The Australian 2020 Budget abandoned "stimulus" so completely the Government intends to back out of recovery pretty well all together. Its Treasury head has had his Wiki page edited so as to excise his NSW wreckage!
The abandonment of childcare showed the Government still refuses to understand stimulus, productivity and "better options", in that case, he created undue expectations as his advisors do not understand microeconomics and he would not accept mine. The continued rejection of all high-employment industries including food and accommodation, arts and recreation, education, and my medicine/economics template has malice as the central tenet.
The PM's description of women as a minority showed that the malice is broadly-based.
Some conclusions from the review follow, which will be posted in detail, but again there are no critical issues matrices, SWOT's or outcome-based PI tables. Financial ratios can disguise the underlying failures:
- the Budget topples over under the dead weight of waste, missed targets, capricious mistakes, corrupted gifting, theft of IP & refusal to follow Charter of Budget Honesty.
- Remarkable what was achieved: UN-STIMULUS, which are hurdles for Mathias on his way to Paris (?)
- Government and media failed to address the "budget repair" analyses of 2018 and 2019*
- They also failed to address the risks & threats put up by OECD, every one of which is evident:
- Coordination across levels of government is difficult, increasing the risk of wasted resources
- Uncertainty of revenue flows and sources can erode confidence in a project’s affordability
- Unstable regulatory frameworks can prevent long-term decisions
- A lack of systematic data collection on performance undermines evidence-based decision-making
- Governance challenges are diverse and occur all through the policy cycle
- Designing a strategic vision is crucial but difficult
- Infrastructure projects are vulnerable to corruption, capture and mismanagement
- Political dynamics may undermine sound decision making when identifying priority projects
- Consultation is less common in setting an overall vision or prioritising investments
- Lack of disclosure of data on contracts reinforces concerns about fraud and lack of transparency
OECD has covered stimulus and recovery in the Survey but I go further back into their governance studies including the interference of vested interests. The crisis is surging. Finance Minister Mathias Cormann is making it worse at a time he hopes to waltz into OECD's top job.
These are short conclusions:
- Dysfunctional lack of clarity between stimulus, investment, repair and integration, I have traced the elements of De-stimulus which relate to such confusion eg changes in education budgets and rejection of childcare and SME support
- Governance disintegration which includes the domination of political serfs and conflicted interests, and a lack of resilience planning such as with bushfires but also Corona, the examples are literally incredible, but add vicious Trump-like anti-women and anti-climate prejudices.These are disintegrative if there is such a word
- Rejection of my significant paper on integrating medicine and economic stability as Corona moves through its evolution. The community understands the risks but the dominant political clique does not
- The powerhouse states are seeing their revenue prospects fall away but are not cutting back on wasteful expenditure, NSW in particular is on a literally lunatic path
- Lack of economic nous in the media and the alienation of university economists
* specifically:
the coming Budget (then it was MYEFO) would contain a line item along the lines of “iA strategic positioning of infrastructure, population, employment and health” directions and budgets, incorporating a sum for acquisition of Intellectual Property which would see me devoting support to practical achievement. It would retrospectively authorise the imminent signing (i.e. by end June) of the contract in the normal spirit of MYEFO.
This graphic is a summary of strategic issues which materially affect Australia's economic future. The full budget report contains details of chronologies, project analyses based on breaches of Budget protocols, options that arguably better fit proper criteria, and governance recommendations that better meet OECD & other guidelines, especially as it now seems the PM actively conspired with the NSW Premier and Queensland Lib Leader to reverse National Cabinet decisions on border controls - the baby and the bathwater have gone and it's time to notice that.