This morning on Insiders* they were pointing out a Barnaby gaff. I had missed it during the week but Lindsay Tanner made a meal out of it on Meet the Press. Fair enough, numbers should be Joyce’s bread and butter. But Milton von Smith thinks there is much more to the story than first meets the eye.
Senator Joyce made the apparently unforgiveable error of saying that Labor’s spending over the forward estimates would be $1.4 billion, whereas the real figure is much higher: $1.4 trillion.
Labor’s attack on Senator Joyce would be hilarious if it wasn’t so pathetic.
The attack comes from a government that has increased real spending by 18 per cent over the last two years. This is the most rapid increase in spending since that economic powerhouse ? Gough Whitlam ? was in charge of our nation’s finances.
This from a government that has promised to spend over $1 billion per day in 2012-13.
And this from a government that will run up the largest deficit in our nation’s history. Not once. Not twice. But four years in a row: they will break the previous record in each and every year between 2008-09 and 2011-12!
Tanner was saying that the Coalition frontbench is the weakest economic line-up in Australian history. Time will tell, right now that is speculative. Based on actual budget outcomes right now the weakest economics line-up is on the Treasury benches.
It is Tanner, after all, who is directly responsible for the financial wreckage that is now this nation’s public finances.
Tanner has never seen a wasteful spending program that he didn’t like. He has cut as many dollars of spending from the budget as he has released credible cost-benefit analyses of his own policies: nil.
Tanner has delivered government waste in such creative ways, on such a large scale, and on such a huge number of programs that it has to be seen to be believed. His has been such an incredibly poor effort at economic management that is unlikely to be ever matched again.
Tanner will likely never deliver a budget surplus. He’s obviously trying to replicate the last Finance Minister who achieved that dubious distinction: Kim Beazley.
Ouch! I don’t think Milton von Smith likes Tanner. But he’s right. Given the broken promises on cutting spending and the inability to balance budgets I really don’t think this government, and Tanner especially, is in any position to be pointing fingers.
* Not sure about having the token conservative sit on the couch.
Not sure about having the token conservative sit on the couch.
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yeah that was really weird and unnerving. How can Bolt call them the “couch collective” when he’s on the couch himself?
daddy dave
7 Feb 10 at 11:15 am
Right because there was no Global financial crisis, nothing has happened and only socialism can explain why Rudd’s spending money. I know many argued an alternate path ought to be taken to respond to the GFC, fine, but that’s no excuse to simply ignore the cause of the governments policy. Rudd didn’t come into office promising stimulatory spending, it was forced on him, in line with treasury advice, with similar policies undertaken by most developed countries around the world.
Context matters.
Also, Von Smith is wrong to claim the government will record the greatest budget deficit for four years in a row. That’s like claiming that while someone else swam faster and beat a world record by 20 seconds, your effort, though 10 seconds behind them is also a world record. It’s not. Records are re-set they don’t just keep being compared to some arbitrary previous figure to imply significance. Else almost everyone in elite level sport is a world record breaker, when compared over the last 200+ years of records. Australia’s largest deficit will be in the 2009-2010 financial year, if Budget figures are right, by 2012-13 the deficit will be half that figure not a record breaking amount.
Rudd has plenty to answer for economically without needing to resort to a-historical and deceitful claims to make the case.
Andrew Carr
7 Feb 10 at 11:37 am
How can Bolt call them the “couch collective” when he’s on the couch himself?
How can he call it the ‘leftist media’ when he and his News Ltd mates are among the most prominent members of it?
THR
7 Feb 10 at 11:40 am
Look, Politics is about perception and Joyce isn’t fit for the role and ought to stop making statements.
There are hunks of flesh that could be ripped from the ALP’s behind to the extent where they could lose the election if the arguments were properly framed in the way that people understood.
Explain how spending has never ever gone so far off the radar since Whitlam and at this rate we will even surpass Greece and Portugal as deficit bums in a few years. Tell the public that these two countries are threatening Europe financial health as a result of bad management of their economies.
Explain how they have lost control of spending and are adding more and more to the fiscal imbalance eventually threatening health-care and pensions if this out of control fiscal mess isn’t reigned in…… in addition to raising taxes.
Explain how the government is hiding Ken Henry’s study as long as possible to delay the time when they impose higher taxes on the voters in order to pay for this mess. Say they are delaying the disclosure as they have something to hide and that SwanDive recently gave us a clue that this is their strategy when he suggested it was patriotic to pay more tax.
Then compare that to the Howard years when we had years of tax cutting due to better governance and spending control.
That shit is easy to frame and stick a red-hot iron rod up tanner and this Whitlam government redux.
Explain how the fiscal balance in two short years has never been worse than the Whitlam period and of the last years of Keating’s government.
Then point to the recent interest rate rises as an example of their ineptitude
JC
7 Feb 10 at 11:46 am
Carr:
You usefulness is even less than zero in these discussions as you have actually argued in support of bribery and dishonesty by the ALP.
You have nothing to add to this discussion.
JC
7 Feb 10 at 11:49 am
How can he call it the ‘leftist media’ when he and his News Ltd mates are among the most prominent members of it?
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Indeed, his criticisms of the media establishment sometimese seem self-contradictory given that he is part of the media establishment. However there’s a substantive point in there, that the media industry has a particular culture, and that culture has its own viewpoints and biases (which Bolt considers himself to be free from).
daddy dave
7 Feb 10 at 11:59 am
If you want to make that argument, you need to be able to explain the first Rudd budget.
Sinclair Davidson
7 Feb 10 at 12:30 pm
Tanner is actually coming across as obsessed and slightly loopy. Joyce’s gaffes don’t come within cooee of the unlimited bank deposit fiasco fully supported by Tanner. FuelWatch, GroceryWatch – “intellect” Lindsey has backed ‘em all.
C.L.
7 Feb 10 at 12:36 pm
Oopps your usefullness..
Tanner has a glass jaw. Bring the arguments right up to the dishonest dick such as his support for the “watch’s” etc.
As someone mentioned they could actually take Tanner right out if the Libs chose to at the next election.
Don’t run a lib candidate in the seat of melb. and ask lib voters to support the Green candidate. IF he’s going to lie like that, then take him out of the parliament.
JC
7 Feb 10 at 1:16 pm
Sinkers the first budget was made BEFORE the GFC err ever heard of Lehman bros?
No didn’t think so.
Put Forrest in charge of Liberal policy. He knows as a little as Joyce and can lie with a blank face.
By gingo those forward estimates show spending out of control don’ they.
Oh it appears the RBA amongst most mainstream economic bodies believes fiscal policy is dampening economic activity.
Butterfield, Bloomfield & Bishop
7 Feb 10 at 4:12 pm
Homer:
for someone who claims that only the Nazis have had the courage to apply Keynesian economics and that they treated the Jews well before some stupid arbitrary date, you really have a nerve coming on here telling people what they should think.
But go ahead. Continue associating Keynes with the Nazi era while remaining quite about other times. I want you to do that.
Get lost.
JC
7 Feb 10 at 4:16 pm
Lehman Brothers collapsed in mid September, 2008.
Two months later:
We can avoid deficit: Wayne Swan.
Homer’s ongoing fantasy about the government being forced to Keynesian battle stations after Lehman Brothers is a complete fabrication.
C.L.
7 Feb 10 at 4:26 pm
CL,
The government didn’t indulge in Keynesian policy.
We had no liquidity trap.
In September we had little indication of how severe the world economy would be hit by making Lehman Bros Bankrupt.
In December we had anecdotal evidence it was bad but still not as bad as it turned out.
No Forrest I didn’t remain quite at all, hint 1995
another hint they too had a liquidity trap.
By the way the Nazis only amplified and strengthened the policies already in place. Expansionary fiscal policies in Germany was agreed on by most parties.
It is amusing to hear from people who say no liquidity trap exists that economic growth will be weak when if they actually believe their own claptrap monetary policy is massively expansionary
Butterfield, Bloomfield & Bishop
7 Feb 10 at 4:58 pm
For some reason the inmates here share the same argument to every topic – Nazis.
rog
7 Feb 10 at 5:19 pm
If you ain’t got a liquidity trap, you ain’t doing Keynes.
Even if you think that’s what you are doing.
Is that it Homer?
ken nielsen
7 Feb 10 at 5:40 pm
Re the Senator and billions and trillions; the American usage of “billion” is one thousand million, but it wasn’t so long ago that it was common for non-Americans to refer to a billion as one million million.
Siltstone
7 Feb 10 at 5:56 pm
Gaffe? Peter Swan farewells the unnecessary bank deposit guarantee.
C.L.
8 Feb 10 at 1:29 am
Sinclair – “If you want to make that argument, you need to be able to explain the first Rudd budget.”
Rudd’s first budget kept the surplus at 1.8% of GDP, set in place $46 billion in tax cuts, and cut some of our middle class welfare. Obviously its a Labor budget and Rudd’s priorities wont match your own (or mine, I wanted a much stronger slashing of middle class welfare), but if anything it’s a more conservative budget than the last one from the Coalition. Indeed Rudd’s first budget proves how significantly he had to change his position due to the GFC.
JC – “You usefulness is even less than zero in these discussions as you have actually argued in support of bribery and dishonesty by the ALP.” No I argued that Australia as a middle power countries may need to buy influence (hell everyone up to the Chinese buy influence, check out their aid donations throughout the Pacific). There are many who find International Politics too morally confronting, and that’s fine, I respect you if you’re like the Greens and think withdrawal is our best moral choice. We need strong moral compasses like that in such debates to keep our consciences in check. However personally I’d rather Australia prospers and so I’m willing to accept some muck and dirt for long term benefit.
Andrew Carr
8 Feb 10 at 9:33 am