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PROMISES, PROMISES and MORE PROMISES…
Over the next four (4) weeks leading into this Federal election, we will continue to be barraged with promises, only now at a higher level of intensity. To date, on a rough count that seems to be generally supported by the media, is well over $70 billion, and still the promises flow. But, who eventually pays… YES, the poor Australian taxpayer.
There are of course a couple of things that we should recognise about major party pre-election promises. Much of the promised money is already "allocated money" in any case and the difference that remains, new money, is contingent on not only that party getting elected into the House of Representatives, but also the Senate. In addition, you have to take the gamble as to whether or not the promise is a core promise or if it continues to hold priority in the future and, of course, that funds remain available.
If you take a look at the money spent in the various portfolios over the last few years and compare that with the promises over the range of years that they will take to implement, then you may well conclude that it isn't such a big deal after all. And because one party elects to put finds into an area of say Education or Health, doesn't in any way infer that the other party will abandon that field or even ultimately spend less.
Take for example the promised expenditure on the Bruce Highway between Cairns and Brisbane. Does it mean that if the Liberal party puts in a new $2 billion, does it mean that Labor will walk away from it… absolutely not! And if Labor promise $2 billion of new money for Health, will the Liberals walk away from health assistance… just as certainly they will not.
Perhaps then there is another way of assessing the best outcome. Let's look at the party performance in Government. Now there is no direct comparison here but since at any level of Government party dominance is usually absolute. But the Federal Government deals out money to the States so we can do a sort of de facto comparison.
Let's take Queensland since that's our State. Over the last eleven (11) years the State Labor Government has had a crisis in just about every major area of administration. We have had health crises, electricity crises, water crises, policing crises and generally have lurched from one crisis to the next in what could be called an infrastructure void.
Would a Federal Labor Government be able to handle things any better? Well the odds don't look good, as the person who oversaw the initiation of the failed Queensland administration, Kevin Rudd, is now their Federal leader.
On the other hand, all the States have been Labor administrations, so to continue the comparison we have to go to the last eleven (11) years of Coalition Federal rule and the story there isn't much better.
Due to a minerals boom, which looks like continuing into the future, additional moneys into the system from compulsory super contributions, combined with a worldwide expansion in trade, economically we are not in a bad position. Then again, did we need things like the "children overboard" fiasco, the war in Iraq [which was going to last a few weeks], Afghanistan or the new workplace relations laws in the form they were delivered.
Did our primary producers need things like the Australia-America Free Trade Agreement, BioSecurity Australia, or do we need to continue selling, and loosing control of our taxpayer-owned assets.
Now clearly we need to expend moneys on health, welfare, education and the environment, we need to keep a good hand on the economic tiller, and we needed some workplace reform that delivers some equity to small business and so encourage them to employ.
But how much of this do you recall, in both the State and Federal fields being outstanding election promises. Probably not many! The 'mandate' has taken precedence and the election promise has been well and truly overshadowed by what is now the day-to-day running of the Government, seemingly in the best interests of Queensland or Australia.
So if you want to gain something definite on the outcome of the election promises your best option is probably with Centrebet. That way you will know for certain whether you won or lost and clearly by how much, and, it won't take three years to find out.
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