Henry Ergas is in really bad form.
Firstly Ross Gittins was mostly right. The main culprits behind the structural deficit at present was the Howard Government and their removal of the petrol excise and the reductions in income tax in the expectation company tax would more than make up for it. (see here) The ALP have culpability as they did not criticise these stupid policy moves and then added to them when in Government.
Moreover you have to take into the circumstances of spending . Under Howard and a strongly growing economy it merely added to inflationary pressures as we saw and thus interest rates had to rise up significantly.
The ALP had to contend with the GFC. You do not remove a stimulus too quickly otherwise you get the economy slowing. Interest rates did not move up when the ALP was in power because of inflationary pressures or potential so the charge of profligate spending is without foundation
Moreover the last full Swan budget was the most austere budget this generation has ever seen.This was a budget Ergas has been calling out for all the time. did he applaud it or even acknowledge this. No! Maybe he thought it was expansionary like his two ignorant colleagues Davidson and Samuel J!!
It is amazing what information our Enry can leave out.. He doesn't want to know the facts. He just wants to distort information to fit in with his ideology.
Another person is well known for doing this in history. He went by the name of Goebbels.
No wonder his nose gets larger ever time he writes!
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