From the AFR comes Professor Ross Garnaut:
“Realism about the budget will be shocking to most Australians. If we get the budget badly wrong, everything else will go badly wrong – ask Europe, ask Greece and Spain.”
…Professor Garnaut said two former prime ministers and two treasurers were “damaged greatly” for failing to “come to grips” with the Treasury department’s over-optimistic forecasts since the end of the resources price boom in late 2011.
He listed a litany of reasons for why the current budget projections for a return to surplus by early next decade are “delusional,” including a slump in the terms of trade since May that is equal to what Treasury predicted for the entire four-year forward projections; slower-than expected immigration growth; weak wages growth that will reduce future revenue via bracket creep; and assumptions that more than $80 billion in health and education cuts to the states will pass a future Senate.
The last sane bloke standing.
