The Coalition have been assuring us for years that they have a plan for real solutions and that the plan will provide jobs and growth and reduce the deficit.
Now I’m no expert, which makes me eminently qualified to discuss what the non-experts who occupy the government benches are doing.
If those are your goals, wouldn’t it have been far better to continue subsidising the car industry than paying 30% more for submarines to be built locally?
As the submarines haven’t even been designed yet, they aren’t going to be creating any jobs here for years and, even when they do start in the late 2020s, according to the government they “will directly sustain around 1100 Australian jobs and a further 1700 Australian jobs through the supply chain”. The car industry, on the other hand, was employing tens of thousands of people directly, and many more through the supply chain, right now.
From 2001 to 2012, Holden generated $32.7 billion of economic activity in Australia, and paid $21 billion to other companies while receiving $1.8 billion in subsidies. That’s a pretty good return on investment for the government.
What economic activity will the subs generate over the next decade? How much will it cost the government?
We went through some sort of competitive evaluation process and then chose the most expensive option.
Aside from the few ship builders who will be employed, we now need to prop up an ailing steel industry which had survived quite well under a carbon tax. No doubt commodity prices and the lower dollar are contributing factors but a commitment to use Aussie steel in government contracts might have been helpful earlier, as would have been a commitment to use Aussie cars by all levels of government and public service.
A US bank lent Gina Rinehart money on the proviso that her Roy Hill project purchased mining and rail equipment from US companies. We could be making that a condition for approval.
One wonders what role free trade agreements have played in the demise of so many industries. Ever since we rushed to get signatures on the line, making the date more important than the detail, our trade balance figures have been poor – we are importing more than we are exporting.
And we continue to waste money hand over fist on subsidies and concessions that skew investment in the wrong direction.
In November last year, a new international report revealed that Australia is still subsidising fossil fuel production to the tune of a massive $A5.6 billion a year.
The report, ‘Empty promises: G20 subsidies to oil, gas and coal production’, also highlights how Australian companies have received billions of dollars from other G20 governments to develop liquefied natural gas sites.
And it notes that Australia also funds the industry with a further $A292 million a year in public finance, as it expands fossil fuel production on multiple fronts.
According to the new report – put together by the UK-based Overseas Development Institute and USA-based Oil Change International – governments from the Group of 20 nations are propping up fossil fuel production with $US452 billion a year.
This is almost four times the entire global subsidies for renewable energy ($US121 billion).
Our government’s mixed messages have decimated the renewable energy industry in Australia. It isn’t taxes that deter investment – it is uncertainty.
Also influencing investment decisions are the overly generous concessions offered on property and superannuation.
An analysis by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling of the costs and take-up of negative gearing, the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount, and superannuation tax concessions, shows the combined revenue loss – or tax expenditure – will amount to some $50 billion annually within three years, although under 7 per cent of that benefit will flow to the under 30s.
And then there is the NBN.
We could have been employing thousands of people to install a world class service which would have benefitted business and society in so many ways into the future. We have now got ourselves in such a muddle, we don’t have enough skilled technicians and Telstra is installing copper into greenfield developments.
The false economies keep on piling up.
They slashed funding to ASIC, the ATO and the CSIRO, resulting in thousands of job losses and redundancy payouts, until they realised there was no one left to crack down on the banks or corporate tax evaders or to research how we survive climate change, so they had to start hiring again.
Money is spent on Royal Commissions and inquiries and reports, only to have the same recommendations ignored time after time.
Cutting funding for health, education and welfare in order to give big business a tax cut is not a plan Malcolm. It’s a rort with our money.
Instead of fiddle fart-arsing around arguing about plebiscites and referenda and Section 18C and the ABCC, start working on the tough decisions that would actually create jobs for the future and the revenue necessary to fund our society.
What’s da plan, boss?
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