Another show of the confused Treasurer trying to confuse the Australian public

This is a very short comment on the ABC news of “Australia dragged into recession: Swan” by North America correspondent Kim Landers, 25/04/2009 http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/25/2552602.htm?

The following first 5 paragraphes are from the report.

The report says that Treasurer Wayne Swan has emerged from G20 finance ministers' talks in Washington with no doubt that he is facing the most difficult economic environment in 75 years in which to frame next month's budget.

"There's no doubt there's a very sharp contraction to growth in Australia and we are certainly being dragged into recession by the global economy," he said.

"The Government has done everything humanly possible to cushion Australia from the impacts of this savage global recession."

"There wouldn't be a finance minister in that room who wouldn't swap places with Australia," he said.

Mr Lincoln's comments start from here.

Two points will make the point. First, has the government really “done everything humanly possible to cushion Australia from the impacts of this savage global recession”? One has to wonder. Just by thinking about the two large cash handouts from November done by he government, one will certainly conclude the Treasurer is either confused himself, or trying to confuse the public to conceal the government, especially his failure in fiscal policy. He either does not understand what the meaning of everything humanly possible or how to use fiscal policy to cushion Australia. He was spinning using a confused logic that what the government had done was the best among every humanly possible thing. How far is that from the truth? Mr Treasurer you need to learn some basic logic.

Second, is that true that “there wouldn't be a finance minister in that room who wouldn't swap places with Australia”? Did he just emerge from the G20? What do G20 include? One would think that they include China, India and the like, right? Then why would their finance ministers want to swap places with Australia? Did the Treasurer really mean they want to give up positive growth in turn for negative growth? To be fair to the Treasurer, he probably meant those finance ministers from the developed countries as opposed to all ministers in the room in the context. But certainly let's hope this is so.

Australia needs badly a competent Treasurer to be able to do the right things to successfully cushion the Australian economy from the impacts of this savage global recession. For the moment it appears that it unfortunately has neither.