Circus monkeys escape after trailer crash…

They’ve obviously run off to join the ALP.

Without their own self imposed restrictions and goals there is nothing stopping both Gillard and Swan to simply just toss the lot at whatever takes there fancy.

There is no self restraint required now and with the likelihood of these clowns being unemployed in less than year being extremely high they have nothing to lose anyway. Every whacko scheme that needs a dollar or a couple of billion will get a green light, pun intended, as long as it conforms to the ideological fantasy of feeling good.

All they have left is to wage a culture war to cripple what little conservatism is left in public life at the moment. And they can wage it hard with the restraint of economic credibility and accountability no longer an issue and with the gallery already forgiving them for breaking another “promise”.

The fix is in and the shopping list of the left is long.

Why when the budget surplus promise was abandoned did the Govt win praise from many economists (present company excepted).

I think what we see there is the difference between those with integrity to their principles – the government should not be praised for finally acceeding to what many of these commentators had been saying for long enough, that Labor had made such a mess of things already that to impose a target for surplus would be merely destructive – the difference between that type of commentator, and the other type who (fairly enough) are wary of an avaricious government that, at least for the moment, clings desperately to power and can still give them a belting.

Oh, and then there are those from the distant planet of Canberra.

More sophisticated critics would ask whether the previous cuts were warranted or not

As a more sophisticated critic, Australians would be better off if total government expenditure was restricted to around 10-15% of GDP. Therefore, any cut that reduces the size of government and moves us in the direction of much smaller government is, ipso facto, a good thing. QED

Snowball had a vision of a windmill.

“A sustainable, clean green future could only be achieved with them”, he said.

Though they never produced anything, or were of any benefit to anyone but the pigs, …

With apologies/thanks to George Orwell.

“Now there’s no surplus Swan should be out there spending.”

Any details?

“The economy needs more spending.”

Details?

“A great opportunity for more spending.”

It was pretty comical.

If you can’t get re-elected, you may as well get what you can while you can. Socialism is all very well while you are in government, but personal enrichment makes it all worth while.

Allowing for some improvement over the remainder of the year, he said the deficit this year was likely to be in the region of $15bn to $20bn, down from last year’s $43.7bn.

No mention of all the fiscal sleight of hand (deferring revenue from 2011-12, pushing expenditure either forward (into 2011-12) or back (into 2013-14))? The non-surplus won’t be as bad as previous years, but not due to any fiscal discipline from the Goose.

I say cut all Government research funding. The poor shouldn’t be taxed to fund AGW research for wealthy Greens.

We’d get more bang for our research dollar if investors had to fund their own research and we had a flat tax of 15%.