Clay Lucas

@ClayLucas

Investigative journalist @theage. DMs open, [email protected] or Signal +61439828128 My stories here:

Melbourne, Victoria

Joined January 2009

1.4K Following

7.8K Followers

10K Posts

ClayLucas retweeted

Aaron Smith

@aaronsmith

16 days ago

Thank you, Dave. I appreciate you reaching out to ask what you got wrong. The clip we’re discussing is less than 90 seconds long. What I’m about to do demonstrates Brandolini's Law: where the amount of energy required to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude greater than that required to produce it. Or, in this case, it takes around 600 words to correct 90 seconds of your economic fan fiction. 1⃣ Between 0 and 30 seconds You begin by confusing government debt with the Future Fund and appear to suggest that the Future Fund can't exist along side Govt debt. They’re different things. One can exist without the other, and in Australia they do. Australia's Future Fund was established in 2006 with an initial govt investment of about $60B. Its first annual report, in 2008, showed assets of around $64 billion - not the $100B you suggested. Then, at around 27 seconds, you talk about the Future Fund as though it ceased to exist (you used the word 'had' as in past tense). It still very much exists Dave. In fact, it's grown every single year since it was created. Today it's worth around $270 billion, or over $330 billion once the other funds under management are included (eg Medical Research / Housing Australia / Drought). So before we're even 30 seconds into the clip you've managed to confuse government debt, the Future Fund, its size, and whether it still exists. That’s a lot of economic history to get wrong in under 30 seconds. 2⃣ Around 32 seconds You then claim Kevin Rudd used the Future Fund to "flush money through the economy". Again, that’s simply false. The Future Fund wasn't used to fund the stimulus. It wasn't used to build school halls. It wasn’t used for any of the things you’re describing. In your defence, you do briefly flirt with the possibility that you don’t actually know what you’re talking about. Sadly, it was a very short-lived relationship. The GFC stimulus was funded through government borrowing. For context, construction approvals were collapsing, more than a million Australians worked in construction, and the objective was to stop unemployment exploding during the worst global financial crisis in generations. You're welcome to argue that was the wrong policy (but you didn't). You’re not entitled to rewrite where the money came from. 3⃣ At about 44 seconds You say, "I might be wrong". I concede you were correct during this part of the video. 4⃣ From 44 seconds onwards You make a series of broad claims about the GFC response. Yes, government debt increased. That's true. What you omit is that Australia's stimulus largely went directly to households rather than primarily rescuing financial institutions, as happened in many other countries. The aim was simple: keep people spending, businesses operating and Australians employed while global demand collapsed. It's known as counter-cyclical fiscal policy. Whether you agree with it politically is your business. The specific outcome for Australia isn't contested though - Australia was one of only two economies in the OECD to avoid recession during the Global Financial Crisis. There's no reality where that wasn’t a comparatively impressive outcome. The money didn’t need to "trickle down". The entire point was that it started at the bottom. 5⃣ Government debt Throughout the clip (and in life generally) you repeatedly return to the theme Labor is responsible for Australia’s debt (which btw is comparatively low). Here are the actual numbers of net debt added by each Govt since 2007. > Rudd/Gillard: about $190 billion over six years. > Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison: about $366 billion over nine years, around two-thirds of which pre-dated COVID. > Albanese: about $75 billion over four years. Those figures don’t support the story you've been telling people. And that’s really the issue. This isn't about getting one date wrong or misremembering one statistic. Nearly every claim in your 90-second clip turns out to be either wrong or misleading. If you're going to publicly lecture Australians about economic history, the bare minimum expectation is that you’ve first acquainted yourself with it. Because once the errors have been pointed out, as they have been to you multiple times, every repetition stops looking like an accident and starts looking like a strategy. Given your very public coffee with Angus Taylor last week, perhaps people are entitled to ask what that strategy might be.

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Clay Lucas

@ClayLucas

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