State budgets: ugly to ultra-ugly

Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick.

· By TERRY MCCRANN

BUSINESS COMMENTATOR

· 5:00PM JUNE 11, 2024

· 9 COMMENTS

Queenslandersshould take the money and run – straight to the ballot box in October, to throwout the incumbent Miles-Dick government.

Any set of ministers who could be so irresponsible with theirmoney, is not the crowd you would sensibly want to be in charge of thoseprecious dollars, for a day longer.

Any set of ministers who could treat them as such out-and-outmugs, hoping to buy their votes with, again, their own money, you couldn’tpossibly trust.

Any set of ministers who could demonstrate such basic andbreathtakingly cynical stupidity, is one that all-but demands Queenslanderstoss them out just for basic individual self-protection.

I’d never thought I’d ever write this, but Queensland’s fiscalobscenity, masquerading as a budget, makes Victoria’s look slightly - OK, ‘justslightly’ - less awful.

The sunshine state has come a long, long way - straight backward- from the days of absolute unbending and total bi-partisan commitment tofiscal rectitude and integrity, putting to shame all the other states. Toborrow those famous words: Treasurer - that’s, Queensland’s state Treasurer,Cameron Dick, not the Queenslander who’s the national Treasurer - I knew formerLabor Treasurer Keith De Lacy.

Treasurer, you are no Keith De Lacy. Were he still alive, DeLacy would be crying tears of blood at the wilful monstrosity that his Laborsuccessor has imposed on the state and 5.5m Queenslanders.

They’ll be paying for the exploding debt, deep if not indeedforever into the future – just as Victorians will also, I should add. In theQueensland case, it’s a burden that will utterly exceed the one-off cashlollies being handed out to them, over the next few months, running down to theelection. The Queensland profligacy is the national profligacy, also underLabor, and as noted, also under a Queenslander Treasurer, on a smaller scale.Queensland is spending money, and then some, of the loot it gets from coal andgas royalties - especially the coal where it has made them so punitive, forcingBHP to suspend investment in the state. In the same way Treasurer Chalmers hasincreased federal spending by more than $100bn a year, every year, in just twoyears - thanks to company tax paid on the booming profits from especially ironore and coal exports.

Yet both governments, Federal and Queensland are also determinedto shut down those industries; to reduce the taxes they pay (and the jobs andincomes) all to zero. Go figure. We get the NSW budget next week. Last year,NSW projected state debt to reach $185bn by 2026-27.

Queensland claims, optimistically, state borrowings will go to$111bn by 2027-28. While Victoria in its budget ’fessed up to net debt goingpast $188bn.

Now, I used to write – in the days of Keith De Lacy up north andthe Cain-Kirner Labor Governments in the deep south – that the budgets runningdown the eastern seaboard were “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”. Now I wouldwrite they run, “The Ugly, The Middling, and the, obviously still ‘Ultra-Ugly’.Then add on the federal debt and deficits. Enjoy the ever-escalating interestpayments.