If I wanted Australia to fail, I guess, I wouldn't change a thing.
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No doubt Wayne Swan will reveal on Tuesday 8 May* that he has ‘delivered’ a Budget surplus in 2012-13.
Of course that is nonsense. The 2011-12 Final Budget Outcome won’t be released until the end of September 2012, and that for 2012-13 will be the end of September 2013.
As has been noted elsewhere, the Government will deploy many tricks to reach a modest forecast surplus in 2012-13, including bringing forward expenditure to 2011-12, claiming more money from cracking down on tax avoidance, etc.
But the real doozy is the continued off-budget accounting of the national broadband network.
There is no sensible case for this to be off-budget, since it is not viable without substantial government funding which means that it should be treated on budget as either a community service obligation or grant.
The money spent in 2012-13 by the Government on the NBN is just the same as money spent on any other aspect of the Budget and increases the Government’s borrowing requirements (even if hidden through a separate structure). In other words, Australian Government debt is higher because of the NBN than in its absence.
Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey and Andrew Robb should declare the intention to correct this egregious treatment in the budget. They should state that, if elected, a Coalition Government would treat NBN expenditure on budget as it should be.
That would blow Swan’s pseudo-surplus out of the water.
Wayne Swan has never delivered a budget surplus. He never will.
* Yes, Bill Shorten, the Budget is traditionally tabled on the second Tuesday in May since it moved from August. Perhaps you got confused over the Budget and RBA meetings?
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2012/04/25/swans-budget/