03 October 2011 in Media
The Coalition’s Scrutiny of Government Committee has today released a 12 month report card on government waste, which shows that Labor has again failed to rein in its wasteful spending.
In fact, the Committee’s report uncovers approximately $4.1 billion in new waste since the last election.
Together with the waste revealed before the last election in the BER program, the home insulation scheme and the immigration budget, wasteful spending tops approximately $8.3 billion.
Over the twelve months since the ‘new paradigm’ was sworn in, Labor has continued to increase spending, it has continued to waste money, it has continued to deliver more and higher deficits, and it has continued to increase debt.
We have seen millions of taxpayers’ dollars wasted on carbon tax ads and market research. Billions have been wasted trying to fix Labor’s border protection policies, a mess of their own making. More examples of BER waste have been revealed. The home insulation clean up bills are coming through.
There have been staff blow-outs in the Prime Minister’s office and the public service. Millions of dollars have been handed to the unions for ‘educational purposes’. The Foreign Minister has splurged over $1 million in travel costs in just nine months. The waste just keeps on piling up.
Then we have new programs ripe for waste, such as the $308 million set top box program and the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation (Gillard Bank), which will be funded off budget – just like their other huge off budget project, the NBN.
While Wayne Swan and the Prime Minister say they will ‘exercise fiscal restraint’ and ‘rein in spending’, in reality they just deliver more debt and higher deficits.
Despite the grand promises, Labor has again failed to rein in its wasteful spending of taxpayers’ money.
Labor are not economic conservatives and they are not exercising fiscal restraint.