Mediaboss Marketing

I now understand through the budget, rather than any formal road map from the government (heaven forbid!) that this is likely to be extended for another year.

This is not something I am willing to endure, and am currently in the process of moving my young family out of Australia indefinitely.

My point put simply is that no one in their right mind with any remaining interests overseas would move to Australia in the knowledge that the government can deny them the ability to see loved ones. This goes for both skilled migrants and students.

She added that she was by no means alone in her plans to leave. One other colleague had already left and others were contemplating doing the same.

This country faces an enormous brain drain as a result of the current draconian travel restrictions and seemingly zero appetite from the federal government to provide an exit strategy from the COVID-free corner it has painted itself into.

Stinging stuff and not an isolated view, coming after the budget assumptions pushed back until mid-2022 any meaningful reopening of the international borders.

The airlines and international tourism sectors are once more despairing. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, whose stewardship throughout the crisis left her state well poised to cash in on the recovery, is frustrated.

Closed international borders are costing NSW $1.5 billion a month and opportunities to capitalise are slipping away, she says.

Despite all the promising ideas to speed up travel, many of which emanated from the recently decommissioned COVID-19 Commission led by Nev Power, nothing so far has come to pass.

There was no mention in the budget about business- or university-sponsored travel and quarantine, the potential for rapid testing and truncated quarantine periods, or expanded quarantine facilities.

As it stands, the joint will stay pretty much locked up until mid-next year, unless the vaccine rollout gets a rattle on.

While there are clear health reasons behind the assumptions the virus is far from being contained in many nations the political imperative cannot be ignored.

As we noted last week, after watching the political rewards heaped on populist state leaders, the federal government, too, has decided to err on the side of an abundance of caution until the election, due by early next year.

For every Sally out there, there are dozens of punters content with living like a hermit kingdom for another 12 months.

Tuesdays budget was very much in that vein. As has been written a hundred times, the government shifted the fiscal rules two weeks out and set a new unemployment target of below 5 per cent. This gave it licence to keep spending on job-creation measures rather than shift to budget repair.

Consequently, Josh Frydenberg unveiled a pandemic budget which put off the heavy lifting in terms of debt and deficit repair until after the election. It did spend big, but it was not all about the pandemic.

The $17.7 billion for aged care would have been necessary regardless of whether there was a pandemic. Morrison called the royal commission and would have been crucified had he ignored it.

Overall, it was a Labor-style budget, which has made the Oppositions task trickier.

This was evident two days before the budget when Labor reached peak Opposition. In the age-old tradition that every silver lining must have a cloud, treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers played down what was evidently a much faster economic recovery than had been forecast in December when the budget was last updated.

The point were making is that even if the recession wasnt as bad as many economists feared, it doesnt mean that the recovery cant be better, he said.

Anthony Albaneses big housing response on Thursday night showed Labor was not going to be pushed to the right.

Morrison took some heat from the fiscal conservatives in his ranks who were uttering such foul oaths as Whitlamesque on Tuesday night.

The PM reiterated how when the pandemic struck and the economy was forcibly closed down, economic ideology had to be suspended so billions could be shovelled out. Even John Howard said so, he pointed out defensively.

All the government did this week extend the ideological suspension for another 12 months or so, he contended.

This is a pandemic budget to address the times that we have, and it is true, as the Reserve Bank Governor and others have said, borrowing costs are low at the moment and so Australians need their government to lean in at this time. Monetary policy is basically spent, he said.

He also reminded the true believers that Labor was still the gold standard in terms of spending, by pointing out how he had ceased JobKeeper at the end of March despite complaints from the Opposition.

Just remember what we did with JobKeeper we knew when to bring it in, and we knew when to take it off. That was a responsible economic decision. Others wanted just to see it run on forever.

He noted the Coalition eschewed a recommendation of the royal commission to fund aged care with a new tax. Labor has yet to discount the idea.

These nuggets, Morrison trusts, will keep any insurrection at bay until the next election, by which time the government will be banking on the belief that the voters will trust the debt to the party that created it.

Still, this week, both sides promised to spend plenty. Amid the cacophony of reaction from interest groups, rent seekers and all else who festoon the Parliament in budget week, just one party raised concerns about how it was all going to be paid for.

It was the Greens, with a proposition to tax the nations 122 pandemic profiteers the 122 billionaires whose wealth expanded between March last year and this year.

Slightly batty, but that was it.

See original here:
Federal budget 2021: The government's cash splash was not socialism, it was ideology on pause - The Australian Financial Review