Economist Terry McCrann exposes yet more of the same blatant fiddling the books in this year’s Budget from Labor. $50 Billion worth of “fiddling”.
From the Herald Sun:
Wayne Swan’s budget is built on two great fiddles. Appropriately, the fiddles relate to the Rudd Government’s two great stupidities – the National Broadband Network and the Emissions Trading Scheme.
The fiddles enable the government to hide up to a massive $50 billion of new spending. So much for the claim they’ve pulled the pursestrings tight.
They also enable the government to ‘keep’ the growth in spending in the 2013-14 year to just 1.9 per cent. Without the fiddles, spending would actually have grown by at least 3.5 per cent in that year – shattering the government’s 2 per cent ceiling.
Now yes, the government’s second great stupidity, the ETS, has been ‘deferred’, while the first marches on…
Ditching the ETS enables the government to take up to $30 billion of proposed spending on it out of the budget and replace it – or most of it – by new spending. With, in an exercise of fiscal magic, no increase in the total spending number!
While separately the $26 billion-going-on-$43 billion to be spent on the NBN is just ‘disappeared’ almost completely from the budget! …
So, put the two together – the ditching of the ETS and the “no formal response” to the NBN – and the government has quite probably hidden as much as $50 billion of very real new spending out to 2013-14.
And blown its 2 per cent growth target right out of the very dirty fiscal water.
Barnaby Is Right 
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