Congratulations to The Australian and esteemed journo Patrick Commins, who have “exclusively” discovered that “government spending has ballooned to its highest share of the economy in history”.
“Evidence of the expanding scope of government in the economy comes as the Albanese government on Monday announced an extra $1.4bn to extend COVID response measures,” Commins warned in a story published Sunday.
Thank goodness for the valiant journalists of the Murdoch press, fearlessly warning that a new era of big government is upon us.
And who is to blame? Experts are apparently “warning more public expenditure is on the way as Labor prepares its first budget, including promises on child care and wages … The Albanese government has ambitious goals to increase spending on key social services.”
Commins even has a graph — sourced, it seems, from the ABS — that suggests that it’s Labor’s fault.
It was enough for The Australian’s sub-editors to slap a headline on the piece: “Government spending balloons to highest share of economy ever as Labor prepares first budget.”
There’s something odd about the graph, though. The last few years have been fudged into a kind of blob up at 28%. Why would that be?
Let’s consult the government’s own numbers, not some vague “ABS” source — and not the current government, but the Morrison government. Here is Commonwealth spending as a proportion of GDP from Budget Paper No.1, Statement 10, from the March budget. We’ve gone back a mere 20 years, but it serves its purpose well enough: government spending has hardly “ballooned” to its highest share of economy ever as Labor prepares first budget.
It “ballooned” under the Coalition in 2019, to 27.7% of GDP, then to 31% of GDP in the pandemic year of 2020-21. It was 27.8% of GDP the next year and still, in the March budget, over 27%, and forecast to stay above 26% until 2026 at least — higher than it has been in the modern budget papers since 1970.
It was the Coalition that not merely responded to the pandemic with a massive increase in government spending, but locked in a permanent, and significant, expansion in the size of government in Australia to over 26% of GDP. As Crikey has been pointing out for years.
Only at The Australian could they blame Labor for something so plainly the responsibility of the Coalition. No wonder they slapped “exclusive” on it.
Says quite a lot about who the people who still buy The Australian more than anything else. Suppose this is the same reason that during the last bushfire season The Greens being responsible for stopping fire prevention measures was front-page news despite it not being true or relevant to any fires going on.
It’s given away for free at airports if Newscorp weren’t such a bludging outfit they would be broke by now. They don’t publish their papers for reading. If they got rid of the ink and minimised the sheet size they have a product for market
Hopeless trying to argue with this wall to wall corporate and class agitprop from all legacy media blaming employees, greenies, lefties, unionists, women and others for actions of imported US nativist, libertarian and authoritarian conservatism.
To be fair, the Conservatives in addition to a cheerleader media have only been in power for 20 of the last 26 years. Can’t expect much in that period of time – there’s a culture war to be won after all.
Now God isn’t allowed in schools and neither is a peanut butter sandwich, men are calling themselves women, and everyone gets a trophy just for showing up. And what about all those entitled Millennials expecting just to buy able to buy a house? Lazy entitled generation who don’t know the value of hard work! And the Greens. The Greens… Those cultural Marxists are indoctrinating the next generation into being a bunch of tree-hugging tofu eating communists who want to punish businesses by demanding higher wages and a work life balance.
Our society is going to hell, so how can we expect competent governance in the short time the conservatives had power?
Love your work. I enjoy tofu, love trees, demand higher wages, and enjoy life.
Crikey I’m a Como.
It appears the alleged visit by Albanese, Marles & Wong to confer with a high profile media CEO at Holt Street has not born fruit. Who would’ve predicted it…
‘borne fruit’
Boughn fruit; bawn fruit; bourne fruit; bloody english.
Shame on Albo et al for meeting them on their turf in the first place.
Just maybe Albanese, Marles and Wong held the their ground? just saying and a hoping!
And our trillion dollars of debt is of course, all Labor’s fault.
… “Because they weren’t the government.”
Total fixation on govt spending, lower taxes and DISHONESTY by News Ltd and the hard right.
This is why rabidly partisan media is so bad for society. News Corp’s audience should be kept informed when a government is destroying a nation’s finances (for example), even when it’s their side of politics doing the destroying. But because they’re so terrified of upsetting their audiences sensibilities, they won’t do it. Shameful