The Opposition’s Budget

I won’t bother to analyse this point by point due to the following reasons:-

1. You can read it for yourself… it’s in plain English.
2. It’s 106 pages long (imagine the number of glasses of water the poor Finance Minister has to gulp down, not to mention while standing in Parliament and reading for a couple of hours at least!)
3. Most of it is just dissing what the current government has done.
4. It’s very “opposition”… and by that I mean if DAP (as opposed to PR, because if PAS had a part in preparing this budget, you’d… cough! Islamic incentives… cough!… know) were to helm the federal government today, their Budget will never (should never) sound like that (because they’d then be dissing their own federal government and giving more autonomy to state governments).
5. Some of their proposals feel very leftist… especially the bit about “sharing risk”, where it sounded more like,”if SMEs fail, we’ll work out a way to save them with the banks”. I’m all for giving power back to the people/ more opportunities for the smaller players kinda leftish government… but saving failing businesses is pushing it a bit too far, I think. Just a tad uncomfortable for the pro-competition-better-for-the-consumer side in me.
6. Some of the proposals are pretty radical (one, at least, is recycled from last year), so operationally, I don’t think our current institutions, like the Inland Revenue, are equipped to administer the changes proposed, let alone understand what they mean. Even if they can, I suspect the cost of changing the operational procedures and awareness campaigns will just wipe out the funds allocated to the objectives before they could even start… (I have that much confidence in our tax authorities. Sue me.)
7. I didn’t have the time to read beyond page 57.
8. I really do have work to do.
9. Even if I don’t, there’s other more interesting news to read today courtesy of a rather interesting weekend politically.
10. I’m in my lazy patch. Now, go read it for yourself!