St George of the Garden wrote on May 5
th, 2014 at 8:16am:
Woo boy, what a cascade of rubbish we are getting from the Lib fanbois here!
Firstly, Hokey and the simian knew the state of the books before the election: the 13/14 Budget, MYEFO, PEFO. As someone said—one good thing Costello did, Charter of Budget Honesty.
So the promises before the election were made in full knowledge of the state of the books. The Audit was a worthless waste of time and definitely not an audit.
The debt we have is small. If it was a real worry we would not have had the 9As reconfirmed recently.
Most of the debt is due to Costello (and Rudd/Swan contributed one cut) cutting income tax too much. We have a revenue problem not a spending problem. The spending is supporting the economy. Gillard/Swan tried fiscal consolidation, i.e. cutting spending but thankfully gave up getting a surplus as the fiscal consolidation was causing unemployment to increase.
There is a type of wasteful spending that can be cut without affecting private sector spending—those tax expenditures, those asset millionaire getting full or part Old Age Pension.
Just think on that last bit—Boomers are retiring, the Old Age Pension is going to balloon out yet we are paying the pension to people owning their own home PLUS a million dollars in assets! Crazy! Weed out all that rubbish—the Budget will be $75Bn the better! $75Bn! Enough to boost NewStart and the Old Age Pension which will boost massively private sector spending.
The reason for the deficits has been revenue weakness. The Treasury estimates for each Budget were out as revenue was weaker than expected. That is because Costello cut income tax too much. So the “levy” needs to be increased and made permanent.
Making people work until they are 70 is just going to see record numbers go on the DSP.
Rubbish George, we have a spending problem.
All of these "structural ' things
health
NDIS
pensions
super concessions
are growing at levels much above the growth in GDP.
hospital costs are growing at 10 %, and the pensioners are starting to bulge the curve even more in terms of demanding these services.
We also had one of the worlds highest rates of debt growth , coming off a very low level.
This low level was totally thanks to Costello.
Stop bagging Costello.
His track record is like black caviars...winner after winner.
Lets look at swans, a total f^^king disgrace.
Should have been sent to the dog meat factory after his first 2 years.
Only the international socialists would give such a clown an award. Oh , that's right , they did