Yo Yo Yo... Da Budget gonna be in da house. K?

[Leftwinger]

I wish you wouldn't feel you have to post banal comments to every post that comes along

And I wish you would cease following me around these boards like a love sick puppy.

Well he's definately a sick puppy, that's for sure.

[Jovial Monk]

Leaves messes just like a real puppy.

[Leftwinger]

Real puppy mess isn't quite as repugnant.

[IQS.RLOW]

Real puppy mess isn't quite as repugnant.

I still manage to make you eat it though...

[Jovial Monk]

Bwahahahahahahahaha

[lisa jones]

I wish you wouldn't feel you have to post banal comments to every post that comes along

And I wish you would cease following me around these boards like a love sick puppy.

Well he's definately a sick puppy, that's for sure.

Believe you me .. you don't know the HALF of it!

[lisa jones]

Tony Abbott was going to announce a $2Bn mental health initiative, doubtless the one floated last year that cut $2Bn out of frontline medicine to fund it—worse than self-defeating, of course.

Now apparently it is down to $400m and probably no way of funding that will be given. He might talk about their mythical $50Bn of “savings” perhaps even tho that could now do duty as a colander so many holes have been shot in it

$2 billion mental health initiative ??? That sounds insane!

[Jovial Monk]

Propbably $5Bn might begin to do justice to the mental health problems--if you haven't been there count yourself very very lucky Lisa. Perhaps do a bit of research. Find out HM people are in and out of prison that should receive some decent mental health care. A prison bed is $60K/night, the savings in monetary terms are immense, in terms of human happiness/fullfilment just infinite!

[Jovial Monk]

Peter Martin, ex-Treasury economist and now a blogger plus a columnist for the Age reckons the Budget is doing OK despite problems caused by flooding/Yasi/soaring $A thanks to soaring iron & coal prices—that has brought in an extra $20Bn

http://www.petermartin.com.au/2011/04/b ... de-20.html

But Deloitte Access director Chris Richardson expects the past few months export price increases to give Australia double that.

“The floods and cyclone cost us a lot,” he told The Age. “But at the same time as we were worrying about the floods and cyclone and the earthquakes and tsunami, the world prices for what we sell were sharply rising; the impact on our nominal gross domestic product in the year ahead is $20 billion"...

Mr Richardson is Australia’s most experienced budget forecaster outside the public sector and during the 1980s did the numbers for the government inside the Treasury.

“That $20 billion flows from just a few months worth of commodity price rises, the world is now begging us to grow faster,” he said.

Asked why his assessment was so at odds with the pessimism emanating from the treasurer and prime minister Mr Richardson said some of their concern was genuine but “some of it is just the usual scene setting, to prepare us for the worst so we react well on budget night”.

Chris Richardson was pointing out the structural Budget deficits in Costello’s Budgets way back when. The impact of the GFC showed Chris was spot on with his analysis there. Labor needs to raise taxes so we are not so reliant on company tax receipts which plummet when even a mild recession hits. Not cutting income taxes will see bracket creep gradually raise income tax receipts but maybe not quickly enough. the carbon and MRRT taxes are all earmarked so can’t be used to boost the Budget position.

Reforms like cutting negative gearing and raising the CGT to 100% on sales of investment properties would be good. I don’t agree the family home should be taxed—homes are built or bought out of after-tax dollars just as Lisa said and high home ownership is good IMHO.