Government bans the words “bad for the budget”

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Published: Wednesday, 01 April 2015 00:00

NSW voters obviously like Mike Baird. He seems a pleasant bloke (although we do wonder about some of his friends) and he has managed to distance himself from the ten Liberal/National politicians forced to resign or moved to the backbench over the last couple of years. Yes 10, you can count them on his fingers.

Barry O’Farrell may have been an affable kind of bloke too but we don’t really know. We do know that he could bring a decent bottle of wine if you invited him for dinner - as long as he remembered that he had it at home to bring in the first place.

The only glitch in the Liberal/National re-election campaign was the revelation that someone in the Government had asked UBS to remove the words ”bad for the budget” from their review of the Government’s electricity privatisation plans, compromising their advice and misleading the public. Currently being investigated by the corporate regulator ASIC and others, no one really knows yet who made the call to the investment bank to remove the words that would have been politically damaging prior to the election.

Today Premier Mike Baird announced that this sort of examination of what should never have been exposed wouldn’t happen again. “We will make it an offence to use the words “bad for the budget”, in any way”, the Premier said.

“Many will argue that this is bad for freedom of expression, bad for democracy but it won’t be bad for the Government. The sooner we forget about those unacceptable words the better.”

Forewarned that this was a risk, media organisations and civil libertarians had lobbied the government about this bad move but were unable to budget.