When are we going to have a party that advocates the kind of budget changes that I would vote for?

When a government has to look at budget cuts the first item on the agenda should be politicians' salaries and expenses.

The next item should be foreign aid, on the basis that charity begins at home.

The next items should be the grandiose new projects that people won't miss because they have never had them.

If any further savings are needed they will have to come form welfare.

That wasn't hard! I've balanced the budget!

plerdsus,
My sentiments exactly. That last federal pollie pay rise was just so immoral. I still can't believe the australian people let them get away with it. It also put a serious dent in my support for the Coalition as they should have rejected it. same goes for all pollies.
That's why I'm hoping that perhaps Clive Palmer could get support if he froze all public service salaries & even drop them. Put in a non-military service & a flat tax & we'll be up & running again.

Individual, how about the 20-26 billion, we current shell out PA as middle class welfare?
Surely our generosity ought to be reserved strictly for need rather than, simple mindless greed.
The trouble with this Howard (aspirational) legacy, unethical vote buying largesse, is that people now believe they're entitled, even if that unearned and therefore undeserved entitlement, takes the bread from the mouths of babes!
A flat tax?
What about a single stand alone unavoidable expenditure tax, set at a painless 4.8%?
Collected in lieu of all the current convoluted complexity, inclusive of fuel excise and the ubiquitous cascading GST?
This simple single stand alone measure, would increase consolidated revenue by around 100 billion plus annually; as well as, end the need for compliance and the often onerous costs, which currently rip 7% averaged, from the average bottom line.
This increase in revenue, would allow us to increase our defence budget, to where it did look like genuine self reliance!
The simultaneous repeal of all other tax measures, (doable) would further improve the corporate bottom line by an average 30% and household disposals by around 25%.
Thereby making a compulsory non contributory 15% super immediately doable, as well as compulsory, or means tested, co payment, health/unemployment/disability insurance?
The states tax, the foregone GST, could be fully compensated for by the fed taking full funding responsibility for health, education, power and water, which could be managed by local boards/councils (regional autonomy)?
The modest profits generated by power and water reticulation, could conceivably cover more modest and far better contained, transparent, comparative, bench marked, best practise, admin/costs?
The icing on the much larger economic cake, would come if we simply used some of the extra revenue garnered for overdue nation building infrastructure roll-outs, like say, cheaper than coal carbon free, (publicly provided and profit generating) thorium power, (localised) and rapid rail.
Followed by say, an inland shipping canal, that could cut thousands of miles, (time and money) off our Asian trade routes!
Rhrosty.

PA as middle class welfare?
Rhrosty,
I thought that was what we call the Public Service Super funds. Welfare, I mean real welfare is nowhere near that figure judging by the poor sods who lose their income due to Labor incompetence.
As for your proposals re a shipping canal etc yeah, flood lake Eyre with water from North Qld & Bingo, you have an economy that's hard to slow down. Also, a Mono rail system like a spider web would do away with expensive & unviable road systems.
Ah and, Non-Military national service to get the confused off the dole & show them the real world out there. The potential is near limitless. It's only our authorities' vision that is limited.

When a government has to look at budget cuts the first item on the agenda should be politicians' salaries and expenses.

The next item should be foreign aid, on the basis that charity begins at home.

EXACTLY !! Actually I had to check the date of the 'Worlds best Treasurer' quote because I expected it to be the first of April. Would someone please advise me why we allow complete dropkicks like the dying duck (Andrew Fraser / Tim Nicholls / Peter Costello etc etc) access to hundreds of billions of taxpayer money ?? The method of choosing state & federal treasurers is unquestionably due for a major overhall. Nobody in their right mind would allow a totally unqualified deadbeat access to their finances, so why is the standard so low for state & federal treasurers ?? One of the major online newspapers ran a story on the budget deficit within the last day or two & invited readers to see if they could do better than the dying duck. For what its worth, I got the country into surplus with a few mouse-clicks and could have easily done much better if the system allowed more clicks than that necessary to get past the magic twelve billion dollar figure. Interestingly, many of the expense items I would have scrapped were not properly detailed eg handouts to has-been parasites, DRASTIC slashing of politicians entitlements, discontinuation of the 'lets support any & all yankee wars' protocol, scrapping of all overseas aid programs & support for all manner of insane causes.

Individual: Negative gearing,costs us over 5 billion per, for just this single measure.
Money better spent as tax breaks for volume builders of low cost/rent housing, which would also serve to boost the domestic economy, which by the way, serves us all!
We could save over 20 billion per, just by means testing all publicly supplied services, education and health.
Means testing public health would incentivate/oblige the better off, to buy health insurance; meaning, we could remove the rest of the, welfare for the better off, health insurance subsidy!
I don't see why the less well off ought to subsidise the mortgage/hire purchase payments made for MacMansions, or two beamers in a two car garage!
The current structural deficit, left unchanged, may leave us with little choice, but reapplying the top tax rate of 45 cents onto incomes above 62,000 per.
I'd rather increase the top rate to 65 cents, [I paid 68] onto personal incomes above 150,000, and ramped up until personal incomes above 1 million, were taxed at a top rate of 95 cents in the dollar.
This would ensure more of our money was reinvested in capital growth; our own people and their better ideas; and, allow us to raise the actual tax threshold to around 65-75,000?
This measure would also allow us to remove complex family tax returns A+B, the baby bonus, family school payments, money churning etc/etc.
I'm quite partial to your idea of a spider web of monorail links, which ideally, would connect to very rapid rail links, and very high traffic volume, moving walkways. Which if intelligently planned, could still be providing efficient service, a hundred years from now.
My shipping canal would link both gulfs and utilise Lake Eire, given it and much of central Australia is already below sea level, which would allow much of the building to be progressively undertaken with electrically powered dredges, which is far and away, the very cheapest way to move the earth.
It would have dual lanes/purposes, and serve as a ultra reliable source, of permanent water!
Rhrosty.