The government has unveiled a range of spending cuts but they won’t stop a big blowout in this year’s budget deficit.
Budgets
Swan can cut, but the bad news from overseas won’t stop
While the mining boom continues to power the Australian economy, the news from offshore continues to worsen.
Locking in a surplus with the carbon price pea-and-thimble trick
Forgetting cutting emissions - the carbon price package has a shorter term benefit for the government. There’s one minister relieved that the carbon pricing package is locked in, and not for anything to do with emissions abatement.
David Murray takes on the fiscal consensus
Despite widespread agreement that the government doesn’t need to return to surplus next year, one figure wants us to go harder and faster.
Labor’s lazy levy
There’s something faintly absurd about a government with a budget loaded with superfluous spending and the lowest debt levels in the developed world insisting that it needs a new tax to pay for the impact of natural disasters.
How Labor found itself in a surplus trap
Labor’s abandonment of economic reform after 1996 has left it adrift and the party’s adherence to its promised 2012-13 surplus reflects how it let its enemies define its economic credibility.
Gruen: paying for Australia’s infrastructure deficit
Rather than simply getting budgets into operating surplus — mostly a very good thing — Australian governments have embraced the notion that all debt is bad, writes Nicholas Gruen, CEO of Lateral Economic.
Employment data might give pause to hairshirt brigade — or not
The rise in unemployment is good news and bad news — good news because it reflects higher participation, but bad news because it confirms the domestic economy is still soft.
Everything’s up, except the deficit — and housing
Today’s Mid-Year Economic Forecast (MYEFO) shows an appreciable acceleration in economic growth this year, but as expected the higher dollar has hit government revenue.
Joe cut and pastes on commodity prices
Joe Hockey misses the point in his cut’n’paste effort today about our reliance on commodity prices. Australia has always ridden commodity booms. The real issue is the strength of the dollar.
Gillard and Abbott jump on the spending cuts bandwagon
Australians have grown accustomed to politicians with deep pockets, prepared to woo voters with their big-spending election promises. But in 2010 the latest fad is not to spend. This may be admirable, writes Jessica Irvine, but will good policy fall victim to fashion?
What if unemployment was as forecast?
Back in the 2009/10 budget, Treasury forecast that unemployment in Australia would hit 8.25% around June 2010. Possum Comitatus charts that against what actually happened, showing two very different Australias.
Clumsy but ruthless — why Rudd is clearing the decks now
The Government is using a brief lull in the political cycle to junk everything that will get in the way of its re-election strategy. Maybe Caucus will have other ideas?
New economic data: no damn good for a government trying to frame a Budget
New economic data suggests an economy marking time — not what the government needed to hear as it works out how heavily to slash expenditure in the Budget.
Yes, we ARE out of the woods … now let’s focus on the Budget
Today’s GDP growth figure shows an economy moving from stimulus-supported growth to private-led growth, which frees up the Government to get back to managing a growing economy.
We’re not out of the woods … yet
With the stimulus packages fading, it’s not at all clear that the economy is going to spring back to normal growth. Good luck framing the next budget.
Queensland’s depression-era Budget
In one word: jobs. With its Budget, the Bligh government is doing nothing more than what governments the world over are having to do to keep their economies ticking over, says Craig Johnstone.
Never mind ABC programs, feel our values
Managing Director of the ABC Mark Scott sent this email to ABC employees this morning…
ABC staff hit by global financial crisis?
The ABC has withdrawn a 4% pay increase offer made to staff, citing a “dramatic change to economic conditions”, writes Margaret Simons.
This year the cut and thrust of the Budget is for real
This will be the toughest budget to frame since, probably, the recession budgets of the early 1990s, writes Bernard Keane.
Rudd’s stimulus package divides the pack
We’re in the middle of the most perverse economic debate in years, writes Bernard Keane.
NSW Premier’s mini-budget is a mega-spin
Laughably, Premier Nathan Rees’s NSW Government is calling it a “mini-budget”, It’s more like a MEGA budget, writes Alex Mitchell.
What was the RBA advice on guaranteeing deposits?
The predictable consequence of the Government intervening in the financial market to guarantee loans and deposits – that those not afforded the same guarantee are competitively disadvantaged – didn’t take long to emerge, writes Bernard Keane.
The reckless stimulus package we didn’t need
What on earth is the Rudd Government doing blowing $10 billion in largely unproductive welfare payments? asks Stephen Mayne.
