As we live through the economic revolution caused by the pandemic, it can be hard to spot the historic shifts underway unless they directly affect us — like working from home.
Another one was in the budget papers: not merely has Australia entered an era of colossal deficits, but of dramatically bigger government. After the government spends more than a third of GDP this year, it is also committed to spend around 27% of GDP a year to the end of the forward estimates — more than two points higher than the level it has managed in recent years and one point higher than the highest level of Kevin Rudd’s stimulus spending.
Few people have a problem with that given the pandemic but it means that, over the medium term, the government is about 10% bigger than it has been, giving it tens of billions of dollars of borrowed money to spend.
And this government has made clear where it wants to spend that money: on fossil fuels and extractive industries, select manufacturing industries, dams and irrigation infrastructure and roadworks. It also used the budget to direct more funding into home care packages, but residential aged care missed out, and the unemployed missed out, with Jobseeker set to revert to its below-poverty line level in 2021.
On the receipts side, the government of course preferred tax cuts for middle and high income earners and accelerated tax rebates for business in its quest for a “business-led recovery” over more direct forms of economic support.
This is something progressives don’t think about when they call for a bigger role for government. Greater spending and a bigger government means government has greater power. And this is a government — the most corrupt federal government since the 1970s, and possibly much longer — that has constantly indicated it will reward its friends and punish its enemies, and use taxpayer funding — or, more accurately now, borrowed money — to serve its partisan agenda.
As the sports rorts affair demonstrated, it is also unashamed about it.
Industry superannuation, renewable energy, the ABC and universities are all enemies of the government; all have been punished or failed to receive anything like the support received by allies and supporters of the government — big fossil fuel companies, the mining industry, News Corp, irrigators and agriculture and high income earners.
As we approach the next election, marginal seats will also become a larger focus of the government’s largesse.
An expansion of government power is particularly problematic when a pro-corruption regulatory environment exists, as it does at the federal level. Weak and poorly enforced political donation laws that provide little transparency around who is seeking to influence policy; the lack of an anti-corruption body worthy of the name; a compliant, politically-directed federal police, an audit office being starved of funding; a lack of transparency around meeting and lobbying in Parliament House and the invulnerability of political staffers to parliamentary scrutiny.
This environment will apply when the benefits of successfully influencing decisions about where money is spent and what regulatory frameworks are imposed are greater than ever before.
As we’re seeing around zoning and purchasing decisions relating to Western Sydney Airport, opportunities for making a buck, or tens of millions of them, from influencing decisions attract not just low-rent spivs and shonks but extremely wealthy and well-connected figures with resources to deploy to get the political outcome they want.
Those opportunities have expanded along with the much-cheered size of government — and the opportunities for the government to use borrowed money in the service of its electoral agenda.
But the structural move toward bigger government that will persist at least into the mid-2020s and possibly well beyond is only one element of a larger shift underway.
Big isn’t merely a theme for government, it will be a key theme for our corporate landscape and the giant investment industry.
Is Australia heading for an era of more rorts and corruption? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say section.
Tomorrow: bigger monopolists and mega-investment funds
Well said Bernard.
The prospect of this distorted economic stimulus continuing with this Government leaves me sick in my stomach.
There has been a missed opportunity to really lift the economy and the well being of the citizens of this country.
The amount of debt has never been the problem, it is the disproven benefit of where the money is being spent.
There will need to be much greater spending by Labor after the next election to pull the economy back into line.
This federal government is dishonest, corrupt (criminally as one judge put it), disrespectful, lacking foresight, accountability and transparency. They are a dangerous gang of misfits who are only motivated by money for themselves and a class war. They must be rid of in the next election. Wake up Australia!!!
And vote for whom? Labors’ just as corrupt and devoid of progressive policies.
Might need some references for your assertion that Labor is just as corrupt. No federal Labor government has been responsible for the number of rorts and general malfeasance as this current mob.
Obeid and Thomson come to mind, but I’m sure a modicum of research would find plenty more examples.
Not the feds
Labor is not in Government! What we have is shambolic and totally against all clear thinking, rational individuals who can see a GOVERNMENT that is borne of and feeds corrupt practices.
I am non aligned to any particular party outside of all the L/NP as they are an abomination..
I don’t disagree, I just wish Labor had the heart and balls (or whatever’s the ladies equivalent) they used to have. At the moment they’re just marking time. Penny Wong, where the hell are you?
Marooned in the Senate, whence even the sainted Janine Haines could not launch herself into the Reps.
Thanks to collusion by the true coalition, the Libor/Laberals, to exchange preferences to defeat her and they only barely managed it.
I am going to say this that Australia is in crisis and the L/NP are a party in power who should not be entitled to the reins of Government.
I am not politically tied to any Party, but I would rather vote for the MAD HATTERS PARTY!
The sleaze and underhanded dealings of this Government has no equal, the list is long and all have a finger in the pie of deceiving the AUSTRALIAN people, whom just go on what this Government feeds them.
The list of lies and deceit, underhand dealings, appointments made to friends and allies along with favouring boards like the ABC with pets is abhorrent.
The Murdoch Press are to gutless and insipid to hold this Government to acct and having approx 70% media ownership is totally out of control.
All Murdoch Reporters cannot distinguish between fact and fiction, most are just lackeyes without a clear thought process.
There are good media outlest out there whom are open and honest.
This Government is both morally bankrupt has no idea of openess is corrupt to the core, lies and deceives the public by trying to hide dirty dealings under smoke screens (how much has gone unnoticed with this Government whilst finding some one else to blame aka Andrews)
Labor is no better, a decent OPPOSITION would be looking at and bringing up all the deceit that this Government has been using to increase it’s power base.
This L/NP is as I said earlier, “rottten to the core, is corrupt, immoral and underhanded” yet like lemmings over the cliff, people follow along blindly!
Murdoch’s minions aren’t gutless. They’re complicit.
Audio! Yeah you are right as complicit is more akin to the lap dogs and slaves of MURDOCH!
I think the ALP do try to bring up the deceit and corruption in this government, but it gets very little airtime in MSM thanks to the complicit Murdoch journos et al. What I do agree with is that the ALP have to find ways to make the corruption speak to the average Australian in bite size ways that they can relate to and regurgitate as easily as the ‘JobSeeker has made it too easy for people to sit on their arses’ line.
Jess, You are correct and if it was brought to light about the corruption endemic in the present Government then maybe people would wakr up and start to realise that we are being led for fools.
It will not happen as long as MURDOCH and his a-se licking poodles in his media outlets are holding sway.
This L/NP is so rotten that it is deserving of investigation, if it was investigated without interference then there are not enough jails to hold them.
Remember Hokedokian when he thought the fairness was just an” old fashioned” construct based on sentiment; whilst he artificially tripled the debt ceiling; that he become a paid spruiker for grubby Trumpists rich mates in the US is just a joke..so blatant so vile you are right if you lay with dogs ( sorry canine friends) you get fleas.. The sad thing is dumb people see the world as black and white as it comforts the lost and dumb; I know that the other revolutions are not pretty but sadly I think they stuff this beautiful place and were all stuffed due to the keystone cops and marauders running aged care; take a look at that abject disaster under the mob
And yet Another one [that] was in the budget papers: The federal government has spent $3,000,000 dragging Witness K and Bernard Collaery through the courts. And it denies that it is holding secret trials despite the cases proceeding in ACT courts that are closed. Even Collaery’s lawyer cannot learn the details of the case against his client.
Perhaps Crikey could run a book on how long it will take for the costs to blow out to $30,000,000.
Great stereotyping that progressive call for big government thus bigger corruption.
Except it’s often conservatives that actually create a big government. Oh and conservatives who are doing bigger corruption as well.