By Community Newspaper Group editor-in-chief Greg Thomson
AS I stood at the delivery dock of my local electrical retailer a couple of Saturdays ago, I marvelled at the rate of flat screen TVs walking out the door.
In the 15 minutes it took for the worker to locate and deliver our shiny new dishwasher to our waiting car, family after family lined up with their receipts eagerly awaiting the collection of their new LCD or plasma screen.
I watched these families struggle to load enormous cardboard boxes into the back of tiny sedans.
It got me wondering just how many Rudd Government cash-splash $900 cheques had been spent in this one store alone.
If that particular Saturday was any indication, I could see why Kevin Rudd remains so convinced that the second wave of Canberra's spending tsunami has been taxpayer’s money well spent.
I for one, however, am not buying it.
I can’t see the economic logic in the nation borrowing a further $11 billion in the middle of a global catastrophe only so it can be handed out to the voters to encourage them to buy electronics built by workers in another country.
Sure, the cash splash may save some Aussie retailing jobs, but too much of the economic benefit flows offshore.
My cynicism towards the cash splash worsened late last week when I learned that the estates of 16,000 deceased Australians each received a $900 cheque – as did 27,000 expat Australians now working abroad. The cost of this oversight? About $40 million.
In the haste to send the cheques out, nobody stopped to think whether dead people ought to be entitled to an economic stimulus. Splendid work.
Adding insult to injury, thousands of non residents, travellers from abroad who were here on a working holiday and who were honest enough to submit a 2007-08 tax return before departing, also received a $900 taxpayer’s gift.
With any luck, let’s hope they at least flew Qantas on the way back home.