[AUS] Gillard Government to introduce SAVAGE spending cuts - right wing coup with a left wing face!

It may come as no surprise to many here that the true colours of the Gillard "Labour" Government are finally starting to show with leaked information detailing the proposed spending cuts that they are planning to introduce as well as other law changes that would have severely impacted on their election campaign had they had been truthful and honest with the public from the start.

Neoliberalism in Australia - Government Introduces Savage Spending Cuts

A 109-page briefing document prepared for the Labor government’s new finance minister Penny Wong by the Department of Finance and Deregulation has recommended a series of deep spending cuts to health, aged care, public sector jobs and welfare, including aged and disability pensions. Consistent with the government’s response a fortnight earlier to similar advice issued by the treasury department, Wong has immediately committed to implementing the brutal austerity agenda outlined by her department.



The document, authored by finance department secretary David Tune, was presented to the government last month and publicly released last Friday, but with highly significant redactions. It began by emphasising “the need for fiscal consolidation to be the primary focus for the government in this term”.

Now just a little background to all this......only a few months ago, our THEN democratically elected Primeminister Kevin Rudd - love him or hate him he was voted in by the people was over thrown in a late night coup organised by the Far Right of the Labour Party.

Labour's Shadowmen stick knife into Rudd

Political commentators say largely unknown Labor Party factional strongmen have shown their control of the Labor Caucus by engineering the political demise of Kevin Rudd.

Mr Rudd was ousted by his deputy Julia Gillard in an unopposed leadership spill after it became clear that he had no chance of marshalling the numbers to prevail in a contested leadership vote.

But in terms of the exercise of power, when push comes to shove, the factions, and especially the right faction, wields tremendous power in the Australian Labor Party federally and in most states.

Which in itself is very interesting and a interesting partnering up between the far right of the party with a far left leaning minister considering the publicly known fact that now primeminister Julia Gillard comes from a far-left leaning background.

Julia Gillard - Left Wing Opportunist

At university, Gillard was a student activist and supported a range of left-wing causes. She rose to be head of the radical Australian Union of Students and acted as a senior official in the Socialist Forum.

So strong were Gillard’s Labor credentials that in 1996 she was appointed chief-of-staff to the then opposition leader John Brumby. Evidence of Gillard’s commitment to left-wing causes include her involvement in the feminist inspired Emily’s List and moves to positively discriminate in favour of selecting women for political office.

Given Gillard’s belief in Labor’s vision, one she describes as favouring collective action to remedy the perceived evils and injustices of capitalist society, it should not surprise that her first speech to parliament championed so-called traditional Labor values.

In her speech Gillard dismisses conservatives for championing “the cult of individualism” and “survival of the fittest” and portrays the ALP as the party of a “fair go”, a party whose values are “fundamentally democratic and collective”.

In explaining why her political philosophy is “left rather than right-wing”, Gillard paints a romanticised picture of her working class electorate, one where the battlers overcome disadvantage by displaying a “sense of community and a fighting spirit often missing from the sleeker suburbs”.

"The Party of a Fair Go"........"one where battlers overcome disadvantage"....I will now explain why this is so hypocritical given the news that is out today.

The finance department explained that: “The government’s fiscal policy objectives will be difficult to achieve for a number of reasons.” These included the reliance of budget projections on continued economic growth—“there are downside risks to the global economy which have the potential to slow the projected growth in export prices and government revenues ... the persistent threat of a ‘double-dip’ global economic downturn strengthens the case for rapid fiscal consolidation to build a fiscal buffer in the event of a further negative economic shock”.

The media here in Australia has been championing the cause of the Labour part by constantly saying how strong the Australian Economy is and that the Global Recession has bypassed us and not affected us....funny considering the Finance departments reports details how precarious a position that the true state of the econmy is in. So what will Gillard Government do about this?

She is going to systematically lower the living standards of all Australians across the board by slashing services like health care and increasing the retirement age.

These changes will involve the systematic and permanent lowering of the living standards of broad layers of the population. The document stated: “Areas for particular attention are health, aged care and retirement income policy ... a substantial program of structural and other savings will be required.” This will entail “a re-evaluation of who pays for health and aged care services and whether more of the burden should fall on those users who have the capacity to contribute more than at present”.

Goodbye medicare and government funded health completely and say hello to the American Health System....not a good example if I may say so myself.

Particular attention was paid to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), which subsidises selected medicines and drug treatments. The scheme, the document noted, involves nearly $10 billion in annual public spending—a figure that has increased at a nominal rate of 7.8 percent every year since 2003-04. The section of the document, “PBS—fiscal challenges”, was the most heavily redacted of all, except for those that covered military and national security spending. Seven of the section’s eleven paragraphs were entirely blacked out, evidently including those detailing the finance department’s proposed cutbacks to the PBS scheme.

Many Life saving drugs for Cancer and the like are covered by the PBS Scheme....getting rid of it will massively increase the death rate amongst the average person stricken with these diseases as medication becomes out of reach to keep living. But that ok....as long as the military gets its funding right?

Among the other measures outlined by the finance department, the document recommended that more workers be forced to postpone their retirement by “tightening eligibility for the pension and increasing the superannuation preservation age to the age pension age [soon to be 67 years]”. It similarly advised that new measures be introduced limiting access to the Disability Support Pension, because “past changes to tighten eligibility for DSP have not worked”.

So this must go hand in hand with the PBS cut backs......reduce the disability pension availability, increase the working age, more than likely going to be 70+years in the not too distant future and at the time of your life when you need medicine and health care the most it wont be available to you unless you can afford the very high prices......How is this going to help the, as previously quoted by Julia "battlers" and give them a "fair go" ?

Not a single one of the proposed cuts outlined in the finance department document was floated by the Labor Party in the course of the recent election campaign. The series of diversions and endlessly repeated sound bites that dominated the official campaign were consciously aimed at concealing from working people the agenda being worked out behind closed doors with key representatives of big business and finance capital. The series of deeply anti-democratic developments in Australian politics over the last four months—from the coup against Kevin Rudd to the election campaign and subsequent negotiation of a business-backed minority Labor government—were driven by a decision, within key sections of the ruling elite, to fashion a more right-wing government capable of implementing the kind of measures that are only now being publicly acknowledged.

What a perfect way to fool the masses.....put in a left wing face with strong support and backing by the far right of the part and ruling fiscal elites to get the public thinking that the First Female of Australia is going to be a compassionate one, with more understanding of what the battlers are going through.....how wrong we are.

Government Rules Out Raising GST rate

Both sides of politics have rejected a recommendation from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to increase the goods and services tax (GST) from 10 per cent.

So we now have the right wing elite of the Labour Party with financial backing from the Global elite in power with a Left Wing Puppet PrimeMinister and we have the Global Financial Overlords the IMF keeping a watchful eye on Australias economic situations and "telling" us the GST - Government Services tax, should be increased?

Whats the bet it goes up within this governments term and a scare campaign start soon to justify it by saying that our economy is not bullet proof due to new risks on the global economic position?

So is the government going to cut absolutely everything everwhere? No way.....of course the military gets excused from all of this.

However, he pointedly ruled out one of the recommended cuts—to defence spending. The document suggested that the government’s pledge to maintain military spending growth at 3 percent annually for the next two decades could be reviewed in light of the “scale of the fiscal task ahead and the very large enhancements to defence and national security funding in the last decade”. But Swan was having none of it. “We’ve locked in a long-term funding profile for our defence forces,” he declared on ABC Radio. “I can rule out the sort of speculation that is floating around this morning. Our troops will get all the support that they need on the ground in Afghanistan.”

A reccommended spending cut....a spending cut that this report clearly said would undermine the governments ability to get into surplus within the time frame it indicated as our military endeavours would be eating through at least half of this potential surplus each year by 2012-2013...so who are they trying to kid?

This statement underscores the class character and militarist agenda of the Labor government. Pensions, aged care, jobs, access to healthcare and prescribed medicines—all options for cutbacks in these areas remain on the table. But the armed forces and their criminal activities in Central Asia, the Middle East and South Pacific are sacrosanct.

Seems to be the flavour of the month lately huh? Cut back spending everywhere except the military...what exactly are we building up for? (yes, many can theorise what it may be).

The average worker "battler" that was promised a "fair go" by Julia will soon workout that he will have to work to 70 years old before he can get his self funded retirement and/or pension......he will have to pay for his own high cost medicines if he wants to stay alive to receive his pension/super annuation, he will have to pay in full for each and every doctors visit, this surely has to go in the favour of the global elites NWO plans in regards to not only population reduction but global enslavement through Debt burden and high cost of living.

I look forward to all your thoughts...yes, it is a long post but I thought I had to break it down in certain areas to emphasize what it all meant.

reply to post by Melbourne_Militia


awesome thread mate, very informative thanks for the heads up, don't know what the military spending could be gearing up toward, there might be another reason for it, I will have to think about that one.

-B.M

reply to post by B.Morrison


Probably the same reason Gillard is pushing for further integration with NATO... This is awesome MM, I will be reading this more thoroughly soon, and giving a more thorough response. Just wanted to subscribe.

Well after the IMF "suggested" Australia raise the GST recently news comes in that Wayne Swan is going to washington for the annual meeting with the IMF. The first of this newly elected "cabal" in canberra lets see what the Global Financial Overlords make then do afterwards?

Wayne Swan attending IMF Meeting

Treasurer Wayne Swan flies out to Washington this morning for the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund. In its latest world economic outlook the IMF says risks remain, noting that some advanced economies were slowing noticeably and that "sovereign and banking vulnerablities remain a significant challenge".

The other topic of discussion by the IMF recently was its concern about the reliance of Australia on the China sponsored mining boom.......now why would the IMF raise concern over this? yes, the mining boom is proping up our economy at the moment but looking in between the lines, does the IMF know something is coming that its not letting on about?

Australia's reliance on China worries IMF

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned the Federal Government about its increased reliance on the China-fuelled resources boom.

In a largely positive assessment of Australia's economic prospects, the IMF says there are risks that Chinese demand could taper off, or that the global recovery might stall.

Now why would Chinese demand taper off or stall? their economy is growing in leaps and bounds and they cannot get enough of our minerals.....so whats going to cause it to "taper off or stall" ? it'd have to be something big.....war maybe?

In my opinion the IMF really loves their taxes....increase the mining tax...broaden the mining tax...raise the GST rate.....are these people for real?

China just announced they don't want our shellfish any more. That's projected to lose 15000 Australian jobs.

Also, before being booted the Irish pm announced over there that they have no money, none in the treasury & that each citizen would be required to fork out about 4-5000 of their own money over the next 4-5 years in order to fix it.

The housing inflation we have here is what happened in the U.S a little while ago and I can't help thinking that a combination of what is occurring in the U.S & Ireland now, (throw Greece into that if you want), is what is in store for the future of Australia.

-B.M

Explanation: Here is a link to the 109 page briefing report as a pdf.

109 page Briefing Report (.pdf) [finance.gov.au]

Personal Disclosure: I just found it and haven't had time to read even 1 paragraph of text yet. But I did quickly scroll through it and yes there are blacked out redacted sections of text! I will investigate those area's in the pdf asap.

S&F my friend. I am watching here from the sideline and see these things happening in Australia and wonder when it will come our way. If I look at the way Australia is being governed, then I jokingly call it "USA Lite". Unfortunately their role model and puppet master is loosing face at an incredible rate. Next up will be the airport scanners and suppression of freedom of speech. One have to ask yourself, what an ordinary law abiding citizen can do, when his own government start turning against him and start to enslave him. One can only pray that the eyes of the ordinary citizens will open to understand and see what's happening...

reply to post by Melbourne_Militia


All them documents are dated 7th September or earlier..
Labour did NOT form a Government till 7th September..

If real, they must have been really rushed to file a 109 page document..
Seems a little off to me...