Australian budget

From Treasury genius Phil Gaetjens this morning: Treasury Secretary Philip Gaetjens has warned that “falling house prices could also cause consumer spending to be weaker than forecast” and said “care must be take” on mortgage broker reforms.

By Leith van Onselen The Coalition Government has been a curse for Australia’s unemployed.

By Leith van Onselen With just over a month until the NSW Election, it’s raining pork.

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Institute’s chief economist, Richard Denniss, has questioned the obsession with cutting taxes, especially for the wealthy, claiming it fails economics 101.

By Leith van Onselen The NSW Government has reportedly rolled-out the second phase of its $1.1 billion Social and Affordable Housing Fund (SAHF), which aims to build another 1,000 homes for primarily older residents.

By Leith van Onselen According to a Newspoll of more than 1500 people, Australian voters are more interested in spending on public services than personal income tax cuts or cutting government debt.

By Leith van Onselen The Australian’s Adam Creighton has written an enlightening article on how the Howard-era tax cuts continue to reap pay dirt for the Baby Boomer generation: Our athletes weren’t the only group to win gold on home soil in 2000.

By Leith van Onselen I have previously argued that Australia is an “anti-humanitarian nation”.

By Leith van Onselen The pressure continues to build on the federal government to writedown the National Broadband Network (NBN), with first chief executive of the NBN arguing that it is inevitable following the “disastrous” rollout of the project.

By Leith van Onselen A conga-line of “experts” have slammed Labor’s $6.6 billion affordable rental scheme, which is aimed at facilitating the construction of 250,000 ‘affordable’ rental dwellings over the next decade.

There is something to pay attention to other than the house price crash.

By Leith van Onselen A day after Prime Minister Scott Morrison insulted Victorians with a piss weak $140m of “congestion busting” funding, Victorian Treasurer Tim “Ponzi” Pallas has declared today’s federal population meeting a “sham” and demanded billions of dollars in funding from the federal government to cope with unrelenting immigration-driven population growth.

By Leith van Onselen Scott Morrison seems to believe he can “bust” Melbourne’s congestion, and bribe his way into office, for the pissy sum of $140 million.

By Leith van Onselen The federal Opposition’s communications spokeswoman, Michelle Rowland, says Labor is considering a writedown of the National Broadband Network (NBN) if it wins the next election.

Via The Guardian today comes Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen: Seven years ago this April, my predecessor as shadow treasurer, Joe Hockey, got to his feet in London to declare the “age of entitlement” over.

Fact check from the ABC: The claim For months the Morrison Government has argued Labor’s controversial plan to raise more than $5 billion a year by scrapping refundable franking credits on dividends from shares is “not fair”.

Via The Australian: Scott Morrison will give small business more tax incentives, vowing to extend the instant asset write off for investments of up to $25,000.

PM Scummo begins his re-election pitch today with a speech based upon fantasy: Labor said we would fail, but we nailed it – 1.1 million jobs within five years and we are now past 1.2 million jobs.

By Leith van Onselen Bereft of policy, and facing electoral annihilation, the Morrison Government has taken a leaf out of the dying 2007 Howard Government’s playbook, flagging yesterday that it would provide one-off cash payments to pensioners and families on low incomes.

By Leith van Onselen The chief economist for the 2014 Financial System Inquiry, Professor Kevin Davis from the University of Melbourne, has expressed support for Labor’s plan to abolish cash refunds for excess dividend imputation credits.

By Leith van Onselen A few weeks back, Houses & Holes asked “What kind of fiscal stimulus should Treasury be readying?”: It is highly doubtful that Recessionberg will go for anything so crude as cash dumps though Labor probably will in H2.

By Leith van Onselen There was a lot of hoopla last week over new OECD research showing that Australia’s company/corporate tax rate is among the very highest in the world.