To my dear conservative friends inside and outside parliament, I know you are upset at the demise of your putative leader, Tony Abbott, whom I hold in high regard. May I kindly implore you, however, to pull your heads in?
Taxi industry cannot brake Uber’s run in an old, overregulated market
And the story isn’t about regulation or deregulation. It is more nuanced. It is about appropriate regulation.
Farmers’ bank idea has been tried before, and has failed
The Australian Institute for Progress today blasted calls for a “farmers’ bank”, saying the notion of taxpayers propping up failing rural businesses had been tried and had failed in the recent past. The Queensland-based policy think tank urged the Palaszczuk government to reject calls by Katter’s Australia Party to establish a Rural Reconstruction Board to take over debts of struggling farmers.
Advance Queensland program doesn’t approach innovation from right direction
It makes all the basic mistakes. It assumes we are not an innovative economy, innovation consists in advances in science and technology alone, and is something out there.
Queensland budget 2015: turning government firms into giant ATM
Queensland’s finances are in no state to restart the spending trajectory of the Bligh-Fraser years. The 2010s have been and will continue to be the toughest of decades for Australians.
Qld Government opts for accounting tricks rather than true budget repair
In the 2015-16 Queensland Budget, the Government has shown it subscribes to the maxim that one might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb.
Financial position weaker after Queensland’s 2015 budget
The 2015 Queensland Budget essentially ignores the real issues in Queensland, or tries to make them vanish through creative accounting.
Budget bills Generation AA
The 2015 Federal Budget represents a capitulation by the government to the ALP and the Senate and builds a populist base for the next election.
Trajectory to surplus not the same thing as budgeting for a surplus
As I mentioned to Pat Hession on Townsville ABC radio yesterday afternoon, the 2015-16 Federal Budget simply kicks the can down the road, as they say, leaving it for a future Government (or this one if it stays in power) to make the hard decisions necessary to truly repair the budget (see my post on Queensland Economy Watch from May 12). A trajectory back to surplus is not the same thing as budgeting for a surplus, and there is no surplus over the forward estimates, just a steady fall in the deficit – a fall which may not occur as projected, as new budget pressures emerge in coming years and the Government commits to new expenditures or renews old programs.
A steady hand
This time last year, we noted that the budget was one of pretend austerity. Much of the debate following the budget then pretended that the austerity was real. It was not real austerity then and it is not real austerity now. In Chart 1 below, drawn from Statement No.10 page 6, we see the payments of the budget as a percent of GDP. Last year the budget was for year 2014/15.
