Page 1997 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 15 May 2013
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I was just getting into my stride when I declared that Labor’s core purpose was, ‘To share the tremendous benefits of the mining boom’.
We were going to do this with a company tax cut starting from July 1 this year but I cancelled that in last year’s Budget. Also, we were going to restore the Liberals’ contribution levels for superannuation but I postponed that in last year’s Budget. And last year I said we would give $1.8 billion to families in more generous payments from July 1 this year. But I’m cancelling that in this year’s Budget. That’s the thing about my Budgets. I do take up a lot of time cancelling what I’ve announced before.
Anyway, there are only so many billion-dollar packages that you can fund out of a tax that raises $126 million. That Resources Super Profits Tax (RSPT) has shown me no R-E-S-P-E-C-T. When I announced it, I said it would raise $9 billion in the forthcoming year—whoops! I had high hopes for that tax. I called it ‘the greatest economic change in our lifetime’. Of course I had no idea what I was saying but the Liberals are always going on about GST, which raises $50 billion per year, so I thought I had better lodge my nomination for the greatest tax ‘reform’ ever.
Last year, I came home with a wet sail declaring, ‘The deficit years are behind us. The surplus years are here’.
Looks like I got the words the wrong way around. I should have said that the surpluses were behind us and the deficit years are here. But I did so want to balance one Budget before losing office.
I’ve been thinking about who to blame. For the first few Budgets I blamed the financial crisis. But that was five years ago and we’ve been through a mining boom since then.
Currently I’m blaming the high dollar, although someone in the Treasury told me last year’s Budget forecasts were based on the dollar being just where it is. I’m desperate that people don’t think it’s my overspending because that is something I could have controlled. So we’ve been on a media blitz recently to say it’s an unexpected revenue shortfall.
In April, I said the revenue was down $7.5 billion. A week later Julia said it was down $12 billion. Then Penny went out last week to say it was down $17 billion. I leaked out a Treasury briefing on the weekend to say we were $26 billion down. How do you reconcile all these figures?
Well, it beats me and I hope it beats all of you because that is the whole point—to try to cloud the issue.
AT LEAST no one in the press ever asks me to explain what these forecasts are ‘down’ against. Because the truth is they are down on the false forecasts I made last year. Get it? I am not the victim of these downgrades, I am the culprit. Every time I downgrade, it just illustrates again how … wrong I got it last year.
I know we can always rely on the ABC, but the thing that amazes me about those other guys in the press is they keep writing what I say—as if that is going to happen … How many times do you have to get it wrong before they start to see there is a pattern?
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