Stimulus Package

We might as well abandon the budget process as we have known it.  Traditionally the budget sets out what can be relied upon to occur in the financial year following its announcement.

But no longer – what we get is a good old socialist planned economy.  Where as the forward estimates used to be an indicator of what would flow from the announced budget if nothing is changed in succeeding budgets.

So Mr Swan’s statement that nothing will change to deliver a $1 billion surplus in 2013 is telling us nothing will change before then.  So why bother with the Budget façade?

Continue reading "When a Budget is not really a budget" »

Kevin Rudd’s fall from grace has been sudden and spectacular. His meltdown on The 7.30 Report on Wednesday night can be seen most charitably as a sign that the bloke has got some ticker. I suspect most people would have seen it as a sign that pressure is getting to him.

When Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner hit the airwaves today to defend his boss as some kind of zen master who is at his calmest and most serene when the pressure is on, he could have chosen his language better. Tanner’s observation that his three-year-old daughter threw bigger tantrums than the PM did with Kerry O’Brien stands as dictionary-definition faint praise.

The next few weeks will be crucial as he tries to use the Federal Budget to restore Labor’s standing in the eyes of voters. In trying to analyse what has gone wrong for the Prime Minister, and whether he can again make things right, there is a consensus across politics as to where the problem lies. The problem lies with the Prime Minister himself.

Continue reading "From fiscal conservative to Krazy Kev, and back again" »

Only a few days after doing an Olympic standard quadruple backflip on its asylum seeker policy, the Rudd Government now has announced that it will establish a taskforce to investigate gouging and waste on the $16.2 billion school stimulus package.

A po-faced deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Julia Gillard made the announcement in Canberra this afternoon despite previously claiming that problems with the scheme were largely a confected fantasy of the Opposition and an overly zealous Australian Newspaper (although was careful not to criticise the paper on the record). 

Well now it seems there is a problem worth investigating, worth hiring former chief executive and chairman of UBS Investment Bank Brad Orgill and worth spending $14 million on setting up a taskforce to do it.

Continue reading "What a difference an election year makes" »

The first term of the Rudd Government is entering its end game and events in our nation’s playgrounds will have a huge bearing on whether it climaxes with high distinctions for the PM or a serious schoolyard brawl

The Prime Minister is right to claim swift action in avoiding the Global Financial Crisis was a major achievement in his first term, but now the focus is shifting to the way the government spent our way out of trouble.

In just about every school there are signs proudly declaring ‘Building an Education Revolution’ initiatives and as these projects are completed voters will be able to conduct their own cost-benefit analysis.

Continue reading "Rudd better start cutting spending as well as ribbons" »

My first offering to The Punch for 2010 – and it’s a puff piece!  Gena Karpf makes great, sweet puffy marshmallows. Fruity flavoured marshmallows, chocolate flavoured marshmallows, pretty much any sort of marshmallow you could imagine really.

Anyone who sees the swooning effect that Meryl Streep’s goodies have on Steve Martin in this summer’s hit movie It’s Complicated will get my drift.

Gena’s shop SWEETNESS: The Patisserie is two doors down from my new Electorate Office in Epping.

Continue reading "A sweet deal for small business" »

What a huge news week it was last week. Sabi the dog came home. Tiger Woods fever gripped the country, and like Ol’ Man River our Australian economy keeps just keep rolling along.

With apologies to Tiger I know we’re not out of the woods yet and nobody’s taking the hands off the wheel, but it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on our achievement as a nation.

Last week’s jobs figures came in at 5.8%. 670,000 unemployed Australians is too many and we expect that unemployment will continue to rise in the coming months. But the community resilience in the face of this threat has been fantastic.

Continue reading "Bennelong, where jobs prove the stimulus is working" »

Drifiting off during Question Time yesterday it was tempting to wonder what Evesham State School looked like and what its one student might do with a $250,000 library all to herself.

What if the one student at this school is some kind of genius who needs to read 35 books each afternoon Good Will Hunting style?

Well, after contacting Evesham State School in remote central Queensland it turns out it hasn’t received a cent of the fabled $250,000 and, according to its principal and teacher, it won’t receive any of it.

Continue reading "The one-pupil school isn’t getting any money after all" »

Yesterday saw a pretty poor parliamentary performance from the person widely regarded as the best performer in the Government.

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard was tickled up by the opposition on a range of Government pressure points - importantly the question of misdirected stimulus spending, whether the signage at schools benefiting from the plan amounts to advertising and its promise that nobody would be worse off under new IR awards.

Of course the star performer isn’t just deputy Prime Minister, she’s Education Minister, Minister for Employment Workplace Relations minister and Social Inclusion Minister. And this is the point: Education and IR and the two portfolios that are right at the pointy end of policy and politics and the moment and it’s fair to ask whether the pressure of this super-portfolio is starting to get to Gillard.

Continue reading "Is Gillard starting to buckle under the pressure?" »

While the Government is keen to demonstrate it must carry out its planned path of stimulus spending, there’s a lot of grumbling about an apparent spending freeze the Prime Minister has put on the public service.

In an effort to cut down on spending post-stimulus the Rudd Government has practically put a complete stop to any new funding for programs not already budgeted for.

The Punch has learnt that any Minister or their department wishing to get extra funding now needs to go through the Prime Minister’s Office - and the answer there is going to be no.

Continue reading "Rudd’s secret spending freeze: no soup for you" »

Here’s the second instalment of Punch TV, where our panel - Dave Penberthy, Tory Maguire and Luke McIlveen - caught up with Infrastructure and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese.

They quizzed Albo on whether the stimulus spending has gone too far, the attacks on Malcolm Turnbull’s judgment, nuclear power, gay marriage and the embattled leadership of NSW Premier Nathan Rees. The second part of the show is in the body of this post.

Continue reading "Punch TV, take two" »

The Israeli political system is far from stable.  Robustly democratic sure. 

But since the advent of proportional voting for the Israeli Parliament - the Knesset - it has seen a revolving door of governments between Labor, the Likud and now Kadima, all having to govern in coalition with minor parties. 

Some would say that Israeli politicians and the Israeli public would wish for the stability that our voting system has delivered for a hundred years – but would they?
This may well be a case of ‘be careful what you wish for’. 
Because of the instability of the votes in the Knesset the government of Ehud Olmert failed to have their Budget passed by the Parliament for 2008-09. 

Continue reading "We’d be better off in Israel - they don’t need stimulus" »

In early 2008 it seemed that the Australian economy could do no wrong.

Unemployment hit a low of 3.9% in February, GDP growth was strong and the prices of our exports were growing at unprecedented rates. Profits were up and consumers were spending.

The only dark cloud on the horizon was the increasingly poor performance of the US economy, which had gone into recession in November 2007, and some faraway problems in overseas banks and credit markets.

Our share market had hit a few minor hurdles after peaking in November 2007, but was still close to record highs after four years of double digit growth.

Continue reading "The GFC: How we got into this terrible mess" »

Anthony Albanese has become one frustrated little bunny.

The Coalition opposed Rudd Labor’s wild cash splash which will leave Australians in debt for a generation or more.

So Lord Albo has been angrily lashing out at any Nationals or Liberal MP who has the temerity not to oppose any Federal Government spending in their local areas.

Continue reading "The secret ingredient in Labor’s pork-barrelling" »

There aren’t many things that are more important than making sure someone has a job. If you want to fix inequality and social disadvantage in a community, if you want to give someone a leg-up in life, you find them a decent job.

For the Labor Party, jobs are in our DNA and that’s why it is such an honour to be sworn in today as the Federal Minister for Employment Participation.

Sadly we are confronted with the reality that this week a new set of unemployment figures will come out and they will probably show more Australians are out of work.

Continue reading "How the new jobs minister will help keep you employed" »

Will the Bogans in the House please show up?

Yesterday, John Cobb extended the meaning of ‘bogan’ to include ‘not showing up’.

I met with his constituents, the Bogan Shire Council, yesterday and listened to their case for a $6 million heated swimming pool.

Continue reading "Marrickville mauler hits back at bogan Nationals" »

It’s supposed to be order in the House, but last week it was chaos in the House.

Why, because an inarticulate Prime Minister resorted to signs, pictures and placards to try and get his point across.

The Government from Mr Rudd down seems to be rattled, so when not using props both the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister resort to personal abuse rather than just the usual political invective.

Continue reading "Kev the builder’s silly stunts turn chamber into chaos" »

In their opposition to the Rudd Government’s nation building agenda the Liberals and Nationals have reminded the Australian public that infrastructure development remains a fundamental distinction between Labor and our conservative opponents.

A fundamental fact that the Coalition has never understood is that infrastructure investment is not just a cost – it is a long term investment in the productive economy.

Investment in infrastructure generates higher returns than investment in other sectors of the economy.

Continue reading "Sorry Bronnie, lazy Libs don’t care about nation-building" »

The infrastructure spending for big-ticket rail, road and port projects is a noble measure aimed at two ends stimulating the economy in the medium term, and delivering vital new services for communities in the longer term.

The only trouble is the alarmingly poor calibre of some of the state governments and bureaucracies which will be entrusted with its delivery.

Chief among them is the Rees Government, which hot on the heels of the Iemma Government, once known as the Carr Government, has achieved world’s best practice in cocking up infrastructure projects.

Continue reading "Would you give $22 billion dollars to this man?" »