While much of the Press Gallery might describe the Coalition’s decision to oppose the stimulus package as “brave”, few have identified the blatant contradiction at the heart of Malcolm Turnbull’s position. He purports to believe both in the necessity of minimising a deficit, and the virtue of sweeping tax cuts.
These are — unless you’ve just beamed in from the Reagan Administration — mutually-incompatible positions.
Further tax cuts will embed the Commonwealth Budget in deficit, regardless of when the recession ends. Regardless of the merits of the specific elements of the Government’s stimulus package, it has the virtue of being temporary spending. The Coalition wants a permanent stimulus locked in.
This is boom-years thinking, when Chinese growth and the resources sector could be relied on to direct a flood of cash into government coffers. This enabled the Howard Government to cut taxes without cutting spending — indeed, Howard put Gough Whitlam in the shade by running the highest spending Government in Australian history.
The Republicans in the US did the same — except they never had a mining boom to keep their budget in surplus. The Reagan and Bush Administrations cut taxes and raised spending, and left the US budget in massive deficit each time.
Unless he’s prepared to identify the programs he would eliminate to offset his tax cuts, Malcolm Turnbull would do exactly the same. Or is the Coalition relying on another mining boom to rescue us again?
“The Coalition wants a permanent stimulus locked in” says the either willfully dishonest or perennially stupid (actually probably both) Jonathan Green
No Jonathan Green, the Opposition apparently says it wants the tax cuts that Rudd has locked in to be brought forward and it also wants ‘temporary’ cuts in the business cost of the superannuation guarantee levy that they’re paying on behalf of their employees in order to encourage business to maintain employment. They would also like to see a reduction in payroll tax temporarily for the same reason.
The truth is nearly always inconvenient for the extreme Leftist narrative of Jonathan Green and therefore his dazzling solution is……?
Just craft a fabrication and dispense with the truth.
Crikey again fails to see the broader picture because of its Labor blinkers.
This is a package worth $42 billion, one of the largest in the nation’s history. Included in the bill is a provision to increase the government’s borrowing limit from $75 billion to $200 billion – about $10,000 for every man, woman and child in the nation.
If Crikey paid close attention to what was happening in Parliament, they’d realise that the Opposition and cross-benchers had only 48 hours to examine the package – not much more than one hour for every billion of taxpayers’ money.
The stakes in this bill are too high for Parliament to just give it the rubber stamp.
Well, how about eliminating support for the NSW Labor Government’s waste in running hospitals. Why waste taxpayers’ money on salaries for bureaucrat positions while starving the system of frontline staff. Three out of every seven employees are paper shufflers. How about telling them to fuck off and replacing them with doctors and nurses?
The very basic flaw in your article and many of those in the press is that the Turnball is simply not required to offer a solution.
It is enough that he identifies the flaws in Rudds plans.
Has Crikey fallen prey to the Rudd line too? It matter not an ants fart what plans Turnball has. He’s not in power. Rudd is.
Think about it…