We’ve spent three days talking about this? What a beat up, especially now that it has come to light that it was all BS. Imagine that.

Confected outrage from a whole heap of people just wishing it was true because it fits their narrative. I really want to believe in Santa and the Tooth Fairy but saying they exist does not prove that they do.

Oh and Twitter is not a reputable news source. It is an echo chamber populated by wannabe heroes, try hard comedians and narcissistic idiots grappling for 15 minutes of fame.

And these people on the ABC and Fairfax Media who broke this “story” call themselves journalists? Next time stop and ask just one of the three W’s. You know something like..

Who is behind things?
What is their agenda?
Why is someone saying this?

I cannot believe this rot. Let us not worry about dead boat people, dysfunctional border policy, businesses closing or warnings that we could be heading for a recession.

Let us instead focus on the hurt feelings of a person whose hide is as thick as a rhino’s.

Seriously. Give. Me. A. Break.

Bill Leak – The Australian (again)

May 1 2013

Are you out of control?

Fantastic take on the current funding predicament that the government finds itself in by Bill Leaks, who has recently returned to The Australian full time.

May 1 2013

I have changed my mind

So we have all woken up to the earth shattering news… that Julia Gillard’s word is not worth a pinch of salt.

Ben Packham in The Australian reports that Julia Gillard will go to the next election promising a 0.5 per cent income tax hike to help fund her national disability insurance scheme.

The Prime Minister said her plan to lift the Medicare levy from 1.5 to 2 per cent would cost average Australians $1 more a day from July 1, 2014.

Last year when the NDIS juggernaut rolled over Australia’s collective horizon most were unaware there was a problem with disability in Australia but what we did know was that Labor had previously rejected the concept of a levy to fund the NDIS, which the Productivity Commission said should be a last resort.

But Ms Gillard said today:

I have thought about this deeply and I have changed my mind.

Well, I’ll be…

How convenient for you, Ms Gillard.

Many people have changed their minds since foolishly voting for the most wastrel government this country has had the misfortune to experience, but unfortunately for us (but fortunately for her) we have to wait until September 14th to do it officially.

Not only has Gillard once again changed her mind in changed circumstances, much like her now infamous 180 degree turnaround on implementing a Carbon Tax, she isn’t really being all that up front about the impact of this proposal.

Well, maybe she is… but in a weaselly, laywerish manner, where the detail is hidden just under the surface.

What detail you ask?

The detail that this tax increase is just the tip of the iceberg. This is NOT a once off increase in taxes because moving forward the NDIS will require many more increases of the Medicare levy to cover its cost. The detail is there, just obscured from view.

The 0.5% increase in the Medicare levy will raise an estimated $3.3 billion which would be placed into a special account that would be used only to fund the NDIS.

However the NDIS is budgeted to cost more than TWICE that much to run when it is in full swing, in fact the NDIS tips the scales at a whopping $8 billion a year when fully operational.

OK two things.

The 0.5% increase will only raise $3.3 billion and it is only for trials.

The budgeted cost of the full monty version is $8 billion.

See that? That’s another $4 billion that we need to find PER YEAR, EVERY YEAR to fund this policy.

So where exactly will this additional money come from do you think?

Well, the ever truthful Ms Gillard told us yesterday that..

..further budget savings would be needed in the future to meet the full cost of the scheme..

So Labor, the party that firmly believes in Tax and Spend, is in fact highlighting that this is not the only time we will be hit with another tax to pay for their fancy policy ideas.

My tax rate already went up to pay for the additional 3% Super Guarantee, having gone from 30% to 32.5% and now I will have to pay an additional 0.5% on top of that to fund LESS THAN HALF of the yearly bill for the NDIS.

To be able to pay for the NDIS fully, we could expect another 0.5% increase in the Medicare Levy next year and as we know with taxes, they only go one way and as that great 1990’s band Yazz once told us, that is up.

Here’s an idea.

If the NDIS is so important, then let us as a nation prioritise it against the other spending that is going on, because there is a lot of spending going on, however much of this spending is being wasted on programs that are not working, or not on initiatives that are not needed.

Apr 23 2013

Help! We can’t count…

Most pundits understand that Labor’s economic credentials are extremely shaky given that it appears that no one from Labor actually understands basic budget or fiscal policy.

However, the rest of Australia has been constantly reassured by both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer countless times that Labor would be bringing Australia’s budget back into the black for the first time since they took office in 2010.

In fact Labor promised to deliver a surplus over 300 times over the course of the journey since the last election until Treasurer Swan announced last December, right just before Christmas when no one was paying attention, that the wafer thin projected surplus for the 2012-13 financial year of $1.1 billion just wasn’t going to happen.

Nope. Just not gonna happen man. Kaput. Gone.

This is despite Prime Minister Gillard giving an iron clad guarantee during the 2010 election campaign about returning the budget to surplus. Gillard was so emphatic that she stated boldly that:

Failure is not an option. No ifs, no buts: it will happen.

That sounded pretty definitive didn’t it? Doesn’t sound like there’s a lot of wriggle room there or the opportunity to make excuses.

Well someone better tell Treasurer Wayne Swan, Finance Minister Penny Wong and the rest of the numerically challenged members of the Labor party about this no ifs, no buts rule because all we have heard since December last year is excuse after excuse.

Excuses about why things havent turned out as rosy as Labor predicted in relation to Australia’s budget position.

The Treasurer laid out all of these excuses in his Economic Note in February this year and has been building the case that it is purely external factors that will cause Labor to deliver yet another budget deficit in June.

Firstly they talk about tax receipts being drastically down, but as the Catallaxy Files shows in it’s post Budget Myths and Reality, saying that tax revenues are down is an outright lie.

The only way they are down is if you actually believed the wildly optimistic projections that Labor made in order to be able to project their promised 2012-13 surplus, but the reality is that revenues are still higher than previous years, and increasing each year.

The diagram labeled Receipts $m to the right shows that tax receipts have actually gone up every year that Labor has been in office, except for a slight dip in 2009-10.

So to say that revenue is down is incorrect. While the actual amounts are not quite as good as Labor expected, Australia has still generated MORE REVENUE than it ever has previously. We have more money coming in, not less.

Ok, good to get to the bottom of that.

Now onto Labor’s recent statements on payments.

In Swan’s update in February and again yesterday, Labor’s economic ministers are once again trying to hoodwink people with mealy mouth excuses.

While Labor bemoan the external factors that are applying pressure to the budget, what they neglect to mention is that most of the underlying deficit is due to internal pressures, namely drastically increased government spending.

Government spending since Labor came to office has gone through the roof to all time highs. This is shown in the Payments $m diagram to the right.

This drastic increase in outgoing is mainly due to Labor money spinners such as:

GFC cash splurges
Carbon Tax compensation
one off Family Assistance packages
Building the Education Revolution
Pink Batts
School Kids bonus
School Kids Laptop program
Low Income Super scheme
Drastic increase in government employment

While receipts have gone up, so have our payments. It seems that we are spending money we just dont have.

As anyone who manages their own personal finances knows, you just can’t spend what you dont have. If you do, then you end up with a deficits. Just like the previous five deficits that Labor has gifted Australia with since we were stupid enough to vote these “financial conservatives” in to power in 2007.

Where does that leave us now? In trouble.

The Underlying Cash Balance $m diagram on the right illustrates what you get if you add the two previous diagrams together.

Note the candy stripe bar on the far right of the graph. That is the projected deficit that has been estimated since Labor started it’s steady march away from bringing the budget back to surplus as they crowed for near on three years.

But what is worse is that now we are hearing more bad news from the bad news bunch that threatens to make reality worse than any possible nightmare.

As Judith Sloan from The Australian (behind Evil Rupert’s Evil Paywall™) observes today, the projected surpluses for the coming years have also bitten the dust.

We are now told that being in deficit is no big deal. Not only will there be a budget deficit this year, there will be a series of deficits over the forward estimates.

So the projected budget surplus of $2.2bn in 2013-14 – forget it. The projected budget surplus of $3.3bn in 2014-15 – forget it.

And the projected budget surplus of $6.4bn in 2015-16 – you guessed it, forget it.

Further to us already spending more than we make, Labor has openly promised that massive new social welfare policies, such as the NIDS and Gonksi, will underpin their re-election campaign.

However to actually pay for these grand schemes, Labor intends to borrow even more money than it already has wasted and tax Australians even more than they already have in order to pay for their utopian social fantasies.

If we don’t have the money, then we just can’t spend it. If these new programs are so important, then we need to prioritise where they fit into the overall scheme of things.

This government just does not know how to live within it’s means. Further more, it seems these clowns just cant add up.

Might be time to bring in the Count, blah.