This is insane:
The Coalition will go the next election with budget and off-budget savings of close to $100bn in a “back to basics” inflation-fighting agenda that will see a raft of Labor spending programs axed in a bid to arrest a structural decline of the government balance sheet.
The savings include the axing of the $10bn Housing Australia Future Fund, which Labor has pledged for the construction of 20,000 new social housing dwellings and 10,000 affordable homes over five years. No money has so far been spent under this fund, with the first round of $500m likely to be allocated this year.
The Opposition Leader has flagged the scrapping of the $20bn Rewiring the Nation program to build transmission lines to connect renewable energy projects to the grid, which it claims would not be necessary under its nuclear and renewables policy.
The $15bn National Reconstruction Fund, designed to provide loans and equity investment primarily for renewable and low emissions technologies, transport and medical sciences, would also be axed.
Mr Dutton has also flagged the Coalition’s plan to abolish the $22bn Future Made in Australia program, the bulk of which will be used for production tax credits for critical minerals sector and green hydrogen production.
I have no problem with the quantity of cuts.
With high building costs, the HAFF only serves to crowd out private dwelling investment so it can go.
Chop the NRF. It’s a slush fund for miners who don’t need the money.
Cut the MFA. It’s a disaster in the making, funnelling cash to rent-seekers.
But if you are going to cut all of that, then you need an alternative set of policies to drive down costs for industry and dwelling construction.
Only then will markets fill the economic void left by Albo’s former spending, and the tax take will rise instead of fall.
How does cutting the renewables boom off at the knees, having no gas policy worthy of the name, and vaguely gesturing at nuclear in 25 years deliver that?
It doesn’t.
Rather, this is a set of policies that means coal-fired power must continue amid energy permacrisis, endemic inflation, and industry’s end.
At this juncture, we have a choice between a fearful government that has embedded energy inflation.
And a corrupt opposition that aims to leave the nation with a failing coal resource that nobody wants to invest in.
For god’s sake, smash the gas cartel!
