Tag: economic mismanagement

The level of economic ignorance and stupidity has reached such astronomical levels that I can make the forecast that Australia is heading for many years of falling real incomes and a vast increase in the level of poverty.

You really have to stand in amazement at how little flak this morning’s front page in The Oz has received: Election 2022: Labor to turbocharge budget deficits in ‘quality spending’ focus. If Labor wins they will do nationally what Labor has done in Victoria. 

Labor is planning to unveil budget deficits up to $10bn greater than the Coalition over the next four years as Anthony Albanese sharpens his election pitch around the need for “quality” spending rather than fast-tracking debt reduction….

“What we need to be able to do is to flick the switch in the budget, not to austerity, but to quality, so we can fund the things that we care the most about,” Dr Chalmers said.

Who could possibly be against “quality spending”? And these are the sorts of things the ALP has in mind.

Last month, Dr Chalmers said Labor would raise almost $1.9bn from its multinational tax policy and recoup billions of dollars through a “waste and rorts” audit during its first year in power. But this is not enough to cover its $5.4bn childcare policy, $1.2bn skills commitment, $2.5bn boost to aged care, $525m increase in foreign aid, $329m for housing and $135m on urgent care clinics.

If you are the kind of person who actually believes that spending money automatically creates productive growth then you are just the person to fall for these idiocies. Our present Government actually does know better but are barely able to explain any of it in a way that will have the general run-of-the-mill Treasury and academic economist on side. Certainly you will find almost not a single warning out there from hardly any of them.

Meanwhile we will be dismantling our power grid and ability to deliver low-cost electricity to industry. I don’t wish to single out The Age but reading its editorial today really did depress me: Fair wage growth must be at the heart of economic recovery.

I’m all in on the sentiment, but first you have to have an economy creating more value adding output than the value of the resources used up in production. If anyone thinks the ALP is remotely capable of that sort of outcome, just vote these people in and then sit back and enjoy the rising level of poverty that will then be inevitable. Not for everyone, of course, just most of us.

That Victoria has been in a financial sinkhole has been obvious to me for quite a long time. Andrews even tried to sign up to the Chinese Road and Belt program to stave off the ruin that was certain to follow his profligate ways. But now all this has come to the attention of others: Andrews govt accused of blurring budget figures found in a late night release on a Saturday night in the Herald Sun [update: now the front page story in the Sunday paper]. Perhaps the news will last until the beginning of next week. It is certainly a dismal story.

 

The state government has been accused of hiding the state’ true financial plight from Victorians.

In a bombshell report, parliament’s independent budget watchdog says the Andrews government has missed and blurred key figures as the state races towards record debt levels.

The report by the Parliamentary Budget Office has accused the government of:

SCRAPPING or modifying most of its own fiscal targets;

BURYING key details to make it harder for Victorians to properly monitor its financial performance;

FAILING to be transparent about the government’s debt position;

DEFINING fewer targets, and less clearly, than before than pandemic; and

IGNORING recommendations made by the parliament’s budget watchdog.

“Blurred figures” is trying to put it nicely. It is a catastrophe that will even outdistance the horrors of Cain-Kirner years which was the previous occasion when Labor was left alone to run the Victorian economy for a succession of years.

And while we are on the topic of Daniel Andrews, there was also this today: Massive Protest Today in Melbourne Australia Against Proposed COVID Laws and Opposition to Mandates.

Sky News has more details HERE.

The State of Victoria, Melbourne area, led by Premier Daniel Andrews has been the epicenter of some of the most brutal police action against protestors.  However, due to the scale of the crowds, it appears the police are no longer going to attempt to beat them into submission again or use rubber bullets.

It appears the international spotlight, provided by alternative media breaking through the control of the government media, has led to shame upon the political establishment.  The police no longer seem willing to participate in the government efforts to stop voices of opposition.

Andrews will leave the State a smoking wreck. He knows only how to tell others what to do. He has no ability to listen to anyone else trying to reason him into acting with prudence and foresight. 

Andrews govt accused of blurring budget figures