While I was following the coverage of the federal budget this evening, I made a few notes, most of which were published to Twitter. What follows is adapted from those notes.
- Rather than all of these spending programs, Wayne Swan would be better off delivering a corporate tax cut as the benefits would reach everyone through lower running costs for businesses creating lower prices through competition, plus increased business profit, and higher tax revenue as a result of the increased economic activity. Instead, Wayne is giving some people money directly, money which is being confiscated from many individuals and businesses through taxes. This creates the likelihood of price rises and inflation.
- Wayne Swan claimed that he tried to get a business tax cut through the parliament, but was blocked. This is only partially true. The government tried to tie other tax increases to the business tax cuts, making the package unacceptable and therefore unpassable.
- On the topic of the surplus, it really is a budgetary trick. The proof of that is twofold:
- Some spending was shifted forward from 2012/2013 to 2011/2012. This make the deficit for this financial year higher than expected, while allowing next year’s bottom line to look healthier. Without this trick, 2012/2013 would probably be a deficit. The really interesting thing about this trick is that, if performed in business, it's called fraud.
- When a government is in debt and they have a surplus, they reduce their debt, or at least that’s what normally happens. To the same extent, when you have less debt, you generally have to pay less interest. So, what is to be made of the government’s forecasted interest payments? 2012/2013: $7 billion. 2013/2014: $6.8 billion. 2014/2015: $7 billion. 2015/2016: $8.2 billion. Interest payments are going back up by a significant amount, so debt will be going up too. Wayne Swan’s statement that “the surplus years are here” seems like a prediction of a shortlived period of time.
- The Defence cuts seem unwise when there is so much economic and political turmoil in the world, and terrorist threats still being uncovered on a regular basis. We should be keeping a strong defence force.
- As expected, the carbon tax’s cost on people appears to fall short of the compensation payments by a very long margin…not to mention that the problem with a “tax and compensate” scheme is that it is rebranded “tax and spend” socialism, with all the problems that brings
- Oddly, the Bureau of Meteorology is being given $300,000 to trial advertising on their website. This has to be the only time in history when selling advertising space has lost money rather than made money. It makes no sense. On what is this money really going to be spent?
- Wayne Swan muttered something about funding for the government's electronic health records scheme. I would like to know if this is an optional or mandatory scheme? I'm quite happy with my paper records NOT being on a government database. I can see how this could benefit some people, but I’m quite capable of having my medical records released to whomever needs them without the government doing it for me, and I would like to keep it that way. And if we’re digitising existing records, I pity the poor clerk who has to decipher my doctor’s handwriting, and I pity the patients who suffer as a result of errors in the deciphering of their records.
- More one-off payments in this budget. How many times can you make “one-off” payments before they’re no longer “one-off”? As long as they’re on different budgets, forever it seems.
- One thing I did like, subsidies for “green” buildings have been slashed. Pity the carbon and mining taxes weren’t slashed too.
- Away from actual budget issues, Wayne Swan repeatedly addressed the acting speaker Anna Burke as 'Mr Speaker' at the start of his speech. It took him a while to recognise the error and to start addressing her as “Madam Deputy Speaker” and variants thereof. Was it in written in his speech, or does Anna Burke look like Peter Slipper to Wayne?
- I was watching ABC News 24′s coverage with the sound muted, while listening to the excellent coverage of 2GB with Ross Greenwood. I noticed that during Wayne Swan’s speech, the ABC only displayed tweets which contained a positive opinion of the budget. After the budget the majority of displayed tweets were positive, but some critical tweets were displayed. Interestingly, the critical tweets were rushed through quickly, with most being given barely enough time on-screen to be read in full, whereas the positive tweets lingered on the screen for ages. Green Party people Adam Bandt and Christine Milne were also given lots of air time with their tweets. Twitter was much more evenly divided than the ABC would have you believe.
- There are some interesting claims about the government allowing some TV stations and ABC radio to report select details of the budget from 5pm, which for everyone else were details which were embargoed until Wayne Swan’s speech at 7:30. This was apparently done so that the ongoing Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper sagas would not get as much airtime in the pre-budget news bulletins, so as to not distract from the government’s message. Leaks are nothing new as they happen every year, but allowing embargoed details to be reported early as a distraction from scandals, well that’s a new one.
As you can tell, I’m not impressed by the budget, but it is at least roughly what I expected. I am concerned about the economic consequences though, and I fear that it may take quite some time for future governments to undo the damage being done by this government…and this budget is just one part of the mess.
Samuel
May 9th, 2012 at 12:39am
This is a graph of the number of people in the US who are in the labor force…that is, working or looking for work.
(image credit: Heritage Foundation)
When people drop out, they are not counted as unemployed, hence the reason the number of people out of work has soared, but the official unemployment rate has not.
Notice too that the big decline started after Obama took office, not before as his reelection campaign would have you believe.
Official statistics can be manipulated in so many ways, and official unemployment seems to be one of the favourites of governments.
Samuel
May 8th, 2012 at 07:34am
An email to 2GB’s Andrew Moore
Good morning Andrew,
I see that Wayne Swan is reportedly going to start handing out more so-called “one-off payments” after tonight’s budget.
I remember when the federal government was not in debt and claimed that the best way to stimulate the economy was to plunge the government in to debt by sending everyone a one-off $900 cheque, along with the various other spending debacles like the pink bats, school shade cloths and overpriced digital set top boxes. It didn’t help…the Australian economy is worse now than it was in 2009, mostly due to the government’s actions.
Now the government is in serious amounts of debt, and Wayne Swan promises a surplus which might make the surplus smaller, except for the fact that most, if not all, of the surplus comes from budget tricks rather than actual savings. But instead of doing the responsible thing and paying off as much of the debt as is feasible, he wants to hand out more one-off cheques…he must sense an election coming soon.
It just proves that these payments, like the stimulus payments, had nothing to do with responsible economic management, and everything to do with bribing voters to overlook serious incompetence in the government. I’ll tell you right now Andrew, the man who once told Alan Jones that “traffic jams cause inflation” will not be the Treasurer once the people have had their say at the ballot box, no matter how much money he borrows to bribe the voters.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
May 8th, 2012 at 03:56am
This round seems to have been sparked by 2GB doing the almost unthinkable, dumping their consistently top-rating night time host Brian Wilshire, and replacing him with Steve Price, whom Macquarie Radio (owners of 2GB) still have under a five-year contract from his time at the helm of their now-abandoned foray in to the Melbourne market, MTR 1377.
This alters 2GB’s lineup a bit more than a simple replacement would. Steve Price is taking over the 8pm-midnight timeslot, which means he is replacing the Alan Jones & Ray Hadley highlights hour which was airing at 8pm, The Super Show with Peter Switzer which was airing at 9pm, and some of Brian Wilshire’s timeslot which most recently started at 10pm. Overnights will return to starting at the old start time of midnight, although it is entirely unclear who will be hosting that as the original story was that Brian Wilshire was to be given that timeslot, however he is going away for three months to write a book, so it’s entirely possible that Michael McLaren will return to the overnight show when he returns from annual leave in a week or two.
That said, I was told late last year that 2GB had plans to replace Brian Wilshire with former 2UE afternoon presenter Michael Smith. It hasn’t happened and I have seen no further evidence of it, but anything is possible at this point in time.
Regardless of what happens to the overnight show, Steve Price has announced that Andrew Bolt, who co-hosted the 8am hour of the breakfast show on MTR 1377, will be joining Steve during the 8pm hour of the 2GB show. Andrew is also on a long-term contract with Macquarie Radio thanks to the MTR venture.
It has been reported in Melbourne’s Herald Sun that the other big MTR contract, that of Steve Vizard, has been paid out as a lump sum.
Meanwhile at 2UE, it seems that despite recent improvements in 2UE’s night-time ratings on the back of Mike Jeffreys hosting the show, they have decided that they need to shuffle their presenters if they are to make in-roads from the absence of the Brian Wilshire ratings powerhouse. Honestly, I don’t understand this logic, as any change brings an element of risk. Mike Jeffreys is a well-performing established brand in the timeslot, and I would have thought that having him maintain his existing audience, while capturing a few people who have been put off by Brian Wilshire’s departure, in conjunction with Mike’s existing audience growth, would have been a sufficient strategy…but nothing that makes sense to me ever seems to make sense to The Powers That Be at 2UE.
2UE are moving morning presenter David Oldfield, who has held on to a fairly stable audience, to the night timeslot of 8pm-midnight. The strategy, presumably, is that David is familiar to 2GB’s audience, having rated quite well when he was hosting 2GB’s overnight show a couple years back, and that he is more likely to attract the Brian Wilshire audience than Mike Jeffreys is. 2UE also had planned to move Mike Jeffreys back to his former timeslot of midnight to dawn, replacing Tim Shaw, however this is now up in the air as Mike Jeffreys has decided to take two weeks off to “decide his future”.
David Oldfield’s morning slot is to be taken over by Stuart Bocking “until further notice”, whatever that might mean. Stuart has recently hosted nights for a number of years, before moving to afternoons to replace Michael Smith last year, and most recently weekend afternoons after The Two Murrays replaced him in the afternoon and Tim Webster took on a weekday evening role in the revived Sports Today program. There is no word on who will replace Stuart on the weekend until the “further notice” happens, but my money is on Clinton Maynard, who did the job for a couple weeks when Tim Webster was transitioning to Sports Today.
Confused yet? To clarify, here’s what the weekday lineups looked like a couple weeks ago:
12:00am-01:00am: 2UE Tim Shaw. 2GB Brian Wilshire.
01:00am-03:30am: 2UE Tim Shaw. 2GB Michael McLaren.
03:30am-05:00am: 2UE Tim Shaw. 2GB Andrew Moore/Luke Bona.
05:00am-05:30am: 2UE Tim Shaw. 2GB Alan Jones highlights.
05:30am-09:00am: 2UE Jason Morrison. 2GB Alan Jones.
09:00am-12:00pm: 2UE David Oldfield. 2GB Ray Hadley.
12:00pm-03:00pm: 2UE The Two Murrays. 2GB Chris Smith.
03:00pm-06:00pm: 2UE Paul Murray. 2GB Ben Fordham.
06:00pm-08:00pm: 2UE Sports Today. 2GB Money News w/ Ross Greenwood.
08:00pm-09:00pm: 2UE Mike Jeffreys. 2GB Alan Jones/Ray Hadley highlights.
09:00pm-10:00pm: 2UE Mike Jeffreys. 2GB Supperannuation w/ Peter Switzer.
10:00pm-12:00am: 2UE Mike Jeffreys. 2GB Brian Wilshire.
And the new lineups, with changes in bold.
12:00am-03:30am: 2UE Tim Shaw (but for how long?). 2GB Unknown.
03:30am-05:00am: 2UE Tim Shaw (but for how long?). 2GB Andrew Moore/Luke Bona.
05:00am-05:30am: 2UE Tim Shaw (but for how long?). 2GB Alan Jones highlights.
05:30am-09:00am: 2UE Jason Morrison. 2GB Alan Jones.
09:00am-12:00pm: 2UE Stuart Bocking (until further notice). 2GB Ray Hadley.
12:00pm-03:00pm: 2UE The Two Murrays. 2GB Chris Smith.
03:00pm-06:00pm: 2UE Paul Murray. 2GB Ben Fordham.
06:00pm-08:00pm: 2UE Sports Today. 2GB Money News w/ Ross Greenwood.
08:00pm-12:00am: 2UE David Oldfield. 2GB Steve Price.
It is probably worth noting that Peter Switzer has not been dumped by 2GB. He will stay on, providing finance reports during the Steve Price show, and will continue to fill-in for Ross Greenwood from time-to-time.
One does have to wonder what the network affiliates make of all of this. 2UE lost almost all of their morning show affiliates to Ray Hadley during the time that Steve Price, and later Steve Liebmann, hosted the show. I believe, but can’t confirm, that they only have two left, which is far cry from the 70 or so they had when John Laws hosted the morning show. One of the remaining stations is 2WEB in Bourke, and I could be certain that David mentioned another at the start of each show, but its name escapes me right now, and Google is not helping. Affiliates of David Oldfield have been lumped with yet another change of host and style as Stuart Bocking is a very different host to David.
I don’t think 2UE have any afternoon show affiliates left. Michael Smith had a couple (probably the same ones as David Oldfield), but the afternoon show isn’t even listed on Fairfax Radio Syndication’s website any more. Afternoon affiliates have either joined Chris Smith on 2GB or gone to local programming.
Then there’s the evening and overnight shows, which have seen even more changes of late. Affiliates of these shows seems to be sticking with it and in fact I see that 2ST Nowra is half way through updating their website for the overnight changes as I write this. It would seem that these affiliates are happy to take whatever 2UE give them as Mike Jeffreys mentioned that 2GB have been trying to poach affiliates for the new Steve Price show, but so far nobody has been in the least bit interested, which I find interesting as Macquarie Radio tend to undercut Fairfax on program fees by offering the shows with the proviso that the affiliates have to air some network advertising. I suppose when you’re already receiving Fairfax news overnight as part of the fee for the overnight programming, and your general break format is already configured in your automation, there is more to consider than merely which shows costs less or which host is better.
The one which really intrigues me is what 2AY will do now. 2AY have been taking the Alan Jones and Ray Hadley highlights hour from 2GB at 8pm. That show doesn’t exist any more. Will they replay the Alan Jones Hour at 8pm (surely not, seeing as they already air it at midday), air an hour of Steve Price (back when Steve Price was on 2UE Mornings, 2AY used to air an hour of his show on delay at midday), or just expand their nightly music show?
These are certainly interesting times in Sydney radio and beyond.
Samuel
April 28th, 2012 at 03:06am
