Ross Gittins in the Sydney Morning Herald, a Fairfax paper, starts …
I guess you’ve heard the news: the Gillard government has obtained new analysis of data from the Bureau of Statistics showing that Tony Abbott’s election commitments inflict brutal damage on working families, particularly those in western Sydney, increasing taxes and cutting support to families.
Then he does the maths …
Terrible, eh? There’s just one small problem. This stuff is so misleading as to be quite dishonest.
For a start, this is just politically inspired figuring, which doesn’t deserve the aura of authority the government has sought to give it by having it released by the Treasurer with a reference to ”new analysis of Bureau of Statistics data” and allowing the media to refer to it as ”modelling”.
bobmcgee 