The Canberra bubble is now a hermetically sealed mendacious dome under which lies prosper and public interest dies.
Witness treasurer Jim “Chicken” Chalmers describe his own economic and budget wreckage today:
The Albanese government will trim spending in the upcoming federal budget as part of efforts to trim Australia’s $1 trillion national debt, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has said.
“It costs more and more to service that debt,” Chalmers told ABC News Breakfast on Monday. “Billions of dollars that we have to find in the budget to service that debt, and that means more than ever we need to make sure that the investments we make deliver genuine bang for buck.”
“I’m encouraging people to see this first budget as the beginning and not the end of that process,” he added.
He said the trimming was required as there is a combination of “unavoidable and desirable spending” required in the areas of aged care, defence and NDIS.
The treasurer sees multinational taxes as an area that is “most ripe for reform”, and the October budget will introduce measures to give multinational corporations paying a higher tax bill and lower Australia’s debt.
Putting a dent on Australia’s $1 trillion debt was especially important due to the worsening global environment, Chalmers said.
“There’s no use pretending that we would be completely spared a global downturn and the global situation is getting worse, not better. There’s no use pretending that we don’t have an inflation challenge or real wage challenge, and that rising interest rates won’t sting the Australian economy and the Australian people.”
No use pretending? What does the Chicken call this? We all know that the inflation challenge, rising interest rates, and real wages crash is the direct result of his own failure to act on the energy crisis.
What is this if not ultra-toxic pretense?
To fix interest rates, budget debt repayment pressures and real income falls, all Chicken Chalmers needs to do is install domestic reservation for gas and coal prices benchmarked to pre-Ukraine War levels.
To inundate the budget with revenues, resolve the structural deficit, and hugely lift Australian standards of living in the future, all Chicken Chalmers needs to do is apply the even better solution of an export levy for gas and coal exporters benchmarked to pre-Ukraine War levels.
Instead, he is allowing mining war profiteers to gut the Australian economy and standards of living while pretending it is some objective force that he can do nothing about.
Why is he such a gaslighting coward? This:
A Labor source said Dr Chalmers was still “scarred” from the failed “super profits” mining tax in 2010 when he was a senior adviser to then treasurer Wayne Swan, and that he did not want to revisit the idea.
In the 13 years since the founding of this blog, we have witnessed an extraordinary decline in public policy integrity in Australia: bribery, rape, sedition, you name it.
But this one takes the cake. A multi-trillion dollar wealth transfer from Australian households to China-sponsored foreign energy cartels combines treason, mass financial assault, and corruption all into one.
There is no curse in dwarvish, elvish, or the tongues of men for this treachery.
