And while we’re talking about the ABC consider this …
Final figures show last year’s budget deficit $543m lower than expected
I heard the ABC take on this in the car. In their determination to find a silver lining in every Labor cloud they were selling the notion that after years of promising a surplus a budget deficit of $18.8 billion was cool because the forecast of five months ago was half a billion larger. (Another way to think of it is as a train of thirty eight carriages costing half a billion dollars each, isn’t it great that only thirty seven were destroyed in the train wreck.) They thought a net debt of $153 billion was fine too because it was predicted to be 5.6% bigger five months ago.
On the other hand, thunder clouds were in evidence when Mr Hockey declined to say when he would deliver a surplus … after all he’s been in the job for two whole weeks now.
I can think of one place he could save $1.18 billion.