In The Age today:
"So, what to do? Well, the first thing is not to let the fiscal bottom line slip. In my view, it is already irresponsible to be taking two more years to return to a balanced budget. Australia is already approaching full employment, the terms of trade are at their highest in more than 50 years and nominal gross domestic product grew at 9.6 per cent over the past year. How much better does it need to get? Well, the government has determined that we need two more years of this - hopefully we have it...
This is a key reason why the government's redistributive approach to funding the federal response to the floods was appropriate. Last week's clearing of some dead wood from the budget, to fund the lion's share of the floods package, also seems to have been so painless as to prompt the question: should the programs that were cut have been there in the first place?"
