Our State Budget

is being drip fed to us through the media. It is the usual mixture of doom, gloom and blame game.
The state government has been in power for twelve years now. It managed to retain government at the last election with a minority of the votes and the support of an "independent" who went against the wishes of his electorate. It has since cemented the position with the support of the member in the electorate I live in. He also switched sides - a move which is costing the government $2.1m a year in on going costs. It does not take into account the money being used to set up his ministerial position. That is estimated to be about $8m.
And, of course, at the last election and the one before that and the one before that and... the state government promised it would create jobs. It has not. We now have the highest unemployment rate in the mainland states and will, if we are not careful, soon have the highest unemployment rate in the country.
Why? We are a relatively resource rich state. We should be doing much better than we are doing.
It is clear that the government has wasted a great deal of money. It has spent money on "cake" rather than "bread" and it has been propping up unsustainable industries instead of finding new ones.
It has spent it on infrastructure we don't need and entertainment to go with it. It has relied on old fashioned ways of gathering tax to pay for these things - payroll tax and stamp duty are two. These tax measures make it much more expensive to employ people. Add on all the other expenses involved in employing anyone and it is little surprise that business is not growing the way it should be.
We need a radical shake up - something that is not going to happen when we have a minority government held in place by "independents" and heavily influenced (if not actually run) by the union movement.
As for the blame game. I am not going to blame the present Federal government - although I think they could handle things differently - I am going to blame the people who spent money in an unwise fashion in the previous Federal government and the present state government.
Oh I know it is "not as simple as all that" but it seems to me that if we want an income we have to work for it. Doesn't that mean providing the means by which to do it? Cake won't do that but bread might. It is time to start making bread.