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For budgets only smaller is tougher : Comments
By Mikayla Novak, published 10/5/2011Wayne Swan has dragged the coat of 'hard but kind' over the budget trail; can it put the blood hounds off the scent?
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- What you fail to realise, Julie, is that a large proportion of the so-called 'non-governmental charitable and benevolent services sector" relies upon federal government funding. Should we wind back government funding of these social programs too, on the mere basis that they are funded by taxpayers $$?
To be sure, we do need to make the delivery of government welfare programs more efficient. But the crux of the issue lay more with the inefficiencies inherent within welfare policy implementation (read: Centrelink's cumbersome and top-heavy bureaucracy) than individuals trying to dodge work opportunities/community participation. Moreover, your argument conveniently sidesteps the social implications of government cutbacks to welfare by fixating the focus on the assumed economic benefits of said cutbacks, presuming, with utter certainty, that welfare cutbacks will have prosperous economic outcomes. This ideologically ( econ-libertarian)-driven assumption blindly glosses over the complexities of the issue (such as the wide range of differences in terms of the opportunities available across regional labour markets)and encourages a one-size fits all approach to policy, that tends to have unintended consequences. Overall, a rather unoriginal and generic piece of libertarian advocacy Julie.