You would think that a Prime Minister and his Treasurer who are proposing to cut company tax to 25% over the next ten years would have some idea of what the cost to the taxpayer might be. But no. When the PM was asked in an interview with David Speers on Sky News he didn’t have the faintest idea. When Speers asked if it might be $55 billion he said it may or may not be correct.
Surely a Government expecting to go to an election with economic management and trust at the forefront of its campaign wouldn’t be stupid enough not to have costed the centrepiece of its budget.
When 3AW Melbourne commentator Neil Mitchell asked Scott Morrison the same question on Thursday he also couldn’t answer. “It’s in the budget, look it up” he robustly told Mitchell.
“I haven’t got in front of me. Couldn’t you just tell me”, replied Mitchell.
He didn’t get an answer.
Speers pressed Turnbull a number of times but he continued to be evasive simply saying that Treasury projected the budget to be back in the black by 2020/21 and stay there.
This of course didn’t answer the question. Speers asked again. “I don’t understand what the cost is – what’s it going to cost taxpayers to cut the company tax rate to 25 per cent?” he asked. Later he confirmed that Treasury had costed the company tax cuts
Labor bared their teeth against the government in Parliament.
“The centrepiece of the budget and they forgot to cost it. Even Joe Hockey was more competent than that” said frontbencher Tony Burke. Then he was gagged by the government.
Labor released costings by the Parliamentary Budget Office showing that a cut to 25% would cost the budget $16.45 billion a year by 2026/27.
When told that Deloitte Access Economics director Chris Richardson estimated the tax cut would hit revenue by $55 billion over the next 10 years, Mr Turnbull could only say that Mr Richardson “may well be right”, but warned that “the further out you forecast, there is more uncertainty”.
The fact of the matter is that they had not done the costing and were just plain lying. And they put up trust as an issue in the forthcoming election. Just who are they kidding?
Chris Bowen at the end of Question Time gave a very spirited account of the Budget omission leaving the Government somewhat embarrassed. And so they should be.
2 The Prime Minister and the Treasurer over the past few days have been attacking Labor alleging that it is practicing class warfare and the politics of envy. Morrison says that voters were “over the us and them” approach to governing. He is correct but who is really waging this so-called war? I don’t see the middle and lower classes up in arms over their treatment. But I do see the wealthy and the super-rich getting cranky every time there is a threat to their privilege. Or at the suggestion that they should contribute more to the public coffers. In fact never in the history of this nation have the rich and the privileged been so openly brazen about their economic self-righteousness.
3 This week’s pre-budget Crickey Bludger Track Poll aggregate has Labor slightly ahead of the Coalition 50.6% to 49.4%.
4 Hidden in the bowels of the Budget papers you will find $1.6 billion in expenses for “decisions taken but not yet announced” over the next three years, including $476.5 million in the coming 2016-17 financial year.
The truth is it would be better described as allocations for campaign promises.
5 Another example of budget fiddling is an amount of $171 million for the Great Barrier Reef. It was taken from allocations already announced.
6 Former Treasurer Joe Hockey said people trying to afford a good home should get a good job. In an interview with Melbourne Radio Host Jon Faine in which the PM suggested he (Faine) should be helping his kids with the cost of a house. He seemed to be indicating that all you needed was rich parents.
Bill Shorten retorted in Parliament saying:
“Is that really the Prime Minister’s advice for young Australians struggling to buy their first home? Have rich parents?”
As reported by Latika Bourke in The Sydney Morning Herald, Turnbull had “purchased a $2.7 million penthouse, with knockout views of the harbour and city skyline, in 2008 for his then aged 23 daughter, Daisy Turnbull Brown”.
My thought for the day:
Life is about doing things. Not having things.
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