Stimulus Good & Bad
Australia has been through economic and health crises and been blessed to have had the great leadership of the Federation, Sydney Improvement, World Wars and GFC generations. We didn’t do so well during the Great Depression; and we’re having real worries now with varying governmental abilities and difficulties to
- repair what we’ve done badly, holding us back – as well as
- do better.
In particular, the PM, Deputy PM and Treasurer are sweeping scorpions under the mat, for someone else to tread on – which is appalling non-leadership right now and for future generations. As with the health system not being ready for a disaster, serious warning signs of collapses in infrastructure projects are being ignored by officials who care not about community as much as their masters’ regard.
Economic policy-making and infrastructure projects and pipelines have seen a lot of controversy in the last 5 years in particular. Something changed for the worse and it was not inherent complexity or uncertainty. Politicians have always relied on sound, intelligent and generally well-educated professional public servants; and the community expected the same qualities in journalism. Neither can be sanguine about the results.
The media regularly carry criticisms of the PM’s statements and actions and this will get worse, fast. Consider ~
- The NSW Government’s “Baird business model’ failed for predicted reasons and Premier Berejiklian is psychotically pursuing more and more debt, thereby prejudicing education, health and other priorities, as revealed in the 2017 Treasury Intergenerational Report, which Berejiklian and Perrottet either did not know about or hoped no one would notice. The SMH’s comment on the revised one gushed with naïve churnalistic rubbish
- The two biggest infrastructure projects in the land, WestConnex and the Sydney Metro, have such profound design defects that there is a significant risk that future generations will have to close them, for reconstruction, at massive cost. Morrison has rejected this analyst’s “re-planning template”, reflecting fused psychologies in big things as well as small. The plague of congestion and unaffordability is being fanned by this stupidity
- The 2019 Budget predicted a surplus of $7.1 billion but that was down-rated to $5 billion by the time of MYEFO – a reduction of 29.6%
- That Budget anticipated a four-year total surplus of $45 billion but by MYEFO – well before the Coronavirus – that fell by 47.8% to $23.5 billion. That’s about 10% a month!
- The third Stimulus is being implemented on a very different basis to the first but again without compensation for plagiarism. $66 or $100 billion or whatever at the sunset of a day that started with $17.6 billion
- Sure that’s Coronavirus which is really serious – but the dramatic change in tone from the three episodes related to forensic deconstruction of the “$100 billion over 10 years” mirage, that was stamped “passed” by the Governor of the Reserve Bank, who had been similarly deconstructed in such matters over 6 years
- The Morrison Government tangled itself in pork-barrelling through three grants-cum-gifting scandals which it has not repaired. The underlying secretive and insular processes continue, with breaches of ethics and fairness, the non-independent Gaetjens report is still secret, and the Budget cost is higher than provided for but we don’t know by how much
- Morrison, Frydenberg and the Tin Soldiers have denied the essence of the Charter of Budget Honesty and unduly restricted “budget repair” to patching-up revenue streams and retro-justifying otherwise-illicit gifting. At a time when “re-planning” is an urgent necessity, a professional proposal to solve many problems at once has been ignored.
The corruption of due diligence and the collapse of engineering in Sydney projects means that a more fundamental repair is needed, but Frydenberg rejected that case in 2018 and 2019. It seems he must be forced to correct his attitudes.. Consider these words from Barry O’Farrell and wonder how much better we’d be doing if Morrison, Frydenberg and Premiers observed them:
- I am determined that our new infrastructure and transport bodies, along with a modern planning system, will make decisions based on evidence and expertise ….
- We need to have an open door to the ideas of the private and non-government sectors, with ministers and public servants eager to explore how to deliver better services ….
- I want citizens to be able to trust our public institutions ….
- I want a NSW Liberals & Nationals Government to be unafraid to run a ruler over its own performance at any level and welcome the results - good or not so good….
A wise American journalist has concluded, about a context that we know well - including the complete disconnect between infrastructure planning and intergenerational equity - that
It is now widely understood that famines arise from local political failures in the trade and distribution of abundant global food supplies, not from local crop failures. And floods devastate communities not because the local rivers are unusually watery but because poor zoning and subsidised flood insurance encourage people to build their homes on floodplains. Those same politicians already have made decisions that may seal a country’s coronavirus fate, and it won’t have anything to do with quarantines or restrictions on travel or large gatherings. Rather, the important choices may have already come in the guise of technocratic health spending and investment decisions that were made largely out of public view over many years.
No one trusted NSW’s Premier Carr’s and après-Carr Labor Governments’ series of repeated and broken promises in the 2000s. Barry O’Farrell promised to end the “stench” of a planning non-system that produced the “fiasco” of the CBD and other Metros. He also promised to return planning control to communities. The most profound undertaking was to clean up NSW. Cynicism would be turned into enthusiasm. Promises were going to be kept. All citizens would be heard.
Nope: all such principles were thrown overboard and the long-understood “NSW disease” morphed into Bairdijiklian Malenomics but not just in NSW – it infected Canberra. There have been too many adverse consequences already. The Nats are unravelling – the revelation of Minister McCormack’s failure to deliver on regional road promises from the previous Budget “stimulus” falsity, the crying over righteous bushfire criticisms with the bush in deep crisis and anger, and the Betrayal of Tim Fischer, make him a top dummy, but as the journalists have noticed, that is the main quality in the Deputy PM that Morrison needs.
Two quotes will set a context that journalists have otherwise largely missed. In Oct ’16 Professor Judith Sloan showed sympathy for generalist Ministers who face complex policy debates:
There was a time governments received advice that was well-researched and reasoned on a broad range of policy topics from outside government. There was a large number of university-based research centres and high-profile academics who were involved in policy debates. These days, most academic economists …(just) publish in prestigious international journals and keep their heads down. We are worse off for the competition of ideas being so much weaker.
Recently, Jacqueline Maley wrote that
You might say our petty domestic scandals should be put aside now we are facing a major health and economic crisis that no one can know the end of. But if we can’t trust our politicians to respect the conventions of fairness and transparency in ordinary times, imagine what they will be able to get away with under the cover of an all-engulfing crisis.
My websites systematically and specifically dissect these aspects in respect of Sydney’s planning crises, and provide solutions.
No journalist has been prepared to publish the insights, including that grossest of ethical breaches, plagiarism.
This pamphlet is based on the forthcoming FRUITS OF SYDNEY’S POISONED VINE - Frydenberg’s “Budget Repair” Death Spiral 2020 – 2050+ (volume 1 of the “Save Sydney Suite)