The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced a very broad and very expensive economic stimulus package yesterday, one which seems to be hailed as ideal in some quarters and yet in others labeled as economic vandalism. For the ordinary Australian, it is hard to know who is right and who is wrong. It seems though the politicians are playing  politics while the economy stinks sinks.

If the truth be told, even the experts don’t know. That is probably the biggest problem with the world’s economic problems at present. No one really has any idea how to get things moving again – of course with that comes the guess work as to how long the world’s economic woes will continue for.

I am no expert and I take a rather simplistic view on the whole situation. It starts from the basic premise that we did elect Kevin Rudd and his Labor colleagues to run this country – part of that job is trying to run the economy. A closer look at the package makes it very attractive.

We are trying to avoid falling into a recession which is defined as being two consecutive quarters of negative growth. The stimulus package is divided into  a now and later. The now involves cash hand outs in the hope people will spend. That will prevent these next two quarters from going into the negative.

The second component involves infrastructure spending. This is where it gets interesting because every dollar allocated is going into areas where the funds really are needed.

Our schools have been desperate for this type of funding for a long time.  Public housing has needed a boost in funds for about ten years – it has a real boost now. Even the rebate for insulation is welcome addition.

The opposition proposes simply bringing forward tax cuts. For a ‘liberal’ party, they are very conservative. From my perspective, tax cuts mean nothing. Petrol price rises along with the increase in price of basic foods, particularly fresh food and meat, means the tax cuts are already spent.

Malcolm Turnbull, the opposition leader says 72 hours is not longer enough to consider the package – yet 12 hours is long enough to consider it and so no, we will vote against it!

The minor parties of course are looking at how they can capitalize on the package for their special interest groups. The Labor party was elected to run this country. It should be left to do the job. In our current economic environment, we cannot afford political grandstanding.  Economic experts have all come out in support of the package. That is good enough for me.

Turnball says the pre Christmas hand out did little for the economy. At the same time statistics reveal that pre Christmas spending had the biggest growth in over 20 years.

My fear is that this country’s economic future will be held to ransom by a politician who was once a banker – and who started this whole mess – bankers!