Election 2013: Day 11 (or, my thought bubble is more concrete than yours)

And so today Kevin Rudd hoped on a plane and went north with a plan. He was the man with a plan. And being a man with a plan in a plane heading north is a good thing.

Unfortunately it seems the plan was something he only bothered to come up with on the actual plane flight.

He, like Tony Abbott before him, saw a vision of a new North – a north that is going to tap into the growing middle class of China.

All good. So what is he going to do about it?

Three things. First he is going to

• Expand the Ord Irrigation Scheme Stage 3 by providing $10 million to the Northern Territory Government to help facilitate expansion of the Scheme from its current 29,000 hectares to 43,000 hectares. This will increase economic output in northern Australia by an estimated $150 million every year, mainly through expanded sugar production and agricultural crops.

OK. Now I have written a number of times before about boondoggle plans to make northern Australia into Asia’s food bowl.

Northern Australia will never become a food bowl in the sense that it will, as Andrew Robb wrote, “double Australia’s agricultural output”.

The most recent report on the issue of Northern Australia was handed down in 2009 by the Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce (set up by John Howard as a sop to the Nationals and Bill Heffernan), It stated:

The north is not a vacant land. It needs to be actively managed for resilience and sustainability, based on a contemporary and informed understanding of the complexities of the landscape and its people. Contrary to popular belief, water resources in the north are neither unlimited, nor wasted. Equally, the potential for northern Australia to become a ‘food bowl’ is not supported by evidence.

And when it came to speculation home much land could be “opened up for farming”

The potential for growth in groundwater irrigable land in northern Australia is
estimated at between 100 and 200 per cent, or around 20 000 – 40 000 hectares.

And it attached to that a number of risks.

To put that size into context, the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area is around 660,000 hectares, of which 120,000 hectares is irrigated. And if you look at the map above, you see that is only a small fraction of the Murray-Darling basin (which of course is not all farm land, but it gives some good perspective).

So at least Kevin Rudd is not off with the fairies and talking about doubling our food production.

He also talked about

• Develop twenty-year growth plans for the regional hubs of Darwin, Cairns, Townsville and Mackay. Infrastructure Australia will oversee these plans, based on the successful Mount Isa to Townsville Economic Development Zone supply chain model, developed in collaboration with the private and public sectors. These plans will target key industry sectors and include strategies for increasing trade, investment and employment in these regional centres.

Sounds good. Anything developed through Infrastructure Australia gets my tick of approval. But it is all a bit, “we don’t know really what we’re going to do”. He probably should have had Anthony Albanese along, because Albo would be reeling off a number of projects that he probably has on a list that he keeps under his pillow.

There’s also not a lot of meat here. Nice sentiments, but, you would hope a bit more from a party currently in Government.

This is one of the problems with changing a leader so close to an election –especially if you want to come up with different policies. It means you can’t use the incumbency in your favour.

Remember those trades centre announced yesterday? That was not an election promise – that was actual money that is going out. It was a Government announcement that Rudd was able to badge as a campaign issue.

Same deal with the after-school care announced in the first week. It was budgeted and is now going out. The Liberal Party will have to actually stop it if it doesn’t want to spend the money.

That is what good political operators do. They spend the last 6-9 months before an election using the public service to cost and develop policies and programs, put a few in the budget as “decision taken but not yet announced” and announce them in the campaign.

You also announce all these whiz-bang policies that are well formed and developed, because for the past 6-9 months some bright sparks in the public service have been working on them!Howard was great at using the public service. He knew better than probably any politician before him how to use the power of incumbency.

No Prime Minister should turn up during an election and announce something that sounds like a thought bubble. Julie Gillard did it last time when she came out with the cash for clunkers and people’s assembly.

And Kevin Rudd did it today. Because the third thing he announced today was this:

• Create a Northern Special Economic Zone focussing on the Northern Territory to attract new Australian and foreign investment through simplifying investment rules, streamlining regulation and application processes for major projects, and introducing new tax incentives with the objective of reducing the company tax rate for Northern Territory based companies in five years.

A lower company tax rate for NT based companies.

The best response to this was a tweet by economist Richard Green (who blogs for Club Troppo)

Who wants to invest with me in a large building of letter boxes just on the NT side of the WA border so firms can incorporate there?

— Richard T. Green (@RHTGreen) August 15, 2013

Anyone think every major organisation who can employ a decent tax lawyer won’t set up a HQ in Darwin that does just enough to ensure its business operations qualify for the lower tax rate?

That is not producing an economic boom, that is just shifting capital, and reducing the revenue collected by the government at the same time.

It was a dumb idea when it was floated by free-market ideologues from the IPA, and it is still dopey. The IPA wants it because it’ll end up with less tax collected and hopefully set off a spark whereby the company tax rate gets lowered everywhere else and then perhaps lowered in NT again and then…. Gina Rinehart wants it because she’ll get to pay less tax just by shifting here HQ.

But what the hell is an ALP government doing proposing it?

Geez. Next Rudd will come out in favour of income splitting tax returns.

Worst of all is he didn’t seem to have a clue about the details. He had no idea how much this would cost, and even how low the rate would be and whether it would apply to Darwin based or Northern Territory based companies. The media release talked of “reducing the company tax rate”, but then Rudd off the top of his heads talks about “by a third” – so to 20% – but this was just his hope.

Geez.

There is no way in hell this policy was worked over by boffins in Treasury. And we know this because just a couple months ago the Gillard Government was quite rightly calling it a boondoggle.

But Rudd had a thought bubble I guess.

All this to try and win Lingiari?

***

And it was a dumb day to have such an uncosted thought bubble, because Tony Abbott was in Tasmania announcing the next step of his plan for Tasmania.

Among the plans was extra money to lengthen the Hobart Airport to allow it to service 747s and the like, and also a “one stop shop” located in Launceston for approvals for major projects. This Tasmanian Major Projects Approvals Agency sounds all well and good. Though it does seem an odd move for someone who wants to cut the public service to create a new agency, so it will be interesting to see if it will be done by trying to transfer people from Canberra.

It says it will try and makes this a one stop shop for both Commonwealth and State approvals. Which sounds a bit like it needs state government support. And given his stated aim of giving the state the right to tick off on any environmental concerns, I’m not sure how it all fits in with that.

But overall the policies at least had the whiff of intelligence about them. They sounded like things being done. The was an overall shape to them all.

And then at the press conference Joe Hockey put in one last sound-bite:

JOE HOCKEY:

Well, we have always said we will release the full costings before the election, well before the timetable that Labor has had in the past.

I just say to you, if the whole election is going to be about costings rather than about policies like we are announcing today then I think everyone is going to bore the Australian people to death and we don’t want to do that, we won’t them to be excited about the policy initiatives, but believe me all of our policies and all of the costings and the ways we are going to pay for it. All of it is going to be out there verified and in net terms provided to the Australian people before polling day.

You have to love the wannabe Treasurer of Australia saying policy costings are boring.

He’s right though – policy initiatives are the exciting thing. Everyone wants to do that. Heck I could go out on the hustings right now and promise everything from high speed rail to double carriage highways across Australia and a second airport in Sydney.

Look at me! I’m doing policy!!

That’s the easy part. The hard part – as Kevin Rudd showed today – is the costings, and that is why they are important. If your costings are dodgy then the policy is dodgy.

The only reason this is an issue at all this time round is because in 2010 the Liberal Party absolutly ballsed up the costings. They treated everyone like mugs. The best they showed us was a spread sheet with numbers on them that correctly added up to a total number

That is not costings.

Heck I can do that. Watch:

JERICHO PARTY MAJOR POLICIES:

1. High Speed Rail from Sydney CBD to the Bradman museum in Bowral (because Richie Benaud says, ‘gosh it’s interesting’, so we need to get there fast): $5 billion.

2. A giant wall around the north coast to keep undesirable people out and put me onside with voters who say they aren’t racist and they really only care about people drowning at sea: $6 billion

3. Free beer at Christmas for those who can’t afford to buy those Tap King things: $7 billion

TOTAL COST: $18 billion

Wow. And here I thought it would be harder to run for government.

Costings are not about adding up the final numbers, it is about working out what the number should be and why. And it needs to be done by someone who you are NOT paying to come up with a nice figure for you. 

Take the Greens. They are thus far the only party to have had any polices fully costed and released by the Parliamentary Budget Office.

Here for example is the costings for their “Improved Mining Tax”

And there we have it – the policy, the assumption made and then the cost (or save) to the budget). We can challenge the assumptions – indeed that is where most of the argy bargy lies, because the costing are made on the basis of the assumption.

If we don’t like the figures, we have to find issue with the assumptions – ie the diesel rebate ain’t going to get removed, so fughgeddaboudit.

But we can trust that the figures are not dodgy, because they were not worked out by anyone who has any reason to give the Greens better number than there really is.

(As an aside, as someone who wrote about the legislation of the PBO in my third ever Drum article in which I chided the media for ignoring the legislation, I am quite happy to see it being used so extensively).

The costings don’t suddenly mean the policy is good. But at least the argument has some degree of reality involved.

Now the Liberal Party has apparently around 200 policies with the PBO. That is great, but it is time to start releasing them. Sure some things are dependent on the PEFO numbers, and may take a couple more days. But today Abbott announced $38m for the extensions to the Hobart airport. Fine show us the costings. Show us the document that displays that a third party has looked at your policy and said, yep $38m will cover it.

There is no more reason to wait.

Tony Abbott tonight on ABC’s 7:30 again talked about “in good time” before the election. That good time is now, not later.

Because the longer he leaves this, the better the ALP new advert looks:

***

And the first policy he can shows us is his Direct Action Plan.

Today the Climate Institute released a report on the Direct Action Plan which suggested the Libs were about $4b short.

And having read the report, I think that’s a conservative estimate. They made some very conservative assumptions which will unlikely occur and which if they didn’t would lead to higher costs. As was noted Tristan Edis of Climate Spectator, the assumptions that the companies bidding for contracts will do so based only on their costs rather than on what they think has become the going rate; that it will be able to start by July 2014; and that all bidders will deliver on time and on budget are pretty generous.

The thing about the Direct Action plan is it is a plan whose purpose is not to reduce emissions but to look as if the Liberal Party wants to try and reduce emissions. The only person who might think the Liberals can get to their target of 5% reduction in CO2 from 2000 levels with the money they’re spending is Greg Hunt.

Tony Abbott certainly isn’t so dumb as to care; he knows the policy is just a show – one that he can slice and dice once in government to suddenly find savings. It is designed to appeal to people who don’t like the carbon tax, but kind of think we should at least be trying something, and it;s also a policy that doesn’t offend those who think Climate Change is … crap..

But today Greg Hunt came out and said the Climate Institutes report is silly and that it was done by a partisan organisation.

Now that is fair – they certainly do favour action on climate change and would prefer a price on carbon. But where is your policy? Show us your assumptions, let’s put them side by side with this report and let’s see who is making the more realistic case.

The aim of the Direct Action plan seems not to be to reduce emissions but to spend $3.2 billion on reducing emissions. Any suggestion that it might cost more is met with the response that it is capped and no more will be spent.

It’s a bit like saying you plan to spend $50 million to build a bridge and upon being told that will only get you three quarters of the way, saying, ‘Well that’s all we’re going to spend, we will not have a blow out of costs’.

Tony Abbott doesn’t care if we don’t get to 5% by 2002. 2020 is three elections away.

The latest Direct Action policy is the 2010 version. Is it still the same? If so bring it out and show us that the costings within have been made by an independent party. Until then you got nothing but dreams and idle desires.

But it could be worse. You could have just announced a company tax cut and you’re not even sure how much the cut will be.

***

And look it could all be worse than that. You could be the journalist who asked Tony Abbott this question:

QUESTION:

[You chose] the song ‘Hot and Cold’ to be your anthem. Are you fully aware of the lyrics? “You change your mind like a changes clothes” “You say yes but you mean no”, “got a case of love bipolar” Do you think that is the best anthem for you as Opposition Leader?

Election 2013: Day 10 (or, I’m 70% confident there’s a preference for bias)

One of the more interesting things is to watch where candidates campaign. In 2007 in the last week Kevin Rudd surprised many when he turned up in Cairns which is in the seat of Leichardt. The sitting member, Warren Entsch was retiring and the ALP thought it had a chance to win. And win it did – with a 14% swing to take the seat.

In 2010 Entsch came back and he re-took the seat with an 8% swing and he currently holds it with a 4.6% margin.

It is the 6th most marginal LNP seat in QLD, but you would think a longshot for the ALP to pick up. And yet today Kevin Rudd was back in Cairns

This doesn’t necessarily mean that the ALP thinks it is a chance to win it; it is as likely that they know they have to go for everything they can possibly get.

It’s only in the last week that the real focus on where the candidates campaign takes on full meaning. But it is something to keep an eye on.

***

Today Kevin Rudd was in Far North Queensland spruiking skills. He’s been on the skills and training kick all week. Today the big announcement was:

$209.8 million for 137 new Trade Training Centres.

The selling point was that

This investment is part of our positive plan to ensure all Australian students are given every opportunity to secure high-skill, high wage jobs beyond the China mining investment boom.

It’s a good policy, but it got no traction because the big “news” of the day was all about preference deals.

One aspect about this policy is that in 2007 Rudd promised 2,650 of these trade trainings centres over the next 10 years (ie till 2018 – as it started in 2008) to be in every secondary school.

At present we have around 250 completed. But the policy has changed a bit. Now the trade centres are more like “hubs” where one centre will service a number of nearby schools.

The latest information from the Department (which came out today) on the centres is:

More than $1.4 billion has now been approved for 510 projects benefitting over
1290 schools.  Over 60% of these schools are located in regional Australia and of the 29 schools  identified in RSD priority locations, 26 have now been approved to benefit under the Program.

Of the previously announced projects, over 70% have already been built – this is a
great achievement considering the first funding round only opened in March 2008.

At the 2010 election the LNP promised to scrap them.,

No idea what they’re going to do this time round; they weren’t saying today, they were just complaining it was all going too slow. 

***

Tony Abbott this morning announced via his party’s newspaper that the Liberal Party would not preference the Greens in any seats.

The statement was initially:

I have directed the Liberal Party to preference the Greens below Labor in all 150 House of Representatives seats.

By the time of his press conference though it became:

I have today instructed the Liberal Party organisation right around Australia that we should put the Greens last.

Geez, they’ve couldn’t even keep a consistent message for a whole morning.

The preference deal won’t matter much. In the seat of Melbourne and maybe Denison in Tasmania.

Preference deals only matter if the Greens are going to finish above the LNP. Other than that it’s all show.

And that show is about telling voters the LNP won’t ever work with the Greens and that they don’t want a minority government.

Again, there’s no basis in reality here – the Greens would never side with the LNP over the ALP in a hung parliament. Abbott continues to say he won’t make any deals and that if it is a hung parliament there should be another election.

He then followed this announcement saying:

“This is my captain's call and I say to Mr Rudd be man enough to do the same.”

Geez, ain’t it good that men are back running the country again?

Kevin Rudd had to respond to this sideshow of an issue, and given it was Julia Gillard who organised the deals with the independents, he was only too happy to run a mile from it saying,

We’ll be not entering into any coalition agreements, we won't be having any negotiated agreements, we won't have any deals with any independent or minor party.

But he also said he would try to work with whatever parliament was elected. And so both sides should.

Elections are not the cheapest of things going around, and we elect a parliament in the belief that an effort will be made to form a government. If neither leader is prepared to do that then their party should dump them at that point and put in a leader who will find a way.

Tony Abbott had nothing else to announce today other than in Wyatt Roy’s marginal seat of Longman, where he announced $250,000 for the Caboolture netball association.

So a bit of pork for the marginal seat.

Tomorrow it is Tasmania again for Mr Abbott where we’ll see if he adds to his “Tasmanian Special Economic Zone” policy he first talked about last week.

***

Tony Abbott also went on 2SM radio talking to John Laws:

He noted of same sex marriage that:

“Well, we have to be conscious of the fact that we are all the product of the society, of the culture, of the circumstances that have shaped us and I’m not saying that our culture and our traditions are perfect.

But we have to respect them and my idea is to build on the strength of our society and I support by and large evolutionary change.

I’m not someone who wants to see radical changes based on the fashion of the moment.

Now I’ll give him a slight benefit of the doubt and say when he was talking about “fashion of the moment” he was talking more in general terms, than of same sex marriage.

But the thing is same sex marriage is actually an example of evolutionary change. It’s not radical at all. Numerous states in America allow it, Britain, New Zealand, Canada, Spain, France and others nations do as well. A majority of Australians support it.

If the move to same sex marriage is not evolutionary, then no change is.

***

Last Friday I noted that while news.corp tabloids were unsubtle in their bias, The Oz was no less dodgy when it came to reporting the state of affairs.

On that day the front page made very idiotic use of the unemployment data to suggest QLD’s employment situation was a hell of a lot better than it is, and also to label Rudd as wrong.

This morning because I was working on various things, I hadn’t got round to reading The Oz, until I was alerted by a blogger from @ConusBusiness to another economics' crime on The Oz’s front page.

Conus Business’s blog post on it is excellent, and largely I will be reiterating and elaborating what they have noted.

Now yesterday I noted that in the PEFO, Treasury had released a graph showing its confidence intervals for its Real GDP growth projections. I noted that this was a great idea because it showed just how difficult it was to predict things years in advance.

I naively thought it would give journalists a bit more knowledge so that their reporting would be more accurate and more aware of the context of Treasury predictions.

Of course I forgot to put in the caveat that this does not apply to those writing for The Oz.

The Treasury also had another graph that showed the confidence intervals for nominal GDP. Nominal GDP is more crucial for the budget because it affects revenue (because you pay tax in a nominal amount, not adjusted for inflation).

Here’s the graph:

For those who prefer words to graphs, this is how the PEFO explained the graph:

The average annualised nominal GDP growth over the two years 2011-12 to 2013-14 is expected to be a little over 3 per cent, with the 70 per cent confidence interval over the two years from 1¾ to 4½ per cent (Chart B).

So the darker grey area is the 70% confidence interval. Treasury is 70% confident that nominal GDP from 2011-12 to 2013-14 will be between 1.75% and 4.5%.  When we look at the next three years (the 2011-12 to 2014-15 part) the range goes from 1.75% to 5.25%.

Fairly straight forward.

But when you need to come up with a front page story that suggests growth is in danger of tanking and that the budget truly is in “an emergency”, well then you have to be a bit less even handed.

So here’s how David Uren and David Crowe explained it on the front page of The Oz

“It says there is a 70 per cent chance that nominal gross domestic product growth – which is the value of all goods and services produced – could be as little as 1.75 per cent a year for the next three years against a central forecast of 3.5 per cent.”

Now that is just as dodgy as it gets.

If you look at the graph you can see the confidence levels are the same amount above the 3.5% central forecast as below.

There is not a 70% chance of nominal GDP growth for the next three years being as little at 1.75%. There is a 70% chance of nominal GDP growth for the next three years being between 1.75% and 5.25%.

I guess they didn’t believe their readers would like to know that there is a bit of an upside to the confidence interval as well.

Because everything in their article focuses only on the lowest level of growth occurring.

As the ConusBusiness folk note, saying there is a 70% chance of nominal GDP growing as low as 1.75% is as disingenuous as looking at the figures and saying Treasury believes there is a 90% chance nominal GDP will grow by as much as 6.25%.

Now you might think, oh well they played fast and loose with the confidence intervals. Big deal. It’s just a small part of their article.

The problem is they use the 70% chance figure to justify the entire thrust of their article. Here’s the lede paragraph:

TREASURY has sounded a dire warning that the budget could be in far worse shape than the government's economic statement suggests, with revenue possibly falling much lower and spending rising higher.

OK. Dire warnings. They need to provide something to support that. So what do they write?

“The document suggests revenue could easily be $30 billion a year less than the budget forecasts, while spending could be rising 50 per cent faster across the next decade than dictated by the government's budget strategy.”

Now the spending aspect is right – I noted it yesterday as well when I pointed out that while the Govt aims to keep spending growth at 2% in real terms, since 2008-09 it has grown by 3.7% (which is actually more than 50% higher, I really missed my chance to go for a headline).

But how do they come up with “revenue could easily be $30 billion a year less than the budget forecasts” line? Well they use the 70% figure:

“It said every percentage point error in the nominal GDP would raise the deficit by $6bn, mostly because of lower tax revenue. This suggests there is a 70 per cent chance that the deficit could be as much as $30bn a year worse than Treasury's forecast.”

How do they come up with $30 billion?

Well 3.5% (the central predicted growth figure) is 1.75 percentage points higher than 1.75%. So we do some “maths” and have 1.75 times $6 billion and then times 3 years to get $30 billion.

What a load of bullshit.

Because you could just as easily write:

“It said every percentage point error in the nominal GDP would lower the deficit by $6bn, mostly because of higher tax revenue. This suggests there is a 70 per cent chance that the deficit could be as much as $30bn a year better than Treasury's forecast.”

Both examples are terrible reporting. And yet oddly Uren and Crowe chose the version that aligns with the Liberal Party’s view of the budget situation. And that version ended up on The Oz’s front page.

I know. The shock.

I don’t know either David Uren or David Crowe personally, but I have chatted quite a lot with David Crowe on Twitter. He was a fine journalist when he worked for the AFR, and I thought him an excellent hire by The Oz. But his name was on last Friday’s piece of biased crud, and it is there again today on this one.

Crowe likes to take to Twitter and talk about his pride in the mainstream media. I would suggest embarrassment is the more appropriate feeling he should have for these two efforts. 

***

But hey, both Davids should not feel too bad. After all they didn’t write this:

***

And everyone can take a moment and be glad that so long as Mark Latham is around, there’ll always be someone in the world who is a bigger tool than they are:

Election 2013: Day 9 (or, Hit ‘em with the old PEFO)

Today was PEFO day. That moment when everyone turns to the Treasury to find out what the budget situation is as we head to the election.

Everyone except those in the Liberal Party looking at the Budget grassy knoll knew the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook was going to be almost exactly the same as the Economic Statement released the Friday before the election. We know this because it was clearly one of the reasons why the Economic Statement was released two days before the election was called. The ALP could not cope with another drop in Budget estimates during an election campaign and so it made sure there was as little time between the Economic Statement and the PEFO.

The only clowns who were saying the Economic Statement would be greatly different from the PEFO were Liberal Party fantasy dwellers and assorted kool-aid sippers. It is not in Treasury’s and Finance’s interest to get budget forecasts wrong on purpose to please the political party in power – which is essentially what Joe Hockey was charging they were doing.

At some point Joe Hockey should apologise for treating Treasury with more contempt than any politician since Jim Cairns. But I wouldn’t hold my breath. If he becomes Treasurer I can just imagine morale at the Dept of Treasury will be sky-high knowing that they have a bloke who for 3 years has accused them of being incompetent now as their boss.

But not to worry, he’ll probably call in Peter Costello to do an audit, like Campbell Newman did, so that they can get the numbers they want to get.

The interesting thing about the PEFO is that it acknowledged the difficulty of achieving the 2016-17 unemployment rates set in the Economic Statement. This was something I wrote about in my Drum piece last week.

The reason it is difficult is it would involve going in one year from 6.25% unemployment to 5%. And to do that you would really need GDP growth of around 6%. Treasury however – because in the 2 “out years” (ie the last two years of the 4 year forward estimates) uses the long term averages for growth and unemployment – had GDP growth in that year only at 3%.

In the PEFO it acknowledges this and points out it could have used alternative assumptions to achieve a different scenario:

Under this alternative scenario, unemployment in 2015-16 only gets to 6% and down to 5.75% in 2016-17.

But while that might be a nice number of the LNP to focus on, it is worth noting that this alternate scenario actually has a higher level of GDP growth projected and thus ends up with a better budget bottom line in 2016-17. Treasury estimates in 2016-17 the alternative scenario would add a cost of about $1.7 billion in unemployment benefits, but because it predicts stronger GDP and employment growth there would be an extra revenue take of around $2.1 billion.

The other interesting thing (in an economic-nerdy way) is that the Treasury has followed the RBA’s lead and published confidence intervals for its forecasts:

This gives you an idea of the inexact science of economic forecasting.

I actually think it is good to acknowledge this.

While in the past the risks with the forecasts have been noted, showing it helps ram home to people (ok, mostly journalists) that getting the GDP growth “wrong” by 0.5% is not an unlikely scenario.

The PEFO also provided an updated assessment of the structural position of the Budget.

This measure in effect forecasts where the Budget would be if economic circumstances were “normal”  ie when we’re not being able to count on record terms of trade figures.

It displays in a nice graph that the budget is expected to be in deficit until 2016-17, but that in structural terms it will take until 2017-18 for things to be in surplus – although the band shows that if the “worst case” scenarios occur it could be till 2012-22.

Note that even if this occurs, the actual budget might be in surplus already, but we could be in that position due to above average terms of trade and not due to a correction of the structural balance.

OK. That is all pretty dull and dry. In effect it lets you know that so far as the “Budget emergency” goes we’re actually repairing it pretty well.

BUT.

That is only if annual spending growth remains at 2% – the Govt’s professed target.

Now since 2009-10 real growth in expenditure has increased on average by 1.9%, but if we include 2008-09 the average jumps up to 3.7%. This might seem a big jump, but 3.7% growth is also the average increase in real govt spending in the last 10 budgets of the Howard Govt.

So keeping spending to 2% is going to be tough.

Laura Tingle also notes in her AFR article on the projections, they are dependent on a number of spending and tax commitments that have not all been agreed to by the LNP and that also if the asylum seekers policies don’t actually work, the added cost to the budget could be around $3.5b over the next four years.

****

The politics of PEFO is that now that the numbers are out, everyone wants to see everyone’s costings.

Joe Hockey and Andrew Robb made a big deal of the fact that when you go to the “Election Costings’ website, the ALPs page is empty.

If they had looked at PEFO they would have seen Table B2, which includes the costings of decisionS taken between the Economic Statement being announced and the PEFO:

The problem with the ALP is not that they haven’t announced any costings, it’s that they haven’t really announced any new policies not covered by the budget or the Economic Statement. It’s all been pretty light, and remember in the Economic Statement there was around $500m worth of policies over the next 4 years that came under the category of “Decisions taken but not yet announced”.

That said, both sides would be better off now actually releasing some policies and costings rather than saying “look at the other side”. How about not arguing that you are just as bad as the other mob, and show us that you are better?

Bold concept I know, but worth trying.

***

The morning started off with WA Liberal MP Don Randall saying the Libs might dump promises after the election if the budget is bad:

“Governments after elections quite often find themselves in difficult circumstances and I suspect that should we be the government and we see the state of the books, there's going to be a bit of that sort of talk from the coalition because governments do do that.”

Someone clearly forgot to tell Randall you only start making those statements after you win. When Tony Abbott was asked about this today he slapped down Randall:

“Look, I have been trying to call Mr Randall, but there is no mobile phone reception up here. Until we win government and put our mobile phone black spot programme into place, it will be difficult to call people from places like this.  But he knows what he said was wrong. I will keep my commitments. We will do exactly what we say we will do.”

What Randall said is actually quite fine in a broad sense. In his first term Rudd was actually very anal about keeping his promises. I remember being in the public service at the time and “it was an election promise” was pretty much the best way to explain why something was given a fast track.

But then the GFC hit and well, there are things more important than keeping election promises, and that’s keeping as many people working as you can.

The problem with Randall’s comments is the suggestion that the Liberal Party doesn’t know the state of the books. They do. That excuse died when Costello brought in the Charter of Budget Honesty. The PEFO IS the state of the books. Any suggestion otherwise requires a lot of lunacy present in your thought process (this doesn’t seem to be in short supply).

The problem is Randall is referring to the commission of audit that an Abbott Govt would institute. It is very similar to the one instituted by the Newman Govt in QLD which was done by Peter Costello (independent man that he is). When asked if Abbott would use the post election audit as an excuse to dump promises or do things not promised he responded:

… if the commission of audit identifies ways of getting better value for the taxpayers' dollars, of course we will be happy to consider that. We won’t do anything that is contrary to our mandate.

Given Abbott was the bloke who denied the ALP in 2009 had a mandate to introduce an ETS despite both the ALP and Liberal Party campaigning on the issue at the 2007 election, for him to start talking about not doing things contrary to his mandate is rather laughable.

The Randall comments also bled into the GST discussion. Last night Chris Pyne, fool that he is, on QANDA went further than the standard line regarding the GST (that they won’t introduce one without seeking a mandate from the electorate) saying:

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: The GST is one of our taxes. If the review says the GST should be increased, the commitment from the Tony Abbott Opposition is that we will not change either the GST or the basket of goods and services upon which it applies. That is a commitment.

and then

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: There will be no change to the GST in an Abbott Government.

Tony Jones rather correctly then asked him why the GST is being included in the review. The same was asked of Tony Abbott today.

Now I think the GST SHOULD be in the tax review, and it SHOULD have been in the Henry Tax Review. (To be honest about all that is needed in the Abbott tax review is a look at the GST, everything else can be marked “covered by the Henry Tax Review”.)

But why pay someone to review something that you are not going to change? You can obviously set parameters on a review – ie review these things, but not other things. Or you can (as the Govt did with the Gonski Review) put the parameter that any recommendation must not make any school worse off. Now those parameters might limit the effectiveness of the review, but at least doesn't negate it.

But to commission a review and say you will ignore any findings it makes about the GST renders the enterprise rather academic. 

And here’s the other thing, any changes to the GST will have huge impacts on any other changes in the tax system. Indeed changing it would be the starting point for most of the recommendations – ie increase/broaden it so we can cut income tax, get rid state taxes etc etc.

I’ll write more on this in my next Guardian post, but that political parties feel the need to rule out things they might only do after a review and even then only after the next election is just idiotic, and is one of the worst things about our current political system.

Yes the Government could change the Tax Act to change the GST without the states help, but it should be enough for Abbott to rule out doing anything before the next election. Promising not to do something in perpetuity is stupid.

***

Oh yeah, and Tony Abbott when asked to compare the current LNP candidate for Lindsay, Fiona Scott, with former Lindsay rep,  Jackie Kelly (she of the “Chaser style prank” Lindsay pamphlet scandal of 2007), he said:

"They're young, feisty, I think I can probably say have a bit of sex appeal and they're just very connected with the local area,"

Apparently Labor are not going to buy into the issue, wary of suggesting that they are invoking a sexism war. Wonderful. So Abbot gets away with saying stuff no boss would dare say of someone who works for them, and Labor give him a pass.

Geez, thanks goodness Julia Gillard got rolled so we could all stop worrying about sexism in Australian politics.

So don’t discuss the GST, and don’t call out sexism. Welcome to Election 2013.

***

But oh look, let’s not get too depressed. Just think it all could be worse, you could be the journalists who wrote this story:

But geez, you wouldn’t wish being that vacuous on anyone.

****

One last thing:

Today Tony Abbott was in Penrith. He “pledge $12 million towards a new Western Sydney community and sports centre.” He noted that the project would boost economic activity and confidence in the area.

"Over the last few years ... it's been hard to be optimistic about Western Sydney when it's hard to be optimistic, particularly about the Government in Canberra," he said.

Mr Abbott said Labor had neglected the area.

As Kimberely Ramplin noted on Twitter, here was Anthony Albanese back in July:

“The Federal Labor Government today announced it would contribute $12 million towards the development of the Western Sydney Community and Sports Centre in Penrith.”

Some neglect.

Election 2013: Day 8 (or, Too many suppositories, not enough wisdom)

Hey remember that amazing leader's debate where that PM just destroyed the opposition leader? It was amazing. The opposition leader was useless. For example he said of the PM, “Now, he's going to throw a big word at you – ‘unfunded mandate’” but then the Prime Minister responded with “"Well, first of all, let's clear up a couple of things. 'Unfunded mandate' is two words, not one big word.”

Zing!

And then later after the opposition leader said a great line about tax cuts, the Prime Minister responded saying,

“There it is. That's the ten word answer my staff's been looking for for two weeks. There it is. Ten-word answers can kill you in political campaigns. They're the tip of the sword. Here’s my question: What are the next ten words of your answer? Your taxes are too high? So are mine. Give me the next ten words. How are we going to do it? Give me ten after that, I'll drop out of the race right now.”

It was such a slaughter that CJ the Prime Minister’s press secretary invoked the Ali-Forman fight, and my God if the PM’s speechwriter Rob Lowe wasn’t pumped about how good they all were. It was incredible. The debate win was so huge that the election was over from that moment. 

Oh wait. No that was The West Wing.

I don’t know what people expect when they watch a debate, but here in Australia our candidates certainly don’t score big wins. Mostly this is because the debates aren’t scripted by Aaron Sorkin in such a way that one of the candidates happens to have struggled to achieve the chew gum and fart at the same time level of intelligence.

No one is going to score a knockout blow because both of the candidates have spent over a decade in parliament. American presidential candidates can rather avoid any great Socratic debate in their career – especially if they’re a state governor – and so you might find one of them can get caught out a bit in a debate.

But regardless of what you think of either Abbott or Rudd, both have spent a bit of time debating in parliament and answering questions from journalists. They are not stupid, and they’re not going to have a caught-in-the-headlights moment.

And going for the big knockout also means taking a bit of a risk – usually because it will involve mocking your opponent. There is no need to even take such a risk in Australian politics, where you don’t need to worry about the get out the vote aspect.  Certainly taking a risk last night was pointless, when due to it being screened on GEM and ONE it rated much less than in 2010.

Yes it had around 2.3m viewers national wide (including regional areas), but at the same time, 3.4 million were watching Australia's Got Talent and The X Factor. So it was never going to be a pivotal moment.

The reporting of the debate was, let’s be honest, for the most part, pointless.

The general consensus over in News.corp was that Abbott won because Rudd failed to deliver a “knockout blow”.

For eg:

KEVIN Rudd won the head-to-head debate tonight but he needed to leave Tony Abbott's election bid lying bloodied on the floor. And he didn't.

Or

PM unable to land a knockout

KEVIN Rudd needed a convincing victory over Tony Abbott in the first national debate to revive his flailing campaign. Rudd failed to achieve that victory

Elsewhere we had:

Kevin Rudd has kept alive his election hopes with a hard-fought debate against Tony Abbott in which neither leader landed a knockout blow but Mr Rudd was the chosen winner by undecided voters.

I swear you could have written those before the debate.

The boxing analogy seemed to have been taken to heart by Tony Abbott who gave Rudd a handshake like he thought it was a contest of strength. Given how often Abbott likes to talk about being “man enough” he probably does think being PM should be about who can do the most push ups.

At least that was the worst it got.

Oh wait, no we had to worry about whether or not Kevin Rudd cheated by using notes.

Even while the debate was going the Liberal shills took to Twitter to profess that Rudd was cheating because he was using notes and the rules of the debate said no notes..

It apparently went to his character.

Geez. Just when you think commentary can’t get any more up it’s own arse. At best I’ve read people describing it as a silly rule, but that it’s the rules and therefore… snore.

Please. Who gives a damn?

Most people couldn’t be bothered tuning in to watch the debate and now we’re supposed to think they care about the rules of that debate?

Here’s how people this morning at work were discussing Rudd’s ‘cheating’ in the debate.

SWINGING VOTER 1: Hey did you see the footy on the weekend?

SWINGING VOTER 2: Yeah, it’s was great.

OK, maybe I’m being cynical. Let’s try that again:

SWINGING VOTER 1: Hey did you watch the debate?

SWINGING VOTER 2: Nope, you?

SWINGING VOTER 1: Nah. But geez, did you see the footy on the weekend?

OK, OK. Still too cynical? Try this:

SWINGING VOTER 1: Hey did you watch the debate?

SWINGING VOTER 2: Nope, you?

SWINGING VOTER 1: Nah. Apparently Rudd cheated.

SWINGING VOTER 2: How?

SWINGING VOTER 1: He used notes.

SWINGING VOTER 2: Oh.

SWINGING VOTER 1: Yeah. Hey did you see the footy on the weekend?

No doubt in future we shall read academic articles, “Historians generally agree that Rudd using notes in the debate was the moment the election result was determined”.

Look, let’s not be too cynical, at least the debate gave us definitive proof that Kevin Rudd has spoken to both Simon Benson and Peter Hartcher about things other than the undermining of Julia Gillard.

On the use of the panel, for mine, I didn’t think we needed it. It flowed quite well when it was just David Speers asking the questions. Some suggested he butted in a bit too much, but I thought he had a good handle on it, and the debate mostly became stagnate once the panel came in. The US Presidential debates last year just had one moderator and now panel. It;s a tough gig, but I think Speers is up to it.

But if you want the debate summarised, for me here was the key moment:

CURTIS: Firstly to Tony Abbott and then to Kevin Rudd about aged care. About 6 million voters in this election are aged 50 and over, 2 million aged 70 or over, that's lot of people who are thinking about care for themselves or their parents. The Government made a change in policy legislated earlier this year with almost no publicity. Mr Abbott, you don't have a detailed aged care policy in your Real Solutions booklet, I think your aged care statement ran to about a paragraph. What would a Coalition Government do? Mr Rudd, can you explain what the central changes are and whether there would be any more?

After a lot of blather, here is Mr Abbott’s conclusion:

ABBOTT: We have no plans to make significant changes to the system that the Government's put in place.

And after a lot of blather here was Mr Rudd’s conclusion to the same question:

PM: I'm of the view, and I note carefully what the Productivity Commission has said, I believe because this is a growing challenge for the nation, this must be kept under continue review. It's only fair to seniors who have served our country so well, that they are guaranteed proper are into the future.

And that ladies and gentleman is why more people cared about The X Factor than the debate.

***

Today Kevin Rudd was talking about skills – a “Step into Skills” policy. It isn’t a big policy, but it is crucial if we want to improve our productivity (I wrote something along these line in my Guardian post today). He pledged

a $35 million initiative (over three years), that will provide around 8,900 training places.  Funding for this project is already included in the budget.

What is it all?

The Step into Skills program aims to empower and educate its participants, and will provide:

• 8,900 training places to the most disadvantaged young people between 16-24 with  $35 million investment over three years.
• Training in core employability skills such as language, literacy and numeracy.
• Simulated work experience opportunities to ensure that young people are equipped with the practical skills they need to secure employment, such as communication and time management skills.

I’m generally in favour of skills programs. This one doesn’t have a big “wow” cost factor, but these thing do matter to people. And it sure beats his incredibly lame policy announced in Tasmania on the weekend to fund the redevelopment of the Hobart Showgrounds. For a state with ongoing unemployment problems, I hope that isn’t all he’s got for the state. The least thing it need is piecemeal stuff.

…

Today for Abbott it was about infrastructure. His big ticket item is the East West Link in Melbourne. The ALP is not funding the East West link. They are instead funding the Melbourne Metro Rail Tunnel. The reason they are doing this is Infrastructure Australia has a list of infrastructure projects listed in its annual report to COAG.

It put the projects into the categories:

THRESHOLD means:

Initiatives in this category have strong strategic and economic merit. It is highly likely that the project will deliver economic benefits exceeding costs incurred.

REAL POTENTIAL means:

Initiatives in this category clearly address a nationally significant issue or problem and relevant options are being considered.

Here’s the latest list for Victoria:

The Metro is a “threshold” project, the East-West Link has “real potential”.

Last week when talking about this (today’s announcement was not new), Abbott was absolutely slaughtered by some journalists on their game:

QUESTION:

Have you seen the business case for the East West Link?

TONY ABBOTT:

Infrastructure Australia, as I understand it, has recently published one and it’s $1.40 worth of benefit for every $1 of spending.

QUESTION:

But you haven’t seen the business case?

TONY ABBOTT:

But I’ve been briefed on it…

That’d be a “no”

… and I want to make it absolutely crystal clear, absolutely crystal clear, that we committed to funding the East West Link, or to assisting the East West Link to the tune of $1.5 billion after discussions with senior people in Infrastructure Australia who made it absolutely crystal clear to me that the number one road infrastructure project in Victoria should be the East West Link.

Which I guess means we shouldn’t care about the one infrastructure project just the number road infrastructure…

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott, just on that point, I don't think Infrastructure Australia has published a business case. The state government’s put out a short form business case which just didn’t have much information. It just said the cost ratio was 1.4. Are you aware that there is actually a business that Infrastructure Australia has put out that we don’t know about?

TONY ABBOTT:

The fact is there is a business case. It’s an absolutely crystal clear business case for getting on with this.

QUESTION:

You haven't seen it?

Lovely work nailing him. There isn’t a report. If there was it would be published, and to think that Infrastructure Australia are privately briefing Tony Abbott is absurd. Time for Tony to dodge:

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, there is a business case, there is a business case. I mean, Kevin Rudd maybe hadn't seen all of the links between the tobacco company that funded his travel to Europe when he was a backbencher. I mean, there are lots of things that I haven't seen but I know, and I know that there is a business case for the East West Link. It says there is $1.40 worth of benefit for every $1 of spending. That's why the East West Link will go ahead under the Coalition, it won't go ahead under Mr Rudd.

And that is what happens when you keep asking a question to a bloke who is making stuff up.

So today he makes the big announcement again – he even has Dennis Napthine next to him. Go hard press gallery. Nothing has changed, the project is still a lower order priority for Infrastructure Australia than the Metro. Last time when pushed on this he ended up saying he knew things he hadn’t seen. This is a an easy one for you guys.

He even said in his press conference:

Today, I announce that an incoming Coalition government will publish, will make an annual infrastructure statement to the Parliament. Every year in the Parliament there will be an infrastructure statement. It will be an implementation statement. It will be designed to ensure that we don’t just talk about infrastructure, we actually get it built.

Now that just begs to be asked how is he going to decide which projects to invest in. It begs to be asked why is he investing in a project that is below other projects on Infrastructure Australia's list.

And so here we have the only question he was asked in his press conference on the East West Link:

QUESTION:

When do you expect to start digging this tunnel? Warren Truss has said its going to take years of planning before big projects like this can actually be started?

Now look, there wee some decent questions asked. For example:

QUESTION:

You keep saying that the economy will be stronger under a future Coalition Government. Specifically on what basis do you make this statement? Do you have modelling to back it up and can we expect in your economic costings an estimate of growth, unemployment, those sorts of data?

This was of course dodged and went to talk about company tax cuts.

But given we also had:

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott, the Coalition’s primary figures in the latest Newspoll have gone up while Labor’s have gone down. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think you are doing better?

and

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott, do you think you won the debate last night?

and

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott, do you think Kevin Rudd’s use of notes was cheating?

and

QUESTION:

When will there be a second debate and can you promise it won’t be as boring as the last one?

I think we can say he was let off the hook on his big policy announcement today.

But look as Abbott said earlier in the day, “No one, however smart, however well-educated, however experienced, is the suppository of all wisdom”.

As someone who has written many typos, I’ll just say, ain’t that the truth. 

Election 2013: Day 5 (or how to put spin on a front page)

This week there has been a lot of focus on the bias exhibited by the front pages of The Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun and The Courier Mail. It’s clear to anyone for whom reading comprehension isn’t a skill they have yet to acquire that there isn’t much care about balanced reporting. That’s fine, balance is often bullshit in media. It leads to journalists going on Twitter and tweeting that they’re being attack by people on the left and the right. They like doing this because it means other journalists can tweet to them saying it obviously means they’re doing a good job.

Accuracy is better than balance.

So yeah the news.corp tabloids are exhibiting bias, and thus during this campaign it make then worthless in terms of trust. That doesn’t mean they lie, it just means you should get a second opinion on anything written in them – you know things like the shape of the economy, the state of the climate, the health system, whether the sky is blue...

But let’s not let The Oz off the hook.

It can be as bad as its tabloid cousins; it just has a faux veneer of respectability.

Take today’s front page:

Now when you start accusing the Prime Minister of being “wrong” on QLD jobs, you bloody well better be right.

And you damn well better not just cherry pick some data that tells the story you want to tell because to do so really would leave you wide open to charges that you are either incompetent and thus not deserving of the loudness of voice you have, or you are not practising journalism, but spin.

So let’s look at what the journalists, Adam Creighton (he of the “democracy is probably not sustainable”, and the Government's anti-tobacco plan is reminiscent of the Nazis) and David Crowe have to say:

“KEVIN Rudd has been thrown on the defensive on economic management after a surprise fall in full-time jobs offset by strong growth in Queensland that challenges his warnings about the damage from the state Liberal National Party government's "austerity" cuts.

Now when I read this I was a little bit surprised, because when I was looking at QLD’s employment data that came out yesterday (as I do each month, nerd that I am) I saw the employment in QLD fell by 0.0023%.

So I kept reading, and after some paragraphs about the national numbers, they finally got back to QLD (you know, the aspect that warranted the headline):

In a challenge to one of Labor's key election strategies in Queensland, the latest figures showed the state gained 18,500 jobs and saw its unemployment rate fall from 6.3 per cent to 5.9 per cent.

Labor has attacked Queensland Premier Campbell Newman and his LNP government by claiming his cuts to 14,000 public service positions last year would damage the state economy.

And then it because clear. The Australian was quoting the seasonally adjusted figures and not the trend data. Why would they do this, and why is it so stupid? Well first, according to the seasonally adjusted rate, QLD’s unemployment fell from 6.3% to 5.9%. If you use the trend rate, QLD’s unemployment actually rose from 6.0% to 6.1%.

Gee I can’t think why they chose the seasonally adjusted rate.

So clearly the “best” figure has been picked. But why is this stupid?

Well using the seasonally adjusted rate at the state level is incredibly “noisy”. It jumps around a lot. How much? Well look at the past 12 months:

If you believe that the most accurate way to report QLD’s unemployment rate is to say it fell from 6.3% to 5.9%, then you also have to think that the most accurate way to describe the June figures is to say in rose from 5.8% in May to 6.3% in June.

Up 0.5% then down 0.4%? Does that really make sense to you? Of course not. Economies don’t work that way.

And do you think the article at any point either quoted the trend rate or acknowledged that the figure they were using was the seasonally adjusted rate?

Well that would be a no.

Don’t you love journalism that gives you the full picture?

I used to like using seasonally adjusted figures as well as trend for state employment, because they were always good for a laugh, but after a while I stopped bothering.

In May I wrote after seeing that the seasonally adjusted figures had Tasmania as the state with the fastest growing employment in the month:

Yes, Tasmania the big winner, which tells you all you need to know about the worth of seasonally adjusted monthly growth data on a state by state basis. This will be the last time I bother with it. It is next to useless.

Even yesterday when I had a quick look at them I tweeted:

The state seasonally adjusted unemployment numbers are always such fun

In seasonally adjured terms, Tasmania's unemployment rate went from 9.0% to 8.2%!! O_o (the trend rate went from 8.2% to 8.4%)

Yes, in seasonally adjusted terms, Tasmania’s unemployment rate fell from 9.0% to 8.2%. Do you believe that? If so, I’ve got a national newspaper I’d like to sell you. 

But you don’t need to trust me. Trust the Australian Bureau of Statistics. They have a very handy page (and seriously EVERY journalist should read it) that is titled:

Interpreting Time Series: Are you being misled by the Seasons, 2012:

WHICH SERIES SHOULD I USE?

On seasonally adjusted data it says this:

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED ESTIMATES
Seasonally adjusted estimates are produced by removing seasonal patterns from the original estimates. They are good for performance measures and comparisons - was that advertising campaign effective, how much tourist traffic did we lose because of the Tsunami, is unemployment doing better in QLD than in TAS. Again, they’re very history focused. Different months are comparable but month-to-month movements are usually dominated by irregular effects. [my highlighting]

and this under “KEY POINT”

HOW ABOUT COMPARING SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA FROM ONE PERIOD TO THE NEXT?
Seasonal patterns have been removed from the seasonally adjusted data, however the residual noise and irregular influences are still present. If the residual noise is high it may distort a comparison of seasonally adjusted estimates. Similarly, an unusual event or irregular influence may affect a comparison. For example, consider a series which has an underlying increasing trend. An unusual event such as a strike may lead to a "once-off" low value for one period. [my highlighting]

But we don’t need the ABS to tell us that. Again if we look at the above graph, you KNOW that seasonally adjusted data is bouncing around like a cocaine addict. You don’t need to even have studied statistics. It is obvious.

And to further reinforce it, let’s look at employment growth, and compare seasonally adjusted to trend:

As you can see: in November 2012 a big jump, then a big fall in December, then a big jump, then a fall etc etc. (the reason why you can’t see a blue column in July 2013 is because it is effectively zero precent).

And why do we know the tend figure is the one to focus one? Why because it was the one the Queensland Treasurer himself in June said was the one to look at:

Trend unemployment remains steady

Treasurer Tim Nicholls says today’s ABS Labour Force data shows the trend unemployment rate remains steady in Queensland at 5.7 per cent.

“This comes after seven consecutive months of trend employment growth,” Mr Nicholls said.

“While the more volatile seasonally adjusted rate increased only marginally by 0.1 per cent to 5.8 per cent, the more reliable trend figure shows employment in Queensland is stable and continues to trend in the right direction.

And the journalists knew this was the case because they even got a quote from an economist:

"It appears the state has absorbed the public sector job cuts for now and the unemployment rate is stabilising around 6 per cent,"

The only thing showing any stability – was the trend rate – their entire story is not about stability it is about a “job’s jump”!

So let’s use the the trend rate to compare growth of employment across the nation in July:

Hmmm. So much for that “strong growth in Queensland that challenges [Rudd’s] warnings about the damage from the state Liberal National Party government's "austerity" cuts”.

But look, even monthly growth at the state level in trend terms can be misleading so let’s look at annual growth growth in trend terms across the nation:

Yeah QLD. The place to be. Unless you’re in NSW, Victoria or WA. (Incidentally the continued decline in WA’s employment growth is THE story of yesterday’s data).

Now lets take a long look at QLD employment growth compared to the National growth rate to get an even better perspective of where they’re at:

And remember Campbell Newman came into office in March 2012. Oh what the hell, let’s go in for a close up:

So yes, the growth is getting better, but heck. You think it could have gotten any worse?

So is Rudd wrong? 

Nope. The only way you could say jobs “jumped” in QLD in July is if you use data in the way that the people who actually compile the data tell you not to use it.

As I say, trust nothing you read (including my blog, I am not perfect, and certainly not unbiased), get a second opinion. Verify. But realise that one news organisation has bet all their bickies on a Tony Abbott win. That doesn’t mean we should assume everything they write is a lie – they don’t “lie” and I would never suggest they do. But as we have seen today, they can cherry pick data as good as any politicians can. I suggest you treat their statements with the same level of scepticism. 

And seek out the full picture.