You will all be pleased to know that our (caretaker) Treasury and Deputy Prime Minister, Wayne Swan, is giving an address to the Sydney Institute tomorrow night, modestly titled:
LABOUR’S ECONOMIC PLAN AND THE STABILITY AND PROSPERITY AUSTRALIANS DESERVE
I can only assume that Mr Swan thinks there are people that really deserve instability and penury.
Note also that PLAN was part of Labor’s spin during the campaign, with the Prime Minister repeating early and often the phrase about her party having a “positive economic plan for the future”.
I’m not so sure about the term PLAN. Is she thinking Gosplan? Is she thinking the economic plan of the People’s Republic of Korea? Maybe a plan like the Great Leap Forward?
What she doesn’t seem to realise is that the word PLAN for a national economy is a negative not a positive; it involves all the mistakes that were made by the Ruddster – ridiculously ambitious targets in a ridiculously large number of areas, badly executed from Canberra.
Governments are not in a position to plan economic outcomes; they can facilitate better outcomes, but mainly by getting out of the way to allow markets to determine the best possible outcomes. This is something that this government does not seem to get.
I am hoping that someone who attends the caretaker Treasury’s speech asks him the following question:
Is it true that the proposed super-profits tax was to be applied beyond mining to include banking? (and hence the name, rather than the more specific, resource rent tax as recommended by the Henry Review).
And supplementary question (allowed under the new Parliamentary Question Time rules):
Is it true that its application to banking was dropped because of the fear that mortgage rate increases would be blamed on the tax, and hence on the government?
Looks like the citizens assembly was a non-core promise.
Sinclair Davidson
1 Sep 10 at 11:31 am
You will all be pleased to know that our (caretaker) Treasury and Deputy Prime Minister, Wayne Swan, is giving an address to the Sydney Institute tomorrow night
I’m very pleased. It means he’ll be at least 900 km from me.
I imagine the ALP’s plan will resmple the Democratic Republic of Korea. Lots of Martell cognac and Coconut Shark Fin Stew on Capitol Hill and of course for all Australians the fine bark that we deserve.
Jeez. Can someone please invade and conquer us. We’re obviously no longer fit for self-government.
Adrien
1 Sep 10 at 11:39 am
You hit the nail on the head. They want to come up with a big plan. This is how they think.
For example they look around and notice that the internet is becoming important, so what do they do? Come up with a “Plan” to build the internet (even though it’s been happening on its own). Come up with a Second Plan to filter out anything that hasn’t been approved by the government’s censors.
These two Plans cancel each other out of course, because the NBN will deliver high speed internet while the filter will slow it down to a crawl.
daddy dave
1 Sep 10 at 11:51 am
As far as I could work out, the PLAN was simply:
1 the NBN waste
2 slight reduction in company tax (not small business tax) funded by taxing some mining
3 lower wages through higher super contributions.
Good plan!
pedro
1 Sep 10 at 1:59 pm
Pedro,
Swan admitted by a slip of the tongue and his egregious pride in his audacious stupidity that the RSPT was designed to cover the superannuation blowout.
.
2 Sep 10 at 8:23 am