Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said yesterday the government needed to rein in spending amid fears that Europe’s sovereign debt problems could become an election issue this year.
The government on Tuesday released an economic plan to return its annual budget to surplus by the 2012-2013 fiscal year — three years earlier than was forecast a year ago.
A record surplus forecast in Rudd’s first annual budget announced in early 2008 became a record deficit as the government borrowed billions of dollars to stimulate the economy during the global economic downturn.
Even so, the nation’s debt remains extremely low by the standards of other developed economies. Growth has also been sustained by Chinese and Indian demand for Australian mineral and energy resources.
Rudd told Radio 3AW his government was confident it would return the budget to surplus “in a time when, frankly, most other governments around the world will be swimming in deficit for many, many, many years to come.”
“Despite what’s happening around the world at the moment, it’s time for the government to pull back” on spending, he said.
Rudd, who will seek a second three-year term as prime minister at elections on a date yet to be announced later this year, said the government’s stimulus spending and strategy to repay all government debt by 2018-2019 demonstrated its responsible economic management.
However, opposition leader Tony Abbott said that the government borrowed too heavily to keep Australia out of recession and could not be trusted to pay back the debt.
“Why does the prime minister only become an economic conservative at election time?” Abbott asked Rudd in parliament.
“Why would anyone believe that after three years of being addicted to binge spending, with an election looming, that the prime minister can now go cold turkey?” Abbott said.
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
CHEER ON: Students were greeted by citizens who honked their car horns or offered them food and drinks, while taxi drivers said they would give marchers a lift home Hundreds of students protesting graft they blame for 15 deaths in a building collapse on Friday marched through Serbia to the northern city of Novi Sad, where they plan to block three Danube River bridges this weekend. They received a hero’s welcome from fellow students and thousands of local residents in Novi Said after arriving on foot in their two-day, 80km journey from Belgrade. A small red carpet was placed on one of the bridges across the Danube that the students crossed as they entered the city. The bridge blockade planned for yesterday is to mark three months since a huge concrete construction
DIVERSIFY: While Japan already has plentiful access to LNG, a pipeline from Alaska would help it move away from riskier sources such as Russia and the Middle East Japan is considering offering support for a US$44 billion gas pipeline in Alaska as it seeks to court US President Donald Trump and forestall potential trade friction, three officials familiar with the matter said. Officials in Tokyo said Trump might raise the project, which he has said is key for US prosperity and security, when he meets Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba for the first time in Washington as soon as next week, the sources said. Japan has doubts about the viability of the proposed 1,287km pipeline — intended to link fields in Alaska’s north to a port in the south, where