How does the Coalition pay for Labor’s big ideas?
Perhaps the most important takeout from the leaders’ debate was when Scott Morrison admitted that it is Labor that introduces the big social reforms – Medicare, the PBS, the NDIS, paid parental leave, compulsory superannuation for example.
Labor might have the ideas but it was the Coalition who had to pay for them, sighed Scott.
They market themselves as the better economic managers. This seems to be based on Howard and Costello’s strategy of selling off every profitable asset we owned, privatising everything they could, whilst wasting the profits from the mining boom on doling out huge sums in tax cuts and deductions.
And they hit us with the GST.
Abbott’s strategy was to cut funding to everything except defence which has seen above budgeted rises every year. He sold the profitable Medibank Private for a short-term sugar hit to the budget, thus ceding any competitive control over private health insurance prices and coverage. He decided the NBN wasn’t worth doing properly – so now we have to go back and do it again with fibre.
He also imposed the 2% budget repair levy.
Josh Frydenberg’s smiling slide show and smug mugs were as close as the current mob came to any pretence of good economic management.
For many years they have ignored warnings about the compounding effect of multiple climate-induced disasters. They have resisted calls to prepare and actively fought against global commitments to reduce emissions and phase out fossil fuels. Their solution is to give a few hundred dollars to a selected few victims and then blame someone else, as Morrison tried to do last night about the bushfires by bringing up a lack of hazard reduction as a cause.
When faced with fires, floods and a pandemic, they abandoned any semblance of fiscal responsibility and threw money around in gay abandon.
Some form of stimulus was necessary but JobKeeper was poorly designed with few if any checks on eligibility compliance. A kid who worked one shift at McDonalds was all of a sudden on $750 a week. Businesses who saw massive increases in their profits were hugely subsidised with that money then going to shareholders and company directors. Others, like universities and the arts sector, were left out entirely.
We have gone from the promise of “back in black” to the three largest deficits in history and a structural deficit next financial year at 3.6 per cent of GDP.
Gross debt is forecast to reach a record $906 billion by the end of this financial year, grow to $977 billion in 2022-23 and top $1 trillion the following year. Interest payments in 2025-26 are projected to be $22.4 billion.
With increasing costs for health and aged care inevitable, instead of a plan to increase revenue, we are offered tax cuts for the wealthy and a dam for every Nationals electorate.
There is no recognition of the economic benefits Labor’s “big ideas” have delivered.
Not only do this lot concede they are not the party of big ideas, they have demonstrated that they also have no idea about how to plan for the future and budget and invest accordingly.
Like what we do at The AIMN?
You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.
Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!
9 comments
Login here Register here-
GL
-
Pete Petrass
-
Michael Taylor
-
New England Cocky
-
pierre wilkinson
-
Kathryn
-
Terence Mills
-
Kaye Lee
-
Florence nee Fedup
Return to home pageKaye Lee,
How does the Coalition “pay for things”? They don’t, unless of course it benefits the big end of town and maatteess, everything else always happens in the future and when it falls through they hope that the peons will forget what they said.
This government do not pay for labor’s big ideas, being the snarky low-life grubs that they are they only spend their time cutting the crap out of them. Just look at the money they strip out of Medicare, PBS and the NDIS for example. And if they can’t take money out of that big idea they screw with it so us regular people end up worse off (superannuation for eg).
After following politics for over 45 years I can count on one hand the number of times it was asked of an LNP govt (or opposition) “How are you going to pay for that?”
If anyone would like to know how many times I’ve heard it asked of Labor I suggest this: fill up a bucket with sand, then count the number of grains. It will be in the ball park.
Liarbrals are the born-to-rule bullsh#tters with no idea about how to rule for Australian voters.
“Gross debt is forecast to reach a record $906 billion by the end of this financial year, grow to $977 billion in 2022-23 and top $1 trillion the following year. Interest payments in 2025-26 are projected to be $22.4 billion.”
Which is all to the good if Labor wins, because then they can and will blame Labor for the “massive blow out in debt”
and if they win they will continue to deny its’ existence whilst insisting that all is rosy
History has PROVEN – beyond any doubt – that the ONLY people the self-serving elitists in the LNP openly support, totally favour and generously fund are their greedy, self-entitled supporters in the Top 1% and/or self-serving, non-taxpaying corporate parasites who, whilst grossly underpaying their working- and middle-class staff and whining about having to provide them with a paltry increase, ensure that they, themselves, are the recipients of HUGE salaries, obscene bonuses and LNP-provided tax-dodging perks! In the meantime, ordinary hard-working Australians are left to fund the HUGE, obscene wages (and perks) of self-serving politicians who are up to their necks in greed and entitlement!
There is nothing – ABSOLUTELY NOTHING – compassionate, egalitarian or honourable about the LNP! They are a thoroughly ruthless, unconscionable pack of predatory elitists many of whom (like Morrison) have NEVER managed to hold down a job out in the REAL world before they rose to autocratic power as the worst, most corrupt and self-serving political parasites this nation has ever seen! Morrison was dismissed or mysteriously “let go” of just about every job he failed to keep before he rose to power as the worst, most corrupt and non-achieving PM in our history!
Morrison never really held a job for longer than two short years: he was a failure as the Director of the New Zealand Office of Tourism and Sport; a position he held for only two years from 1998 to 2000 after which he was quickly replaced after only two years as managing director of Tourism Australia from 2004 to 2006. During that time, Morrison’s adherence to callously inhumane, prosperity-driven, ultra-conservative ideology managed to get him a role as the state director of the New South Wales Liberal Party from 2000 to 2004. Once slotted into this role, Morrison’s treachery became apparent when he deliberately and surreptitiously, undermined Michael Towke in order to steal Towke’s seat of Cook!
Morrison chose to repeat this type of backstabbing treachery when he repeated the same type of betrayal against Malcolm Turnbull in order to steal the role of leader of the Opposition! Morrison was unfairly rewarded for his treachery by going on to lead the Coalition to an upset victory in the 2019 election, with a LOT of help from the like-minded vindictive and lying Murdoch press. The LNP/Murdoch vendetta against the Labor Party at that election was one of the most vicious, thoroughly malignant campaigns in our history.
As one of the worst, most non-achieving and self-serving prime ministers in living memory, Morrison was justifiably criticised for taking a holiday during the 2019–20 bushfire season and for the Commonwealth’s response to the disaster! He was later heavily condemned for his appalling response to the 2021 Parliament allegations of rape committed by a disgraced, skirt-lifting predator that the Morrison cabinet decided to defend and protect! During the COVID-19 pandemic, Morrison was criticised over Australia’s slow rollout of COVID vaccines and his government’s appalling lack of funding or assistance to relieve the heavy burden taken on by over-worked doctors and nurses! Tragically, Morrison’s overblown sense of importance and stratospheric ego has rendered him almost incapable of diplomacy! Morrison’s total lack of leadership, ever-increasing indiscretions and mismanagement of Australia’s foreign policy has, in no small way, increased tensions between Australia and our largest trading partner, China as well as damaging the once good relations Australia had with France!
Morrison was criticised over his government’s response to the 2022 Eastern Australia floods and his government continues to receive worldwide condemnation and criticism for his regressive and irrational response to climate change.
It is fair to say that the LNP – and, in particular, the bone-idle Sloth Morrison – have not achieved a SINGLE thing since they rose to power on the back of a vindictive campaign against the ALP (in general) and virulent hate campaigns against leaders of the Opposition on a deeply personal level! Despite Morrison claiming to be a sanctimonious, religious member of the notorious Cult of Hillsong, his appalling level of vindictiveness, treachery and callousness against anyone who stands in his way (which includes his OWN colleagues) – over many years – has exposed him as a truly vile, bible-thumping hypocrite.
I challenge ANYONE to name ONE SINGLE THING that the LNP have EVER EVER achieved to benefit the lives of ordinary working- and middle-class Australians! ONE. SINGLE. THING. If you click on the link, underneath this paragraph, there is a list of the damage done by the LNP who can only be described as the worst, most corrupt and inhumane regime in living memory!
https://www.mdavis.xyz/govlist/
By comparison, the long long list of REAL achievements made by the ALP that benefit the lives of ordinary working- and middle-class Australians is HUGE:
The long list of achievements made by Gough Whitlam who many believe to be our highest achieving PM:
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/gough-whitlam-left-a-long-list-of-achievements-20141021-119cpu.html
In spite of the appalling, internationally-condemned sexist attacks made by the appalling misogynists in the Abbott regime, Julia Gillard – unlike Abbott – managed to leave behind a wonderful list of achievements!….
https://theconversation.com/how-julia-gillard-forever-changed-australian-politics-especially-for-women-138528
Kevin Rudd also managed to achieve so much to benefit the lives of ordinary Australians:
There have been good times and bad times with every government in our history but noone can deny that the HIGHEST achieving government in our history has been the democratic, beneficial collaboration of the LABOR PARTY and our Unions which, after all, are made up of ordinary working- and middle-class Australians! It must be pointed out that the ONLY people the LNP represent are the Top 1%, greedy self-serving employers and corporate predators …. NEVER forget it!
Did you notice that Spudley Dutton came out under questioning the other day to say that final negotiations to compensate the French, on the abandoned submarine deal, may take longer than the anticipated July deadline : it may be more than the leaked figure of $5.5 Billion.
This makes it very difficult for Morrison to claim the title of better economic managers when this money was wasted due to absolute incompetence by the Morrison government.
If Labor win the election they will need to call for an audit of the books by the National Audit Office and they should probably forecast that the next time the coalition talk up their economic management credentials (read massive borrowing program).
Factual numbers (excluding YouTube) for the Leader’s Debate were 175,000 which for SKY is massive : Paul Murray Live dropped back to 85,000 after the debate.
While 7.30 on the ABC had 439,000.
https://tvtonight.com.au/2022/04/wednesday-20-april-2022.html
Over the decade, the government is providing $575 billion in funding to Defence, but in that time it won’t deliver a single new combat vessel.
Defence cancelled its project to deliver the Submarine Escape Rescue and Abandonment System. After getting into contract and spending what could be close to $100 million, Defence decided that it had irreconcilable differences with its industry partner.
The Army’s highest priority program, the digitisation of the Army under LAND 200, also has been put on hold after nearly 15 years of work and almost $2 billion spent. Even if it continues, it could take another 10 years to complete—in total, that’s longer than the F-35A. Can Defence keep running projects that take a quarter of a century to deliver?
The defence budget in 21-22 is over $122 million per day. The opportunity cost of that is enormous.
https://www.aspi.org.au/report/cost-defence-aspi-defence-budget-brief-2021-2022
They also cancelled the helicopter contract and a contract for guns for patrol boats. Heaps of other contracts are way overdue and over budget. They have so much money they are falling over themselves to spend it without doing due diligence of value for money or whether the platform is even appropriate for our needs.
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/defence-quietly-cancels-another-navy-contract-after-denying-problems-20211214-p59hcy
Many Labors’ great ideas cost the same or even less than the spending they replace. Medicare & especially NDIS are good examples. We paid out on disabilities before NDIS will pay if it goes. All previous payment was built into NDIS, hoping to form a fairer & more efficient scheme. The idea was the disabled themselves would have control. That has not happened. The money people have been put in place.