Think HBR

FROM THE EDITOR

The announcement by Joe Hockey of the deterioration of the Federal Budget came as no surprise to most of us. Successive Governments during the mining boom made the sustainability of the budgetary outlook dependent upon the boom lasting forever, something that we all knew was not going to happen.
A variety of decisions by former Governments failed Australia’s long term interests and focussed merely on short term electoral popularity,
It is yet another example of our politicians putting their own short sighted political aspirations before the welfare of the country.
Those with any degree of foresight urged Governments to take advantage of the “good times” and invest in helping to minimise the damage when the mining boom ended, but alas on deaf ears again.
Now that we are in this mess, the task at hand is to get the Budget back in shape without causing a significant economic downturn which would lead to the vicious cycle of further reduced revenue and higher expenditure in areas such as unemployment benefits.
This will be a real test for politicians on both sides of the parliament to put aside their political point scoring obsession and work for the benefit of Australia.
I would like to hold out hope that this would happen but unfortunately past performance indicated this is unlikely to happen.
We would like to take this opportunity to wish our readers, advertisers and story submitters a happy Christmas and a healthy and fulfilling 2015.
We look forward to again serving the Hunter business community in 2015, which marks the 10th anniversary of the Hunter Business Review,

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