Where is that darrned budget emergency....can't seem to find it anywhere...Let's do the Emerson

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-12/kohler-perfect-storm/4747996

"Domestic demand is declining due not to the long election campaign, but to the high levels of household debt. That process is likely to continue after the election, especially if a new government imposes new austerity measures to repair its own balance sheet, writes Alan Kohler."

Alan Kohler can usually be relied on to cut through the fat and shine a light into the white noise put out by the mainstream media, but lately I have been disappointed by two of the best journalists in the country. Barry Cassidy has also gone loopy. The explanation seems to be the election effect. Don't forget the opinion poll effect.

Our budget deficit is between 1 and 2 percent of our GDP. This can, IN NO POSSIBLE WAY be construed as ANY SORT OF an emergency. A balanced budget is always the best possible outcome, but this needs to be seasoned with the reality of the state of the economy. Our economy, the most stable and resilient in the world in the past decade, judging by our weathering of the GFC in such spectacular fashiion, has none-the-less begun to falter a little bit in recent months. A faltering economy  is the wrong time for austerity measures in fiscal policy. The experience in Europe is a warning to us. A slowly growing economy has been cast into a prolonged period of stagnation, characterised by high unemployment, with all of the human pain that entails, and shrinkage, by the implementation of crazy Hayeckian austerity in fiscal policy. I've said all this before on this blog.

Just as there is an optimum gearing ratio in business management which achieves the optimum outcome for the business, so there is a balance of austerity and progressive spending in fiscal policy which produces the optimum outcome for the nation, economy, and society. Managing the economy is about finding this balance, more of an art than a science. The deficit as a percentage of GST is probably about right, as it stands, for the level of faltering in the economy, so the present government is managing the economy pretty well, really.

In contrast the conservative forces, with Abbott as their mouthpiece, continue to rattle on about a mythical budget emergency for ideological reasons. They do this so that they will have a justification for implementing the depraved austerity measures practiced in Europe, which will cause unnecessary pain and irreparable harm to our economy, our nation and our society.

If the present government is managing the economy fairly well, as I have shown here, and a conservative government would throw a wrecking ball through it, to coin an Abbottism, WHY CHANGE GOVERNMENTS.

EVERY GOVERNMENT MINISTER NEEDS TO GET OUT THERE NOW. CALL PRESS CONFERENCES, AND GO OFF LIKE CRAIG EMERSON (DO THE EMERSON perhaps), ESPECIALLY THE PRIME MINISTER, DROWN OUT THE WHITE NOISE, SIDE ISSUES AND SILLY LITTLE POLITICAL GAMES, AND GET A RATIONAL DISCUSSION AND COMPARISON OF POLICY AND ACHIEVEMENT HAPPENING. 

If this were to happen the government would win hands down and that is what Abbot is afraid of, so he draws Gillard into these silly political games as a side show for a mainstream media that consciously encourages and facilitates them. Gillard falls for it because she is, in some ways politically naive. and her advisers and spin doctors are blinkered and seem incompetent. They must know their business beter than I, yet they hold off on this rational policy discussion.

WHY????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????