McKibbin calls for new election

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From the SMH:

Former Reserve Bank board member Warwick McKibbin has suggested a new election may be needed to resolve the Senate impasse holding up vital budget savings, and has hit out at the political populism of the Greens and Palmer United Party.

Professor McKibbin, who left the RBA in 2011 and is now a professor at ANU, said the crossbench had left Australia tackling longer-term fiscal challenges by blocking the savings. ”The politicking of minority parties has done damage to the economy and over time that can build up. Firms can’t make decisions … and uncertainty is damaging consumer confidence. At a macro level, the budget is about right, we need to stabilise debt and trim back expenditure.”

The government ”needs to better explain why they have put in place measures” such as the $7 GP co-payment, Labor’s adoption of Tony Abbott’s oppositionist strategy was ”good politics but has caused damage to the economy”, but ”it’s the populist parties like Palmer or the Greens [blocking reform]”, he said.

”I would like to see a new election and a Senate truly representative of the Australian people.”

But who would that be?

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.