Just heard a newsreader say:

“The cut in Company Tax will compensate business for the 1.5% which is being levied to pay for the Parental Leave Scheme.”

Now, I don’t have any formal accounting qualifications, so perhaps I’m missing something, but this doesn’t seem to add up to me.

Still, I guess I should try it before I knock it. I’ll ask my wife for a ten percent levy on her wages to pay for my petrol costs over the next week. When she asks what’s happened to my money, I’ll explain that I’m going to drop the amount that she’s been contributing to the mortgage by a figure equivalent to the money I’m taking from her. That way she’ll be no worse off and my petrol will be all paid for!

Simple really. Just like before the previous election when Hockey explained that they’d pay for some of their promises by not spending the money on the things that Labor had announced, but which he said we couldn’t afford because we didn’t have the money.

At the time, I said to my wife that we’d saved a lot of money by not getting a new Toyota this year, but next year we could save even more by not getting a Maserati. Indeed, we could probably save enough to quit work if we didn’t get two Maseratis!

But like I said, I’m not planning to be Treasurer. I’m sure Mr Hockey’s figures all add up. Even if he did say yesterday that he wouldn’t be adding them up himself because he didn’t trust the Treasury estimates.