Thursday, April 23, 2009

Time for the Opposition Leader to refresh his lines


It's getting urgent

Here's Malcolm Turnbull on Darwin's ABC today:

QUESTION: So what would you do? What is one thing that you could name that would significantly improve the capacity of Australians to weather the storm affecting the globe?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well, firstly, what we have to do is not borrow money for extravagant and poorly targeted spending. So you’ve got to remember that the more money you borrow today, the higher the taxes and higher interest rates are going to be in the future. So making every dollar count, getting the best bang for the taxpayers’ buck is vital.

We would bring forward the tax cuts for July 1 this year and July 1 next year to provide real incentive..."


Can anyone see a problem here?

It nearly is July 1. Even if this government or a government led by him tried to bring the July 1 tax cuts forward at this stage, they would be lucky to succeed by even a week.

That part of his prescription came with a built-in use-by date.

It has arrived.

Malcolm Turnbull himself appears not to have noticed.

Not that his prescription is entirely vacuous. His idea was to backdate the bringing forward of tax cuts to January 1. (Stick with me, I know that sounds silly.)

The point is that if it happened now it would be a lump sum, a "sugar hit" - everything he has derided.