Recent entries
- Legacy
- Holiday Camp
- Preferential voting
- Commissioner launches coast crackdown
- Stronger Than Grief
- "He's a dog..."
- System failure
- School terror project
- RSS Syndicate this blog (XML)
What we're talking about
- Phil of Springwood on "He's a dog..." @Bigfellah, with your permission, I would like to add that I thank you sincerely for acknowledging my success at being a ... more
- Bella on Preferential voting FIRST PAST THE POST ~ is not as democratic as you may like to think.In a preferential system every registered voters final ... more
- steve on A few facts on illegal boat people Hey Wendy - I'm an immigrant - I've lived here for 40 years and have learned to ignore people with attitudes like yours but ... more
- James Weir on A few facts on illegal boat people Wendy, I'm surprised anyone lives in Adelaide. Even the Welsh born redheads are getting out of the place. more
- Phil of Springwood on "He's a dog..." @Bigfellah. Again in typical Socialist Fashion, you are denying me my right to form an opinion. Mr. and Mrs. Newton ... more
- Meg on "He's a dog..." I believe that any ordinary person who assaults women would have been charged and jailed not sent to rehab. Has Matthew ... more
- Wendy on A few facts on illegal boat people Look around..In Adelaide now, you cannot spot an Aussie. Everywhere you look its Chinese/Asians, Indians and Pakistani's. ... more
- bigfella on "He's a dog..." Hi z,The point is: How the heck would Phil of Springwood know what sort of parents Bert and Patti were to their son? For all ... more
- z on Bob Brown Lazarus Where is the costings that they demand of everyone else, thier 5 minutes of fame will be up shortley more
- Shanelle on System failure The whole system is stuffed. I have been apart of it for 10years now and still im confused. Im in a bad place at the moment ... more
- James Weir on Barnaby Joyce How many Clem 7's would you like in your Super Fund, Barnaby? It lost $1.5B in it's current reporting period. Only Govts can ... more
- Steve Martin on "He's a dog..." Rebecca Wilson as per normal is just plain out of touch.The hitting of women is wrong but personalising this with "he's a ... more
- Ronny Of Brighton QLD on Preferential voting MichaelIve just come back from a holiday.That bloke Dean Jaensch Siad that if someone(call Him RONNY) had 40% he said 60% of ... more
- z on Preferential voting the way it is working at the moment is the first loser joins with 2nd loser and so on untill they beat the winner, so a ... more
- brisman on Bob Brown The guy is not green he absolutley red through to the core. His environmental visions are shallow and don't serve ... more
- z on "He's a dog..." bigfella, Phil of Springwood is not talking from so called flippantly expertise, Ivory tower stuff but more from commonsense ... more
- robert goodchild on Support our Diggers the sticker Idea is great.I would happily part with $20 for one and would like to see the profit go to families who have ... more
- Phil of Springwood on "He's a dog..." Hey Bigfella, back again so soon after your mobs magnificent defeat by the Tories, I thought you and the rest of your Left ... more
- z on "He's a dog..." Hey Phil, why don't you say what you really mean more
- bigfella on "He's a dog..." Congratulations to Phil of Springwood,We've become accustomed to his astute political and social commentaries based on ... more
The US securities commission
Our state Treasurer will shortly deliver his budget for next financial year.
A budget is an informed guesstimate about the state’s expected income and expenses for the year coming. I think actual, recorded results give a much better view of how well a government is managing.
This is Treasurer Fraser’s 2007-08 Report on State Finances. You might want to think twice about opening it. It’s 110 pages long and a bit impenetrable. http://www.treasury.qld.gov.au/office/knowledge/docs/state-finances/2007-08/state-finances-report-2007-08.pdf
It tells us that in the boom financial year of 2007/08 he delivered a deficit of $1.6 KEV*. That is a profit-and-loss result of negative $1.6 KEV*. His government also spent $5 KEV* more cash than it brought in. That’s as a result of its capital works program not being managed to budget. In other words, it blew its budget badly.
Treasurer Fraser explains that away with this magnificent piece of Sir Humphrey-ism. Get ready. It’s superb. Here it is, a direct quote from page 4.01.
'Capital Purchases in the General Government sector exceeded the estimated actual forecast due to a lower level of under expenditure than anticipated.'
That one is going in a frame on the wall.
OK, that’s one thing. The government’s total debt as at 30 June 2008 is the really scary number.
The financial disclosure laws in the United States are pretty comprehensive. Queensland’s Treasury Corporation raises money in the United States. So our government has to produce financial reports for the US Securities and Exchange Commission that meet US reporting requirements.
And that’s great, because the resulting financial statement is much, much easier to read than the one that the Government puts out here.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/852555/000119312508251662/dex99e.htm
That document shows clearly that as at 30 June, 2008, Queensland’s state debt was $41.796 KEV*. We owed $42 KEV*. And that was as a result of the good times. God knows how much that’s grown in the 12 months since then.
$42 KEV*. I’ll write it out. $42,000,000,000.00.
There are currently 2,236,800 people in the work-force in Queensland as at April, 2009
On that basis, each working person in Queensland owed $18,776.80 as at 30 June last year. We’ve been paying the interest load on that money all year.
Not Federal debt. Not personal debt. That’s debt owed by the state government of Queensland. Now you can add in your share of the $300 KEV that Kev’s borrowing as well.
Before we pay for one copper, one nurse, one doctor. It’s like each of us having a $18,700 credit card balance to finance every month before we can buy the groceries.
Happy with your election choice? There will come a time when a sensible economic manager in this state will need to relieve us of the burden of the interest payments. That will mean asset sales in rail, power stations, ports and anything else that’s not bolted down. The people who are in power at the time will cop it for that - but make no mistake - the reason we’ll have to do it is because of the shocking mismanagement of the boom times.
This state really did deserve better.
* a $KEV is the unit of AUD currency formerly known as $1 Billion.
