Adelaide tram network expansion push for Federal Budget
A MAJOR expansion of Adelaide's tram network should be funded in next week’s Federal Budget if the Government is serious about investing in infrastructure, the Oppositions says.
A MAJOR expansion of Adelaide's tram network should be funded in next week’s Federal Budget if the Government is serious about investing in infrastructure, the Oppositions says.
Ministers have hinted the Budget will include new funding for infrastructure projects to boost the economy, create jobs and reduce transport bottlenecks.
Federal Labor transport and infrastructure spokesman Anthony Albanese will today use a visit to Adelaide to call for the Turnbull Government to fund the state’s AdeLINK project in the Budget.
“Because the corridor is already there, this project will have substantial benefit for relatively minimal cost,’’ Mr Albanese said.
“It will create jobs in construction in the short term and will make the Adelaide even more liveable.”
Before the Federal election, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten promised a federal Labor Government would contribute $500 million towards AdeLINK.
The staged rollout of the network could eventually see trams running to a range of locations, including the airport.
Although Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is committed to investing in infrastructure, a report to be released today by respected budget watchers Access Economics warns that Government spending is unsustainably high.
The report says that a loss of Australia’s AAA credit rating would hurt families and budget forecasts since the Coalition came to power have been wrong by about $105 billion
In the wake of former Labor treasurer Wayne Swan’s repeated false promises of a return to surplus, confidence in Budget numbers is low.
The biggest error has been that assumptions about commodity prices and economic activity have been way too optimistic.
“There is, quite rightly, a natural scepticism of the Budget when the claimed budget position by both Labor and Coalition governments has been so consistently wrong, and so consistently wrong on the downside,” said PwC economist and budget expert Jeremy Thorpe.
Deloitte Access economist Chris Richardson said that since the global financial crisis, budgets overseen by both political parties had assumed that rapid returns to normal levels of economic activity would cover increased spending and pay off debt.
But time and again, the predictions have proven wrong.
“Albert Einstein famously noted that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results,” Dr Richardson said.
“After moving the date for the ‘return to surplus’ another year time and time again, and doing so without changing any of the underlying assumptions, are we not all a little insane?”