Senator Assange?

[Aractus]

I get the impression that an Abbott government is going to be a different beast than the Howard government was.

And so it should be. This is the 2010's not the 1990's...

So far what the Coalition has promised is not going to cut the budget deficit significantly. Especially given that corporate tax receipts have declined significantly since the onset of the global financial crisis. If the Howard government had been re-elected in 2007, the federal budget would have still gone into deficit.

Obviously the budget would have gone into deficit. Australia is not isolated nor insulated from the effects of global economics. In fact we are dependant on a strong world economy. What we had in 2007 was an economy that was very strong from the decade-long Howard government, and we had no federal debt. Thus we were in a strong position to handle a sudden global economic catastrophe.

Also I cannot imagine an Abbott government declaring a lot the promises they have made as non-core promises and embarking on a path of serious austerity. A serious austerity programs would involve cuts (around 20 billion dollars to the annual federal budget) to various government programs and payments (including centrelink payments), as well as the elimination of tens of thousands of public service jobs. Unless such a government were to adopt a long-term strategy of losing a few battles, however winning the war so to speak.

What Labor is doing is spending future money. In a time when the economy is strong (not as strong as it was in 2007, but strong nonetheless), and when productivity is high, they still can't balance the budget. You need to make a choice about having services today, or services in the future - you're spending future money to pay for present services - in the future we'll be spending our present money to pay for past services. Get how it works?

In my view while the Rudd-Gillard government has been an pretty incompetent government, (although the Gillard part has done some worthwhile achievements, like the NDIS for example). However I don't believe an Abbott government is going to be much better.

Gillard introduced a mining resource tax AND a carbon tax. Both are bad for Australia. WA in all honesty should have declared independence and told the federal government to fuck themselves. But then, hey, why let WA profit from their own productivity when the Federal government can come along and take what they want? That's not a strong plan for the future. We have high wages, we have a high Australian dollar, and we're increasing taxes? That's not a good export plan, it may sound great to have high taxes on paper, but you pick your battles - would you rather high taxes and low wages? high taxes and a low dollar? Well we can't control the dollar, no one wants low wages, so to stay competitive for resource exports we need to keep low resource mining taxes.