“We are throwing money at the community a second time, billions of dollars,” Mr [JEFF Kennett] said. “No one asked for a second handout. It was just a gift. It was wrong. A lot of people are saying, `We don’t need it; we didn’t ask for it’.” Mr Kennett said federal Treasury secretary Ken Henry “seems to have become political” and added it was “unclear whether Ken Henry is running the Government or the Government is running Ken Henry”.

“It was never going to address the underlying problems,” he said. “Now it is happening a second time. I am not opposed to governments going into debt, but not if you are throwing money like confetti in the air.

JEFF Kennett has slammed Kevin Rudd’s fiscal stimulus and questioned whether the Government is being run by its top Treasury official.

The former Victorian premier told business economists in Sydney yesterday that throwing money “like confetti” to stimulate the economy was a flawed policy that would leave future generations paying for the folly.

The Rudd Government has dispensed $3.9billion to low- and middle-income families over the past fortnight as part of its $42 billion economic stimulus package, following on from the $10billion handed out in December.

“We are throwing money at the community a second time, billions of dollars,” Mr Kennett said. “No one asked for a second handout. It was just a gift. It was wrong. A lot of people are saying, `We don’t need it; we didn’t ask for it’.” Mr Kennett said federal Treasury secretary Ken Henry “seems to have become political” and added it was “unclear whether Ken Henry is running the Government or the Government is running Ken Henry”.

Mr Kennett said an economic downturn was an opportunity to step back and review the fundamentals of an economy.

He said the Government needed to provide genuine tax cuts for individuals and companies and create infrastructure projects. He also said the Government needed to stop talking down the economy and to encourage a more positive atmosphere for investment and job creation.

Mr Kennett said the payments had not produced long-term jobs, and at best may have produced a few weeks’ casual work for a few employees at Harvey Norman.

“It was never going to address the underlying problems,” he said. “Now it is happening a second time. I am not opposed to governments going into debt, but not if you are throwing money like confetti in the air.

“The pity is we have generated enormous amounts of debt we have no capacity to pay.”

Mr Kennett said that with welfare payments now consuming half or more of the nation’s budget, the potential social impacts of the payments were also retrograde.

“We are increasingly looking to governments to provide. We are losing our independence. We are taking away a lot of the creativity of individuals and groups. As soon as we start understanding government doesn’t have the capacity to be all things to all men, the better.”

Credit: John Stapleton