“At the moment, we are spending over $100 million a day more than we’re collecting in revenue. Now that’s unsustainable, particularly given we’re spending nearly $40 million a day on the interest on the…
Remember the Maastricht criteria? No, I didn’t think so. Nor apparently do Britain’s political leaders, based on their manifestos for tackling the UK’s deficit. The Maastricht Criteria were the convergence…
The Autumn Statement was supposed to be a celebratory moment for the coalition government – with its deficit-reduction strategy nearing completion and the 2015 election on the horizon, pre-election giveaways…
Ed Miliband is trying to wrestle back the political initiative in Manchester. The leader of the opposition must avoid becoming mired in deeply complex constitutional questions of devolution at his party’s…
You can’t fault a treasurer for trying to put the best possible spin on budget numbers — and that’s certainly what Joe Hockey did last night. The most important numbers, of course, are the deficit projections…
Charis Palmer, The Conversation and Emil Jeyaratnam, The Conversation
Since publication this infographic has been amended. The original version stated the NDIS was scaled back. There are no planned cuts to the funding of the NDIS.
The mid-year budget update released on Tuesday — known as MYEFO — largely tells close observers what they knew already. The Commonwealth budget doesn’t add up. Revenues don’t cover outgoings. The numbers…
Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey’s first budget update has revealed a massive blowout to the bottom line and a warning of a decade of deficits ahead. The government’s Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO…
George Osborne long ago realised that policy programmes designed to avert crises do not win elections. What he has offered instead in his Autumn Statement is once again a simple trade-off of public austerity…
There continues to be a great debate around Australia’s fiscal position. Yet, budget deficits are, in fact, a natural outcome of the business cycle. In a policy brief, co-authored by myself and colleagues…
“We have among the lowest of budget deficits and debt to GDP of any other major economies in the developed world… If it’s so bad, Mr Abbott, why have we been given by the three ratings agencies a AAA credit…
“Mr Rudd can stand up and show us his chart and demonstrate that by comparison with some other countries, Australia’s debt and deficit position is not so bad. But it’s not what we’ve done, it’s where we’ve…
“This year our debt will be $30 billion. This year what we see is that government expenditure has grown by $30 billion… The entire volume of our deficit for this financial year is explained by government…
Recent years have demonstrated the enduring strength of a core Keynesian insight: deficit spending may result in higher growth and enable states to move more quickly into surplus. In this light, Australian…
The debate about long-term public finance and the role of government is one that is most definitely needed. However, there are two aspects to this debate that are often conflated. First, there is the issue…
Today’s announcement by the government that it has a $12 billion “black hole” had the status of a confession. It needn’t have. All talk of “black holes”, “revenue shortfalls” and “structural deficits…