John Quiggin

Its been a notable feature of the Howard government that they often deliver policies in a complicated somewhat micro-managed way designed to ensure the political credit goes to the federal government. The net result has been the creation of an awful lot of extra paperwork. They have basically gone backwards on the issue of red tape despite alot of talk about how important it is to business.

Hi all, I’d like to post the latest press release from Larissa Waters, the Greens lead Senate candidate for Queensland. As follows;

Federal budget full of cheap tricks and greenwash.

Tuesday night’s federal budget shows the Coalition has its head in the sand on the key issues of climate change, household debt and education.

Costello’s budget is a box of cheap magic tricks.
The reality is that education is less funded than when the Coalition came to power, we are paying as much tax as we always were, and the environment is the poor cousin – despite climate change threatening our way of life and our children’s future.

This is a greenwash budget – the government wants to look as if they are environmentally aware, but the figures show their priorities lie with big business. For every dollar spent on climate change, there’s $10 spent on greenhouse gas producing activities. It’s telling that there’s $150 million per year for climate change compared with the $65 million for advertising WorkChoices.

Only 1 in every 500 homes will benefit from Costello’s solar rebate – the same rebate they were going to scrap completely until recently. The rebate has been increased to the same amount it used to be before it was halved, so there’s no new money. Labor wants to add to household debt by giving loans for solar panels. Neither of the old parties are being responsible about climate change, because they’re both beholden to the mining industry. Only the Greens support solar on every roof.

There’s nothing in this budget to stimulate the renewable energy sector or encourage energy efficiency. Costello is focussing on household energy use and ignoring the big energy wasters – there are no incentives or penalties for big business energy efficiency.

Fourteen dollars a week on tax cuts will in no way compensate for wages lost through scrapped overtime pay and public holiday pay under WorkChoices. What an insult to hand out fourteen dollars when families are facing the biggest ever household debt because of increasing food and petrol prices and huge mortgages.

This government gutted education funding when it first came to power 11 years ago. It has run down the education sector and now wants to ‘fix’ a problem of its own making for political points.
But the figures don’t stack up – education funding under this budget is just 1.6% of GDP, less than the 2% of GDP it was in 1996.

This budget does not tackle the real challenges in education. Most of the money is for infrastructure
- but what good is a new building when you have no staff to fill it? There is no money for more lecturers or teachers, nothing to address the ratio of teachers to students, and nothing to reduce the HECS and school fee burden.

Costello has also once again privileged the rich by removing the cap on full-fee paying students at university. This means you can buy your way into a course and potentially take the place of a student with better grades but no money for upfront fees.
The Greens policy is free education for all, as a crucial investment in our future.

The Coalition has once again proven it is a government for the 20th century, while the rest of us are looking to the future.

This HEEF is simply more Howard looking-like-something-is-happening while it is actually……..not.
As I heard it Howard is banking 5 Billion Dollars and making the interest available to Universties for capital works. So if this is the case then that means that nothing is gained for at least a year and when it does happen it will be a pale shadow (300 million dollars spread over all of Australia’s universities) of 5 billion dollars.

Read correctly the government has collected 5 billion dollars in cash from the Australian public (250 dollars for every man woman and child or 1000 dollars from a family of 4) and rather than provide public services to that value they are going to supply just 1/17 th of that amount after a year of interest earning accrual. This effectively parks the 5 billion dollars till after the coming election, whilst attempting to gain credit as though 5 billion dollars was now available to universties for developmment.

Bah Humbug I say!!! This Howard guy makes Scrooge look positively amateurish. My guess is that this is his nuclear development funds put aside till Westinghouse is ready to collect.

I have heard two things in the last 2 days:
1) The higher education budget was 0.9% of GDP when Howard came in and now, after the budget, it is 0.6%.
2) Education spending this year is a smaller share of total budget spending than it was last year.

And they are doing absolutely nothing about early childhood education which is what we need more than anything.

The Higher Education Endowment Fund is a little like the savings families are encouraged to start when their children are born, to pay for education costs. That is where the immediate appeal for the idea lies. However the full ramifications are still being discovered such as discussed in posts above.

That it was a wedge to lead to the takeover of the universities by the Commonwealth has come as a shock and that it is to be accompanied by a large increase in full fee paying students makes it look as if there could be many unintended or cunning consequences. How will the future benefit if universities are privatised?

There was no other significant education policy in the budget which shows that it is strictly for election purposes. There was nothing there for those who aren’t old enough to vote even though it was a budget supposedly targetting the future.

There is a group of students in a high school who today held a funeral for the Howard Government. This event was in a safe Liberal seat. Those children obviously don’t believe that the Howard government is looking after their educational future when most of them plan to go to university.

The Howard government costs us 34% more than Keating government. Numbers here:-

http://alsblog.wordpress.com/2007/05/10/howard-govt-costs-34-more-than-keating-govt/

John – following Rudd’s budget response speech last night, I presume you’ll now have a post about how the ALP is short on big ideas?

A poll taken in Bennelong a few days after the budget shows Howard losing his seat. So much for the ‘cute packaging’.