middle-class junkies need to wean themselves o

Middle-class junkies need to wean themselves off welfare

Alas, John Howard was not among those cheering the abolition of the Baby Bonus, which he introduced in 2004. Back then, critics of middle-class welfare like me railed against Howard's taxpayer-funded hand-out as a sop to populism, a betrayal of the Liberal Party's philosophy of smaller government and greater individual responsibility.

As Andrew Baker from the Centre for Independent Studies outlined in his recent Target 30 Report the problem is in the middle - among the third, fourth and fifth quintiles of income earners - where a new form of welfare has been created. Here, a class of welfare recipients pays substantial taxes only to receive them back - over their lifetime - in the form of welfare services that include Family Tax Benefits, the Baby Bonus, the Child Care Rebate, the School Kids Bonus and so on. The once proudly self-reliant middle classes have become a new cohort of welfare junkies who have quickly grown too accustomed to handouts.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/middle-class-junkies-need-to-wean-themselves-off-welfare/story-e6frg7bo-1226647906369

So will the money us taxpayers spent on sloppy joe going all the way to pongolia to say the the end of Entitlement is over or what?.
The first thing to go needs to be abbotts paid parental leave scheme.

This is going to be extremely difficult because of abbotts dirty little economic secret.

Abbott’s dirty economic secret: he’s just like Labor

Four economic policy issues - middle class welfare, climate change, maternity leave and industrial relations - show an opposition leader far more social democrat than economic liberal.

The most odious example is Abbott’s extraordinary defence of middle class welfare. Labor’s inspired decision to freeze indexation of welfare at $150,000 per family in this months budget elicited an extraordinary rebuke from the opposition leader.

Abbott described them as “class war cuts” and accused the government of declaring war on “aspirational” Australia. But the only war is against those who aspire to live beyond their means, and anyway, freezing indexation at $150,000 is not so much a war as a pillow fight.

The opposition are boxed into extending welfare for those who can comfortably fend for themselves. The “cost of living” pressures these families face is whether they can afford a second new car or have to slum it with a perfectly functional second-hand one - not whether they can put food on the table. It might be good politics to prop up the upper middle-class with welfare but it’s absurd economics.

The Liberal Party have replaced Labor as Australia’s champion of welfare and if John Hewson or Jeff Kennett were in a grave, they would surely be rolling in it.

The ideological depravity of Tony Abbott is also evident in his approach to climate change. Labor and the Liberals are equally committed to tackling climate change through a five per cent reduction of Australia’s 2000 carbon dioxide emissions by 2020. The only difference is one of method. Labor will introduce a market-based mechanism, and the opposition government-funded direct action initiatives.

It’s not surprising that Abbott would choose costly government programs over a market-based mechanism to reduce carbon emissions - it’s what a true social democrat would do.

The only other explanation is that direct action is a front for inaction. If Abbott is dubious about the scientific consensus behind climate change or the long-term economic wisdom of cutting Australia’s carbon emissions, he should have the courage of his convictions and junk the five per cent target. Otherwise, the only conclusion is that he has an ideological preference for unwieldy government programs over the market.
Tony Abbott took a maternity leave plan to the last election that slugged big business with a new tax to fund wildly generous payments to new mothers. Not only was it pure economic vandalism, it was enthusiastically embraced by the Greens - which is the kiss of death for any economic policy.

Abbott also ruled out any industrial relations reform during the 2010 campaign. The charitable explanation is that Abbott didn’t have the backbone to fight for a politically challenging policy that he privately believed in. You can’t govern from the opposition benches, or something like that.

The alternative conclusion is that he has lost his passion for industrial relations reform and has little sympathy for John Howard’s job-creating Work Choices. The Labor Party’s Fair Work Act is re-regulation gone mad but embracing it when in government is perfectly consistent with Abbott’s social democratic ideology.
Unfortunately, Tony Abbott will not have a competent team to rein in his interventionist urges. John Howard was a profligate spender as Prime Minister. Real spending increased by 3.3% per year between 2000 and 2007, which is significantly more than Labor governments before and after. Spending would have been even higher if it wasn’t for the Scrooge McDuck of the Coalition party room, former Treasurer Peter Costello, one of the few spendthrifts in the Howard government.

If Peter Costello were Black Caviar, Joe Hockey is a portly little pony. It’s not as though Hockey has much to live up to, as Wayne Swan has been a truly awful Treasurer. However, the shadow Treasurer has been so ineffectual that he makes Swan look good - a miracle beyond even Jesus. Hockey would be no obstacle to a free-spending Abbott.

Tony Abbott has political skill and his relentlessly negative approach to opposition has been a brilliant success. If politics were a game, he is a winner. But popularity in politics isn’t an end in itself and the ideological Abbott is destroying his party’s credibility.

It should be obvious to Abbott that the Liberal Party is at its best when it pursues economic growth through liberal economic policies - and that this strategy, by and large, defined the successful Howard-era. Unlike the Labor Party, it’s not supposed to have an ideological identity crisis.

But the Liberal Party now have a leader whose basic economic instincts are the antithesis of all that was good about it.

http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Abbotts-dirty-economic-secret-hes-just-like-Labor/

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