Turnbull’s faux war on inter-generational fairness

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By Leith van Onselen

A key reason why Tony Abbott failed as Prime Minister is because he failed to acknowledge the true situation facing the Budget and attempted to pin the blame for “Labor’s Budget mess” on too high government spending under the guise of “lifters versus leaners”, while altogether ignoring the collapse of revenue.

Abbott then tried to argue that to not address the Budget deficit was a form of “intergenerational theft” that would leave future taxpayers worse-off, only to then target Budget cuts unfairly at the young and disadvantaged (e.g. via university cuts/fee rises and reducing access to unemployment benefits), while leaving the swathe of tax expenditures benefiting richer, older Australians (e.g. negative gearing and CGT concessions) untouched.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.