The worst treasurer in a century, Jim “Chicken” Chalmers, was at it again yesterday:
Jim Chalmers says the nation’s fiscal deficit has seen a $50bn boost since March, driven by lower spending by the former government and strong commodities prices.
Ahead of a full budget outcome next Wednesday, the Treasurer welcomed the “substantial” debt improvement but reiterated it was driven by temporary factors.
The changes are mostly owing to spiking commodity prices, especially coal is at chases global gas prices to record highs.
Put another way, energy cartel super-profits are driving budget improvement. This is to be expected given the extent of the price blowoff. Though the under taxation of these commodities is equally obvious in the continuing large deficit:
What is most striking about this situation is that the $50bn budget bottom line improvement is a neat fit with the damage done to the private sector economy via the same energy price spikes.
This $50bn, expressed largely through utility bill shocks, is a coincidental match. But it is still an eloquent expression of how spastically inadequate the policy response has been to the energy shock.
In fact, Chicken Chalmer’s refusal to rein the energy cartels means the Albanese Government is now participating with them as a beneficiary of their monopolist gouge while every Australian east of WA is rorted blind.
Consider the counterfactual. If the energy cartels were stopped with domestic reservation then roughly $100bn of income would not be ripped out of households by doubling utility bills and interest rate hikes.
But this would cost the budget, given lower corporate taxes from energy, with some offset from better profits in consumer-facing sectors.
To complete this shit sandwich for Aussies, with the poorest given a foot-long sub via utility bills, Chicken Chalmers then had the gall, or perhaps the ignorance, to declare:
“The first budget in October will be pretty standard, pretty solid, a bread-and-butter budget. But there are multiple opportunities in multiple budgets over the course of the next three years or so, for us to properly engage the people in a proper national conversation about the services that we provide, and how we fund them.”
The answer is staring Chicken Chalmers in the face. If he were to use the optimal solution to break the energy cartels of imposing an export levy benchmarked to pre-Ukraine prices, then we’d have all hit the jackpot. Households and businesses would have no utility bill shock, many fewer rate hikes, and a soaring budget surplus.
In short, Chicken Chalmer’s decision to join rather than break the energy cartels has directly resulted in his budget improving at the unnecessary cost of a $100bn bill for household income, and trillions in lost wealth as house prices crash. Why? 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.
One might have thought that this profound national mismanagement would register as an opportunity for the Opposition. But, sadly, the capture of our parliament by energy cartels is so complete that shadow treasurer and renowned gas parasite, Angus Taylor, is instead competing over taking credit for the entire shit smorgasbord:
Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor said Dr Chalmers was talking down a good news story because he could not admit he had inherited from the Coalition a rapidly recovering budget and a strong economy.
“It is very clear from what we saw today, the budget is in a very strong position, the economy is in a very strong position,” he said.
“He needs to be clear with the Australian people and say, yes, he has inherited a very strong economy, very strong budget and his job now is to improve on that.
Perhaps the best use of Australia’s rich endowment of fuels is to dowse Canberra with them and set a match to it.
