2016-12-07
Greens Treasury spokesperson, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, says that the quarterly economic figures show that the Government needs to urgently walk away from its austerity drive and to ‘borrow to build’ for productive public infrastructure.
Senator Whish-Wilson, “Scott Morrison’s policy prescription is delivering nothing but bad medicine for the Australian economy.
“The Government’s austerity measures are hurting poorer people and they are actually now harming the wider economy.
“Labor and Liberal both have to walk away from their obsession with budget cuts. What the economy needs right now is for the Australian government to borrow big to invest in critical public infrastructure.
“If Labor and Liberal continue their obsession with a triple-A rating by chasing further cuts to social services, they will only weaken the economy further. This will, by default, create self-fulfilling prophecy that only serves to weaken our credit rating further.
“For too long, Scott Morrison has been lazily leaning on the Reserve Bank to support the economy. It’s time for him to get off his backside, listen to the IMF, the RBA and the OECD, and borrow now to build,” he concluded.
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