How can you tell it is Federal Budget time in Australia? Wayne Swan starts making excuses… again…
Treasurer Wayne Swan is again contriving excuses for his own poor performance. This year he is blaming the mining companies for their lack of success in providing tax revenue for him to spend.
Like Chicken Little, for Wayne Swan the sky is always falling in.
In 2008, the threat was our economy was too strong because the “inflation genie was out of the bottle”. Meanwhile, economists described our economy as the “wonder from down under“.
It was also the Budget that brought you this performance, when our Treasurer couldn’t explain the inflation figure:
A couple months later, when he realised that Peter Costello’s warnings about a “financial tsunami”, now known as the Global Financial Crisis, were coming true – the 2009 “cash splash” budget was born.
Wayne Swan, the “fiscal conservative“, delivered the most wasteful and debt-ridden budget in Australia’s history. It forecast $300bn in “responsible” debts, having blown the tens of billions of dollars in the surplus and savings bequeathed to him by the Coalition.
2010 was Wayne Swan’s masterpiece – it helped see the end of Kevin Rudd and his elevation to the Deputy Prime Ministership. While Swan merely delayed the planned the carbon tax/CPRS, he blindsided our largest export sector with the Resources Super Profits Tax.
In three short years, the Australian economy has been too strong (2008), facing the worst crisis since the Depression (2009) and then we should have been grateful to the ALP for saving us from the GFC (2010).
Now Swanny has come full circle – the government’s finances are in a shambles again and we are in need of a “tough” budget because Labor cannot control their spending.
This guy is making it up as he goes along. Wayne Swan is a man still obsessed with looking good in the mirror on any given day. But he has no strategy for Australia’s economic future, short of increasing the cost of living for everyone through a Carbon Tax, mining tax or a flood tax.
Despite his bleating about the Budget, we all know that Labor’s wasted billions are the reason that he needs to hit family budgets.
One of Australia’s top economists has already called Swanny’s bluff – Government revenues from mining companies are going to be just as good as they were under the Howard years, if not better.
Remember, whatever Wayne Swan says on Budget night, he will not be repaying the billions of dollars wasted on school halls and pink batts. You will – though higher taxes and reduced services.
And if Swanny promises a surplus in future years – ask yourself why he isn’t delivering on that right now. Because as Wayne Swan knows better than anyone, Labor’s financial promises are only made to be broken.