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May 14th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
Updated
Independent MP Tony Windsor says he believes tonight’s budget will be Treasurer Wayne Swan’s last.
Mr Swan is poised to use tonight’s budget speech to lay out a 10-year plan to fund the Gonski education reforms and the DisabilityCare scheme – both key planks of Labor’s election pitch.
Mr Windsor supports the Government’s plan to lock in funding for both schemes, but does not think Labor will be in power for much longer.
“My guess is he won’t be Treasurer after September,” Mr Windsor said.
“But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t set a platform for whoever the Government happens to be for the next period of time.
“You can bet your bottom dollar that Joe Hockey will be talking about sustainability and surpluses into the future and so he should.”
Mr Swan says whether he is Treasurer after September is “entirely up to the Australian people”.
“I’ve run for Parliament on any number of occasions and I will continue to run proud of what has been achieved, and go to the next election with the expectation we will win that election,” he told the traditional budget morning press conference today.
“There’s a real challenge here tonight for the Opposition.
“What we are putting in place is a detailed funded plan for the future, based on Treasury forecasts and, of course, the Opposition is going to have to come clean as to what their program is going to be.
“The task for them will be to demonstrate how they’re going to bring a budget on a pathway back to surplus, how they’re going to fund the investments for the future and how they’re going to keep an economy strong and that is the debate we need to have in this country as we go forward to the election.
“There will be a clear choice and in that choice we will win.”
Tonight Mr Swan will reveal a budget deficit, but then set out the pathway he would take to get back into surplus if Labor wins the September 14 election.
Mr Swan will outline a plan to fund the Gonski and disability reforms for the next decade, which he says will necessitate significant savings on top of the cuts already revealed.
However, the Treasurer will argue they are responsible cuts, and insists the Government will not cut to the bone and slow the economy.
Just last month Mr Swan told a press conference that “it is very difficult to do absolutely reliable 10-year figures,” but this morning he insisted his 10-year funding plan would be credible.
“I did say it was difficult,” he said.
“What I also said was … that we would make structural changes in our budget to make room for other or new structural changes in the budget.
“If you’re going to put in something like funding the school improvement program then you have to find room in your budget.”
Infrastructure is the other element at the heart of tonight’s budget – emphasising job creation, then a longer term boost to productivity from better road, rail and freight facilities.
“The forecasts I’ll be delivering tonight are forecasts that have been prepared by the Treasury, the same people who did the forecasts for the Opposition when they were in government,” Mr Swan said.
NAB’s chief economist Alan Oster has told Radio National Mr Swan’s plan is a good idea, but has warned against relying on long-term forecasts.
“The one thing I would however be careful about is saying you can forecast these things for 10 years. That’s just clearly not true,” he said.
“I don’t mind the idea of scenario planning but what I would advise people not to assume is that therefore everything’s going to work out okay over a 10-year period.”
Mr Hockey says Mr Swan’s budget contains nothing different to the past five budgets – something he says is cause for alarm.
“When Wayne Swan threatens Australia that he is going to deliver the same sort of budget tonight as he’s delivered for the last five years, we should be both alert and alarmed,” he said.
“All we want is an honest budget. We just want the budget to tell the truth, to reveal in full the true state of the nation’s accounts, to give honest assessments about how the budget is expected to deliver a strongest economy.
“I think it’s important that he focus on getting this year’s numbers right and not deliver us a decade of deceit with 10-year terms numbers that are in his own words barely believable because it was just a month ago that he cast out on the reliability of 10-year forecasts and now is expecting us to believe them when he gives them tonight.”
But Mr Hockey would not be drawn on the Opposition’s budget plans.
“I am not going down that path,” he said.
“Our team is working every day and every night to give Australians a better opportunity.”
Topics:
budget,
government-and-politics,
federal-government,
business-economics-and-finance,
australia
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Source Article from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-14/windsor-says-its-swans-last-budget/4687868
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