THE desire of former treasurer Wayne Swan, the architect of much of the economic problems the nation faces, to seek a further term in parliament is positive proof of the disconnect between fantasy and reality that besets the ALP. 
 
Swan, who promised four budget surpluses and delivered none, remains a constant reminder of the economic lunacy coupled with ideological blindness that smashed the huge budget surplus Labor inherited from the Howard-Costello government’s careful stewardship and left the Abbott Coalition government with a colossal repair and restore task.

In just over a fortnight, Treasurer Joe Hockey will bring down his second Budget and detail his plans to address the enormous problems of Labor’s unfunded legacy, its promises to the states on education and health, the NDIS, and, with the significantly reduced price in iron ore, the inequities of GST funding and the Commonwealth Grants Commission formula.

While Opposition Leader Bill Shorten brays about economic bipartisanship, the thought bubbles which erupt from him and Labor’s treasury spokesman Chris Bowen indicate that neither is seriously interested in assisting the damage their government wrought while in office.

Bowen’s attack on negative gearing, itself a pejorative term, was a direct assault on one of the most popular forms of investment in the nation.

For about a million Australians, property represents a fairly safe and stable asset.

The principle of governments providing deductions for legitimate investments is not unique to Australia.

In speculating about the possibility of tampering with the tax deductibility of real estate investments, Bowen and Shorten are blowing their dog whistles furiously in the hope of inciting the politics of envy.

Hiding behind the opaque labels of fairness and equity they are doing no more than dangling the old socialist nostrum of wealth redistribution.

Add to Labor’s rogues’ gallery of Swan, Bowen and Shorten, the emergence of former prime minister Julia Gillard with her tweeted support for US presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton, and the quadrella of disappointment is complete. This is meant to be Labor’s year of ideas but its leadership still hasn’t faced up to its own record of disaster.

It is still focused on taxing success to repay failure. With projections showing the age pension cost to more than triple in the next 40 years, Bowen defies economic gravity with his bizarre belief the current scheme is sustainable.

As Hockey said this week in a pre-Budget address “our future prosperity relies on us taking action now”.

The reality he spelled out was basic. If Labor had been re-elected, Australians would be paying more tax than they are today. “Moreover taxes such as the failed mining tax and the job-destroying carbon tax would still be hurting the economy. The truth is you can never tax your way to prosperity,” he said.

While Labor remains in denial about the economic bedlam it created, Hockey has to find a balance that deals with Labor’s big spending legacy based on its presumption of increasingly higher taxes.

“The problem was that previous governments locked in expenditure that did not foresee a fall in revenue,” Hockey said. “Nothing illustrates that better than the Rudd government locking in tens of billions of dollars in spending on welfare, infrastructure and handouts against a mining tax that did not raise any money. It presumed the iron ore boom would last forever. Well here’s a newsflash … it didn’t!”

Labor didn’t ever plan on living within a budget, no matter what Swan promised, and hasn’t a hope of balancing any future benefits, if Bowen’s strategies should ever prevail.

In last year’s Budget, Hockey took the axe to Labor spending, halving the growth level trajectory by 50 per cent over the next 40 years.

Attacking Labor’s profligacy hasn’t been easy and isn’t going to get easier but is necessary if the economy is to be sustainable.

Hockey has highlighted the need for sound structural reform from the tax system to the future of federal-state arrangements, responsible environment management to the intergenerational challenges of the ageing population.

Central to the Budget will be measures to give small business stability and ­certainty.

Employing 4.5 million people, they contribute a third of Australia’s output, and 223,000 new business registrations were recorded in the past year, 10 per cent more than in the previous year.

Where Labor sees only new taxes, the Coalition is looking to find sensible spending cuts. While it is impossible to avoid new spending in areas such as defence and national security, the government must also seek to redeploy spending to areas that help lift growth and position the nation for the opportunities in the global economy that lie ahead.

“We understand the imperative of doing more with less and living within our means,” Hockey said.

That’s a statement none of Labor’s irresponsible populist spendthrifts can make.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/wayne-swan-is-economic-with-the-tr...

"Bowen’s attack on negative gearing, itself a pejorative term, was a direct assault on one of the most popular forms of investment in the nation."

**flings into the same basket as welfare, leaners, dole bludgers, uusustainable pensioners, and so forth**

Amazing that anyone who sides with a party that specialises in pejorative terms would even suggest the use of the word 'pejorative' here...'

Reminds me of the 'Age of Entitlement™ Is Over' - leading to the Abbott Government of Watershed when everyone started to take a long hard look at Entitlements™... and found some mighty big gaping holes elsewhere than with the 'entitlement' group targeted - pensioners and unemployed etc....

It would seem to me that subsidising real estate moguls in a land that concentrates wealth through a  boom-bust primary economy was always asking for trouble.

cods wrote on Apr 27^th, 2015 at 11:42am:


The Smelly is not much more that the propaganda arm of the Liberal party these days, there is nothing in the article worth commenting on.

It is only the typical preaching BS to the choir rubbish expected by Piers and his ilk.

On this one there is no genuine subject to debate.

Dnarever wrote on Apr 27^th, 2015 at 12:09pm:

Abbott and Hockey are Global jokes: oh and Turnbull aswell!

The arctic sea ice chart is looking very suspect these days and Abbott is too scared to go on QandA for the massive lost investment called copper elephant... the only people that will vote for him are the racists.

Where is the momentum??

Somebody has tampered with Wayne Swans abacus.

Karnal wrote on Apr 27^th, 2015 at 2:00pm:


No, the people have spoken and they have demanded that we follow Greeces example, cuts are for losers, borrowing is for winners, the only thing missing now is the hoards of fake refugees coming here to get on centrelink.

Genius that Wayne Swan, engineered a worldwide global financial collapse just so he could put the budget back into deficit.