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November 12, 2007
It's campaign launch time at the end of the election campaign that has been going on for a year or so. No doubt we will have lots promises and give aways at the spectacles, which will add to the inflationary pressures noted by the RBA. Both leaders will claim to be both conservative and deeply committed to being economically responsible. It's a topsy turvy surreal world is it not?
Alan Moir
For sure, we will not hear much about spending cuts advocated by the IMF, given that spending promises by both political parties are running at $100 billion. The only other solution is to increase productivity big time. That means increased investment in university as well as vocational education.
However, I don't see this investment happening. Education policy has a couple of decades of history now and there is little sign that either major party is approaching education from a more radical perspective. So the policy proposal announced in the campaign launches are going to be modest, marginal and smallscale. The resources boom indicates that you don't need an investment in lower education to dig minerals out of the ground and sell them to China. Only business leaders need an education.
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Gary,
How much of that $100 billion do you reckon will actually get spent? How much of it gets set aside but never actually allocated to anything?
The Murray-Darling for example. Squillions set aside but only a couple of applications ever got approved and funded.
Many of the promises made in the past few months have turned out to be re-promising money that failed to actually turn up after the last election.