Australia’s mainstream media is increasing its distortions of the state of the economy. Alan Austin reports.
THE FIX is in with the mainstream media, which is already blatantly deceiving voters about Australia’s economy. They know that perceptions of the economy are critical in federal election results. They know that the current poor governance has been the worst in Australia’s history and close to the worst in the developed world today. So they have to convince us that the opposite is true.
The Australian ran a story last Friday with these bizarre claims in the campaign: ‘This is no ordinary boom so what can stop it? … No one expected an economic recovery of this magnitude. ‘
Daily Mail online recently on the way a puff piece, “Australia’s economy is about to grow in 2021 …”
On ABC’s Insiders on Sunday, March 28, Jennifer Hewitt from the Australian Financial Review (AFR) explained that:
An AFR article last Tuesday was on the way, ‘M&A boom says economy is strong’.
ABC News Breakfast last Monday, March 29, interviewed the treasurer Josh Frydenberg WHO sa, undisputed:
he repeated that on Channel Nine’s Today show the same day, even undisputed.
he told FiveAA Adelaide three days earlier:
These are not just fake. They are the opposite of the truth. Australia’s economy is struggling – despite being the most benign conditions for export in live memory.
How do we know? Simply by checking actual results today with where Australia has been in the past and should be now. And by comparing Australia with all the developed economies – not just France, Britain and the United States, which are hardly comparable.
There are many critical variables. We will consider five.
Job
Australian unemployment is 5.83%. This rankas 16: ei OECD. During the last three years of the last Labor government, the ranking was between third and ninth. If it were still ninth, the interest rate would be 4.55%. The difference is 177,000 extra families with employees.
At present, 805,000 Australians have no job at all. Another 1.2 million work fewer hours than they need. This does not happen in a boom.
The coalition’s conspicuous debt yields overwhelming results
Economic growth
Annual growth in gross domestic product (GDP) has been negative over the past three quarters. The percentage declines were 6.3% during the June quarter last year, 3.7% in September and 1.1% in December.
There were no negative quarters of annual GDP growth throughout John Howard even during the global recession of the early 2000s. There was no one under Prime Ministers Rudd and Gillard, not even through the Global Financial Crisis (JRC) – which drove all other developed economies, except Poland, to negative annual GDP growth for between one and ten quarters.
Australia’s economic growth was OECD’s highest under the JRC. It has dropped to outside the top ten through the current downturn.
Wage growth
Australia’s wage growth over the past year has been just 1.4%. It is ranked 23rd out of the 36 countries stated on Trade economics. This is Australia’s lowest ranking ever.
Budget deficit
Australian budget deficit exploded last fiscal year to a whopping $ 85.3 billion, or 4.3% of Australia’s GDP. This is the worst since Treasury started keeping the current set tasks 1970. The deepest labor deficit, recorded in the depths of the global crisis, was $ 54.5 billion.
Debt
As shown here last week has the gross debt increased to a staggering $ 818.6 billion. It is more than three times the sad debt that Labor left in 2013 – after fighting with the JRC for five years.
Australia has now collapsed from fifth ranked in the OECD on debt to GDP to ranking as a miserable 17th.
Morrison government puts Australia in debt
Comparisons with other developed economies
On these five variables – unemployment, annual GDP growth, wage growth, budget deficits and gross debt that were added in the past year – many countries are far ahead of Australia. This is crystal clear from data published by Trade economics and Statista.
Ireland, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates are ahead of Australia in all five results. New Zealand, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, Estonia, Luxembourg, Singapore, Switzerland and South Korea are leaders in four out of five and are far ahead. Three out of five results lead Germany, Israel, Latvia, Poland, Sweden and Brazil. Brazil!
These are not the only variables we could have investigated. Others include the corruption index, which Australia has fallen under this coalition government into ranking to a gloomy equal 11th.
To claim that Australia’s economy “has surpassed all major advanced economies” is simply false. For the media to refuse to challenge this but to reinforce and broadcast it is a gross loss of duty. It must be a choice on the way.
Alan Austin’s defamation is almost over. You can read the latest update here and contribute to the public funding campaign HERE. Alan Austin is an independent columnist and freelance journalist in Australia. You can follow him on Twitter @ alanaustin001.
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Source: sn.dk