@copperoad; the 'Trickle Down Economics' preached by Regan, Thatcher and Howard has been fully exposed as a steaming pile of absolute crap - totally discredited and except for troglodytic Coalition dead-heads all but dead, buried and cremated.
In Australia and after September 2013 the deceit of 'Trickle Down Economics' enabled the Coalition to destroy real wages, to undermine working conditions and especially in 'feminised' workforces, to cut essential public services, to sack professional bureaucrats loyal to Australia and instead transfer $Countless $Billions to inept and corrupt corporations - just as it did in the UK.
The Coalition had to be turfed out by May 2022 because of its incredibly wasteful defence equipment purchases, the damage it did to Australian exports to China, the road to a $Trillion $Debt it created and even its failure to train Australians for the skills of the future which has created the current need for so many skilled people from overseas.
When taxpayers' money is used to improve the bottom line of corporations as with the $34 Billion via the Coalition's JobKeeper, that's $Waste. When taxpayers' money is used to create education apartheid by segregating the kids of wealthy families from, those of battlers, that's $Waste. When taxpayers' money is used to pay the USA $365 Billion for submarines and another $250 Billion for other WMDs, that's $Waste.
Retuning taxpayers' money to them is by definition NOT $Waste since it's their money NOT being spent by government at all.
Spending taxpayers' money on essential public services including public health care, public education, policing, public transport, communications technologies, public power infrastructure, emergency services, etc are $Investments in our future - that's NOT $Waste unless you do what Abbott and Turnbull did to the rollout of the NBN - emasculate it, requiring subsequent upgrades / rework.
