Hi Aidan,

Rephrase my above post to; "I have a mate dada dada dada..." problem solved. I thought the "I have a mate" nonsense had been done to death by a bunch of Forumites who are "No mates Nigel's"... who we know have no mates.

The problem with government spending is political as well as economic. The Coalition locked us into their mantra of personal income tax cuts, and woe betide the Labor government should they renege on that, although economics would say absolutely to do so. Cut expenditure, but where, cut aged welfare by 25%, save $30 billion dollars, but politically Australians wont support that. Introduce user pay schemes in health, education, etc, again political dynamite. Oh yes cut war expenditure, attacking the conservatives 'Sacred Cow' Dutton would be doing somersaults on the floor of parliament, Murdoch and the commercials would be having a field day. How should fiscal policy change?

Paul,
The obvious solution is a postal survey to give them a mandate to do the economically responsible thing.

In the longer term, Australia should use fiscal policy more like the way monetary policy has been used the past thirty years.

Hi Aidan,

Totally agree, the question; "Do you agree that the Federal Government should be more responsible on spending taxpayer money?
(Or some such question). The votes in and 99% agree. Albo says; "That great, now cut Aged Pensions by 25% and save $30 billion...I have a new mandate for that...Wow!" The pensioner lobby are up in arms, Fred Ziffle the spokesman for the newly formed "Pensioner Action", appears on the 6 o'clock News with; "There will be blood in the streets, my members are angry. We voted for responsible government spending, not cutting Aged pensions, CUT THOSE DOLE BLUDGERS OFF INSTEAD!"

I'm being flippant there, but I think you get the drift, its like prisons, lot of people want to see more people in prison, but not in their backyard, somewhere else.

Paul,

It's just more of your BS. The incompetent Labor idiots can do a lot to reduce Labor's $1 trillion debt that does not involve cutting the existing funds you suggested.

Labor's wasteful spending is already reaching record levels. This is boosting inflation and as a result the interest rates.

SM,

You lack all credibility when you spruik the lie "Labor's trillion dollar debt" I know it, you know it, everyone knows it, the irresponsible Morrison government racked up more wasteful debt than all the previous governments since federation. So lay off your lies. Not satisfied with dishing out the dosh to the big end of town, for example $12 million for the mega rich Gerry Harvey, they locked in a massive tax cut for good old Gerry as well. What is it, maybe Gerry looking after ScumO' and Friedbrain with free TV's and computers, a free lounge or two. Given the huge amount of Coalition corruption uncovered I wouldn't doubt it.

TTBN's closing comment:
'Shades of the "Workers’ Paradise" that drove previous Leftists to fiddle with the market and dispense with entrepreneurial individuals and private enterprise, replacing them incompetent bureaucrats and Government.'
Set up a false dichotomy. It is this dichotomy that was exploited by Thatcher and Reagan and has since been embraced by virtually all shades of politics. A perversity lies at the core of neoliberalism; whilst market fundamentalism actively produces, and depends upon, the existence of, social and spatial inequalities in wealth and income, neoliberal philosophy promotes the view that it is both morally wrong and technically unnecessary for governments to seek to intervene to remediate these inequalities. The result is a damaging and incredulous cycle of market liberalisation followed by growing inequalities followed by the preferred panacea—more aggressive neoliberalism.
This government's aim is to encourage entrepreneurship and private enterprise but rejects an economic system that increases inequality. One possibility is a property owning democracy based on some form of distributive justice. There is lots of work being done in that space.