Replies

Supporting news at http://asia.news.yahoo.com/050508/3/20meo.html and also that Bloomberg site we can't post on threads.

Let's take a trip back in time to 1998 and look at the socialist/progressive predictions of doom and gloom for the Howard/Costello tax cuts and welfare reform.

Further cuts to hospitals, schools, childcare http://www.wsws.org/news/1998/may1998/budg-m14.shtml 'Surplus' Budget in Australia deepens social assault

By Mike Head 14 May 1998

Despite warning signs of the severe implications of the deepening economic crisis in Japan and East Asia, the Howard government in Australia has handed down a 1998 Budget that predicts 3 percent growth and a $2.7 billion government surplus.

The transparent purpose of Tuesday night's Budget is to clear the way for an election to be called as early as possible, before the economy deteriorates under the impact of the Asian meltdown. Within the next month, the forecast surplus will be used to underwrite a highly deceptive taxation package. Cuts to taxes for high and middle income earners and companies will accompany the introduction of a regressive consumption tax, or Goods and Services Tax (GST).

This agenda was summed up in the headline of yesterday's Australian Financial Review : "Back on track ... for a GST". It hailed Treasurer Peter Costello for announcing the first Budget surplus since the 1990-91 recession. Before Costello delivered the Budget in national parliament, Prime Minister Howard told government MPs to be ready for a snap poll, perhaps as soon as July.

Both Howard and Costello have presented the hoped-for $2.7 billion surplus as a return to solvency -- "putting Australia back in the black". They use the analogy of a household getting out of debt. This analogy is fatuous. The surplus represents a massive transfer of wealth to the corporate sector at the expense of the jobs, living standards and social services of millions of people.

In the first place, it has been achieved through $7 billion worth of cuts to health care, education, aged care, childcare, labour programs over the past two years. These cuts have deepened in the latest Budget: Spending on childcare subsidies was slashed by a further $300 million over the next three years, reflecting the withdrawal of thousands of children from day care and before-and-after school centres by parents no longer able to afford the fees, because of earlier reductions in fee relief..." [Snip]

The horror of socialist mental illness. Hope the GOP and Bush take to heart the lessons learned Down Under.

A new impost of $9,000 was imposed on immigrant families seeking to bring their parents or other relatives to Australia to live. In addition, $50 visa charges were imposed on visitors from poor or war-torn countries regarded as high risk in terms of people illegally over-staying their visas. Immigrants from New Zealand will be denied social security and medical benefits for their first two years. The number of public service workers will be reduced by another 9,000 in 1998-99, accounting for a large part of the $2.4 billion decrease in public sector costs. This brings the total job losses since 1996 to 77,000 -- a reduction of more than 20 percent. Many of this year's job cuts will come from the abolition of the Commonwealth Employment Service and other reductions in services to the jobless and those on welfare.?

Wow. What's not to like?

As a result of ongoing cuts to training and other labour market programs, as well as public and private sector downsizing, the government anticipates that the official unemployment rate will remain around 8 percent, or nearly 800,000 workers.

I don't know where they got their figures because official unemployment is is at 5.1%, not 8%.

WA Gov Christine "Fraudoire" Gregoire and other lying, liberal, leftists rotten demoncRATS like her--Take note!