Register - WIN a $10,000 Safari | Login  How the figures are
fiddled to hide the true state of the budget  March 25, 2004
Where's all the money gone? The Government should tell us,
before the election.  'When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in
a rather scornful tone in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-
Glass, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more or
less."  The Howard Government knows what he meant.  Before the
end of the present financial year, the Government will draw down
$4.6 billion from the Consolidated Revenue Fund and hand the
money over to the Telstra and Australia Post superannuation
funds, which will use the money to buy shares and other assets.
This transaction miraculously does not appear on the budget
bottom line. If it was to appear it would wipe out the projected
surplus for 2003-04 reported by the Treasurer in 2003 and,
incidentally, the Government's credibility and its much-touted
election war chest.  This is just one episode in a series of
financial fiddles designed t