Ian McAuley | Abbott’s figures don’t add up | New Matilda, 4 Feb 2013

Is it possible to cut company tax, cut the carbon tax, pay out for defence and ‘direct action’ on climate change—and still balance the budget?

CPD fellow Ian McAuley analyses the pitfalls of Abbott’s policy paper ‘Our Plan: Real Solutions for All Australians’ which, while promising to abolish the Mining and Carbon Tax, cut personal and company tax, spend heavily on road infrastructure and increase pensions, refuses to reveal any costings.

As Ian argues, the contradictions replete in the Coalition’s fiscal statements which no economic conditions or budgetary measures could possibly reconcile, have gone largely unnoticed by the media, leading to the public assumption that the ‘Coalition is better able to handle the economy than the current Labor Government.’

Read Ian McAuley’s New Matilda article – ‘Abbott’s figures don’t add up’ – in full