Asset backflip likely
O’REILLY’S Rainforest Retreat, a plethora of panorama and whispering silence, melts the hardest of hearts.
It would seem it has done just that to Queensland’s Treasurer given his waxing lyrical about his first defining Budget which he asserts will mirror the reformist zeal of the ALP Hawke- Keating- Peter Walsh era.
A caution, Peter Walsh, the doyen of Finance Ministers, nominated fiscal rectitude as the driver of good governance.
Curtis Pitt signals an increase in expenditure within a climate of declining revenues and no tax increases, while shirtfronting ballooning debt without asset sales. This no mean feat surely would have blushing faces among Treasury officials.
A clever union- led campaign – “No to Asset Sales” – catapulted this ALP into Government, highlighting the futility of the absolutism of contemporary politics.
Politicians engaging in scorched earth policy while in opposition to garner electoral favour, once elected, make a rod for their own back by having already ruled out sensible options to assuage the needs of an unforeseen economic downturn.
With royalties in free- fall coupled with meagre returns from GOC’s threatening the State’s bottom line, Mr Pitt’s Budget will make for an interesting read.
Deputy Premier “Captain” Jackie Trad has flagged some “responsible borrowing” to stimulate growth. Get ready for the backflip of Nadia Comaneci proportions in relation to asset sales by stealth.
It will be served up to an unsuspecting public by this Palaszczuk Government under the guise of “innovative approach”.
The Andrews Victorian ALP Government last week passed legislation in the lower house leasing the Port of Melbourne to private hands. This will pay for the removal of 50 of its worst level crossings, creating thousands of jobs and shoring up its AAA credit rating.
The irony is that the move is backed by the same unions and their members that were paid to come to Queensland to campaign against exactly this outcome.
The Jesuitical edict – admission is the first step to redemption – should be the enabler behind Mr Pitt’s budget papers.
If unchecked burgeoning debt is the panacea for the economic mobility of future generations, then “Greece” is the word? PETER SMITH, Rosslea.