There’s an easy way to plug a budget black hole, at no cost to voters

April 15, 2026 — 5:00am

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Australians don’t hold their politicians in high regard and I’m sorry to say they’re right. It’s not so much that they lie to us, but that they treat us like idiots, giving us oversimplified slogans rather than frank discussion of our problems and our choices about how we solve them.

And then they wonder why so many voters have stopped listening to them.

But it’s wrong to think of them as liars; they’re too devious for that. Any pollie telling an outright lie could expect to be quickly torn apart by their political opponents. Who knows? Maybe even the media would occasionally call them out.

No, what the pollies do is say things that are true in some sense, but are calculated to mislead. As well, they talk down to us, telling us only part of the story. Election campaigns are fought in some imaginary world where everything is nice and nothing is nasty. Price tags rarely get much of a mention.

Labor likes to talk about all the wonderful promises it’s making to spend on this new program and that one. But it doesn’t mention the higher taxes needed to pay for those promises.

The Liberals, on the other hand, focus on our dislike of paying taxes, promising to cut them and keep them low. But there’s rarely a mention of the........

© Brisbane Times