Stay Calm And Keep Shopping - Another Budget Thread

[icyfroth]

I decided I should read up on the budget so I could comment. Found this article explained it well:

Budget 2014: the six graphs that matter for Australia

This is a horror budget for many – but the cuts overall are not as bad as in the past and, surprisingly, leave Wayne Swan with the record for wielding the budget axe

"On the broader economic front the budget suggests 2014-15 will be worse than this year. While the economy in 2013-14 is expected to grow by 2.75% (a slightly conservative estimate given annualised growth in the last half of 2013, which was 2.9%), in 2014-15 it’s expected to just trudge along by a mere 2.5%. Only in 2015-16 is the economy expected get back to close to trend growth of 3%.

Why are they so gloomy? Well it’s not households. Household consumption has been revised up since the Myefo – from growth of 2.75% next year to now 3% and 3.25% in 2015-16.

So we’re expected to keep shopping.

The problem is the end of the mining boom. This budget really throws off any hope that mining might sustain us. In the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook (Pefo) done just prior to the 2013 election, business investment was expected to grow in 2013-14 by 2%. The Myefo revised that down to a fall of 1.5% and the budget has dumped it even further –estimating a fall of 4%."

"This was going to be a horror budget. And it is. If you are intending to go to university, if you are under 30 and unemployed, if you are a family with a child over 6, if you go to GPs, you’ll going to be hit hard.

Family tax benefits are frozen to save $2.5bn over four years, the threshold for Family Tax Benefit cut from $150,000 to $1000,000 will save $1.2bn, cutting it for families with kids over six saves $1.9bn and the $7 co-payment for GP visits gathers in $3,5bn. The increase in costs to uni students through the deregulation of fees, the cutting of funding to unis and the changes the HECS/HELP repayments $3.2bn

But the biggest individual “saving” is through not increasing foreign aid as promised. This saves $7.6bn and is easily the laziest save any government can do."

"Hockey is not rushing back to surplus. Yes he’s putting on the fiscal breaks, but not like Costello did in 1996 to 1999, nor even like Keating did after the “banana republic” crisis in the late 1980s.

The budget deficit will shrink by on average 0.7% of GDP over the next four years. Costello trimmed it by 1% of GDP when he came in –but he was able to rely on much more revenue growth than Hockey.

Spending is expected to be cut each year by on average 0.3% over the next four years. Costello’s cuts to expenditure were double that."

Entire Article Here

Those baying for Hockey's blood should do a bit of back-reading.

[purplecarrot-top]

He is a liar.

[izabsmiling]

  Now Abbott lies about lying, copies Howard's Manildra

By Margo Kingston
August 27, 2003

Unrepentant yesterday when he spoke to the Herald, Abbott now says sorry for responding to Deborah Snow's request for the reason he lied to the ABC with: "Misleading the ABC is not quite the same as misleading the parliament as a political crime."

Abbott last night: "It is not acceptable to mislead the public. I should not have responded flippantly to the SMH's question and I am sorry that I did so."

But last night, when Kerry O'Brien asked, "Did you mislead the ABC?" Abbott replied, "I don't believe I did."

he always was a liar.  'misleading the parliament as a political crime' ...has he done that now ?

[fourandsixpants]

1810 poem by William Blake:

"Deceiver, dissembler
Your trousers are alight
From what pole or gallows
Shall they dangle in the night?"

....especially lycra ones........

[cherry*135]

Someone's pants would be burnt to cinders by now.

p.s did I imagine a large number of posts here in the last few years peppered with the word Juliar?

[cherry*135]

Quote.. Tony Abbott

"there will be no new tax collection without an election"

[spotweldersfriend]

Yes there will,am3.He's was fibbing:)

[cherry*135]

Yes, he was fibbing, even John Howard says so.

JH: 

It's a tax increase', Howard says about levies

....he has questioned the Government's use of the term "levy" to describe the 2 per cent income tax rise for the nation's top earners.

"I wouldn't spend too much time in talking about levies as distinct from tax increases," he said.

"It's a tax increase."

[boris1gary]

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@am*3 wrote:

Someone's pants would be burnt to cinders by now.

p.s did I imagine a large number of posts here in the last few years peppered with the word Juliar?

---

no imagining and a lot worse than liar in the last few months. Just been reading about the DSP changes, turns out it isn't about budget savings and looking after the countries future (pffft) after all. It's also going to cost around $50 million to throw the "expected" number of young disabled people off the DSP and into compulsory activities.

It was "more of an integrity measure than a savings measure" says andrews office. Is that a joke? "integrity"

[polksaladallie]

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@am*3 wrote:

Someone's pants would be burnt to cinders by now.

p.s did I imagine a large number of posts here in the last few years peppered with the word Juliar?

---

I'm still waiting for Abbott's lies to be paraded here in huge coloured letters several times a day as was the supposed lie (singular) of Gillard.

Am I imagining that some of those posters are absent now?  Ashamed?

[purplecarrot-top]

And don't forget the disgusting cartoons that were doing the rounds. According to some on here it is okay for this government to break election promises. Double standards.

As for keeping on shopping , tell me where does the money come from?