ACTU’s response to the release of the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook today by Scott Morrison and Mathias Cormann:

Quotes attribute to ACTU President Ged Kearney:

“Unsurprisingly, the Government has overlooked the fiscal elephant in the room of falling revenue and chosen instead to make cuts to health, income support payments, family day care and aged care.”

“The Government needs to acknowledge that their ideology is preventing them from seeing: we don’t have a spending problem, we have a revenue problem.”

“Using phrases like integrity, streamlining and duplication doesn’t disguise the fact that the Government has again taken the easy road of cutting services to working Australians rather than looking at the systemic issues the economy is facing, even as Scott Morrison himself acknowledges the wide-ranging effects of the ending mining boom.”

“If the Government wants to focus on integrity, they should instead be clamping down on superannuation concessions and other tax loopholes that favour high income earners and multi-national companies while costing all Australians billions of dollars each year in lost revenue.”