In case anyone was thinking fiscal profligacy was purely a Labor disease — or that Crikey was unfair in constantly pointing out how bad the fiscal positions of Victoria and the Commonwealth are — behold last week’s budget from the Tasmanian government of Jeremy Rockliff and his Treasurer Guy Barnett.
Not merely is the Rockliff government promising deficits out to 2028-29, the budget represent a marked deterioration since last year’s budget — despite increased revenue.
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That includes $13.2 million to fund the operations of the “Macquarie Point Development Corporation”, the spivvy government body charged with developing the prize example of the Tasmanian government’s inability to control spending: the new stadium being forced on Tasmania by the Australian Football League. The government willingness to entirely abandon good process around this benighted project was necessitated by the fact that any rigorous assessment of the new stadium reveals how the government has relied on garbage modelling to justify the spending.