Real deeds needed

Comments on Dennis Shanahan “Tyranny of expectations”, 10/07/2009, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25757932-17301,00.html

From now on the Rudd government and its ministers will be truly tested for what they can and can’t do to deliver to their election promises and their ability in managing the economy and budget, although it is interesting that the government, Rudd and Swan in particular, don’t acknowledge the excellent starting point of the Australian economy and federal budgetary position they inherited from the previous government. They can still deny the starting point for now, but they can’t do the same trick forever.

Unfortunately for the Rudd government, it has already sod the seeds for disasters. They used the international crisis as an excuse to over-spend unnecessarily or squander taxpayers’ money. They have over done on the industrial relations law and moved too far as to ban individual agreements. They have irresponsibly raised the expectations of spending more than $40 billion on a national broadband network that could all use taxpayers’ money without a business case study or feasibility study. They have assumed future security threat from China to increase defence spending by tens of billions.

It would be interesting to see if they have the courage to have an election after the federal budget next year, because by then, some results of true tests would have shown. Also, it would not be able to avoid a tough budget for the next one.

I have no prejudice on the Rudd government and hope it can do a fine job. But I fear it probably can’t do so based on what we have seen so far.