Collingwood supporter so I understand irrational love but that kind of unthinking uncritical support is another level all together.
Astro , you have been caught out lying again. I purchased a house in 1991 about July , and my % was 13.4 % and keep coming down till Howard slipped into power . After 3 years on a fixed 13 .4 % , i changed lenders to a lower % rate. Howard as treasurer had the HIGHEST at 21 % beating Keatings 17 % .
@Harrybelbarry
Interest rates were never 21% under Howard Government, and I was paying 19 something percent under Keating. Dont worry that cemented in my mind.
The RBA rate may have been 17 but the punters rate were 19 or so.
Quick Google search Astro- (this Luddite conservatives!)
http://www.loansense.com.au/historical-rates.html
Go look for yourself!
Irrelevant. Inflation is much harder to measure than people think, the RBA was ineffective at measuring it then, and it’s still got a long way to go now. Hawke’s Prices and Incomes Accord set up the foundation of a far more rational IR regime than anything we’d had for many years, but it had huge teething problems throughout the 80s and it did raise unemployment, inflation, and government debt.
However, to this day the high-teens RBA rates of the late 1990s have never been adequately explained, but we do have enough information to say neither Keating nor Howard was responsible for them.
@OldSkool
Thanks, I dont understand you have shot yourself in the foot.
Interest Rates highest under Hawke / Keating Government, lowest under Howard Government
And to the chargin of lefties like me and libs like PINS, dolts like you Astro continue to ascribe some simple causality
I was pointing out that 19% was not there for a start, besides, interest rates (post de-regulation) were lowest under Rudd/gillard.
@oldskool.
RBA maye have been at 17%, I was paying just over 19%.
Interest rate globally lowest in last 3 years, you cant give Rudd / Gillard credit for that, they went up 6 in 7 months since December. I dont think thats happened since de-regulation.
Yeah, OLDSCHOOL, what I’m saying goes both ways. Government activity is just one of many factors influencing inflation, typically with time delays, and inflation is very hard to measure. So it’s by no means clear whether the recent surprise figure of low inflation reflects reality or whether the RBA did the right thing keeping rates on hold. And even if inflation was as low as the headline figure says it is, it would be drawing a long bow to say that proves anything about government performance right now. If it did prove anything of the sort, then ASTRO would be right and Keating would be solely to blame for the recession Bernie Fraser had to have.
That wasn’tthe RBA rates in the table, that was the “Standard Variable Home Loan Rates”.
Interst rates rising from what are considered “emergency lows” coming back to the norm is bad?
Has no one got anything to say about the kind of under-the-bonnet economic reforms I touched on above? Or do you just want to have a slugging match over interest rates?
SBH mentioned a point which is much neglected: “… increase in house prices which we will pay for our whole lives and will permanently and generationlly shut some people out of affordable home ownership.”
It is fashionable to speak of house price “growth” and “making money” from speculation in residential land, apart from any value added by the building on it.
What most people don’t realize is that there is no “growth” or “making” taking place here, it is a form of transfer payment from the future. Every future dollar of wages that goes into paying back excessive home prices, is a dollar that does not circulate through the economy to generate real growth. You’re all familiar with the concept of money having “velocity” as it gets spend onwards - this principle was discussed at length around the stimulus, where each dollar should get spent again and again. But with the excessive home prices SBH mentions, there is no “velocity”, just direct transfers from future wages to past speculation windfall.
@PINS “Has no one got anything to say about the kind of under-the-bonnet economic reforms I touched on above? “
Give us some time man - just had a “death-by-meetings” morning & about to head off to give blood (thats right conservatives - if you get sick & admitted to your fancy private hospital you could still very well be receiving socialist leaning, leftie, green-tinged blood)
What, you reckon the blood donated by blue-blooded conservatives isn’t red enough to be any good?
No, it’s good blood. it just usually comes from one of their employees…………….
@PINS
You raise some very good points - no amount of tinkering on the sidelines with assumptions about savings or
Its a crime that expert reports continually flow into governments with so many good ideas about how things can be re-structured, improved with wide ranging benefits while the politicians cherry-pick 1 or 2 of the 100 or 250 recommendations.
The Henry Tax review for instance. If our government took it and said - yep - great idea - we’re going to implement all the recommendations and here are the benefits & here is the timeframe imagine the possibilities. I was shocked to learn that 90% of the government’s income came from 10 taxes and that the government could abolish 115 other taxes and be down only 10% in revenue.
Its tax time now and its insane how complex and difficult the large volumes that my accountant has to wade through when I ask him a question. All the legacy of successive govts too p!ssweak to change things for the better - just adding a new page of calculations to determine if you apply for this rebate or payment or Part B or Part A thingy or a temporary low income this or how many days you were single with 2 children and would then qualify for this threshold to remove this percentage rate from an additionally calculated deductable allowance.
However I have to disagree with you on your comments about competition policy. Yes I agree that we need more competition, but when we talk about physical infrastruture I just can’t see the benefits of having 2 or 3 or multiple sets of infrastructure sitting side by side.
Its a wasteful and unneccessary use of limited resources to have two sets of train-tracks lying side by side. All that steel, concrete and energy that goes into a trainline with a similar one established in close proximity. We all saw that in the 90’s with so much money being wasted in the debacle with Telstra & Optus both erecting ugly cables all through the streets of our capital cities - when a shared model, with competition enforced, could perhaps have seen one network but covering twice the area be developed.
In cities too you often get the case that one utility digs up the footpath and roadway using energy and materials to install their cables or pipes, the council or roads authority comes along afterwards to remove the cut footpaths & roadways and lay brand new ones only to find the next utility has turned up to rip up the newly laid roadway or footpath for their infrastructure. Its a constant, wasteful process which has a better answer.
In London for instance there are shared tunnels under the streets where each utility can lay their own cables and all share the one infrastructure - so they don’t have this wasteful continual roadworks that we experience here - in the name of fundamentalist competition.
Once again the 2 dimensional economic calculation has to be included into 3 & 4 dimensions to look at environmental & societial aspects - where a different balance can be reached. Yes perhaps no more single use private railways will be built - but then again was that a good use of energy & resources when we could have a shared railway that is twice the size & with possibilities of other organisations taking advantage. Australia Post, Defence etc.
As for your observations on property - couldn’t agree more. Sadly no politician would ever contempate any changes to the tax system that is crippling this country economically. A tax system that has almost every worker with a packaged vehicle driving thousands of unneccessary kms to reach 25,000 or 44,000kms for the year - or the massive amount of capital being poured into the dead-black-unproductive-hole of domestic housing.
Whats really been strange is that Tony Abbott has an economics degree yet he has joined all the other contemporary mainstream politicians in being too timid to talk about any reforms - real reforms for fear of being subjected to scrutiny.
Keating, Hewson etc could all say what they meant and they could easily explain their big ideas and defend them - if people didn’t agree well that was too bad - no hope of that happening now.
Sadly to our detriment.
No - I’m just saying that the Red Cross doesn’t have enough blood - full stop. We should all go out and donate.
But yust fun mentioning - even lying in the bastian of a well off private hospitals you can’t escape the “insidious leftie influence”…
@SBH “No, it’s good blood. it just usually comes from one of their employees…………….”
Lol - yes very good point. Its not often I look across to the other couches & see any CEO types…
(Maybe they go first thing - before their “working” lunches)
Actually, thinking about that 1993 campaign, the media reporting was pretty shallow then, too. Hewson lost because he could not improvise effectively when ambushed with a question about the cost of a birthday cake. And because his “Fightback” plan was released months too early, so that the excitement over tax reform died down and birthday cakes took over. (“Fightback” was actually leaked a day early, and we kept hearing about this political stunt for months, as if it mattered.) Hewson actually would have continued Keating’s superannuation reforms (which was his idea in the first place - Fraser never understood it but Keating did) while bringing in a superior GST reform than the compromise we later got. But Hewson also had ideas about trading preferentially with North America more than Asia. None of which was well understood by journalists at the time - they just wanted to talk about the birthday cake.
We might have to agree to disagree on the competition question as far as private infrastructure. That still leaves things like <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/10/09/grocery-retail-dominance-is-a-threat-to-public-health/#comment-40688"antitrust issues in the supermarket sector, and I think you’ll agree it’s something that needs a bigger, wider review by the Productivity Commission than the 2005 NCP review. Kevin Rudd’s Grocerywatch would have been a backward step in my opinion, providing free advertising and further economy-of-scale advantages to Coles and Woolworths and enabling them to form an effective cartel against the smaller retailers.
Sorry that link should be antitrust issues in the supermarket sector
Hey PINS and ER (and James Mac if your reading this), have you read Rundle’s piece. It is really on point and calls for a broad left/right coalition to fix this mess.
SBH - I think Fran Barlow’s call for proportional representation may have more to offer.
Local electorates are best suited to state governments - that’s the level that should be balancing expenditure on public goods in the bush, the burbs, the latte-sipping zone, etc. The federal government should not be involving itself in these things, it should be concentrating on affairs of a strictly national scale, and as such should be chosen by a national majority.
The states will never resume functioning properly until they regain their fiscal autonomy and responsibility for hospitals, etc.
And where are the states being represented, by the way? It was supposed to be in the Senate. Does anyone recall the last time a Senator belonging to the party in government spoke up for his or her home state against the party? No, because the Senate is just a time-shifted second chance for the opposition and the smaller parties to counterbalance the Reps on proportional representation. Sometimes it works but mostly it’s just a puppet of one or other of the leaders in the Reps.
The only representation the states get is the premiers twice a year in COAG. Senators should be encouraged to stand a bit aloof from their parties and form closer links with state governments.