What’s the plan, boss?
The Coalition claims the budget sets out their plan for the nation, so what is that plan?
To address cost of living pressures, millions of people will be given a one-off few hundred dollars and a temporary reduction in petrol prices.
No permanent increase to pensions or Jobseeker. No support for an increase to the minimum wage. Nothing to address unaffordable housing and childcare.
To address climate change, we will increase our exports of “cleaner” coal and pin our future on gas, carbon capture and storage, and buying carbon credits.
No plan to genuinely cut emissions. No risk assessment of potentially stranded assets. No commitment to, or recognition of, the global effort to keep heating below 1.5 degrees.
To address the aged care crisis, a few hundred million will be spent on improving medication management.
No increase in wages for aged care workers. No mandated staff to resident ratio. No requirement for specifically trained staff.
To address national security, we will spend hundreds of billions on war toys that won’t arrive for decades, recruit more personnel, who also won’t materialise for decades, and join the dirty world of cyber and space warfare.
No thought of the value of soft diplomacy or being a responsible, respectful, reliable global citizen – it’s all about military ‘alliances’.
To address water security from droughts, we will build dams.
To address flood mitigation, we will build dams.
To address rising power costs, we will build dams.
To address irrigating increasingly unviable farming land, we will build dams.
The decision on whether dams are commercially viable, environmentally appropriate, where they should go, how they will operate, and who they will benefit, will be left to Barnaby Joyce who does not need unelected bureaucrats like the National Water Grid Advisory Body telling country folk what to do.
To address anything else, we have the following slush funds to be doled out one marginal electorate at a time:
Energy Security and Regional Development $7.1B
Regional Accelerator Program $2B
Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility $2B
Regional Telecommunications $1.3B
Local Roads and Community Infrastructure $501.7M
Modern Manufacturing Strategy and Fund $328.3M
Environment Restoration Fund $100M
Community Infrastructure Murray-Darling Basin $97M
Community Development Grants Program New Projects $67.7M
Magnetic Resonance Imaging for Rural Health $66M
Recycling Modernisation Fund $60.4M
Safer Communities Round Six $50M
Strong and Resilient Communities Grants $45.1M
Stronger Communities Round Eight $29.2M
Planting Trees for Queen’s Jubilee $20.3M
Community Child Care Fund $19.4M
Total $13.8B
Let the pork barrelling begin.
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11 comments
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New England Cocky -
GL -
Baby Jewels -
Ill fares the land -
Phil Pryor -
Kaye Lee -
Michael Taylor -
Kaye Lee -
Michael Taylor -
wam -
Kaye Lee
Return to home pageGee Kay Lee ….. it would be nice just for a change to have a political representative of the Australian voters in New England who worked to improve the best interests of those voters.
Currently Beetrooter is spreading political largesse and vote buying funding everywhere except New England, so why should us forgotten voters remember the Nazional$ on election day … or even at the pre-poll booths????
“To address water security from droughts, we will build dams. To address flood mitigation, we will build dams. To address rising power costs, we will build dams. To address irrigating increasingly unviable farming land, we will build dams.”
Just imagine how smoothly and wonderfully all that will go if Bananababy was the minister in charge of all those dams.
$60 million for school Chaplains. From where? Hillsong? Citipointe? And in a secular society? I object!
By the time you take out the infrastructure spend directed towards key states where the LNP needs to retain seats (e.g., Queensland), or is likely to get the flogging its incompetence and corruption deserves (e.g., WA), plus the short-term insignificant cash “fix” and the increased LAMITO that has to be claimed in 2022 tax returns you are left with ………………..
Donald Horne was not correct, for this is an unlucky country, with corporate crooks, political perverts, pontificating profiteers, selfish stools, ignorant imbecilics, self centred secondrate slobs, hyperactive hypocrites, atrocious attitudes, media maggots, press and print pigs, all joining to RUIN it for most people. The current Morrison Slobbery of sluts and slaves to sensationalism make this a cursed continent, a land not of milk and honey, but excrement of executive officeholding bludgers and bullshitters. We need an intelligent, practical, planning and socially aware group of people’s representatives. We could get an improvement, some relief, some honesty, soon. We need it, desperately, not some dogshit utterings by Lachlan Lovemydicky, a foreign turd from an undereducated, soulless, oppressive family of fartfilmed filth and social depravity. Is that a phone tap??
“Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people’s ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.” – Donald Horne
In my years as a political junkie I’ve never seen a Coalition government deliver a budget, plan or policy that hasn’t looked beyond the next election (unless it’s to deliver something decades in the future, like submarines).
During the 2010 election campaign Julia Gillard – when the Coalition threatened to destroy Labor’s NBN – profoundly said; “Imagine missing out on all the possibilities of the future” (or words to that effect).
We see that every year and every budget with a Coalition government: the possibilities of the future are not even given a sniff.
“What is worse again is the opportunity cost of money not spent where it is needed, of the return on better investments foregone.
This is a miserable budget, lacking integrity, conceived in cynicism, designed to help a political party, not the nation.”
https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/finance-news/2022/03/31/budget-trouble-next-year-michael-pascoe/
Michael’s right on the money.
What a marvellous read, kaye, scummo should be blushing. However most of your points are covered by the rabbott’s ‘it is their choice’ attitude of conservatives. They have never considered much ‘change’ beyond short term selling and long term views. Planning has been beyond them, since pig-iron bob’s standing to attention for god save the queen at the cricket. Their outsourced attempts are usually disastrous and abandoned after a few wasted $millions. They say but don’t do? https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/28/what-happened-the-policies-scott-morrisons-government-appears-to-have-abandoned.
Oh why is there any doubt that scummo will get thrashed?
Living in a marginal electorate certainly increases your junk mail. One of the four shoved in my letterbox on one day this week, all from Lucy Wicks, was an invitation to a community BBQ on Sunday that will go ahead, regardless of the weather, where she has invited community and sporting groups (or anyone) to come along to let her know how she can help…..I read that as “I have money to spend quick so put up your hand.” I feel some solar panels coming on.