In compiling the list of 23 Labor spending promises the Minister has done us a favour. He has enabled us to cast an eye over what really maters, which as the Treasury Secretary Ken Henry is at pains to point out is not how much money is spent, but what it is spent on.
In his address to Treasury staff leaked this month Dr Henry said that what was important was spending built productive capacity. Money spent “creating jobs” by moving resources from one part of the economy to another was money wasted.
On that criteria Labor’s 23 spending promises appear to stack up extraordinarily well. There are plans to pipe, recycle and desalinate water, plans to encourage Australians study and teach maths and science and plans to boost early childhood education. Kevin Rudd made the point yesterday that the rate of return on investments in early child development is believed to be as high as 10 to 1...
It is hard to find in the Labor promises collected by the Senator spending that clearly fails Dr Henry’s test, although its $500 million “green car partnership” with Australian carmakers probably comes close.
Senator Minchin is to be commended for keeping count. I am looking forward to the next update, and for an update on Coalition promises. It is shaping up to be an election like no other.
3 comments:
Good call Peter. The billions that have squandered in budget handouts is appalling. I note that there's talk of another childcare cash handout for working families. I imagine that ABC Learning have their new pricing schedules at the printers already.
Something I've noticed for a while - any chance of tweaking your RSS feed so that it includes some of the text from the post? It's not always clear what a post is about from its title.
Referred from Oz Politics, Peter.
I get the feeling you're writing what you realy think, which must be a change from the ABC (especially nowadays).
Hi Slim,
When I myself read the blog with Google Reader the RSS feed gives me quite a few lines.
I will try to fix it for your reader. Which one do you use?
Dear Anonymous, Thanks. Your sentiments are right, but when I was at the ABC things weren't nearly have bad as my remaining colleagues tell me they have since become.
It is funny, but so far a commercial operation, the Canberra Times which this week became part of Fairfax, hasn't given a stuff about which commercial operations I offend. None.
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