The current hysteria about Australia’s modest level of debt is just another ruse to scare the voting public, says Rodney E. Lever.
OF THE Ten Commandments Rupert Murdoch uses to bring down governments ‒ with all the noise his thundering newspapers can make ‒ the first is:
"Terrorise the voters. Convince them that the ruling government will bankrupt us all.”
The second rule:
“Only the Opposition can save you — (but never tell the punters how!)”
“Deficits are bad, surpluses are good!” So Murdoch shouts through his servile editors.
Perhaps he forgets that he built his own business on borrowed money. Perhaps he can forget that there was a time when he, himself, was tottering on the edge of bankruptcy. Now he tells us confidently that only Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey can save Australia.
In all the words that have been trawled through the pages of Australia’s print media and those who promote the same hysteria on radio and television, people seem to overlook the fact that a nation of 23 million people is not a small business.
Those who guard Australia’s Treasury are not concerned with profit and loss. That is the ghost that haunts all big business ventures. Australia’s Treasury is dealing with a very big, growing, and wealthy nation, not a piddling coffee shop.
The progress that this country has made under the Labor administration since 2007 seems to be forgotten already; and the progress planned for the future is neither reckless nor dangerous, but essential for our individual well-being.
Most politicians are not professional economists. Rupert Murdoch studied economics at Oxford University. He did not pass in the subject, but he got enough out of it to set his mind on his future career.
Few politicians have a deep understanding of economics. It is a form of social science evolved by mankind over many centuries. It requires a knowledge of the past and an imagination of the future.
Deficits are immaterial to the progress of the nation. Nations have plenty of ways to get rid of them and turn them into surpluses. One way, of course, is to collect taxes. Another is to print their own money, which is what all major countries do. And, of course, inflation follows as it always has done.
Sixty years ago when I was a newspaper copy boy, earning two pounds ten shillings a week, a haircut cost me two shillings. I could travel around Sydney on a tram for sixpence. A newspaper cost tuppence. My first home in Melbourne cost $4,000.
Inflation is not nice, but it has happened in all the nations of the world as the decades passed, while various wars have been fought, magnificent inventions produced and some people have acquired massive wealth while the rest of us battled on acquiring our day to day needs.
Australia has grown from a population now nearly eight times it was when I was a boy, while governments on both sides of politics have carried the nation forward. Today our country is riding high in prosperity. A prosperity that must be allowed to continue.
The panic about our economy, about whether we should have a deficit or s surplus this year or next, is just another thing to make the voters nervous. Wayne Swan is a confident treasurer. When he brings down his budget, we will hear screams from the Opposition, no matter what the figures show.
We should be much more worried about the first Budget that Joe Hockey will bring down next year, so close to the centennial anniversary of World War I.
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