No emergency, cont..

Koukoulas has been pushing hard his take that by putting only mildly more optimistic figures into forecasts you get a budget surplus within a few years without any massive mucking about that Abbott is planning.

He may be right, but this is his other point that Labor would be wise to push hard:

What most if not all commentators have missed in addition to the rubbish forecasts underpinning the MYEFO and Commission of Audit snake oil, is that the cuts in spending and hikes in taxes are largely to cover the pet projects of the Coalition and not reduce the deficit.

Getting rid of the mining tax and carbon price, the paid parental leave scheme and increasing defence spending to 2 per cent of GDP are costing the budget bottom line at least $10 billion a year and this is growing into the years of the forward estimates.

Abandoning this set of priorities and using realistic forecasts for the economy would all of the sudden not only see large budget surplus in place, but would mean net government debt is eliminated by about 2020. The deficit 'crisis' is of the Coalition's making.

Here is the emergency and it is in half baked policy priorities and dodgy economic parameters.