“We are making spending sustainable, delivering record infrastructure investment, creating new jobs and bringing the budget back to surplus over the medium term.” - Joe Hockey explaining a $30.5 billion increase in the budget deficit. Dear Joe, During the last election you told us there was a budget emergency” after Wayne Swans final budget in May last year put the deficit at $18 billion. I was somewhat incredulous at your claim that you could do better but then I was assuming you were talking about reducing the debt, not increasing it by 269% to $48.5 billion. I’m not sure youve quite grasped the concept of economics yet but Ive always thought you were supposed to reduce debt. Still, the only way I know how to nearly triple debt within a year is by going to Uni, so clearly Im no Treasury expert. At least were on track to actually having that budget emergency you keep going on about. Another thing you repeatedly said during the election was that the buck stops with you. So Im delighted to hear that you’re accepting full responsibility - for the job of blaming it all on Labor. I realise youve been telling us the ALP are incompetent for some time now, but Id never realised they were incompetent enough to lose another $30.5 billion without even being in government for the last 13 months. So at what point in time are you actually responsible for the department you’re already collecting $400,000 a year plus perks to run? Can you let us know when that will be? Maybe you could ask someone who actually is a Treasury expert to work it out for you; I know maths isnt your strong suit. Anyway Im sure its got nothing to do with you giving the RBA $8.8 billion dollars they didnt want or need, or the 96 proposed changes to tax and superannuation you dumped, or the additional $571 million you spent on Immigration detention (plus millions more disguised as defense and customs spending), or your decision to scrap carbon pricing and the MRRT, or the $2.55 billion youve allocated for Abbott’s unworkable ‘Direct Action’ plan, or the $5.5 billion for his largely unexplained Paid Parental Leave scam, err scheme, or the cost of unplanned redundancies for the 16,500 public servants youve sacked. It can’t possibly be the $82 billion that will be given to the mining and fossil fuel industries over the next four years to fund the Fuel Tax Credit subsidy, or the $6.9 billion cost of you refusing to change Accelerated Depreciation laws that allow there companies to claim their equipment lasts half the time it actually does, or the $100 million youve given them for the new ‘Exploration Development Incentive’. The deficit doesnt yet include the $500 million a year youve optimistically predicted it will cost us to go back to Iraq for the third time since 1990 and join in another open-ended military campaign with no obvious strategy or goal, so it cant be that. Youve halted ATO investigations into tax scams and avoidance schemes by individuals and corporations including your mate Rupert Murdoch. You continue to ignore the fact that a third of Australias richest companies pay less than 10 cents in the dollar in corporate tax, 84% pay less than 30 cents in the dollar and nearly two thirds of them declare subsidiaries in tax havens. Meanwhile $80 billion in health and education funding has gone up in smoke under your watch, with the promise of more cuts to come, and youve still managed to piss away another $30.5 billion! In the last five years business profits in Australia have continued to grow while the proportion of tax revenue from business has shrunk from 23% to 19%. Wage growth has slowed in that time while the proportion of tax revenue from individuals has risen from 37% to 39%. Is this the heavy lifting you were talking about? Or were you referring to the job Australia has of carrying an inept clown as Treasurer for at least another two years? Here’s a savings tip for you: If the only thing you’re capable of doing is blaming everything on Labor and the poor then why not go back to doing it in opposition? Ill even do the maths for you; itll be $30.5 billion cheaper.
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 00:38:30 +0000
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