The Intergenerational Report was released today.
It was late. Which, I understand, is illegal. But this is a government that seems to believe that, well, it’s the government so therefore nothing they do is illegal, because, as governments make the laws then there’s no need for them to uphold them because they can just change them if it’s inconvenient.
Or ignore them.
But, I’m not going to write about the failure of the current mob to understand such things as the separation of powers. I’m going to write about their failure to understand two other rather important things.
First, projecting forty days into the future is fraught with difficulty because all predictions make certain assumptions, so predicting forty years into the future is only useful in terms of asking ourselves if it’s where we want to end up and if not, what do we need to do to make sure that it doesn’t happen that way.
Second, when you’re in politics you need to pull the right face at the right time. And I’d like to suggest that when the message you’re trying to sell is that we’re all ruined. You should not have such happy faces so soon after announcing the bad news.
But then, Joe’s never quite understood that last point. Neither has Tony for that matter. Tony always looks very angry, or extremely happy that he’s now PM. Every now and then, he can pose for a photo opportunity and look concerned, but then he’ll break into a beaming grin which suggests that he thinks he’s done very, very well and he can gloat because he’s PM, after all and look at all the losers who never made it that far.
Which brings us to Hockey.
He looked far too pleased to tell us that Labor would have increased the debt by so much. He almost seemed to be enjoying it. Look where Labor would have taken you, he seemed to be saying, so isn’t it great that we’re the government?
Except that brings me back to my first point. It’s ridiculous on any level to say this is where the debt would have gone under Labor. I’m not even going to suggest that this little graph seems to assume that Labor would have been in power for then next 40 years…
Although, given Abbott and Hockey’s performance, I wouldn’t like to entirely rule it out.
I could also point out that – according to the Liberals – Labor are the party of high taxes. They’d tax far, far more than the Liberals, which would suggest to most folks that they’d have more revenue and therefore be better able to pay for their spending. But then I’d get into some convoluted argument about how high taxes – such as the mining tax or the carbon tax or, indeed, asking highly profitable companies like Apple to pay any tax above two percent would mean that they’d close all their stores and only sell their products to people in third world countries – destroy the economy and thanks to the abolition of the carbon tax our economy is STRONG again.
But I’m done with all that.
I’m not playing the game of using logic and reason because it seems to lose out to the Andrew Bolts of this world, so I’m going to accept that the debt is enormously high and Labor would have just let it grow like that. Let’s just say that’s a given. After all they introduce things like Medicare, which forces people to have access to a doctor when it’s be much better to have a “price signal” so a person could decide whether they’d be healthier by visiting a GP or feeding themselves. That’s choice; that’s the Liberal Way. Let’s just accept that Labor are incompetent with money and it’s all their fault that the debt is so unacceptably high. Yes, yes, Joe, so let’s just say that they should never be given the opportunity to govern ever again like many of your front bench seem to argue.
Take away that red bit at the top of the graph. Just imagine that only the blue bit is visible, because after all this is not really a comparative thing. I mean, you wouldn’t say that I convinced you to not to eat at my competitor’s restaurant because he gave you food poisoning, whereas, I just let my dog defecate in the restaurant while you’re eating, and I always clean it up withing five minutes. (Actually, maybe you would!)
Anyway, focus on where the blue bit is headed:
LOOK AT HOW BADLY YOU GUYS ARE DOING.
LOOK AT HOW MUCH THAT DEBT IS GROWING.
YOU NEED TO DO SOMETHING.
I mean, you can’t say that just because you’re not as bad as Labor then it’s all ok. LOOK AT IT…
It’s grown enormously in the forty years since you made this a one party country by seizing the Opposition’s metadata and jailing them because they weren’t on Team Australia.
No, don’t just blame the Senate. Call a Double Dissolution now, before it’s too late. Because if you don’t, we can all see the way things are heading.
Turnbull will be PM before the end of April. And who wants that?
Ok, ok, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!
I think you should be a psychoanalyst, Rossleigh, and your first clients should be the LNP Degenerates with Hokey first and Rabid following on second.
Your expertise will be invaluable for understanding their numbskull logic when the rest of us might struggle to understand what planet they came from.
That face is not smiling, it is smirking because he stupidly believes we will swallow this simplistic linear projection. Remember WW1 was the “war to end all wars”? consequence; WW2 and all the smaller ones since. You can predict climate change broadly, but not in local detail, you can predict water problems, and other consequences of increasing population, with provisos about war, plagues, women getting real equality, using good science, but there are far too many variables to predict in this sort of detail. Maybe we will do a U turn and live more lightly on the earth, maybe war or disease will massively alter human numbers .Maybe we will see wealth and growth as the obscenities they have become and all go ascetic.There are so many possibilities to human behaviour , and this treasurer can’t even predict last year properly, never mind the future.
I like your relaxed attitude Ross – after all we can’t make sense out of insane.
It’s refreshing to hear a journalist point out that these clowns are CRIMINALS.
Cheers
They’re a bunch of fruit loops!
Its the face of a “dead man walking”…….
Don’t ya just luv Joes graphs, anyone can draw a graph and color it red and blue
staying in the lines and pretend they know what they are talking about.
This gov ” is so yesterday” and their useless graphs,
someone should take the red and blue crayons off the kid
before he pokes someone in the eye with them…
The red line Labor projections on all their graphs are taken from the figures in MYEFO rather than PEFO. In other words, their supposed Labor debt included their decisions to give up revenue from the carbon tax, the mining tax, the FBT tax on car leases, the tax on super over $100,000 pa, and also their decisions to borrow $9 billion to gift to the RBA just to make that debt look as big as they could. MYEFO also projected a debt based on 6% unemployment in the future whereas the IGR has changed that back to 5% which makes a huge difference to projections.
The dishonesty infuriates me as does the assumption that we won’t notice.
Sorry to get all maths on you but I can’t help it…I hate the deliberate deception as they call for a mature honest national debate.
It’s ok, Kaye Lee. I started to do an analysis of the facts and figures and then I started to get a headache and I thought to myself (as opposed,to those who think t o other people)…
I thought to myself why should I think about this when Joe Hockey clearly hadn’t and it was just as effective to take pot shots.
Debt grows exponentially. Exponentially faster than the GDP. No matter who’s in power. That’s how growth works.
We need a reboot. We must abandon growth.
Thanks Kaye – I love maths and economics but I hate fraud. Hockey {sic} is dangerous! Every time I watch someone gets injured.
“Debt grows exponentially. Exponentially faster than the GDP. No matter who’s in power. That’s how growth works.”
That has no basis in historical fact. Under Howard debt decreased as growth increased. I wish you guys would actually use facts rather than ideology.
Rossleigh, I hope you didn’t take a special “headache Nurofen” for that nearly a full blown headache you nearly had, because they are misleading, they make you think you don’t have a headache when one cleary does not have headache.
Or you could take a “back pain Nurofen” but I wouldn’t because that might just help your nearly headache…its all very misleading as is this gov of the misleading leading the misleading
I hope this post is not giving you a nearly headache, like Smokin’ Joes misleading logic 🙂
This Coalition government is looking worse and worse by the day. A couple of weeks ago it was revealed that 40% of the Coalition parliamentarians were supporting a spill against the PM. Then we had the claim in some quarters that the Coalition have achieved a rise in the polls.
So we are belatedly given the Intergenerational Report and we see why it was presented so coyly and with so much laughter. It is a completely farcical fizzer. and this is the mob which accused Prof Triggs of producing a partisan report!
What can we expect in the Budget in May? Especially after the PM has told us the last Budget did the “hard yards” to set Oz up for a generation – provided it was all passed. Will the upcoming Budget be of the same delusional kind as the all the rest of the statements made by this mob in the last 18 months – and in the last several years? Why should we believe anything they say? And why do they so often get away without questions being asked by so many of the commentariat?
Stay around for a while, guest,
as I detect you as a Labor insider.
I don’t dispute your rationale about the LNP’s intent to introduce austerity measures via the last failed budget and the next suspect budget.
As much as I despise their intent to prioritise people according to their circumstances, I want to know how different Labor IS and intends to be.
I also want to know what you think about a proportional party system where there is the real possibility of multiple parties that need to co-exist and negotiate good policies that represent wide, diverse groups of people in our various communities.
This is the future of good governance in Australia of the Fair Go where people have real opportunities of being heard and enacted.
Labor would be wise to recognise the need to start forging meaningful, reciprocal and proactive relationships with powerful minor parties such as the Australian Progressives and the Greens.
Joe Hockey, the Dr Seuss of economics. Does this idiot never learn? Let’s have a conversation he said. Is this his idea of a conversation? Let’s patronise the population and tell them it’s really important that you let us stuff you royally. This government is simply incapable of thinking of anything but it’s own political programme. How on earth can they suggest that Labor would have followed any particular course over a period of 40 years. None of them has yet displayed an ability to think clearly for 40 minutes. They are pathologically incapable of speaking the truth. EVERYTHING they say is coloured by their own twisted agenda. Maybe Pyne is right. If we make it harder for people to get an affordable education maybe we’d get less idiots like this crew of drop kicks. In Hockey’s case I think there’s a damn good argument for demanding our money back. This guy is a total waste of space and our dough.
Is this seriously a graph from the IGR? It’s totally meaningless even in its intention to (again) make Labor look bad. I shake my head at the continuing stupidity of the government’s economic intelligentsia, the smirks on their faces, say it all really. We’ve just released a pig in a poke and hope all you suckers out there understand how important it is to keep Labor out. Oh and our plans for the future? Look at the blue band.
O’Bleak,
although I could agree with your premise about Hokey Pokey’s inability to run a budget despite his higher education, that does not mean I would restrict my grassroots peers, our children and our grandchildren from our UNdeniable right to education and Higher Education.
Hokey is a misfit with lots of money but the unfortunate consequence of his greed for claiming expenses inappropriately.
Therefore, I authorise our next Alliance Government in pursuing him for misappropriation of public funds. As this is likely the case, then I consider, criminal charges are likely to follow once the new legal public authority takes control.
Kellie O’Dwyer was interviewed this evening – well actually she was given a chance to deliver a monologue on the Drum. When the kouk pointed out that the red lines on the graphs came from MYEFO which included Coalition revenue and spending decisions and projections, Kellie tried to say that they had to give the RBA the $9 billion because Wayne Swan had ripped money from them. I get so infuriated that these so-called journalists don’t point out that Swan did indeed take $500 million in dividends….Hockey, after his big show of borrowing $9 billion, then took back over $1.2 billion in dividends.
Jennifer. Hockey’s wife has the money. He has SFA apart from a stapled gut. And an IQ somewhere south of the Antarctic circle.
Kaye, your 6.44 post pretty well says it all. Abbott and gang think we are all so stupid that we’ll just wear their lies and bullshit without question…and sadly, I think they may be right.
As I’ve said elsewhere, at my age (70+) I don’t expect to see the worst of what this bunch of intestinal parasites are doing to my country: but I absolutely despair for my grandchildren…
Rossleigh
You failed to emphasize that it is all Labors fault and why is that, because they are the reason there are so many oldies around they introduced medicare that ensures we all live longer and are now a burden on the young of today and tomorrow. They introduced free education resulting in more intellegent people whose desires creat more needs and on and on it goes.
PS this mob could not forcast trends into next month let alone (40) years, as mentioned just about everywhere except the abc(still not worth capitals) it is a work of fiction and I expect it to be treated as such
Are we really expected to take seriously projections 40 years down the track, One would have to believe there would be no policy change in that time. Believe there will be no technology advances. No disasters. No global financial crisis.
This one leaves out fibre broadband and climate change for starters.
What can w expect in May budget. Easy. A give away budget, to set them up for early snap election.
Under Howard debt decreased as growth increased. I wish you guys would actually use facts rather than ideology.
Kaye Lee, you very well know Howard sold all manner of assets (not least Telstra) to offset the government’s debt, and it only postponed the inevitable for a few years at best. BESIDES………… this had ZERO impact on the private debts which are still skyrocketing…..
Growth will kill us, it’s only a matter of when.
Joe Hockey really is an idiot. He must honestly believe the average Australian is a moron. Kind of like his boss Tony…..celebrating International Woman’s Day at a Mens Club.????????? Tony, are you a complete and utter moron? Wait, don’t answer that….it’s probably Labor’s fault.
There is some seriously stupid shit going on inside the brains of our government. Seriously stupid. And it’s seriously dangerous to the rest of us. They are destroying the future of our country. I despair. I love Australia. Adore it. It is my home. And it’s being turned into a little baby USA. I despair.
He must honestly believe the average Australian is a moron.
Well……… the ‘average Australian’ voted them in….. the government we deserve and all that?
NEVER forget that by definition half the population has an IQ of 100 or less.
“I love Australia … And it’s being turned into a little baby USA” … by the USA with help from the plants in the LNP and Labor. Turnbull is a connection to this, as a prime example. Australia is being handed to the US corporates, on a platter, by kowtowing, weak, shrill, banker-buddy Australians.
I agree with Awabakal,
How long before we have a Goldman Sachs prime minister installed like Italy and other nations?
Cheers
ps Goldman Sachs always funds both sides of the false two party dichotomy
Here is another example of the LNP non-logic at the State level this time.
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/nsw-government-plans-to-outsource-jobs-to-india-20150305-13vwsc.html
So in order to supposedly cut costs (it wont) they outsource government jobs to India.
This makes no economic sense whatsoever. It completely ignores the multiplier effect of government spending. For every dollar spent there is a multiplier effect. As the money will now be sent to India NSW will lose this multiplier effect, so the overall result of government outsourcing jobs will be:
a) a decline in direct employment that cannot be made up in other ways
b) a decline in other employment as the effect of indirect jobs losses due to the loss of the government cash in NSW leads to downsizing (imagine of this was Canberra)
c) a loss of tax receipts via income tax and GST
d) a loss of jobs that could be decentralised
e) initial savings on the provision of the service in the first 2 years, but an overall loss should true total costs were properly evaluated including the redundancy payments and the cost of managing the outsourcing over the life of the contract. After 2 years the prices for the service will rise and the government will be captured by contract clauses where anything non-standard will incur costs far in excess of the actual cost (its will be a bit like the inkjet printing industry – cheap machines, excessively priced toner).
This sort of thing will cost Australia maybe up to 10 times the supposed savings.
It is criminal. I would bet you any money that there are people connected to government who will make money out of this deal.
I’m calling it as corruption!
https://www.youtube.com/embed/qBpm5sVmGYc Take an hour and half out of your life and watch this. Debt & deficit as we are commonly lead to understand it, BUSTED!
jimhaz,
I agree 100%.
Cam,
shall do.
Everyone,
don’t give up. Legally targeting the LNP Degenerate and corrupt politicians, who do the corporate lords’ dirty business, is a good way to eliminate them and cause discomfort to the mega-bosses.
That’s why rabiddingo,
I say call out Hokey Pokey for his alleged misappropriations of taxpayer dollars that he’s claimed in bunking in his own wife’s house. Just to make an example and act as a possible deterrent to other such degenerate pollies like Hokey.
Shirt front your local fed rep about the money waisted on this fairy tale report from Hockey. .
What a farce it all is.
The “Intergenerational Report ” is allegedly a document that sets out objectives for the next four decades. … So they have delivered one, ( as was required ).
What happened to the Scabbott’s recent barb at his detractors, when he stated ( not verbatim ) … ” not concerned with decades down the track, we are doing this for the here and now “. ( certainly words to that effect ). …. Changes his mind and hides all true intentions constantly.
~ ~ ~ ~
From the Governments’ own website :
http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BriefingBook44p/IntergenerationalReport
“The basis for conducting such an analysis is the principle
of intergenerational equity—that actions benefiting current generations
should not compromise future generations.”
Coff … yeah – right !!!
……
@ Florence . …. your comment re the next May budget. I agree – it will be full of promises of goodies and how they’ve realised their mistakes, blah, blah, blah – then a snap election will be called.
Would put money on it.
The manipulation and hypocrisy of this mob is absolutely staggering.