Category Archives: Politics & Government

Hockey’s morality play

Joe Hockey has mightily offended Bernard Keane by making his austerity a moral issue, evoking a trenchant critique. The shorter Keane is that if you turn budgeting into a moral issue you are held to a higher standard. On this basis Hockey comes out as a prize hypocrite.

More of Keane later, first let’s wrangle some numbers.

I’ve made a table of the 15 major expenditure items identified by the National Commission of Audit as causing concern over the long term, omitting the eight years of 2015-16 to 2013-24 for convenience. The intervening data does tell some stories. For example, after growth spurts both Schools and the NDIS settle to much flatter growth in the out-years. The table was reprinted in the AFR.

Audit Report_cropped_600

To me the most important numbers are the two in the bottom right. When all is said and done total Commonwealth payments would grow by 0.2% of GDP over 10 years. In today’s dollars that’s about $3 billion dollars. Sounds a lot, but in a $400 billion budget it’s a rounding error.

Hockey is trying to achieve two main goals. (Here I’m drawing mainly from Phillip Coorey, but also Laura Tingle in the AFR.)

First, he is aiming at a small surplus in 2019-20 and a surplus of one per cent of GDP by 2023-24. Economists and others can argue about timing and quantum but this aim seems to me fair enough.

Secondly, Hockey wants to shrink expenditure as a proportion of GDP. This is ideological, not moral.

Hockey claims that if he takes his hands off the wheel expenditure will grow by 3.75% per annum, reaching 26.5% of GDP by 2023-4. From memory, I think that’s roughly where it was under Howard and Costello.

The CIA’s world Factbook has a country comparison of tax and other revenues as a proportion of GDP. Obviously they use a particular definition (probably includes GST) since Australia comes in at 33.2%. By contrast we have Canada at 37.7%, New Zealand at 38.5%, the UK at 40.4%, then follow the Europeans up to the Scandinavians at above 50%. If Australia’s share was lifted to Canada’s the government would have an extra $55 billion available.

All I’m saying here is that lifting the share by a few percentage points is not self-evidently a crime against the people, immoral or even economically foolish.

The audit commission has assumed that tax receipts must remain limited to 24% of GDP, for reasons unknown.

Before the election Hockey was saying that he would take 1% off tax receipts as a proportion of GDP. He hasn’t nominated a percentage now that I know of, but he has deemed that growth in expenditure will be limited to 1.75% per annum. That’s harsh. Tingle says Labor’s aim, not always achieved, was for a 2% limit, also austere.

Again we are told this 1.75% limit is right, responsible and moral, without any supporting argument.

Labor’s plans

Wayne Swan, I understand, reduced outlays by a couple of percentage points of GDP. His problem was that revenues were a couple of percentage points shy of outlays. Still, Labor had a long-term plan back to the black. The following graph is from the Pre-Election Fiscal Outlook (PEFO) published under the charter of budget honesty before the last election. I displayed it in my ‘liars and clunkheads’ post back then.

fcccad64-03b4-11e3-9d44-7643a0300d9c_chart1_580

I understand it involved allowing bracket creep. One has to ask why Hockey’s self-imposed austerity path is supposed to be superior.


Hewson on tax concessions

One way of fixing the budget would be to allow bracket creep, ruled out by the audit commission and Hockey.

Another way, suggested by John Hewson, would be to take a look at tax concessions, especially in superannuation.

A startling fact is that the percentage of retired folk receiving at least a part pension is projected to remain at 80%. Hewson says that superannuation policy robs the poor in favour of the rich, and in amounts that matter. He calculates super tax concessions at around $44 billion, roughly the same as the aged pension but growing faster.

Tax concessions overall are around $120 billion rising to $150 billion by 2016/17. Today’s AFR identifies some of the budget sacred cows, leading with $15 billion in protecting the family home from capital gains, $13 billion in not broadening the GST. Tightening the age pension means test to include the family home would save $7 billion.

By contrast the mooted ‘deficit levy’ would only yield hundreds of millions even if implemented widely. It’s small change. Such a move must be regarded a political rather than economic.

Keane’s critique

Keane asked Hockey what he was going to tell his granchildren about what he did to prevent global warming. They will pay.

Why were Labor’s efforts to reign in middle class welfare either not commented on or termed “class warfare” or “the politics of envy”?

Why did the LNP fight tooth an nail cutting back the private healthcare rebate to high-income earners?

In November, Hockey abandoned Labor’s plan to reduce the extravagant tax concessions enjoyed by superannuants earning over $100,000 a year, costing billions. He also restored a fringe benefits tax rort, an actual rort, for novated leases, again worth billions.

Hockey wants to cut carbon pricing and the mining tax.

Hockey is talking to us about the “moral imperative” of fiscal discipline while handing billions to large companies, wealthy retirees and tax rorters.

One minute Hockey is complaining about

a “massive increase” in defence spending beyond forward estimates and that it was a budget boobytrap, a fiscal “tsunami coming across the water” created by Labor.

The next minute he’s committing billions to F-35s which “wouldn’t cost anything” because it’s already in the budget.

Then of course there is the rolled gold parental leave scheme.

Keane reckons Hockey has cut revenue by about $15 billion. He would have increased spending by a similar amount. Then he complains about a budget mess and dresses up his austerity program as a moral crusade.

By the way here’s Labor’s Budget debt in context:

Debt_35d9ec68-d401-11e2-a269-28d841715c70_14p22bassRESIZED_cropped

I think we’ve been short of revenue since Rudd matched Howard’s tax cuts in the 2007 election campaign. There’s nothing broken about the budget that a steady hand, a mature review of priorities and a gradual return to revenue levels prevailing under the Howard government would not fix, together with a modernisation of the whole tax regime. Time to look seriously at Ken Henry’s review.

Elsewhere, Peter Martin has some tips.

Update:

In the Weekend AFR Phillip Coorey in an article The budget crunch is John Howard’s baby too reckons the budget problems date back that far. Apart from generous handouts to middle Australia in the previous years, Howard/Costello promised a $31.5 billion tax cuts in the May 2007 budget. One day into the election campaign he added a promise of $34 billions worth of further tax cuts (we’re talking four-year budget cycles). Rudd matched him, in addition to his own spending plans. The half-year budget update did find an extra $59 billion worth of revenue.

No-one foresaw the GFC and the end of the salad days.

Also Chris Bowen has an article pointing out that scrapping the low income superannuation contribution (LISC) and deferring the increase in the superannuation guarantee will take $55 billion out of our national savings pool over the next 7 years. These policies, he says, were designed to reduce the numbers of middle and low income earners requiring pension support in the future. Do this rather than lift the retirement age, he says.

Bowen’s comment received specific support from Tony Shepherd, chair of the audit commission.

See also John Davidson’s post, plus Richard Holden on why Australia does not have a debt crisis.

Update – posts on Budget 2014:

On a mission to upset everyone

Budget explainer

A crisis in trust

Shredding the fig leaf

Poll anger or a shift in the tectonic plates?

To GST or not to GST
Cap super, says Richard Denniss

Resolving the budget ‘crisis’

Hockey’s debt and deficit mess

Bill Shorten gets serious, or does he?

Bill Shorten’s plans to reform the ALP were greeted with unrestrained enthusiasm by Mark Latham, a remarkable event in itself. Others have some reservations or are not so sure.

Laura Tingle pointed out (paywalled) that he actually proposes nothing about senate candidate selection, it’s a matter for the states. He asked the national ALP secretary to work with the National Executive and the WA state secretary “to recommend the best way of giving local party members a meaningful say in the selection of Senate candidates.”

Our work in Western Australia will be used to inform our other State branches in allowing local members to contribute to Senate pre-selection nationally.

Farr said that there would have been discussion within the ALP before Shorten went to press. Shorten is reasonably confident of his reforms getting up, he says. Farr described it as a “well-planned offensive”. Apparently NSW in July are going to consider the union membership link and introduce one-click joining facilities via the internet.

Count me confused. Here in Queensland last year before the election my wife, who is not currently a union member, went on the internet and had no difficulty in joining with one click for the princely sum of five dollars. (She has since made a more substantial donation.)

After the current publicity she rang the Qld office asking if her membership was OK. She had been a union member for years, acted as union rep etc, but is currently not a member. “You’re fine” she was told. Could she vote in a leadership ballot if Shorto gave up? “Certainly.”

Malcolm Farr pointed out on RN Drive that achieving rank and file input to senate selection would be the real prize. At present it can be a sinecure for party and union officials, a privilege they might be expected to relinquish reluctantly.

Shorten is recommending a 70:30 membership/central panel split in selecting candidates. He’s also recommending more primary-style selections, as successfully trialled in Western Sydney.

Shorten wants broader input in a review of Labor’s entire policy platform prior to the 2015 national conference.

He looks forward to a membership of 100,000. I believe it is 40,000 at present.

David Lockwood at New Matilda thinks the union link should remain, indeed should be strengthened and “democratised”.

Union delegates to ALP conferences should be elected by ordinary union members, not appointed by national secretaries. Furthermore, the selection of parliamentary candidates should be in the hands of rank-and-file members of the party and the affiliated unions…

Break the link with unions and the Labor Party

ceases to be an authentic voice for working people, it will lose its core meaning and become nothing more than a pale imitation of the conservative parties.

Lockwood sees Labor as representing working people, not Australians generally. He says there are 1.8 million union members, roughly 18% of the workforce. This has been stable for three years. He sees anti-union laws as an inhibitor of greater membership. This should change, he says.

Shorten said Abbott did not put Labor in Opposition, the Australian people did. It’s hard to see the Australian people handing over the government of the country to an overtly union-based party, however democratised.

Narelle Miragliotta, Senior Lecturer in Politics at Monash University, assembles a catalogue of negativity about the Shorten proposals. The Party is a victim of its own success. Nothing left to fight for, apparently.

Labor has addressed some of the worst excesses of societal disadvantage and inequality when in government. In doing so, it has transformed both the life opportunities but also the political and social expectations of Labor’s former working-class base.

This has left Labor bifurcated and fractured between a progressive and traditional cohort. Increased membership “is unlikely to bridge the policy and cultural divide that separates these voting segments.”

As to a faction-free Labor Party, the bigger it grows the more power aggregates around cliques.

With that sort of negativity we may as well hand over the game to our natural rulers, the Tories.

Most of my working life was spent inside government. I’m not a natural joiner. Now I work as a sole trader providing direct services to capitalists, pensioners, professionals and self-funded retirees. I can’t see a role for a union.

Shorten has a bit of the anti-politician about him. I might go look for that one-click entry portal.

Lower living standards


On the most recent comparable data from the final three months of last year, living standards have gone backward.

While consumer prices increased by 0.7 of 1 per cent during that quarter, household incomes only went up 0.1 of 1 per cent.

That’s what we were told on Radio National yesterday.

Ben Phillips from Canberra University’s National Institute for Social and Economic Modelling says there’s a shift under way in our standard of living. Export prices are lower than they have been, the cost of services such as school education, electricity, and gas are going up. Incomes are not keeping pace.

Household debt is an issue.

Professor David Peetz of Griffith University says that the Bureau of Statistics’ wage price index, a key measure of household income, fell to its lowest level on record in the December quarter. He points out that the labour market is largely non-unionised and hence vulnerable with unemployment increasing.

The question is whether this is a temporary blip or the beginning of a longer trend. Given the commentary from the experts it’s looking like the latter.

In this context it looks as though interest rates will be on hold, given also that the CPI came in lower than expected. That was courtesy of falls in the price of furniture, clothing, footwear and car repairs, not big on my shopping list.

Given that the age of entitlement has ended, Treasurer Hockey is now looking at the Audit Commission big picture.

Fiscal stimulation seems very far from his mind. Hockey says “nothing is free” and warns that spending people have come to take for granted will be wound back. Co-payments and means tests are on the agenda.

I’m in favour of means tests, in moderation, but I fear Hockey’s ‘vision’ is to shrink Australia.

Climate Change Authority review

In late February the Climate Change Authority published a Draft Report of its Targets and Progress Review.

The full draft report (all 265 pages) is downloadable from the first link above. Unfortunately I don’t have time to read all of it. Clive Hamilton at The Conversation has written an excellent overview. Continue reading Climate Change Authority review

The Qld Government’s People’s Budget Planner

I have just completed and submitted my views re what should be done about the Qld budget in the People’s Budget Planner.
The planner allows you to play with various ways of reducing the state budget using a mix of various tax increases, service cuts and asset sales alternatives.   If you get below the debt budget target it also allows you to spend the interest savings amongst a range of spending alternatives.
The government obviously hopes that playing with the budget planner will encourage people to support asset sales as a better way to bring the budget back to a sustainable level compared with cutting services or, shock horror, tax increases.
The planner does have some serious limitations.  For example, what you get when you click on more details is fairly skimpy.  For example, in the case of selling the ports business there is no indication of how much revenue will be lost and/or what effect this will have on costs to port users.  The details are a slightly extended explanation, what the sale will yield and a few examples of where this has already been done in Australia.
When it came to spending the interest saving there was nothing to give a feel for how much was already being spent in an area.  For example, if you allocated 10% of the total interest saving to improving bike infrastructure you may have been choosing a doubling of the existing budget or something that was barely worth the effort.
Despite its limitations, the planner is useful for helping people understand some of the budget choices and as a mechanism for allowing people to state their preferences.
The interesting thing from my point of view was that the planner showed that the budget could be balanced by simply increasing a range of taxes and charges while doing nothing else.   The planner is worth filling in and submitting if, like me, you think that taxes should be set at levels that allow governments to do their job properly. 

What Business Spectator thinks of our refugee policy

On Maundy Thursday, the Business Spectator lead story was this telling article on the Rudd/Abbott refugee policy by Rob Burgess.  The article starts with:

As many Australians prepare for a holiday marking the most important Christian festival of year, it’s worth remembering that Jesus of Nazareth began life as a refugee, taken to Egypt to escape King Herod’s slaughter of male infants.  

The refugee family eventually went home, so there was no need to transfer the infant to an offshore detention facility – I mean, who’d even think of doing that?”

 And ends with:

While the nation spends a long weekend celebrating the life of the world’s most famous refugee, political leaders might take time to sniff the wind again and realise we’re standing out in our region for all the wrong reasons.

As Fraser sums it up: “Whatever else our refugee policy is, it isn’t Christian.”

In the middle there was a well argued article with useful supporting data that included:

“In years to come, people will look back at the Abbott Government’s practice of locking innocent children up on remote Pacific islands and shake their heads with disbelief,” said Hanson-Young on Wednesday.

It may not take years. Other nations, including key trading partners, are already shaking their heads at Australia’s offshore processing regime…….

” At this year’s human rights dialogue between China and Australia, vice-minister of foreign affairs Li Baodong said China had concerns “especially on the protection of refugees and asylum seekers, the right of the children of refugees in education and other rights … We have also asked about whether these refugees will be illegally repatriated to other countries….”

While the Greens have long used moral arguments to condemn Labor’s and the Coalition’s policy, economic and strategic concerns give added weight to opprobrium from our trading partners.

Recent history shows how quickly a latent dislike of Australia can become manifest – the fury on the streets of Indonesia during the recent phone-tapping scandal was fed by negative stereotypes of Australians that stretch back through the 20th century.

Not only are we remembered as the lucky country that ran the white Australia policy, but our political leaders of the past have (often unfairly) been seen as colonialists seeking to impose a Western order on peoples who, from their own domestic perspective, were throwing off the shackles of a colonial past.

Whatever the roots of our negative image within the region, Australia’s national interest lies in the paring away of stereotypes, not augmenting them with stories of babies flown to Pacific Island prisons.”

Think about how those who used to be excluded by the White Australia policy must see us now:  Here is a country getting all agitated about 18,111 protection visa applications from boat people in 2012/13 despite having a strong economy and an estimated 2013 net immigration of 234,000.  A country that claims to be all about a fair go but thinks its OK to send refugee children to concentration camps in breach of a refugee convention that Australia signed.  A country where both Abbott and Rudd are very public, white Christians being nasty to refugees who mostly aren’t Christian and who would have been blocked from entry under the white Australia policy.

Having an Attorney general who has stated that it is “OK to be a bigot” doesn’t help either.

Progress is being made whenever an important, Murdoch owned business blog is saying, in effect, that our refugee policy is not only non-Christian but also bad for business and our relationship with our neighbours.

Enjoy your Easter.

Appendix:  Refugee Council of Australia’s data on Australia’s refugee performance compared with the 10 best countries:

Graph for Australian self-interest through Asian eyes

Ending the age of entitlement


“there are no cuts to health, no cuts to education, pensions don’t change…”

That was Tony Abbott at the National Press Club just days before the last election, as reported by Peter Martin.

JOE TO SLASH AGED CASH

was the headline of Samantha Maiden’s Murdoch paper report in the Courier Mail on Sunday.

Budget pain to hit all: Hockey

That was the headline of Laura Tingle’s front page article in the AFR on Monday.

Treasurer Joe Hockey says no group will be safe from cuts in the May budget, as he braces voters for potential changes to the age pension and tighter asset tests.

Large numbers are cascading everywhere. Maiden’s article tells us that 94% of Australians over 70 qualify for either a pensioner concession card or a seniors health care card. Some 78% of the cost of scripts claimed under the PBS is going to concession card holders. Half of the $40 billion age pension bill goes to households with assets of more than $500,000. The $40 billion bill could rise to $70 billion over the next decade.

Labor increased the aged pension from 65 to 67 but that is to be phased in by 2023. The LNP are considering lifting the eligibility age to 70.

Another option is to include the family home in the assets test if it is worth more than $1 million.

Moreover, Hockey reckons the age pension indexation needs to be sustainable. Labor increased the rate and indexed it to average male earnings, which escalate faster than the CPI. Hockey appears to favour a return to the CPI.

Cutting the ‘seniors supplement’ (I get $500 taken off my tax because I’m old) has also been mentioned.

Justin Greber quotes the savings (paywalled) calculated by Stephen Anthony of Macroeconomics. Anthony reckons we need to cut the budget by about 1% of GDP or $16 billion. Overall he says:

the primary focus for the government should be in stemming middle- and upper-class welfare, with the most obvious savings in the aged and family benefits, drugs, industry assistance and removing overlaps between different levels of government.

As to the oldies, he says changing the indexation back to the CPI will save $900 million. Including the family home in the assets test will save $1.1 billion, while cutting the seniors supplement would garner a further $500 million. Peter Martin identifies a further $1.5 billion in carbon price compensation, so in all about $4 billion could be screwed out of the oldies.

Peter Martin also points out that the aged pension has increased by 25% since the indexation changed four and a half years ago, compared to the CPI of 13%.

There’s little doubt that rich old men could contribute a little more.

For context we need to note that the Australian budget is approaching $400 billion.

As a disclosure I’m modestly self-funded with no superannuation. I’d appreciate help with pharmaceuticals but get none other than the normal PBS. In this post I’m not arguing the merits or otherwise of any of the proposed changes. I do think, however, that we could consider paying a bit more tax.

Yet Peter Martin argues that tax increases are already included in the forward estimates because they don’t compensate for bracket creep. The CPI and bracket creep could make our incomes virtually flatline in real terms. He favours increasing the GST.

New Zealand increased the GST in two phases from 10 to 15% without stalling the economy or undue public concern. John Hewson says we are the champions in the OECD in tax concessions, including notoriously concessions to rich retirees and the fossil fuel industry. There are plenty of options available and Anthony stresses the problems are in the out years, not the next budget or two. There should be time for debate.

The Commission of Audit report is said to be available shortly as is a review of the welfare system.

My main worry in all this is that the poor and the vulnerable are going to be hit as well when there really is no need. Also there are sectors where we need to increase spending, such as skills, education including universities, research, innovation and smart industry development. Did everyone see the 4 Corners program on the hollowing out of sophisticated manufacture with the demise of the car industry? That at a time when the CSIRO prepares to cut another 300 jobs.

Meanwhile the Fairfax poll is now 48/52 in favour of Labor. There are some problems for Abbott in the regions, perhaps over foreign investment and trade policies. However, the Labor TPP surge is largely courtesy of a stunning increase in the Greens vote. 26% of 18-24 year-olds now favour the Greens. From 16-39 the LNP vote is lower than Labor, while within the margin for error. It’s the oldies that are keeping Abbott afloat. They don’t always vote in their own interest.

You can use this post as an open thread on politics.

Work categories and voting patterns

Roy Morgan have done some interesting research on voting patterns according to how we earn our living. This table shows the work categories most likely to vote for the three major parties:

Roy Morgan_4971_600

To me there is a vague shape of a class analysis, with workers voting Labor and bosses voting Liberal, but one has to be careful about the actual numbers. If Labor gets a first preference vote in the low 30s there is plenty of scope for workers to vote Liberal.

There is interesting detail in the accompanying text. Primary school teachers are split down the middle. With the Greens we have to remember that the vote is low. While social workers are the profession most likely to vote Green only 33% of them do so. I would be interested in how many vote Liberal.

It’s now well known that Green voters earn more on average than other voters. Clearly they have spent more years in education.

I’m wondering what you make of it all.

From hero to zero politically: Campbell Newman shows how

Doctors_1800187_670334396358324_809804344_n-250All during the 2013 election campaign Kevin Rudd warned voters that Abbott would “Cut, cut and cut to the bone” just as Campbell Newman had done in Queensland. Commentators have remarked on Abbott’s lack of a honeymoon period. Campbell Newman certainly had one, but has now spectacularly squandered his political capital in various ways.

Dominating headlines for weeks on end the doctors’ dispute seems to have become something of a tipping point. Mark at his new blog The New Social Democrat has published an excellent link-filled post Newman v the doctors: a political fight that is poisoning the LNP, originally published at Crikey.

Mark sees the changes proposed in doctors’ conditions as carrying a broader warning for Australian health policy:

The contracts, read in conjunction with changes to the Industrial Relations Act, deny salaried doctors unfair dismissal protections, control over work location and timing of shifts, and require doctors to take direction on appropriate medical care from hospital and health service administrators.

The suggestion is that, having failed to find private operators for public hospitals that could actually provide cheaper services, the government’s agenda is to substitute bureaucratic cost controls for clinical judgement. That’s something the federal policy shifts towards paying hospitals for the “efficient price” of a procedure encourages. (Emphasis added)

The ground is shifting politically:

None of this is a good look for a government that recently lost the Redcliffe byelection to Labor with a massive swing. Polling conducted by ReachTEL for the Australian Salaried Medical Officers’ Federation in Ashgrove (the Premier’s seat), Cairns, Ipswich West and Mundingburra shows massive public opposition and significant impacts on the LNP’s vote. Newman would easily lose his seat to the ALP on these numbers, and it could be reasonably inferred that the LNP’s majority would be in danger.

Readers may recall that in 2012 Anna Bligh spectacularly crashed and burned, losing 44 of 51 seats to be left with seven in an 89-member parliament. With a walloping majority “Can do” Campbell may do the impossible and become a one-term government. A tweet from Possum Commitatus quotes a ReachTEL poll which says that if an election were held now the LNP would lose 36 seats and government.

Newman has looked gone in his own seat for some time. If people think he’s not OK as leader let them ponder the alternatives!

Elsewhere Kiwi doctors stand in solidarity with their Qld colleagues and are being advised to stay well away.

The electorate is volatile. Abbott be warned!

WA Senate election result

Now to work!

You can follow the WA senate election results at the AEC tally room or I think preferably at the ABC. There is seat by seat counting at Antony Green’s Election Blog.

Poll Bludger is here.

At time of writing (just after midnight EST) it seems that about 25% of the vote has been counted. It’s looking like two seats for the Liberals, one for Labor, one for the Greens, one for the Palmer United Party and the final seat a tussle between Liberal and Labor, with Liberals the more likely.

I’m not sure exactly what this means for the final balance of power in the Senate, but I think it means that Abbott will have a choice of coming to terms with Labor and the Greens, or assembling a combination of “others” which must include PUP. If anyone knows, please share.

It looks as though Scott Ludlam will be elected comfortably, which is good to see.

Update: This morning Antony Green has Labor slightly ahead for the last seat with just over half the vote counted.

For Senate composition go here.

So for the LNP it’s a choice between needing 6/8 extras or 7/8. See also my comment here.

If a tree falls in the forest…

…does anybody hear?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock in the past few days you will have heard/seen Joe Hockey say that the budget is in terrible shape and he’ll have to clean up Labor’s mess. You see it’s all Labor’s fault.

Chris Bowen has been saying that $20 billion of the $17 billion budget deterioration since Labor’s pre-election statement is due to Hockey’s own decisions, that Hockey is setting us up for swingeing cuts in the budget in May next year.

I think the $20 billion is across the forward estimates (four years) and the $17 billion is just this year – it’s confusing.

Anyway, the AFR provided this helpful graph, which was sourced from Treasury, but I can’t find there:

951e60a8-66d4-11e3-b959-55a7b594860c_MidYear-onlineV3_cropped_580

Laura Tingle says the budget has been mugged by the deteriorating economy as well as alarming spending blowouts. There is a need, she says, not to “crunch a soft economy facing a continuing decline in national income, yet in the medium term there is a need to profoundly re-engineer the budget – and voters’ expectations.”

Yet there is so far a complete lack of what she calls “fiscal rules” to measure Hockey’s performance. There are no yardsticks or performance indicators. The future is completely open. We await the National Commission of Audit and the Government response with some trepidation.

Bruce Cockburn’s song If a tree falls sees vast swathes of forest felled. Yet single trees falling also go unnoticed. What’s happened in Queensland in the last couple of years foreshadows what we can expect. Ben Eltham’s report on the massive cuts to small and medium arts organisations in Queensland, for example, warns of worrying reverberations through the entire national arts sector. Cuts of that kind may not impinge directly on my experience, but I feel the life blood is being sucked out of the place. Yet the Newman government are now telling us how worthwhile the whole exercise has been. They are very proud of themselves. Continue reading If a tree falls in the forest…

Analysing the polls

Dr Kevin Bonham has a post Abbott Fastest Ever To Lose Poll Lead with this helpful advance summary:

  • 1. Following the recent Newspoll, the new Abbott Government has lost the two-party preferred polling lead.
  • 2. This does not necessarily mean the government would lose an election if one was held now.
  • 3. The Abbott Government has lost the 2PP polling lead much faster than any other new government elected from Opposition in federal polling history.
  • 4. Tony Abbott has also recorded negative personal ratings much faster than any new PM elected from Opposition in federal polling history.
  • 5. While polling taken at this stage has very little if any predictive value, governments that have lost the lead very early in their terms have a historically greater risk of defeat at the next election.
  • 6. Bill Shorten’s polling as Opposition Leader appears good, but is nothing unusual by the standards of other Opposition Leaders at the same stages of their careers.
  • 7. Furthermore the strength or otherwise of an Opposition Leader’s personal polling after only two months in the job has no relationship with their success at later elections.

I’ll leave you to read the rest. Continue reading Analysing the polls