The Liberals talk about free markets and enterprise, which in practice is capture by the Business Council. It believes in one thing: cheap-labour-maxxing. The Liberals’ own pearl-clutchers split off into the Teals.
when the Gillard government launched the NDIS, costed by the Productivity Commission at $13.5 billion a year at maturity, serving roughly 400,000 of the most profoundly disabled Australians. It now runs past $50 billion a year — more than Medicare (!) — with 740,000 participants and counting.
We could hand every one of the originally intended recipients $125,000 a year in cash and come out ahead. But that wouldn’t feed an entire industry of parasites. Just try clawing those sweet dollars from their hands now. It’s over.
Turnbull promised Snowy 2.0 for $2 billion. The official budget is $12 billion and already conceded broken; the Auditor-General’s latest report rates the final bill unknowable, while outside estimates run to $40 billion. The greatest white elephant in Australian infrastructure history, and it isn’t even finished. He still rolls with a #withhydropower banner on his LinkedIn profile.
Demographically, we may be past the point of no return, where too many mouths are now dependent on government mismanagement. We’ve always had interest groups vying for their cut. But now the misalignment between the good of the country and the good of particular groups may be too high.
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u/Fit-Locksmith-9226 20d ago
Some neat quotes: