At this election Australians have a clear choice to keep the course on our economic plan for growth & jobs #ausvoteshttps://t.co/oToVZeVV5M

— Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) May 8, 2016

Yesterday the Prime Minister called a double dissolution election and announced the gist of the policies he'll take to the polls.

http://malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/press-conference-election-2016

At this election Australians will have a very clear choice; to keep the course, maintain the commitment to our national economic plan for growth and jobs, or go back to Labor, with its higher taxing, higher spending, debt and deficit agenda, which will stop our nation's transition to the new economy dead in its tracks.

I hate to pour cold water on a purportedly conservative campaign launch but this is not a party of conservative values.  Here are the budget data in a graph prepared by The Marcus Review.

Looks pretty high-spending, high deficit to me.   Spending in this budget is up 4.4% against inflation rate 1.3% and wage growth 2.13%.   Why?   And the spending growth is not aimed at building the economy.

Turbull goes on with the innovation and exciting times stuff which he says will grow GDP and cover any revenue shortfall.

We live in a time of remarkable opportunity. We live in an era when the scale and pace of economic change is unprecedented through all of human history. The opportunities for Australia have never been greater. There are many challenges. But if we embrace this future with confidence and with optimism, with self-belief and a clear plan, then we will succeed as we have never succeeded before.

Our economic plan for jobs and growth is as clear as it is critical - to support this transition to the new economy of the 21st century.

It is the most exciting time to be an Australian. These are exciting times. But we must embark on these times, embrace these opportunities, meet these challenges, with a plan and we have laid out a clear economic plan to enable us to succeed.

We have set up an Innovation and Science Agenda which will ensure that right across our nation we are more innovative in business, in academia, in government, ensuring that we are able in these times of rapid change to meet them with the agility and the ingenuity and the imagination that makes for success.

Yet if you analyse the frightening rampant spending growth, it's not in supporting jobs at all.   The two big ticket spending increases are

• Welfare payments up $5.7bn - mostly Gillard's NDIS (payments to families with children are down $1.2bn)
• "Other Purposes" up $6.6bn - mostly interest on debt, new money for local councils and increased GST money to states

The jobs growth and plan for jobs Turnbull refers to are shown in this graph from the 2016/17 budget papers.

Look closely at the bar chart from the bottom up.   We're shedding jobs in manufacturing and mining - big traditional contributors to GDP.   The biggest growth is in household services - Turnbull's innovation program won't mean much if our economy is based on doing each others ironing.

All of the innovation, jobs and ideas boom stuff could have been said by either Shorten or Turnbull.  To differentiate a political party we expect to hear a bit more than "if we embrace this future with confidence and with optimism, with self-belief and a clear plan, then we will succeed as we have never succeeded before".

Construction jobs are in decline.   Australia is too costly a place to build in.   The 3rd most expensive building in the history of the world is the Adelaide Hospital.   Turnbull should be all over the unions like a rash.  But he doesn't want a war with unions and doesn't appear to have the ticker to take them on.   He has material for months of campaigning from the TURC, but would apparently prefer to leave it on the shelf than use it to differentiate his party from Labor.   This is all he says in the speech on unions:

the Senate has twice refused to pass legislation relating to the accountability of unions and employer organisations

Vote One Turnbull for Legislation Relating to the Accountability of Unions and Employer Organisations!  

Even handed Malcolm might be dealing himself out of government.  He should have Shorten under the heel of his boot, but he'd rather be nice.

There aren't many truly differentiating reasons to score Turnbull's waffle higher than Shorten's.

The Liberals are going to have to do a lot better than this.

Here's Turnbull's idea of a reason to vote for him and his Leadership Team.

Julie Bishop ‏@JulieBishopMP  12h12 hours ago

Coalition Leadership team full of enthusiasm for our campaign on #jobsandgrowth #Election2016

 Malcolm Turnbull, Fiona Nash and Barnaby Joyce

 

 

Good onya.   Enjoy it while you can.   And harden up, go after the corruption in Labor and save us from Shorten et al.

 

This is not the way to do it.

 

 

Helping out with Gillard's NDIS might make you feel good Mal and it's something a surplus producing productive economy should do - but while we're saddled with deficits, debt and the loss of high wealth producing industries and jobs now is not the time to bask in the glow of new spending with borrowed money.