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!
