Good luck with that one, Wayne

So the treasurer Wayne Swan reckons he can reign in a $20 billion deficit, that actually blew out to a $44 billion deficit, and turn it into a $1.5 billion surplus in 12 months.

Oooookay. Sorry if we don’t hold that one in much faith, Wayne.

WILL go easy on Wayne and Co. for getting rid of some public service jobs, but they’re missing such a great opportunity. Why, there’s a whole department there they could get rid of. Heck, the people working there probably wouldn’t mind, either.

And what’s all this taking the NBN, the $37 billion NBN, off the books completely? And the $10 billion green loans scheme? That’s a nice little $50 billion windfall. Nothing sus.

Did Craig Thomson help Wayne out finding some spare cash?

Might as well swan off now

Who else thought he’s been sounding a bit “politiciany” lately?

MINING magnate Clive Palmer is due to take on Wayne Swan at the next federal election, announcing today he will seek Liberal National Party preselection for the seat of Lilley.

Mr Palmer said today he was seeking to run in the seat because he and the Treasurer had “differing views of what was good for the country”.

With Labor as polular as cancer at the moment – and even if they knife Gillard, their repuation will still be in tatters – toppling the lame duck Swan shouldn’t be a problem.

Just go easy on the CIA stuff, Clive.

UPDATE

No Clive, but regardless, you could probably run almost anyone you like. And the bloke Abbott likes isn’t just anyone.

Anyone else watch 4Corners? [updated]

They aired a reasonably decent, if not prone to naval-gazing, feature on the current woes of the Australian Labor Party with considerable emphasis on former PM Kevin Rudd and his usurper, Julia Gillard.

A lot of history there we already knew. The ALP appears to be in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t position. The party likes Gillard. The public likes Rudd. And vice versa.

Former PM Rudd came out looking (at least some of) the people’s champion with perhaps – and I’m going easy here on the ABC – just enough emphasis placed on his domineering, micromanaging style of leadership.

The ALP as a whole, with emphasis on their power brokers, came out looking excessively poll-driven, sneaky, and lacking any real principles or conviction. Also dumb. Eleven years in the wilderness, years of an unsuccessful former leader in Kim Beazely, a miraculous turn around, and then *splat*  – Kevin’s corpse chucked out onto the street at the first sign of a cold.

PM Julia Gillard came out looking at best, evasive, and also unable to be believed. She repeatedly failed to answer questions directly. For instance, yes or no, did she know about internal party polling  – kept hidden from Rudd – that showed Rudd was losing numbers fast? Yes or no, did she know her first speech as PM may have been prepared by members of her office and/or the ALP a full two weeks before she seized power? Answers to these questions drive straight to the heart of her credibility and trustworthiness.

Evading these important questions was, to say the least, not a good look. Nor was her obvious tension during the interview, especially when juxtaposed to a laughing, smiling Rudd sharing photos, beers and embraces with an enthusiastic public at a pleasant establishment.

What did you guys take out of the report?

____________________________________________________________________

Related.

____________________________________________________________________

Whatever way you look at it 4Corners just re-enforced the image of the government as a bitterly divided bunch.—
Paul Bongiorno (@PaulBongiorno) February 13, 2012

UPDATE

More. (lots of links)

More.

UPDATE

That last link is the Bolta MTR podcast.

Julia Gillard: “My job is to answer questions… I’m not someone who runs away from questions.”

Oh, really? She runs away from the question asking if she actually did plot to bring down Rudd (she’s always claimed she never *cough bullshit* did; that it all happened on the last day), and despite being asked almost every week to appear on The Bolt Report, she has declined every time.

UPDATE II

Steve Vizard talks to former Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson – someone who admitted last night having a hand in Rudd’s downfall – about the segment.

UPDATE III

Pot.Kettle.Black.

The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has all but accused the ABC’s Four Corners of deception after it aired damaging claims last night that her office was plotting the downfall of Kevin Rudd well before the June 24, 2010 coup.

BWAHAHAHAHA! How rich is that?!

Asylum seeker costs will top $1bn before long

And yet our government will likely never admit they got it wrong by weakening the effective laws that we had. Their heart may have been in the right place but their head was, and still is, in outer space.

ASYLUM seeker arrivals have sparked an $866 million budget blow-out, forcing the Government to rush laws into Parliament begging for more cash.

The Sunday Mail can reveal Parliament will debate the plea for a fresh injection of taxpayer funds this week.

Another boat with 127 suspected asylum seekers was spotted off Christmas Island yesterday.

At the same time the Government confirmed it would ask for another $330 million this year, with the total blow-out rising to $866 million over four years.

Any one else not feeling so reassured the budget will be back in surplus by 2013?

With the way Gillard is spending, how CAN Abbott possibly commit to a return to surplus timetable?

OK. I get it. Opposition leader Tony Abbott, before the last election, did commit to return Gillard’s budget deficit to surplus within one term.

But that commitment simply isn’t possible now for two main reasons.

1. The budget deficit is much higher that the initial $6 billion Abbott committed to returning to surplus.

2. With gross national debt (and yes, this does affect the budget) skyrocketing at around $2 billion per week, budget debt rising fast too, and uncertainty as to exactly what week this government will fall, it would be foolish and impossible to try and dream up some sort of timetable now. Timetables require a costing/spending plan. You need to start out with a total, but nobody knows exactly what that total will be when this mess finally comes to an end.

Mr Abbott said the Coalition wasn’t in a position to make a similar pledge as it did at the last election, when it promised to post a $6 billion surplus by 2012-13.

“Now since then a lot’s happened and as you know for the current financial year the government originally predicted a $12 billion deficit, then it went out to $24 billion and now it’s gone out to $37 billion.

Imagine what that budget debt would be if sneaky Wayne Swan hadn’t taken the NBN out of budget calculations.

Stacking the board?

The Sydney Morning Herald dutifully reports the appointment of two new board members to the Reserve Bank.

Treasurer Wayne Swan has made two new appointments to the Reserve Bank of Australia board.

Philip Lowe has been appointed as the bank’s deputy governor, replacing Rick Battellino, who is retiring on February 14 next year.

Australian Industry Group chief executive Heather Ridout will also join the baord that day, replacing Graham Kraehe.

And on the article goes with various background info and quotes.

The SMH curiously (not) fails to report one newsworthy tidbit, however.

Graham Kraehe, the head of BlueScope Steel, has been a huge critic of the government’s mining tax and carbon (dioxide!) tax.

To find that out, one has to pop over to the Daily Telegraph (sorry, can’t link directly there on this computer).

The SMH also fails to explicitly mention that an industry titan has been replaced by a…

Lobbyist.

The SMH also fails to mention Kraehe is the second board member critical of the government (the first was Bill McKibben) to get the boot.

Stacking the board?

Maybe. Maybe not.

But it wouldn’t be the first time Labor and/or Swan have been implicated playing tricksies.

Take the Shepherdson Inquiry in Queensland at the turn of the century.

Labor was found guilty of branch stacking in a number of seats there.

Or this around the same time…

Allegations into electoral fraud continue

PM Archive – Monday, 27 November , 2000 00:00:00
Reporter: Mark Willacy
COMPERE: First tonight, a Federal Labor front-bencher faces investigation by the Director of Public Prosecutions over claims that he gave money to the Australian Democrats during the 1996 election campaign.

A former ALP organiser claims that Wayne Swan, who’s now serving under Kim Beazley as Labor’s Community and Family Services’ spokesman, asked him back then to deliver an envelope. It was stuffed with about $1,400 and addressed to a Democrats’ Campaign Office.

The Prime Minister, keen to keep the issue of Labor vote rorting in the headlines, says the allegations raise serious questions about one of Opposition Leader Kim Beazley’s closest advisers and confidantes. But Mr Beazley denies it was a case of ‘cash for preferences’ saying the assistance deal, negotiated at a Federal level, was no secret.

In Canberra, Mark Willacy.

MARK WILLACY: What started out as an inquiry into pre-selection vote rorting in Queensland is now starting to bite into Kim Beazley’s front-bench. The names of two Federal MPs have already been suppressed and now serious allegations are being made outside the Inquiry Chamber.

Or this…

Branch-stackers lobby for Wayne Swan’s pet project

by: Andrew Fraser
From: The Australian
May 15, 2009 12:00AM

TWO men expelled from the ALP for branch-stacking have emerged as the chief lobbyists for the project the federal Government has promoted as a suitable candidate for “Rudd Bank” funds.

Austcorp, which last week called in administrators, is the developer behind the Brisbane high-rise residential tower “Vision”.

Wayne Swan said earlier this year that Vision was “just the right project” to receive government funding through Rudd Bank, which was established to take lending positions in commercial property ventures where foreign or other smaller banks refused to roll over their share of syndicated loans.

Or a more recent example:

A north Queensland Labor candidate has downplayed allegations of branch stacking in the lead-up to his preselection.

In a leaked email, Mark Harrison wrote to ALP members alleging “unsavoury methods” had been employed before his preselection in the Townsville seat of Mundingburra, and a ballot for delegates to the Labor state conference in June.

Now maybe Kraehe just wanted to go, but his replacement does seem to make it awfully convenient for the government.

When you spend more than you earn…

…Eventually it catches up with you.

We are seeing this unfold in the EU.

And it’s sure catching up to Australia as well.

Thanks to some good leg work done by blogger Barnaby was Right, our treasurer, Wayne Swan, is essentially predicting a 57% blowout in net debt this year.

57%!

What was supposed to be around $105-odd billion (remember this is net debt not gross debt which is close to double) is now predicted to be a little over $130 billion.

• End 2011: almost $85 billion
• First end 2012 estimate: about $105 billion (about a 25% increase in just one year)
• Revised estimate: a little over $130 billion (a whopping 57% increase!)

And the thing is, it’s not as if revenue has changed all that significantly. In fact, if anything, it’s gone up.

Some numbers sent in by Bolt reader John Comnenus posted on Andrew Bolt’s blog re-entered into a table:

Professor Sinclair Davidson over at Catallaxy has some slightly different numbers but the general trend is still the same (the way they calculate budgets is a bit different since the ALP took government).

Whichever way you look at it, we’ve gone from about a $20b budget surplus, to (and I’ll use Davidson’s figures) to a $55b deficit, followed by a $35b deficit, followed by a $20b deficit, followed by a $35b deficit.

That’s $55b + $35b + $20b + $35b = $145 billion!

Barnaby is Right had the latest blowout of 57% (from $84.5b to $130-odd billion) so at $145-odd billion, maybe that 57% could even be revised up to a whopping – give or take – 71%.

Eek!

But no worries, that $130b or $145b is only our net debt.

Our real debt (gross debt) stands at around $220b and climbing by about $2b a week.

Now, to be sure, that’s lucky if it’s even a mere 20% of our GDP considering you have countries like America at around 101% of GDP.

But with America not yet out of the woodworks, and Europe teetering on the abyss, when basically no-one has any money (China might buy us but they won’t save us, and even they might not be doing as well as everyone imagines), is now really the time to be living a champagne lifestyle on a beer budget?

H/T s_dog

Ten days to save the Eurozone?

Or make that eight days since Wolfgang Munchau’s column over at the financial times (had the page up before but now it’s behind a paywall so here’s a Hot Air link) was written on the 27th.

Who knows but really when it will actually happen? Or if. You read comments on these financial articles and everybody seems to have an opinion on when or if the Euro will collapse and/or how to fix it.

And as for that 10 days stuff, we were told 10 days back in October, and even as far back as June.

All I know is that if it does collapse, the Gillard government will blame Tony Abbott and use it as an excuse for yet another billion-dollar budget blowout.

UPDATE (via JM)

What? Socialists rioting because they’ve run out of other people’s money?

As the Italian government struggled to borrow and Spain considered seeking an international bail-out, British ministers privately warned that the break-up of the euro, once almost unthinkable, is now increasingly plausible.

Diplomats are preparing to help Britons abroad through a banking collapse and even riots arising from the debt crisis.

The Treasury confirmed earlier this month that contingency planning for a collapse is now under way.

A senior minister has now revealed the extent of the Government’s concern, saying that Britain is now planning on the basis that a euro collapse is now just a matter of time.

And…

Europe’s monetary union may unravel sooner than the region’s leaders can mobilize to ensure the sovereign-debt crisis doesn’t overwhelm the currency, a UBS AG (UBSN) foreign exchange strategist wrote.

“Financial markets continue to move faster than politicians,” Mansoor Mohi-uddin, head of foreign exchange strategy for UBS, wrote in today’s note. Markets are starting to “price in the endgame” for the currency, he said.

How’s that gonna work, Wayne?

So our government is borrowing $2 billion a week, the budget deficit has been revised from $22 billion in May to $37 billion now, and yet Treasurer Wayne Swan reckons that in a year or so, he can bring that down to a $1.5 billion surplus.

WAYNE Swan is clinging to his return-to-surplus timetable, relying on luck, belt-tightening and clever accounting to put the budget in the black by a wafer-thin $1.5 billion in 2012-13.

The mid-year budget and fiscal outlook, released today, revises up this year’s deficit to $37 billion as worsening global financial conditions wipe $20 billion off revenue forecasts.

But despite a massive writedown in income tax receipts, slashing $7.3 billion from revenue over the next two years, and 0.75 downward revision in domestic growth forecasts, the Treasurer vowed to deliver a surplus in 2012-13 as promised.

Er, oooookay. He’s attempting to convince us the bloke who took a $20 billion surplus four years ago and turned it into a $37 billion deficit – that’s an average blowout of almost $15 billion a year – is, in a year, gonna “save” $38 billion.

Yeah, right. And I’m a Chinese gymnast.

PS Make sure you check out Wayne’s clever accounting in the link…

PPS Wayne, there’s still that total $220-odd billion of debt you’ve foistered on us, too, remember.

Wow, didn’t see that one coming

Treasurer of the Year Wayne Swan might not be able to get the budget back in surplus by next year after all.

In other surprising news, it has been revealed that Osama bin Laden was a terrorist, and that only Americans think the name “World Series” is an apt title for a competion played exclusively in North America.

You know the global financial situation is dire when…

… Well, you already know it’s dire, but you know it’s really dire when Wayne Swan is voted the world’s best treasurer.

This is a bloke who, in the space of one budget, took us from a $20 billion surplus straight into billions of dollars of deficit.

This is a bloke who has us borrowing $135 million every single day.

This is a bloke whose helping bring in a giant useless tax that will actually see the government $4 billion out of pocket.

And now, this bloke is going to advise the G20.

And as for the people, Euromoney (too ironic) magazine, who voted for Swan? They sure know how to pick winners.

(Via Bolt reader Sherro’s email to AB)

Euromoney 2006 Best Investment Bank – Lehman Brothers (Busted 2007)

Euromoney 2006 Best Equity House – Morgan Stanley (Bailed out 2007)

Euromoney 2006 Best at Risk Management – Bear Stearns (Busted 2007)

Euromoney 2006 Best at Investor Services – Citigroup (Bailed out 2007)

And I’d like to note the favourable Euromoney commentary on AIG’s future, 2007 (bailed out 2007)

Outstanding.

Townhall meetings coming to a venue near you

OK, so PM Gillard reckons The Debate We Never Had™ is over, but that doesn’t mean – oh no siree – that folks aren’t standing up to have their say.

A townhall meeting in Brisbane:

Mr Hockey said merchants at a Brisbane market this morning told him they would not be able to pass on the cost of an estimated 10 per cent rise in electricity without sacking staff.

“Time and time again, as we went past every store, all the workers were coming out and saying ‘you have to stop this tax’,” he said.

Read on. There are hints of the American Revolution there. With any luck, sure, things are going to get worse, but when they get better, we’ll be in a position of unprecedented strength.

Oh, and who was invited but didn’t attend? That’d be treasurer Wayne Swan.

Typical of a government that will neither listen nor be listened to.

The polls — 58 to 42 and a staggering 27% primary vote — are disastrous, and Labor has lost its base, the tradies.

There are surely some Labor MPs going apoplectic behind closed doors about this. Will, say, Martin Ferguson finally take a stand along with the rest of Australia?

Cory Bernadi:

To put it bluntly, the Gillard government has run out of your money to spend. They have raised the nation’s debt ceiling twice already and have borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars to pursue their wasteful programs. Even the socialist left faction of the Labor Party (of which Gillard is a member) knows that this cannot be allowed to continue. Left unchecked, national debt can bankrupt a nation or destroy a national currency within a very short time frame.

The good news?

Ironically almost, coal is up today… Big Time.

H/T Tim Blair

UPDATE

Via tweeter Joe Qld:

Support for the #carbontax has plummeted to 35 per cent, to 53 against – the widest gap yet measured.

Nice try, treasurer. Expats beware: Govt. wants to “acquire” your Superannuation

I’ve been an expat for around five years now.

MORE than $13 billion in inactive or lost superannuation accounts is about to be taken by the Government unless the owners claim them.

Laws introduced last year by the Federal Government mean that, from this month, funds in inactive super accounts can be transferred into consolidated revenue. It is estimated that the government will fill its coffers with about $10 billion from these accounts in the next five years.

Essentially, a desperate Wayne Swan is trying to steal my Aussie superannuation which is a considerable amount.

Here’s the trick: Is my account “active”? i.e. Have there been employee or personal contributions over the last five years? If not, Swan swipes my stash.

Well, Swannie, here’s to squashing your swipe.*

Nice try, Duck.

BTW, Wayne, the idea of superannuation is that money I, an Australian citizen, have earned and put in Super is protected.

You utter dog!

*Account fixed… but only just in time.

Wayne didn’t swan to victory, either

Deputy PM, #2, the ALP’s Wayne Swan did not win the primary vote in his (and my) electorate of Lilley. He got in on Green preferences. Nor did he win the 2PP vote there, either.

In fact he suffered more than a 10% swing.

This is leverage that neither any right-leaning citizen nor even Swan himself (or Labor) would want. No wonder he looked so sheepish the other day.

Stocks in popcorn companies should rise.