DOLLARS BUT NO SENSE

THEO Theophanous made sense about supporting the Teal independents. What stood out most is that while Coalition politicians like to paint themselves as the better economic managers, the PM “avoids talking about the $1 trillion of debt or budget deficits that are projected” (“Teals disrupt the Liberal heartland”, CP 29/4).

But there’s more to it than that. Data from the Australian Office of Financial Management shows that government debt doubled after the Coalition won government and before the pandemic.

The Treasurer paid $40bn of JobKeeper money to organisations that were not eligible to qualify and he did not build in a claw-back mechanism.

The Coalition has also set weak emissions targets and Deloitte Access Economics calculated that climate “mis-action leads to economic losses of $1.1 trillion in present value terms by 2050 – or 3.6 per cent of GDP by 2050”.

The Coalition likes us to believe they are the best managers of the economy and that we can avoid climate action with a three word slogan. The facts suggest otherwise.

John Shute, Edge Hill