Labor stacks up debts
SIR Leo Hilscher, Queensland’s longstanding partisan chief treasury boffin has blown the whistle on the train wreck that is heading our way – toxic debt!
Budget estimates is a wonderful opportunity to grill errant ministers and apply serious questions to government profligacy and direction.
Writing in The Australian ( 25/ 7), Queensland editor Michael McKenna headlined the spendthrift style of this Palaszczuk ALP Government which used its jobs, jobs, jobs mantra to stack, stack, stack the favoured public service with the annual wage submitted to taxpayers for 2018- 19 surging to $ 27.36 billion up $ 5.4 billion since Palaszczuk’s ascension.
The hiring of 26,400 FTE public servants since is a delirium of fiscality. This week the fiercely independent Sir Leo has waded in.
He bluntly warns bringing forward spending now is kicking the fiscal can down the road as a burden for future generations.
The moral imperative of intergenerational equity, the bequeathal of economic mobility, freedom for the generations that must follow us, is the Plimsoll line of good fiscal governance.
The Premier’s tired excuse of blaming Campbell Newman for cutting 14,000 public servants ( 7300 gleefully took generous redundancies) is oafish and disingenuous.
Palaszczuk governs in her own right, and lame, pathetic excuses won’t just rinse through the electorate anymore as urgent calls for a proper debt strategy ramps up.
During estimates, Premier Palaszczuk’s claims that 90 per cent of public service front line or front line support roles were quickly rebutted, as budget papers in June clearly demonstrated 40 per cent of public service jobs were not front line at all.
McKenna writes it also flagrantly breached a fiscal principle, introduced by this tricky government restricting overall growth in FTEs over forward estimates to population growth, with hiring of FTEs over three years up to 2018- 19 averaging 2.78 per cent – double the average population growth.
The political optics of this are patently obvious. With public service numbers soaring and subjected to a heavy union drive, the praetorian guards are ensconced inside the public service moat.
It means a near impossible job for an incoming, reformist government to sell a Razor Gang approach to voters as it cuts waste to a bloated unionised public service; all this colliding with spiralling debt.
Is there a politician of Keating ilk prepared to prosecute fervently the case for fiscal prudence reform, and sell to a sceptical electorate so used to five star living expectations?
The odds of this occurring can be backed at the Melbourne Cup winner Pirate of Penzance’s starting price of 100 to one – sad really.