As I type, Treasurer Scott Morrison is lifting the lid on the 2016/17 budget. Discuss and argue the toss here (or indeed, discuss anything else related to national affairs).
Federal budget open thread
A thread for discussion of the federal budget, along with the federal anything-else.
Bemused
Are you not familiar with the Valley/SF pre-money valuation formula, which is:
(number of engineers * $1,000,000) – ( number of MBAs * $500,000)
Generally “having an MBA” and “starting a business” is not a propitious combination.
Or as Dilbert (or someone) put it:
PHB: I have an MBA and a great business idea, now all I need is some engineers to code it
Dilbert: The technical term for what you have is “nothing”
David Pope thought Morrison was just a little too excited…
WTF – it’s wrapping lines in the middle of words like something from 1965!
Is this some sort of psychology experiment?
Brilliant photo from Alex Ellinghausen of the moments after Scott the Dog of a Treasurer had finished his Budget speech:
And there is not much of that.
One problem for them is that after two, essentially failed budgets, they NEEDED to do something this year. They have fluffed it.
I think they get no advantage out of this, but poll wise wont lose a lot out of this, OR arrest the trend of decline in their polling.
If the ALP can get any kind of sustained ( a couple of days) focus on any nasties from 2014 that are still in there as savings, THEN the Libs are in some bother on this.
Bill Shorten
2m2 minutes ago
Bill Shorten @billshortenmp
A couple with a single income of $65k with 3 children in primary school are now $3,034 worse off a year after the Budget – with no tax cut.
Cat @ 10.01
Interesting photo. Tony and Kevin stopped applauding early. Maybe very early.
Can someone please tell me this:
Is it EVERYONE earning more than $80,000 a year that gets the tax cut? I read somewhere tonight that “only” about half a million people would be getting it and that doesn’t seem to be enough if it applies to everyone above that level.
TPOF
interesting photo. Tony and Kevin stopped applauding early. Maybe very early.
The rest look like they’d rather be somewhere else.
The Ellinghausen picture (C@tmomma at 10.01pm) of the Lib benches after Morrison’s speech is devastating. It is as if he announced that he was funding a program to give herpes to government backbenchers to reduce their numbers.
Darn
[ Is it EVERYONE earning more than $80,000 a year that gets the tax cut? I read somewhere tonight that “only” about half a million people would be getting it and that doesn’t seem to be enough if it applies to everyone above that level. ]
Half a million sounds about right. Don’t forget that wealthy people generally either have very low taxable incomes, or no taxable income at all, and hence pay no tax. The people above $80,000 would be mostly made up of professionals who still have to rely on a salary for income.
Comrade
Darn
Richard Denniss
“75% of the tax cuts in tonights budget go to the top 10% of income earners, nothing for the bottom 60%”
#auspol #Budget2016
What I really don’t get at all is the decision to move the $80k bracket to $87k. It is worth no more than $7 a week for anyone earning between $87k and $180k per annum.
But everyone who earns less than $80k a year, which is the vast majority of income earners in the country get absolutely nothing at all. And to add insult to injury they are told that they already got their goodies by being allowed to keep the carbon price compensation after the carbon price was abolished. A hell of a lot of them, many of them swinging voters, are going to be totally pissed off.
It would have made more sense to give nobody anything than this measure, which insulted those who got it by its miserliness and those who didn’t get it by the mere fact that people who earned more than them (and were likely less needy than them) got a few dollars which would be more useful in the pockets of the poorer people.
The only rationale that I could see is that they hoped Labor would oppose it as unfair and that would make it sound more generous than it really is. But Labor has decided not to oppose it. It will only oppose the budget repair levy abolition, which will benefit people earning over $180k per annum. And the more they earn the better off they will be.
Super dumb politics again. Unbelievable.
Testing
Oops dont know where i got comrade from in my post above
I attended a speech that Ross Gittins gave about 6 months ago at which he made it very clear he thought Turnbull was absolutely brilliant and would do great things. He must feel pretty stupid about that right now.
Maybe the times will suit labor. The liberals were successful under howard because they had plenty of money to buy off the middle-classes (while helping their rich mates). Now, if they want to help their rich mates, they really have to show their claws.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/federal-budget/budget-2016-rich-hit-with-16-million-super-cap-20160502-gojvpr.html
Interesting. they must have hoped for a positive first impression to be what got out via the media first to set the tone. Instead they got….meH!
Have I missed something – or is it that the most important aspect of economic transition, generating most jobs and growth, the transition to renewable energy, didn’t even get a mention?
None of the talking heads on the ABC coverage even asked the question.
It’s like Australia exists in some sort of stupidity vacuum, or brain damage brought on by several years of being led by an ape.
To those scratching your heads, the trick is to ignore page two of the comments thread and make your way to the bottom of page one.
Whoa there!
I have grown a beard since Christmas, and I’ve had at least 2 people say I look like George Clooney.
Looking like George Clooney is not a bad thing at my age.
TPOF
What I really don’t get at all is the decision to move the $80k bracket to $87k. It is worth no more than $7 a week for anyone earning between $87k and $180k per annum.
It can only so the can say in their adds they gave tax cuts to the middle income earners, pushed by their media mates. It won’t work bulldust never smells sweet.
It’s all a bit odd. 2 hours of comments just got erased from my iPad.
trog sorrenson @ #17 Tuesday, May 3, 2016 at 10:22 pm
Why would you bother when global warming is just a myth?
TPOF – Totally agree. The “bracket” creep provision is moronic. It seems to have Sco-Mo’s fingerprints all over it. It is his attempt to put his ideological stamp on the budget – to state HIS “prosperity bible” philosophy. And Malcolm didn’t have the balls or the strength to tell him to pull his head in. Sco-Mo really is a very, very stupid man.
There comment at the top of the second page, where you are taken after you leave a comment, takes you back more-or-less to here.
william bowe @ #19 Tuesday, May 3, 2016 at 10:24 pm
Is this a permanent thing William? My brain hurts whenever I try to find the latest comments.
Hey, we have avatars and page numbers now.
What a time to be alive.
It’s certainly not a permanent thing, Player One. Fingers crossed for what replaces it.
Thanks Vic. Shorten should be able to flay them with that.
Where have all the comments gone, long time laughing…..
william bowe @ #28 Tuesday, May 3, 2016 at 10:29 pm
There has never been a more exciting time to be a Poll Bludger.
If the Libs thought they were on a winner they would be here crowing as is the in bed cowering
Can we go back to new coments added to the highest page number. With new comments on page one every comment changes every page as all the comments shuffle up.
Yes, where is the Pamamal cheer squad?
*Panamal
Billie (in previous thread):
Spot on! Poll Bludger is the outlier on this site – no other Crikey blog or post attracts anything like the traffic or posters here.
MTBW(in previous thread):
No, many of us here are Crikey subscribers, perhaps doing so specifically because of Poll Bludger.
I think subscribers have been particularly badly-served by this whole “public beta” shambles by the new editorial team at Crikey. As I pointed out in an email to the new editor, making all the site’s content available for free during the beta period is no benefit or compensation to subscribers, who meanwhile are paying for an unstable half-baked site full of problems. Maybe we could get our subscriptions extended for however long the “public beta” runs for (two weeks and counting…)
o dear few teething problems – i know its been said – but why change what worked or why not asked for a submissions – i assume this is programmed site not a template? comment nos, sidebar threads and polling etc etc … i can find my comments or end of thread- not even refreshing from blog menu. not even after comment. o well will backspace a big as william said. do hope all settles in as have valued this site for some years – maybe a decade
So, the budget. Eh. I’m not exactly up on all the detail, but from what I’ve looked at so far, it doesn’t strike as being the electoral disaster for the government that the 2014 one was, but I can’t see them really winning any votes from it either, apart from perhaps a very superficial bounce. If this is what the Coalition were relying on to save them from the polling dumps, I think they’re in for some dissapointment.
Prepare for the dead dog bounce.
The issue here is that Crikey has control over the comments pagination system, and they’re using it to set the site up for reverse-ordered comments, and I have control over the order comments appear in, which I’m persisting in setting to chronological order. This is going to end with them either accommodating my desire to have chronological comments and setting up pagination accordingly, or ordering me to put comments in reverse order.
Rabitthat
Welcome to the world of “agile” software development. There is no such thing as a “beta” release in agile development – agile sites remain in a state of continual flux, with a constant stream of new releases.
Now you know why Mal was dumb to appropriate the word “agile” without knowing what it means these days.
To my mind, the best thing about this budget is that it means the merciful end of those ridiculously overblown ABC promos for their budget night coverage. The way they were going on about it, you’d think they were advertising the footy grand final or the new Game of Thrones season.
Mark Kenny still on the Kool-Aid drip:
No change is not good enough. It is still trickle down economics when it has been thoroughly discredited. And while budgets normally fade into the background as the ordinary business of government goes on, this time the government is about to shut up shop and go straight to an election campaign. An election campaign which will be a very long one, with plenty of opportunity for an Opposition (two if you include the Greens) to go through the entrails that were hidden or obscured today in the lock-up and highlight the losses, the misses, the unfairness, the rip-offs.
The average and below-average income voters may well say ‘no change’ this week, but there are no surprises on the upside for them (or the government would have told them) but plenty on the downside.
There is, of course, a couple of billion of unannounced goodies in there – and offsetting savings. But these will have to be revealed early in the campaign giving the Government’s opponents plenty of time to see whether there are sleights of hand involved and to identify who the losers are.
Unless an enormous white swan shines its beneficence on the Coalition or Labor screw up big time (and there is simply no indication that will be happening despite the best efforts of the press gallery – such as the so-called black hole) the best it is ever going to get for the Government is prior to the release of the PEFO, which has to occur within 10 days of the issue of the writs which, to the best of my research, has to occur within 10 days of the dissolution of the Parliament. So, basically by the end of May. And Labor will have the whole of June to fight the election on equal pegging, with the government in caretaker mode and able to get only a small part of the normal benefits of office.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/federal-budget/budget-2016-the-do-no-harm-budget-20160502-gojqn6.html#ixzz47aymvjkC
asha leu @ #42 Tuesday, May 3, 2016 at 10:46 pm
Stay tuned (or tuned out) for weeks of their election night promos.
william bowe @ #40 Tuesday, May 3, 2016 at 10:45 pm
Don’t give in to the fascists, William! Stick to your principles – remember that you have by far the biggest and most active blog on Crikey!
player one @ #45 Tuesday, May 3, 2016 at 10:49 pm
I am in full agreement with this and your earlier post about ‘agile’.
Hey P!…having worked the world of ‘Agile’ software development it gets called ‘Fragile’ more often than not for a good reason:-)……..or sometimes F…n….agile
Just saw the WA Swarzenegger, that other great Liberal motormouth, on ABC.
He is a wonderful ad for Labour.
He is a fanatical “believer” in trickle down, SadoMasochism for the poor and the beauty of the over-privilidged over indulging at the expense of the serfs.
Jane Caro on the Drum just neatly summarised the Governmen’s problem with Gonski: “we can’t afford to help poor schools because we’ve got to subsidise rich schools”.
Just got this email from Ged Kearney.