Treasurer Chalmers denies Integrity & Rule of Law

Integrity does not have an  on/off switch:  the crisis in ignoring plagiarism

5 July The following Update of 4 July is relevant but Chalmers’ conflicted positions, with fiduciary and probity duties as Treasurer which he performs selectively, and crony of the LNP chief corrupter and suppressor of integrity Kennedy, are bursting at the seams. These images indicate a massive Albanese challenge with yesterday’s sequestration of the 2022 Budget integrity – as I did to Frydenberg and Kennedy and they dropped their pants and squealed. Other ministers are entangled their their silence as this crisis evolved including Catherine King and the Attorney General Mark Dreyfus:

This has been posted also on the main Albanese page but it is profoundly important and the Treasurer has tried to sidestep the risks but has tripped:

Economic Update 28 July

Treasurer Chalmers delivered an Economic Update on 28 July as the latest in a series which started in early February 2020 with a statement on a Matter of Public Importance being “a government that is psychologically incapable of levelling with people about the real challenges in our society and our economy”.  He was talking about Treasurer Frydenberg as well as Treasury Secretary Kennedy, as much as Morrison.

Treasury sits at the head of economic and financial thinking at a time of extreme challenges, many from our recent past such as haphazard projects and corrupt rorting, waste and debt, sloppy “plans” and methods covering vaccines and PPEs etc, a shift from carbon exploitation towards renewables and conservation, and a commitment to replace that psychologically insane approach with “integrity”.

While the Treasurer used clear words in confining himself to living standards, economy, budget, pressures, Treasury forecasts and preparations for an October Budget, he did not talk about the integrity of processes behind that Budget’s preparations (already at severe risk) , strengthening our balance between preventative and treatment health funding, reviving regions facing decarbonisation as Newcastle did so well, and dealing openly with debt (cost cutting if that is what he believes) and integrity. 

In particular he did not properly consider ideas from away of Treasury, which he was informed of, such as focussing on

• due process (integrity)
• a systematic approach to infrastructure quality and cost effectiveness including “repairing” problems which impede productivity and proper resource priority-setting (OECD protocols)
• don’t waste money on high risk, high cost and low service standards “shiny toys”, and
• apply smart solutions to spiky problems including rapidly-escalating breaches of democratic standards.

This analysis comes on top of 7 years dissecting, reconstructing and reporting on Coalition malaise, including Kennedy’s in Western Sydney and during the coronavirus cycle of Budget mayhem and PPE/vaccine scandals. 

Chalmers has not progressed in style or skills (https://sydneybetrayals.me/treasurer-chalmers-denies-integrity-rule-of-law/  & https://sydneybetrayals.me/treasurer-chalmers-performance-2019-on/);  

and

Kennedy (https://sydneybetrayals.me/rogues-gallery/ & https://sydneybetrayals.me/budget-fed-nsw-blues/)   has shown he will damage Chalmers as much as he did Morrison and Frydenberg. 

Also https://sydneybetrayals.me/budget-fed-nsw-blues/  in that Chalmers made few if any of the obvious criticisms of process and malice.

Jim Chalmers (Rankin—Treasurer) (12:26): by leave—

Australians are overwhelmingly optimistic and confident people. Our optimism, …rests on our ability to navigate difficult times together, and emerge stronger.  Australians know their government changed hands at a time of instability, uncertainty and volatility—around the world and at home.

All nations do.  They expected more competence and surety and were surprised by continuance of the coal-past-2050 theme as well as you Vs Jim on nuclear submarines (Chris being swayed by a conniving call from Kerry).

Today, through this parliament, I want to explain to Australians what this means for you — for your living standards, for your economy, for the budget that funds the services you rely on. … the international factors we are buffeted by;  detail the domestic economic and budget pressures …; provide some revised Treasury forecasts that try to reflect the circumstances we have inherited, in advance of a full update in the October budget; and outline our plan to deal with these conditions.

As already said, clear words but behind them rest selective vision and suspect intent

This is about giving you the best sense we can of what is really going on. Because there is no use tiptoeing around the pressure that people are under. You know what we are up against. You see it every day at the supermarket, in your pay packet, when the electricity bill arrives.

The best sense is based on repression of better informed views especially of the “barnacles” you and the PM inflicted earlier in your careers which must be “repaired”

Mentioning electricity (and gas) is a truism and no mention of a solution, just a red flag proceeding an horror budget.

And you didn’t send us to this place to bury the bad news or gloss over the glaring issues or wish away the warning signs or to pretend that our problems will solve themselves with more waiting, and more wasting time.

But you are wasting time, just as Morrison had no plan, your Budget preparations are based on that same unprofessional approach of “gifting” and lack of zero-based and audit-tested

That approach has already given our country a wasted decade of missed opportunities and messed up priorities. You are already paying too much for that in the form of:  high and rising inflation; falling real wages; and  a trillion dollars of debt that will take generations to pay off—without a generational dividend to accompany it.

So stop excusing Kennedy

Nine years of mess can’t be cleaned up in nine weeks—it will take time.

Mine was capable of being cleaned up in 1 day but after 8 years + 10 weeks you are still hiding in a coward’s castle

And this time of great challenge for our country is also a time of great opportunity, the opportunity to build a stronger and more resilient economy that converts the potential of our people into prosperity for our nation—an economy powered by cleaner, cheaper, more reliable energy where more people have the right skills, in secure jobs, with decent wages growing strongly and sustainably, and a better future, built with more opportunities for more Australians in more parts of our country

Truisms, platitudes, labels.  As you have suppressed better options, your approaches are second-best or worse

Global outlook

The Australian economy is growing—but so are the challenges. Some are home-grown, others come at us from around the world. As Governor Phil Lowe and I were reminded at the G20 meeting a fortnight ago—the global picture is complex, and the outlook is confronting. The world economy is treading a precarious and a perilous path. Higher global inflation, slower global growth, ongoing conflict and war, the impacts of COVID, clogged supply chains—all of this affects us, in some form.

Home grown include lack of a proper manufacturing basis for mitigation approaches

Lowe supported Frydenberg during the lunatic “infrastructure is stimulus” period when I proved – and many journalists agreed – shopping baskets do not a sensible strategy make, see https://sydneybetrayals.me/budget-fed-nsw-blues/

Watch plurals – “all of this”.

What have you done about Taylor’s emergency fuel lake in the US?

The IMF is expecting global inflation to reach 8.3 per cent by the end of this year—driven by higher food and energy prices, and strained supply chains.  In the United States overnight, the Federal Reserve has again raised interest rates by 75 basis points in response to the highest inflation figure recorded in more than 40 years. And tonight, the preliminary US GDP result for the second quarter is again expected to be weak—after falling by 0.4 per cent last quarter.

Lower inflation does not come from cutting national cost budgets, they cause hardship without benefits.  Cut subsidies to high-cost business sectors

China is our biggest trading partner by a long way—what happens with China’s domestic economy has a direct link to our national activity, income, and prosperity. China’s strict COVID containment measures have had a substantial impact on their output and have made existing supply chain disruptions more severe.

Why do you abuse China but permit the HK takeover of Sydney & Melbourne essential services?

As has Russia’s unilateral, immoral and illegal invasion of Ukraine, which undermines energy and food security—dramatically pushing up global prices. And all of this puts pressure on our economy and our budget.

Inflation challenge

Once again, Australia is outperforming much of the world, but that doesn’t make it easier to pay the bills at home. More Australians are in jobs than ever before—and that’s a very welcome outcome—but fewer Australians are feeling confident about the choppy waters our economy is in. Because they see the impact that high inflation is having on their living standards—in an environment where workers aren’t getting wage rises sufficient to match price rises.

Truism.  Outperforming in carbon cost per head of population and susceptibility to US/UK coaching

Our high inflation is primarily but not exclusively global. It will subside but not overnight. It’s been turbocharged by a decade of domestic failures on skills, on energy and on supply chains which just aren’t resilient enough. Left untreated, inflation which is too high for too long undermines living standards and jobs, and wrecks economies. But the medicine is also very tough to take—and millions of Australians with a mortgage are feeling that pain right now.

                  Explain skills, how significant?

Rate rises began before the election, they rose by a full per cent across June and July, and the independent Reserve Bank has told us to expect more to come. There’s no point pretending these rate rises don’t hurt—they do and they will. Every extra dollar Australians have to find to service the mortgage is a dollar that can’t help meet the high costs of other essentials.

Same old but unexceptional

Governments shouldn’t make it harder for the RBA on the demand side but, more than that, we should be working to address problems on the supply side.

For the RBA?  Demand side is not exclusively monetary

Some of the conditions determining this inflation problem are outside of Australia’s control and largely unavoidable. As much as we can provide support, we can’t control the war in Ukraine, or China’s COVID policies.

Floods and new COVID variants bring the supply chain disruptions and worker absences we are experiencing.

Yes

But there are things we can control. And some of these conditions have been building for a long time and were avoidable:

A decade of energy policy paralysis—with not enough investment in cleaner, cheaper more reliable energy, and not enough certainty for investors—that’s pushed up power bills. A lack of the right investment in skills and local manufacturing capability—that’s seen our productivity flatline and supply chains break. And an objective to keep wages low as a deliberate design feature of the economy—that’s contributed to a decade of stagnant pay.

And let’s be really clear about something. Inflation is high and in the near term will get higher—but the primary cause of this is not higher wages—nowhere near it.

We don’t have an inflation problem because workers are earning too much or because we are in some kind of a wage-price spiral. Real wages growth over the past decade has averaged just 0.1 per cent a year. In the year to March real wages fell 2.7 per cent—the worst result in more than two decades. In the year to March, real wages fell 2.7 per cent—the worst result in more than two decades. And once wages data for the June quarter is released in a few weeks, it’s likely this fall will have accelerated, given yesterday’s inflation outcome. The wages of Australian workers are not causing this inflation. The fault lies with a decade of wasted opportunities, wrong priorities and wilful neglect—that Australians are now all paying for.

Fine

New economic forecasts

This is the context for the updated Treasury forecasts for our economy that I am releasing today. Forecasts are never perfect, but these better reflect the economic circumstances our new government is now dealing with—compared with what was set out before the election.

In the pre-election forecasts—released a little more than three months ago—inflation was expected to peak at 4¼ per cent. It’s already at 6.1 per cent through the year to June, and now forecast topeak at 7¾ per cent in the December quarter this year. The current expectation is that it will get worse this year, moderate next year and normalise the year after. We haven’t reached the peak yet, but we can see it from here.

Get my point, Treasury is consistently unreliable

Treasury expects headline inflation at 5½ per cent by the middle of next year, 3½ per cent by the end of 2023 and 2¾ per cent by the middle of 2024—back inside the RBA’s target range. Inflation will unwind again, but not in an instant. Just as the domestic forces contributing to some of the supply-side pressures have been building for the best part of a decade, it will take some time for them to dissipate—but they will.

In the meantime, higher interest rates, combined with the global slowdown that I’ve described, will impact on Australia’s economic growth. The national accounts in the March quarter showed that the economy had not been performing as strongly as had been predicted pre election—we saw 0.8 per cent growth instead of the 1.8 per cent growth they told us to expect. And the headwinds that our economy is facing—higher inflation is at the top of that list, along with slowing global growth—are now reflected in the revised economic outcomes and forecasts. This has cut half a percentage point from growth for the last financial year, for this financial year and for next financial year.

Come out and say it, Frydenberg & Kennedy were lying

It’s expected that real GDP grew by 3¾ per cent in 2021-22, instead of 4¼ per cent as was estimated pre election. The pre-election forecast for GDP growth in 2022-23 was 3½ per cent. This has now been revised down to three per cent growth. And growth is expected to slow further in 2023-24, at two per cent—down from the 2½ per cent that was previously predicted.

A key part of this weaker growth outlook is due to weaker consumption, which is all about higher inflation and higher interest rates. While some households have built up savings buffers, others are under much more pressure. Net exports will also be a bigger-than-expected drag on growth in the near term—because flooding hits commodity exports and because imports increase when businesses restock. Weaker dwelling investment is also part of the story—because of higher interest rates but also because of those capacity constraints that we’re seeing in construction. That’s what I mean by a growing economy but one with growing challenges as well.

What about earlier cant about households releasing savings in a self-generated revival?

Jobs and wages

This complex picture is reflected in the updated outlook for unemployment and wages. The unemployment rate is expected to remain low through the latter half of this year before returning to 3¾ per cent by June 2023 and four per cent by June 2024.

Fix the definitions and stop repeating lies

At the same time, the forecast for nominal wages growth is being upgraded—from 3¼ per cent to 3¾ per cent—for both this financial year and next financial year. If this eventuates—and I’m careful, cautious and conscious of the history here—it would be the fastest pace of nominal wages growth in about a decade.

Within margins of error

The harsh truth is that households won’t feel the benefits of higher wages while inflation eats up these wage increases, and then some. Real wages growth relies on moderating inflation and getting wages moving again. On the basis of current forecasts, real wages are expected to start growing again in 2023-24. But there is a key difference now. Australian workers now have a government with an economic plan to boost wages, not deliberately undermine them.

What!  You gave us expectations on immediate rises in wages and earnings

The budget

Our new government has begun its work in this time of serious uncertainty and the substantial challenges as I’ve described them, with a trillion-dollar handicap in our saddlebags.

Admit infrastructure incapacities and incompetence are yours and you are suppressing the solution – as Kennedy has done since 2015

The budget we inherited is bursting with waste and rorts, booby-trapped by expiring measures, and burdened by long-term demographic challenges that come with critical and necessary spending.

Bursting?  A few lakes but look at the tax concessions and unrecovered JobKeeper funds as well as long-term infrastructure efficiencies and multipliers

While the final budget outcome for 2021-22—published quite soon—is likely to show a dramatically better-than-expected outcome for that year, it’s temporary factors like supply chain disruptions, capacity constraints and extreme weather which have delayed some of the planned spending—and now low unemployment and those volatile commodity prices, which are boosting revenue. These are factors that will not last forever—or even for long.

Do not repeat definitional lies and distortions

The short-, medium- and longer-term pressures on the budget are more pronounced. The temporary improvement in tax receipts may not persist over time, the impact on payments will persist, and the cost of interest on debt will grow as more debt is refinanced at higher interest rates.

Be specific, “more refinanced” is not on the recent borrowing which are the bulk

A full set of fiscal forecasts will be ready for the October budget. But we already know that additional COVID-related spending so far costs the budget an extra $1.6 billion this year alone We expect that government payments will be around $30 billion higher over the forward estimates than was forecast pre election, because of inflation and wage expectations and how they flow through. And we know that vital government programs, which are already growing faster than the economy, have upside risks on spending growth. This includes health spending, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, providing decent aged care after years of neglect, and fairer pay for aged-care workers—which the Fair Work Commission is currently considering. Then there are the hidden cost blowouts that we are beginning to discover—like the Modernising Business Registers project, which was not properly resourced and, as the Assistant Treasurer told us, could be $1 billion over budget.

We should see a proper analytical basis for public sector economic discussions, waving around labels masks pain and waste, your anticipated cuts to medical supplies etc are infuriating

Finally, we know that the debt burden left to us—the highest level as a share of the economy since the aftermath of the Second World War, with deficits stretching beyond the decade—is growing heavier because of the impact of higher interest rates on repayments. This isn’t just COVID debt that we are repaying—our predecessors had more than doubled gross debt before the pandemic hit. And we know that the interest payments on government debt will be the fastest-growing area of government spending—faster than the NDIS, faster than aged care, faster than hospital funding.

Again stop waving labels, the rates were fixed on a large proportion, were they not?

For these reasons, our government must make the difficult decisions necessary for responsible budget repair so that in the future, when there is another pandemic, or another price surge, or more global pressures, future governments are not left in this situation, with so many problems to solve, but so few resources to solve them with.

You have rejected budget repair – see this website’s pages, a major theme

Economic plan

Building our resilience against future shocks means starting to deal with the low-quality spending embedded by the previous government. That starts with the audit of rorts and waste that the Minister for Finance and I, and our departments, have begun, going through the budget line by line, making sure that spending is about building value, not buying votes, because right now, every household has to make tough decisions about what they can afford and what they can’t—and it shouldn’t be any different for their government—and because the budget should be about high-quality investments in the right priorities. The Australian people endorsed our priorities in May and they’ll see them budgeted for in October.

Started in 2008 and fixing iA needs much more than board restructure which States must be embarrassed into proper planning protocols

When the defining challenges in our economy are high and rising inflation, falling real wages, and choked supply chains—and when our choices are constrained by the fiscal situation—our economic plan will do three things to lift the speed limit on the economy.

You have suppressed the positive, high yield proposals detailed on this and associated websites including community resilience, smart transit solutions and Aboriginal 8,000 workers reducing fire risks ©

First, help Australians with the costs of living—by cutting childcare costs for approximately 1.26 million families, and reducing barriers for parents, overwhelmingly women, to work additional hours; and by cutting the cost of medicines on the PBS by up to $12.50 a script.

Still waiting for acceptance of my childcare proposals on March 2020

Second, grow wages over time—by successfully arguing for a decent pay rise for the lowest paid; by supporting decent wages in the care economy; by training people for higher-wage opportunities; by investing in industries which will deliver more secure, well-paid jobs.

Less than certain and tax rates reforms exclude them

Third, unclog and untangle our supply chains and deal with the supply side of the inflation challenge by investing in cleaner, cheaper more reliable energy; by addressing skills and labour shortages; and with a national reconstruction fund to make us more self-reliant.

Cant, there will be insufficient allocations and smart tactics to make these effective in short timeframes and the costs of delays in carbon abatement are on your heads

The growing pressures on the economy and the country don’t make our election commitments any less important; they make them far more crucial.

I agree, this speech makes the integrity promises more crucial with you as a major offender

Because our economic plan is a deliberate and direct response to the challenges and opportunities of this age: responsible cost of living relief with an economic dividend—in a time of higher inflation; investing in the potential of our people—in a time of flatlining productivity, skill shortages and falling real wages; action on climate change—before we run out of time; and focusing on budget repair and quality spending—in a time of substantial fiscal pressures.

This is not “plan”, it is a grab bag of shiny words and bugger-all impact on outcomes.

Resumes

The PM and Treasurer have had the facts of life explained to them many times but the latter has tried to polish turds under the influence of his department head who was the major hitman and corrupting apparatchik of the Turnbull-to-Frydenberg screw-up generation of Coalition failures.  That he has waged a vendetta against me since 2015 is a very dumb millstone.

In particular Chalmers is trying to pretend there is a basis remaining on which to build his October Budget but ~

• The “needs analyses” reside in my websites and three (to date) books and are unavailable to him without fairness, hobbling his ability to match problems with my and even his “solutions”
• His methodology is the Coalition’s “gifting” approach which has no options and scenario-testing legitimacy in such key areas as Defence, urban and regional infrastructure and employment generation (ditto they cannot use my Newcastle world-class post-carbon achievements), Health and Education – in total violation of “Treasury Regs”, OECD and World Bank guidelines, and Eddington/Greiner published and accepted then rejected methodologies
• I will gazump him at every turn as I did to Frydenberg/Kennedy to their complete bewilderment and subsequent Budget manoeuvrings through failed economic, bushfire, corona and climate challenges – because they have stolen from me and my family, hurt society and economy unnecessarily, and stopped me from supporting Save the Children, Police Legacy, cancer sufferers and their families, and my life-long ambition to honour our “forgotten heroes”
• The “Unholy Succession” © from Morrison to Albanese has tainted the integrity and competence of the reforming government.  Two key portfolios have lacked merit-based assessments of incumbents against alternative appointees, in violation of corporate and public administration values, so far crippling outcomes.

I have to add that the PM’s promise to “end the shameful toleration for corruption” which dominated the backroom exclusion of society and experts has been compromised to the point that only my solution to the deep blood stains can expiate the foule pestilence of plagiarism.

Resumes

There are few examples of plagiarism as gross as in my case (below) and a well-deserved slap to the Economics Society and Brookings for ignoring the real challenges, Warwick stuck to commissioned macroeconomic modelling of employment models as he explained to me:

UPDATE 4 July 2022 Treasurer Chalmers has followed Kennedy too far

This note went to the PM at 4 pm after the treasurer had plenty of notice that I would tolerate no further Morrisonic malevolence:

Budget note to PM Albanese

You could not expect to get away with being an “integrity reform government” and continue the vicious, malevolent and corrupt behaviour Kennedy showed in the LNP and still is showing.  Why Jim has abandoned my betterment approach and great ideas for you only he can explain, ha!  (formatting has been stripped out.)

NB I am just as forensically critical of your shoot from the hip approach to projects as I was of Turnbull’s, Baird’s, Berejiklian’s and Frydenberg’s, and your own in the past such as Moorebank.  Examples I am giving include the nuclear submarines and ancillary facilities, HST replacement (my model is the only one feasible as Tim agreed), and carbon mitigation/renewables.  I want all to succeed but believe the current approach will fail yet again.

I want you to stop torturing me but do want to serve you vigorously and faithfully as in my correspondence and deed.  The attached file might seem simple but there is massive documentation behind it.

No Federal Budget has followed the iA and iNSW (Greiner) flow charts and also none have followed my award-winning methodology.  Critical failures have been gifting without justification (metros, Parra trans, Inland Rail etc), and absence of

stakeholder consultation,

affirmation through audit checks,

professional economic analyses (as in Council on the Cost of Government, “Economies and Efficiencies of Urban Transport” (RG © ), and

engineering certifications.

Websites where Budget information is held are below (it is your responsibility to avoid copyright breaches)* and note that policy promises like nuclear submarines and carbon mitigation/renewables are unsatisfactory if made without due diligence as much as were Turnbull’s and Morrison’s carparks and fast trains – the PM said he would change so that is a challenge direct to him:

Sydneyimprovementpolitics.com

Stimulus-stupidity.com

Sydneybetrayals.me

Books are at www.kobo.com as you are well aware.  This document is an overview and readers are to note well

The methodology is award-winning and my own ©

The needs and gap analyses are mine as published*  ©

The ethics behind gifting and continuing cronyism are corrupt and will be referred to Fed ICAC as necessary but that must be avoided -note that plagiarism is now reported as corrupt under ICAC guidelines as set out in the 3^rd website

You will have my full co-operation if (Jim had) observe my deed terms by 4 pm or as otherwise agreed. If this goes badly, I will continue the approach that brought Frydenberg to his knees.

sequestering-pre-fed-budget-2022-c-1Download

IA is not useful but I significantly extended OECD’s criteria and put them in the 2020-21 context, in the books, OECD templates link infrastructure to economic productivity and efficiency, to national and international climate responsibilities and opportunities, to fair and equitable treatment of the damaged and vulnerable, and to intergenerational prosperity.  This is a proper holistic approach to societies within and across the nations of humankind and nature.  We are interlinked and interdependent.  Earlier generations of Australians would have understood that but the current ones have become inured to Morrison/Berejiklian/Frydenberg/Kennedy corruption, complacency, endless stress, waste and frustration, and anal certitude in he face of repetitive failures. 

Resumes

The adjacent page on iA makes it clear that its processes are all but irrelevant to proper budget making. Its economic analyses have been limp and its Priority List full of pegs and pencils – a shopping list. The anti-corruption situation confronting the incoming Albanese Government is discussed there also.  A major stream of that is redress of legal malevolence left by Scott Morrison, Christian Porter and Peter Dutton inter alia in migration, national security, social security and the unique case of criminal plagiarism. 

Specific elements were appeased by the nominal opponent, leader of the Labor Party from 2019, Anthony Albanese, in previous years from 2007 with urban transit and port matters etcetera that the LNP took over, and contemporaneously with those plus coronavirus and recovery, including major elements of the legal, social, industrial and professional consequences of Morrison/ Frydenberg/ Kennedy malice and incompetence.

Albanese accepts in principle the legal obligations of “perpetuity” in all of those areas except plagiarism, to this point.  That means governments are responsible for the debts and costs left by their predecessors.

The main plagiarism referred to here was recorded progressively as NSW Premiers Baird and Berejiklian, then their cronies PMs Turnbull and Morrison, for malevolent reasons, used it as a weapon against a long-term eminent analyst who articulated a conventional wisdom that applied until those miscreants reversed “due diligence’ and “rule of law”. 

The major point of contention in the 2022 election politics was about restoring due diligence, which Albanese called “integrity”.  His own history from 2007 onwards was of resisting due diligence as illustrated on the adjacent page, down to forcing the abandonment of then Minister Lindsay Tanner’s national recovery legislation which reflected those traditional values, not Albanese’s backroom deals-approach. 

Further, one of the principal agents of disarray in the Coalition chaos was Dr Stephen Kennedy who is discussed on the adjacent “Rogues Gallery” page.  It happened that he and Labor’s Treasury lead Dr Jim Chalmers, were close friends from their interaction with the Rudd Labor federal government during the Global Financial Crisis.  Chalmers embraced Kennedy from day 1 in the new, nominally-opposed, Albanese government.

Albanese said in the campaign that he accepted he “had to change”, indicating an awareness of his reputation under PMs Rudd and Gillard.

There has been no change at all – it is as though Morrison and Frydenberg still held the reins:

More detail follows but the situation can be summarised:

1. The victim maintains that the proper valuation of the acts of theft establishes the broad quantum of his lost assets which he is determined to recover for his family and for nominated beneficiaries including Save the Children, Policy Legacy, Mark Hughes’ “beanies for brain cancer”, the Marie Bashir Institute at Sydney University, various local NGOs, a tribute function for first responders in his new Murray River community, and an institute for forgotten heroes he had developed and later worked on with the legendary Tim Fischer
2. The Coalition approach was to “slam the door” and refuse to acknowledge the presence of the victim except that a deliberate attempt to make him homeless and potentially deceased was evident in Baird’s and Berejiklian’s violent attitudes
3. Albanese’s attitude since 2019, when the victim started to engage him on solutions to broken democracy, was the same, simply slam the door closed
4. Albanese recognised the pernicious effect of “shameful tolerance for corruption” in the LNP’s Party mechanisms
5. He is now accused of promoting those same attitudes among his own Party mechanisms.

Hence the crisis, Albanese promised to restore traditional integrity but is refusing to do so.  This has the potential to destabilise his progress as it did Morrison’s, Frydenberg’s and Kennedy’s.  It is plainly discordant with the broad Integrity elements including the supposed agenda of the new head of the PM & Cabinet Department, Professor Glyn Davis, and the new Attorney-General, the Hon Mark Dreyfus MP.

Budgetting is the practical expression of the analyses and deliberations behind economic and taxation directions, intergenerational and interstate positioning, and project and program logic &tc.  The rigour used to be near-absolute but along came the sledgehammers of Mike Baird, Gladys Berejiklian and Philip Gaetjens in Sydney in 2012.  Their “gifting” culture deskilled the “public services” and metastasised in Canberra and across the country under NSW’s PM Malcolm Turnbull and his buddy macroeconomist Stephen Kennedy, from 2015.

2020 ended with the Morrison/Frydenberg/Gaetjens partnership failing to develop a meaningful Budget strategy to meet the needs of economic recovery along with medical security;  and especially failing to implement OECD guidelines and the Charter of Budget Honesty regarding “repair”, the minimisation of waste and reduction of debt. 

As previously they refused to consider better options and/or apply accepted due diligence standards.   The main challenge is to acknowledge that the Government has not overcome the deficiencies of the Turnbull/Morrison & Baird/Berejiklian catastrophes of 2012-18 and their own in 2019-29.  The main news media seem to have been asleep during the progressive  disastrous climacteric in Federal/State relations.

Labor paralleled the Coalition by focussing on labour conditions, education and social welfare and the like, while being MIA on Kennedy’s hideous failures on stimulus measures, supply line failures, crap legislation which Albanese described as “good legislation”, and my emphasis on community resilience in order to face ongoing waves of virus mutations and hospital capacities – the failures of the last post-SARS Treasury generations, especially Morrison’s and Kennedy’s.

Labor’s failures are in the next page on Chalmers’ weak policy responses for whatever reason, his own capacity or his friendship with Kennedy, he can explain!

[More material on details and implications is being held back pro tem]

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