The Adventures of QueerPenguin

I Feel Comfortable Using Financial Jargon in Everyday Life

*waves*

Sorry for the extended lunch break between posts, have started my new job this week and trying to get my head around the new work environment (it's still essentially a Dilbertesque cubiclist nightmare, but with slightly better eye candy) and the financial as opposed to legal vernacular. Who'd have thunk that chartered accountancy could be so fascinating?

Oh, wait a sec. It isn't. D'oh.

Anyway, in what can only be considered good timing, I've started at this position during the same week as the budget, which appears to get these financial types with their woven silk ties and chequered business shirts pretty excited. (The editorial team I'm in, thankfully, is quite pleasant - all women, of course. I'm the only man in the village and I'm a big screamer. Go figure.)

My thoughts? Meh. Seems like a pre-election budget without the election bit. Nice of our beloved Treasurer to give us back some of that $4322 trillion (or whatever it is) surplus he keeps banging on about. Not sure tax cuts is the best way to go about it. Sure, it placates the Howard whingers in marginal outer-suburban seats who may have been entertaining the thought of changing their vote over high petrol prices and last week's interest rate rise, but in the longer term it doesn't seem so responsible - tax cuts ---> greater spending ---> inflation issews ---> further interest rate rises etc. But I guess that argument's a little too complicated for swinging voters whose interest lies solely in the perception of a chunkier wallet in the short term.

Is the whole investment in underfunded infrastructure thing really so unfashionable these days? OK, so the ABC - FINALLY - got a boost in funding (still well short of the KPMG recommendation to the government, by the way) and there's going to be a $500m one-off payment to pump some more gigalitres into the Murray-Darling, but nothing jumped out at me as being a particularly visionary or generous investment, even in the Coalition's favourite infrastructual play thing, roads.

I'm only a few grand off the salary range that would have got me an additional 20 bucks a month in tax cuts on top of what I'll now get instead. I guess that's what they call classic incentivisation for me. You know, one of those words made up by corporatia that doesn't actually exist.

The reduction of the top marginal tax rate only confirmed what we knew all along - that Howard is friend of the battler millionaires. But I dare say Labor won't tamper with this should they ever present a federal budget in the 21st century.

Overall, it's going to be hard for Labor to combat this one. It's a diabolically ingenious budget if nothing else, one in which all the townsfolk appear to be better off.

In other news: apparently there were some miners, or something, stuck in a mine somewhere in (I think) Tasmania, and now they're free? Honestly, the media could have worked a lot harder to report this - I hadn't heard a word about it until MsCynic mentioned something in passing.

OK, all sarcasm aside, 3 things: 1 - How are we supposed to make fun of Naomi Robson now? 2 - Was the miners' love-in with Kochie part of a grander scheme to lull him into a false sense of security long enough to do us all a favour and throw him into the hole? and 3 - I hope they invest their $1m wisely. I imagine they're in no rush to go down a mine ever again and I doubt there's a booming IT industry in Beaconsfield they can fall back on instead with a bridging TAFE degree, so they may need to look at this as their golden handshake. A gold "mine", if you will, because things might now get a "hole" lot worse.

Commence the pelting of rotten tomatoes.......now.

posted by Sam @ Wednesday, May 10, 2006