“I think the economy will come to a shuddering halt and I think the stock market will crash.

“I think once people realise how dangerous Labor’s economic proposal is I think they’ll be happy to see an election and deal with it.

“Labor’s essentially said they want to lower house prices and they want to increase rents and I think that would be a disaster.”
Peter Dutton, Minister For Immigration

No, Dutton’s statement isn’t really the early opening of Melbourne Comedy Festival. True, it could be funny to listen to Peter Dutton, but not if one remembers that this is the man who gets to make decisions about people’s futures. Yes, as Immigration Minister he’s just acting on the advice of other people and not really making many decisions for himself, apart from which colour tie is in fashion in Liberal circles this week. It’s very much like the Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, although the PM does more than simply listen to what Cory Bernardi and the IPA tell him. He’s takes his own photos at the photo opportunity ensuring that the camera gets his best angle. You know the sort of thing, announce a review into the Safe Schools program, but take a selfie at the Gay Mardi Gras to show that you really do think that being gay is ok, even if you’re not allowed to actually stand up and contradict Cory Bernardi for fear of losing your leadership. (To be fair, Turnbull did say that we should all watch what we say and not resort to name calling… although it was unclear whether he was refering to George Christensen’s tweets or Bill Shorten calling Cory a homophobe!)

For a few days now, I’ve been to work out how prices can drop and rents rise. While it’s possible in the short term, any longer term trend would be contrary to the simple laws of supply and demand. Already there’s only a relatively small difference in the amount you pay in rent and what you’d be paying as a mortgage; if there was a sigificant downward shift in housing prices and a significant increase in rents, you’d be paying more to rent a property than to purchase the same property. Ok, not everyone would have the deposit but some would, and that’d be enough to stop a complete crash as well as taking some of the demand out of the rental market.

But let’s assume that Dutton is correct about the laws of supply and demand being suspended under Labor’s tax proposal and that we the people will be keen to rush to an election to deal with Labor and show our support for all those poor people with net incomes of $70,000 to $80,000 who’ll be excluded from purchasing their fourth property. How this leads to the economy coming to “shuddering halt” is another thing entirely. Note he didn’t say “slowdown in growth” or “lowering of the GDP”, he said “halt”. I’m trying to picture what a stopped economy looks like.

“Sorry, sir, you can’t board this economy.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not moving, Labor’s policy means that all economic activity has been halted for the forseeable future.”
“But how do I get to work?”
“No need, sir, there’s no such thing as work any more.”
“No work? How can afford to put food on the table?”
“Sorry, sir, food was part of the economy, there’ll be none of that either. Just think yourself lucky you already have a table because now that the economy’s been stopped, there’s no way that people can buy tables any more.

Ok, it was hyperbole. Not even Dutton could be stupid enough to believe that an economy could actually stop completely just because of changes to negative gearing. Of course, we all know that the stock market will crash under Labor because it did last time when they caused the GFC…

Under the Liberals, of course, the economy’s going along just swimmingly. Unemployment hasn’t been this good since 2013 and while Labor were in power then, the Liberals have had some really, really difficult things to deal with like the iron ore price not staying at record levels and slow wages growth meaning that tax revenue is down, but thanks to their policies our government’s debt is only growing at same rate as it did under Labor. If Labor had stayed in power they would have incresed the rate, because Tony produced a graph showing that they would. I mean, they’d have spent more on the NBN than the Liberals, because Turnbull spent more than Labor said it would, which just goes to show that you can’t trust Labor because the NBN is costing billions to set up as it is. Imagine how much more it would have cost if we were setting up one that actually worked!

Among the wonderful initiatives to grow the economy and to boost growth was the measure in last year’s Budget allowing small businesses with turnover of less than $2 million to claim an immediate 100% write-off for an unlimited number of tax deductions to buy assets like cars and machinery valued at less than $20,000 each. “Tony’s tradies” were going to give an enormous boost to the economy.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have delivered any long term benefits. While there was a spike in the month after the Budget, sales seemed to return to normal immediately after.

One might suggest that the supposed increase in jobs and growth has ground to a shuddering halt, but that’d be impossible because Scott Morrison is Treasurer and it’s only under Labor that the economy stops.

Actually, I better stop before someone starts accusing me of being left wing because I’m critical of the public relations arm of the IPA. Or the Liberal Party as it’s known in some circles.

And you’re right. There is no real need to make fun of the current Coalition government. They do it so well by themselves. After years of forming government by siding with the Nationals, they criticise Julia Gillard as “illegitimate” because she needed the support of others to govern. While arguing against quotas for women in Cabinet they tell us that all appointments are made on merit, however, a few months later they have a public discussion about whether Macfarlane’s attempted defection to the Nationals will mean that they’ll be entitled to another Cabinet post because while appointments are based on merit, the Nationals are entitled to a certain number based on a quota. And Barnaby Joyce is made Deputy Prime Minister by virtue of the fact that he leads a party who received about 4% of the votes. He is now part of a government determined to stop the ridiculous situation where some senators were elected when their party didn’t receive a figure approaching ten percent of the vote.

Yep, consistency is not their strong point!