What a terrible mockery of himself PM Turnbull has become, from The Australian:
Malcolm Turnbull will go to the federal election warning voters that the nation must “live within our means” as he rejects demands for greater spending on health and education and ignites a political storm over “fantasy” Labor promises.
As cabinet ministers meet this week to decide on budget savings, the Prime Minister hardened his stance on the need for spending restraint by declaring there was “simply not the money” to fund the promises of the past.
…“If the states are not prepared to take responsibility for raising more of the money they spend, then what that means is we must live within our means,” he told Sky News’s Australian Agenda.
He blamed Julia Gillard for promising too much spending before the last election, reviving a dispute over the Coalition’s decision in May 2014 to scale back health and education payments to the states by $80 billion over a decade.
“This has been a great and revealing moment of clarity — and what it reveals is that the Gillard promises were a fantasy, the money was never there,” he said.
“I mean, if the money was there, we wouldn’t be in deficit, would we? I mean, the fact is, the money was never there.”
Jessica Irvine has a nice riposte:
First under Abbott, now under Turnbull, Australia’s traditional conservative party appears to have turned its back on the Howard and Costello era consensus that good economic management means balancing the budget.
Instead, their rhetoric increasingly echoes that of the American Tea Party, which says taxes must never rise, and, even sillier, that tax cuts will actually fix the budget. They won’t.
Instead, we have the spectacle of Turnbull trying to broker a deal with the states to make up for severe budget cuts by delegating them tax raising powers they were forbidden from using in the short term.
Turnbull & Co refuse to countenance the one thing that would actually fix the budget: tax increases.
True enough. And the obvious place to start is reform of the economic distortions of tax concessions that we know the former Malcolm Turnbull supports. But Labor has beaten Tony Turnbott to that punch, back to The Australian:
Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek said it was “just the first lie” for Mr Turnbull to claim the Gillard government’s promises were “fantasy” because those commitments had always been funded. Mr Shorten committed to full implementation of the “Gonski” increase in school funding in January in a policy tipped to cost $37bn over a decade.
The spending commitment is covered by $105bn in Labor savings over a decade, including raising $7.2bn from multinational company tax, $14.3bn from higher superannuation taxes, $47.7bn from higher tobacco excises and $32.1bn from changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax.
Precisely, reform will deliver the better revenue outcome and if invested properly will keep delivering via productivity gains that drive income and GDP growth.
Labor’s outlook is too rosy as well but at least it makes economic sense. PM Turnbott makes none.
