Spending cuts must go hand-in-hand with tax reform to fix budget
Tightening the purse strings is great, but it won’t solve our economic problems. The scale of the challenge means a review of the tax system is critical.
There is something mildly entertaining about being lectured on government spending by someone whose party took $136 billion more in spending measures to the last federal election – and still lost in record style.
But irony aside, former NSW Liberal Party president Jason Falinski raises a fair question: can we deal with the intergenerational and fiscal challenges I and others have identified simply by managing spending, or do we need tax reform too? My answer is that spending restraint is necessary, but not sufficient – tax reform is critical – and that it is time we move beyond platitudes to costed proposals.
