« tired but.... | Main | the pictures from Abu Ghraib »
May 08, 2004
Budget choices
I know that it is not that black and white. But see this article by Michelle Grattan from The Age. Over the last 20 years public opinion has has shifted away from preferring personal tax cuts to preferring federal government budget surpluses to be used to ensure better public services.
We also need money put into long term building up of the nation's infrastructure (rail, road, telecommunications, electricity) and into a decade of environmental repair (land degradation and environmental flows). There appears to be little money for the latter in the budget leaks.
And the knowledge economy? That has taken a bit of a back seat of late as well.There was a big splash with the $5.3 billion five-year program designed to lift research and development performance and tighten the links between Australia's innovation system and commercialization. There is more smoke and mirrors (rebadging) in this version of Backing Australia's Ability, than moving Australia to a credible R&D performance.
The package does not address the declining investment in public research and development; nor the very low R&D rate of private industry. So it does not arrest the stagnating or decline in investment in innovation.
So Australia slips further behind in creating a knowledge economy. Meanwhile the Howard looks as if it doing something, when nothing new is the case. Hence the size of the electorial bribes.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at May 8, 2004 05:24 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.sauer-thompson.com/mt2/mt-tb.cgi/1600