Federal Budget

The Reserve Bank has decided the economy is ticking along for the moment, and airline passengers lists confirm that many Australians have had a bit of cash to spare. On the day the central bank left official interest rates untouched, the Bureau of Statistics revealed millions of Australians have been in a position to take advantage of the dollar’s golden powers abroad.

Last year, short-term departures by Australians reached a new record of 7.8 million overseas visits, up from 7.1 million in 2010. Back in 2001 there were just 3.4 million visits.

Some 57 per cent of those who left the country for a short time last year did so for a vacation and a further 22 per cent said it was to catch up with relatives. That amounts to a lot of people with the dough to put to travel, a relative luxury.

Continue reading "The sun is shining but storms lie ahead for the surplus" »

In 2008, one of the biggest financial disasters in history took place. When investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, the global financial crisis announced its unwanted presence to the world. Four years later, the European debt crisis has again left the global financial system teetering on the edge of the abyss.

Make no mistake. This is the Cuban Missile Crisis of economics. Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, has warned of a 1930s style Great Depression. Former prime minister Paul Keating has called it the “worst crisis of his lifetime.” Legendary speculator George Soros, in a chilling interview with Newsweek, had this to say:

“We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.”

Continue reading "What happens to us if we collide with GFC 2.0?" »

It was billed as a tough budget but the document Wayne Swan brought down tonight will win no awards for bravery and lead to no riots on the streets.

There are $22 billion of savings in the budget - Swan’s fourth as Treasurer and Julia Gillard’s first as Prime Minister – and they include the $1.7 billion flood and cyclone levy which clobbers higher income earners over the next two years.

But there are no measures among this scary-sounding $22 billion figure which will lead to any social dislocation or public unrest. As a result, when Australia returns to surplus next year, it does so to the very modest tune of just $3.5 billion.

Continue reading "Swanny cuts away at spending with a tomato" »

New Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson got married last Saturday and had a splendid ceremony and celebration in the tourist-depleted north Queensland resort of Port Douglas.

He will now spend time which might have been allocated to a honeymoon doing all-nighters in the Treasury Building as the May 10 Budget is locked into place.

Crazy honeymoon. And it will be a crazy Budget in crazy economic times.

Continue reading "Budget 2011: Quick! To the fiscal bunker!" »

This government must have the courage and discipline to cut spending, reduce borrowing and to repay debt.

The mid year economic update (MYEFO) expected this week needs to take the form of a mini-budget. Wayne Swan needs to accept that government spending has and is contributing to the upward pressure on interest rates. We have now seen seven rises under his watch.

The Treasurer was at direct odds with leading economists such as Saul Eslake, Chris Richardson and RBA board member Warwick McKibbin, when he said: “Anybody who’s claiming the stimulus is somehow related to rate rises is simply talking rubbish.”

Continue reading "Labor should cut spending to protect home-owners" »

I think I’m with the miners – just why did the Prime Minister and Treasurer let the banks and finance groups off the hook when it came to tax reform and revenues for the common good?

As one mining industry guy said this week, there’s a whole part of the banking and finance sector involved in ‘moving money around and not creating anything of value’, and which does not pull its weight in revenue generation for the common good.

I’m surprised that a Government, that’s more than willing to run on the theme of ‘nasty foreign extraction companies taking our wealth offshore’, couldn’t have come up with an anti-banks campaign.

Continue reading "Forget the nasty miners PM, what about the banks?" »

Ahhh, now we get it. Lindsay Tanner is smarter than that “freak show” Barnaby Joyce.

In case we didn’t get the message in parliament last week (we can be a bit slow sometimes) Mr Tanner spelled it out again on Meet the Press on the weekend. Not only is Senator Joyce “off the planet”, his team mate Joe Hockey is a “lightweight”.

Yesterday in parliament he repeated the lesson again for those who’d wagged the last one or drifted off while doodling on our pencil cases. Mr Hockey is “out to lunch”, and again he filled us in on Barnaby. According to Mr Tanner, Senator Joyce is evidence of “a very big question mark over the leader of the opposition’s judgment for appointing him in the first place.”

For someone who’s so much smarter than his counterpart, Mr Tanner seems to have skipped the chapter in Politics for Dummies called “Australians don’t like smug politicians who reckon they’re smarter than everyone else.”

Continue reading "Political snobs risk turning Barnaby into a martyr" »

Well what can I say about the first parliamentary week as shadow finance minister?

Tony wanted a speech and I delivered it at the Press Club. It would not have mattered if the speech had categorically disproved the theory of relativity, the issue would be the slip and when the question came where I had to, on my feet and in my head, quickly add up Labor party expenditure via MYEFO for the next four years, I said billion when I should have said trillion.

In that split second my head said trillion my heart said you have got to be joking that is enormous. My head was right but the result is for all to see on YouTube.

Continue reading "Freak show? At least Barnaby didn’t blow the budget" »