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Promises to rein in spending rarely last an election cycle, writes Richard Allsop.
'This sort of reckless spending must stop!' That was Kevin Rudd at Labor's 2007 campaign launch. But the spending did not stop.
The reckless promises may have stopped for the remaining ten days of the campaign but, with the GFC as a pretext, the Rudd Government embarked on one of the biggest public sector spending sprees in the nation's history. The sheer incompetence of much of the spending-pink bats that burn down houses and new school canteens too small to install a pie warmer-has not done much for the credibility of large government programs.
The Rudd-Gillard spending has attracted two main critiques, both of which go to what one might call the practicalities of the particular spending. In the first critique, it is argued (in part by Labor themselves) that it was good to spend lots of money in theory but, due to particular examples of incompetence, the practice did not work out. The major critique (largely the Coalition position) adds to the incompetence argument by also querying the economics of the spending. This argues that the spending, even if it had been spent more competently, was an overreaction to the GFC, and the debt generated has created more harm than any good delivered by the spending.
In some ways, we should count our blessings that in Australia these two critiques are viable. There is a general acceptance that government spending should at least match the aims of government programs and there are even bodies like auditor generals' offices to try to judge whether this has happened. Further, the Whitlam experience seared into the brains of the majority of the body politic that balancing the books is important and being seen to be able to do this is the most basic indicator of government competence.
Hence, when Prime Minister Gillard spoke at the National Press Club two days before calling the election, she confirmed that Labor was committed to returning the budget to surplus by 2013 and said that ?once the budget returns to surplus, we will still maintain...