Abbott will also cut the company tax rate and give tax breaks to the biggest polluters and miners. He will repeal the carbon tax, but continue giving people subsidies for their electricity.
How is the idiot going to pay for this?
It was the Libs who drew up the Charter of Budget Honesty - yet failed to comply last year by using a criminal accountancy firm - this year - they're going to have find another dodgy audit firm to bend their rubbery figures.
They have pledged to give fringe benefits tax breaks back to people who do not use the car for business purposes, and to restore the private health insurance rebate for the richest Australians.
Their proposed paid parental leave scheme offers nothing more to a worker on the minimum wage than the current scheme, but provides more than $70,000 per baby to those who earn the most. Each of these policies are skewed towards the most affluent. Together, they constitute a massive cost to taxpayers.
The problem for the Liberals is that they have spent the past three years saying ''no'' to Labor's sensible savings measures. As a result, they are now in the position of promising to spend more, tax less, and pay off debt faster; oblivious to the fact that it isn't mathematically possible to achieve all three.
In the first week of the campaign, Abbott's sole policy announcement of substance was a cut in the company tax rate. Spruiking it, he claimed that it would be paid by savings he'd already announced. But those savings have already been taken by the commitment to give a tax cut to big miners and big polluters. Once that's paid for, Abbott has nothing in the kitty.
For Australian families, Abbott's costings gap means tax increases or service cuts amounting to thousands of dollars for the typical household. Most likely, that means a reduction in the quality of schools, hospitals, and family payments. Over recent budgets, Labor has made tough decisions affecting the public service. Anyone who knows our federal public service is aware that any ''fat'' is long-gone.
If elected, the Liberals are likely to maintain the efficiency dividend, and to add on top of it their policy of getting rid of 12,000 to 20,000 Canberra public service jobs. This would be devastating for our city, and yet it would be only a small fraction of the costings gap that Abbott needs to make up. Even after slashing the Canberra public service, abolishing the schoolkids bonus and scrapping trade training centres, Abbott is still left without enough money to pay the bills. So will the Liberals provide some honest answers?
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/ ... 2s5av.html