After being warned for years that Australia needs to ‘live within its means’, the country has been offered a new reason to reduce spending.
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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Saturday said Australian MPs had to act in the cause of ‘morality’ to lower the nation’s debt levels.
It came off the back of Treasurer Scott Morrison’s warnings last week that the country was divided between ‘taxed’ and ‘taxed-nots’.
In a matter of days, the federal government has taken the Abbott-Hockey economic agenda and recast it.
This project failed last time in 2014, and the government’s savings measures were blocked in parliament. So what does the Coalition think is going to be different this time?
The cause for this agenda is indisputable: Australia’s debt levels need reducing despite being relatively modest.
In the event of an economic crisis, caused by something like a downturn in China, Australia lacks the stimulus firepower it took into the Global Financial Crisis.
Interest rates are low, and the budget remains in deficit.
Meanwhile there are structural costs that will escalate as Australia’s population ages. The country’s fiscal path is unsustainable in the long-term, and the Coalition is right to bring this into national focus.
If Mr Turnbull wants to bring the nation’s attention back to this conversation, he’ll have to take a different approach to his predecessor.
At its core, the discussion is about what aspects of the social safety net we can afford, or, which ones we can’t afford to lose.
Australians weren’t convinced that making dole recipients wait six months for payments, or introducing higher university fees, were the fairest or most effective way to reduce spending two years ago.
Mr Morrison’s casting of the debate in terms that target welfare recipients show that the Coalition may not have learned this.
It needs to convince the public of the real benefits of a company tax cut.
Mr Turnbull’s call for cooperation from Labor on spending cuts could be a positive move for the debate. If it indicates a willingness to compromise, it could avert the partisanship that mars politics in the United States.
That’s one way to achieve some outcomes from the spending debate this time around.