Budget 2013

[Jovial_Monk]

The 5.75% unemployment allows for lags in employment shifting from building mining projects to moving to other areas of the economy. Probably too cautious—the dropping $A will boost agriculture, tourism, services and manufacturing.

[IQS.RLOW]

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opin ... 6642519909

This Budget cannot be about Labor's plans for the future, for Labor has none.

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THIS is not a Budget. This is a confession. This is Wayne Swan admitting to one of the greatest cock-ups of any Treasurer. Forget Mr Swan's promise of better behaviour in the future after dumping another two big deficits on us.

He will be gone by September and the wretched Government with him.

This Budget cannot be about Labor's plans for the future, for Labor has none. It can be read only as a list of the sins of its past, for the past is what will kill this Government at the election.

As it should.

See, Mr Swan has confessed that the surplus he repeatedly swore he'd deliver is, in fact, yet another deficit - this time $18 billion.

He has also confessed that, instead of the "four years of surplus" he promised us a year ago, he's giving us not just this deficit but another $10.9 billion one in 2014-15.

Mr Swan has confessed that he gave us these blow-outs despite having $20 billion more in taxes this financial year (a rise of more than 6 per cent), and a predicted $26 billion extra the next.

Mr Swan has confessed he's put us deeper in the red even though the economy is growing at nearly 3 per cent and is now - he boasts - 13 per cent bigger than before the global financial crisis, which he still blames for his failure.

Mr Swan's figures confess to the real problem: that while the Government this financial year did shave payments by $4 billion, next year its spending will leap again, to an astonishing 50 per cent above the Howard Government's in its final year. He yesterday also showed he doesn't have the heart to cut spending as he should.

He's confessed that what he calls the $43 billion in "savings" he's made over the next four years actually include big tax grabs, including $11.5 billion from a rise in the Medicare levy, a suspiciously hopeful $4 billion from closing tax loopholes and $3 billion in other tax changes to hit corporates and the rich.

Mr Swan also showed that while he knows how to spend, he doesn't know how to earn. He confessed by his silence that all trace of a promised company tax cut is gone, and struggling businesses must again pay for the welfare dreams - the disability scheme and Gonski education changes - that Labor over the next cold years will huddle around for warmth.

Mr Swan has confessed to so much else: that unemployment is higher than he predicted a year ago, and growth slower, that promised family tax benefits now can't be afforded, and nor can the future carbon compensation.

There's this confession, too, in a graphic Mr Swan included - that of all the social units in our community, from singles to retired couples, none has a real income rise less under Labor than arguably the most critical, single-income families.

How to explain this astonishing litany of failure?

I suspect the problem is this: Labor made the cardinal error of political idealogues and novices of believing its own bulltish. Again, the Budget tells the story. It is the bonfire of Labor's vanities.

Mr Swan last year was so sure of his superior skills that he believed Treasury predictions that his tax take would leap an astonishing 11 per cent and balance his books. It didn't.

He also believed the mining boom would just keep going, with China filling his pockets. But no such boom lasts forever.

He believed the new mining tax he somehow let miners themselves help design would give him another $2 billion a year. It didn't.

He also believed soft Labor would somehow slow boat people arrivals to just 100 a week.

Instead, arrivals this year are around 100 a day, driving the Immigration Department's costs up another $800 million a year to more than $3 billion. On no issue did the Government spin itself sillier than on global warming. It's not just that Labor is still spending billions it can't afford to make zero difference to the temperature.

Mr Swan also assumed the rest of the world would be this stupid, and Europe, in particular, would lift the price of carbon permits to $29 a tonne by 2015, when Australian companies could trade them, too.

At that price, he reckoned he'd be earning some $9 billion a year. But yesterday he admitted the price is likely to be just $12 per tonne.

In fact, Europe's price is still just $4.30 and if it doesn't get close to Mr Swan's new target, the scant $800 million surplus his Budget now promises for 2015 will be blown away, too - if a slowing China hasn't blown it away already.

That's Mr Swan for you. Even now, still believing the bull. Even now spending what he doesn't have and will not get.

Time's up, Wayne. Out of here.

[Jovial_Monk]

Abbott:

Will not proceed with Gonski, will remove schoolkids bonus. Not a believer in education it seems.

Still blathering about his PPL massive middleclass welfare scheme where women on low and medium incomes pay higher prices so millionaire women can be paid $75K to pop out a brat. I would MUCH rather my numerous great nieces and nephews got a decent education than rich bitches got paid $75K to breed.

(TV interview on ABC TV.)

[IQS.RLOW]

So you believe that women having a baby should be on welfare and not a work leave entitlement.

I know that you being homosexual and childless may affect your reasoning here, but why should one of the most natural human functions be relegated to welfare?

What next? Should annual, sick and berevement leave be written down to minimum wage welfare too?

[Jovial_Monk]

Standard and Poors has stated that the Budget will not affect the nation’s AAA Rating. The other two agencies should leave their AAA ratings in place too.

[Jovial_Monk]

Consumer Confidence rises sharply – up 5.7pts to 119.3pts after Reserve Bank cuts interest rates to all-time low ow.ly/l2duT—
Roy Morgan (@roymorganonline) May 14, 2013

[mantra]

Any intelligent commentary?

Myself, I would have liked to see something like this: http://wp.me/p30JJG-56
Wayne is sound and solid but too cautious, too gradualist.

The Budget will keep us going ahead with jobs being created (Wayne said unemployment next May would be 5.75%—too pessimistic with the dollar dropping but Budget creation takes a while, I guess.)

Just ignore IQ when he's taunting you. Maybe the mods can clean up the thread later.

Some commentators are saying this is a terrible budget - others are saying it's about the only decent one the govt. has come up with yet because they're actually curbing expenditure, not porkbarreling which Howard did in his last term.

I listened to Hockey this morning boasting about all the cuts they're going to make when they're in power. It's likely that most Australians have stopped listening because they wouldn't be happy if they heard it. Funding for all basic services will be cut and 12,000 public servants will be sacked. The carbon and mining tax will be repealed and live exports will be increased. More funding will be given to the private health companies and of course the parental paid leave will commence. Full tax concessions will be restored to self funded retirees and they will cut $60 billion off the cost of the NBN. I didn't realise it was even going to cost that much.

Hockey was trying to sound confident, but he was very nervous and unsure of himself.

[Jovial_Monk]

IQ is on ignore—he never says anything intelligent or mature or interesting.

[Jovial_Monk]

I listened to Hockey this morning boasting about all the cuts they're going to make when they're in power. It's likely that most Australians have stopped listening because they wouldn't be happy if they heard it. Funding for all basic services will be cut and 12,000 public servants will be sacked. The carbon and mining tax will be repealed and live exports will be increased. More funding will be given to the private health companies and of course the parental paid leave will commence. Full tax concessions will be restored to self funded retirees and they will cut $60 billion off the cost of the NBN. I didn't realise it was even going to cost that much.

Hockey was trying to sound confident, but he was very nervous and unsure of himself.

Hmm I haven’t heard the buffoon make clear the cutbacks—seems they want to keep them secret till after the election for some reason.

They will sack 60–70K PSs, not 12K and the 12K Hockey is mumbling about are from the old Dept Climate Change which doesn’t exist anymore, that is how clueless he is.

The carbon and mining taxes will not be repealed—a bit of jiggery pokery in renaming them and they are called something else and the carbon price adjusted down but the compensation will be removed so they will have a nice extra revenue stream.

The NBN is $37Bn—Turncoat started crapping on that the NBN will cost $90Bn, a lie. No NBN, not even Fraudband—they want austerity, not nation building. That austerity will cause a recession which will cause unemployment and bankruptcies to increase and so the deficit will increase, then they will do a second round of cuts—and unemployment suddenly has a 10 in front of it. Just look at the UK—borrowings and deficits higher than when the Tories were elected. (and the real deficits, household and financial sector not even looked at. Deficits here means the private sector deficit is decreasing with a savings ratio of 10%.)

Love the bit about live exports! Indo wants to be self sufficient in beef, so not much growth there. New markets are already being investigated and China likely will be a good one—but this is happening. I guess that bit was a sop to the fools who elect Nats.

[Jovial_Monk]

Fucking Greens, be glad when they are history:

Lee Rhiannon ✔ @leerhiannon
Big loser in #Budget2013 is NSW public transport users, no thanks to @AlboMP http://tiny.cc/40j3ww

Anthony Albanese @AlboMP
@leerhiannon why is it you go so out of your way to avoid #fightingtories ? NSW Govt has refused to spend Fed money allocated to PT