This budget has all the features typical of Tony Abbott - opportunistic, unprincipled, a genuine unreliable windvane prepared to say whatever he thinks will go down well with the audience in front of him at the time.
As I understand it, the serious cuts to health from last budget are unaddressed, and I haven't heard anything about the fate of university funding. The government is hoping that other stupid ideas that sprang from nowhere last budget are quickly forgotten (making young unemployed starve for 6 months being one of the most prominent ones.)
As many people are saying (even those on opposite sides of economics commentary - such as Judith Sloan and Ian Verrender), the budget is in many respects like a Swan one - forecasting return to surplus on assumptions that everyone thinks are brave, very brave. In Hockey's case, they are not just the guesstimates on increasing national growth and international stability, but also that he can get measures through the Senate. And bracket creep is to do so much of the lifting, while the retired rich on superannuation are being promised they won't lose their tax free income. Yeah, that's fair...
As with any government, it's virtually impossible for them to not come up with some decent measure, so the tightening of pension assets tests is hard to criticise.
But the overriding thing is the way this government changes rhetoric and policies with wild inconsistency. (And then has the gall to pretend it hasn't really changed much.)
1 comment:
Infrastructure has been hard hit. It is very low as a % of GDP.
Just as well we have an Infrastructure PM.
To understand this budget you must understand cognitive dissonance!
Black is white
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