Gary Adshead: Where will the money come from?
BY now folks, you’re probably wondering if WA is actually floating in a sea of money, rather than drowning in an ocean of debt.
And that’s because there’s an election campaign under way and the major political parties are at it again — chucking your money around like confetti.
Their approach to getting elected — or re-elected — is as predictable as the sun rising.
The science behind the formula they come up with every four years could be concocted by a two-year-old in day care.
Jump in a car, or a big slogan-covered bus, smile a lot on arrival, and leave after promising to spend a wad of cash if voted in.
Quite a few times during the campaign the formula gets a bit of a tweak by one of the election strategy Einsteins working back in political party laboratories.
It’s easy to spot, though. The wad of cash is bigger because they’ve worked out that the spot where the politician got out of their car, or hopped off the bus, is in danger of being lost to the other side.
The test-tube geniuses call that formula “sandbagging” and there’s no problem with it costing them more to produce — it’s your money!
So, on Wednesday, Colin Barnett fired the official starter’s gun in the election race — although all sides exploded out of the blocks weeks back — and the spend, spend, spend formula is formally being applied by him and Labor’s Mark McGowan.
Even before the writs were filed this week to put the Barnett Government into caretaker mode, Labor and Liberals had pledged more than $2 billion combined to win your votes.
Think about that. There are still 34 days to go before voting on March 11 and in a State staring down the barrel of $40 billion worth of debt it’s the same old electioneering formula of splash the cash.
And the downright duplicitous, hypocritical and hysterical thing about the spend-a-thon is that Labor and Liberals will try to convince you their opponents are being reckless and irresponsible.
You can also throw the Nationals into the mix after the party’s leader Brendon Grylls promised $600 million on regional tourism this week. Where will the money come from? His proposal to raise the lease rental paid by WA’s two biggest mining companies. Yeah, money from a source that doesn’t exist. Talk about funny money.
Readers of this column would go dizzy if they saw the amount of financial pledges flowing into the email inboxes of political reporters right now.
It’s obscene. The headline “Liberals say yes” is appearing more and more across the top of Liberal Party promises. Maybe if they’d said “no” more often the State’s debt wouldn’t have reached a record high.
And perhaps if Labor would stop promising “a fresh approach”, which includes spending billions of dollars more, and actually devised a serious approach to debt reduction, then the public might just appreciate the honesty of an approach like that.
Just imagine — and this is a stretch — what it might be like if those who want to lead us decided to tell it straight.
Parents know that sometimes you have to say “no” when the kiddies are demanding this and that.
Don’t you find it strange that when election time comes our politicians just start promising to hand out cash left, right and centre? How many of you got on your phones during the past four years and demanded money for something in your electorate to buy your vote?
If there had been billions of dollars worth of demands from voters it might in some way justify the spend, spend, spend formula.
Movie buffs — or fans of Warren Beatty — might recall his 1998 side-splitting political satire Bulworth.
Senator Jay Billington Bulworth was up for re-election when something snapped in his brain. He decided to start telling the truth wherever he went and whoever he spoke to.
For example, he began reading a pre-prepared “dawn of a new millennium” speech to a hall packed with black Americans before tossing it to one side and calling for questions from the floor.
As he answered each one with brutal honesty, there was anger, then confusion and finally appreciation for a politician who told voters what they already suspected — the truth.
Shame it was only a movie.
Tomorrow, Labor will be out there promising a mountain of money on something and the Liberals will commit a suitcase full of cash on something else.
More of the same old formula from the Einsteins in the party laboratories and their masters. Perhaps they should read a quote by the real Albert Einstein.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them,” he said.