Two years compensation freeze and THEN the public sector austerity starts. The official Liberal plan.
Finance Minister Dwight Duncan’s speech to public sector labour leaders proposing a compensation freeze was accompanied by a power point slide show. And it makes for some interesting reading. The government claims that the main period of austerity will occur, not now or next year, but in the period between 2012-13 and 2017-18. That would mean eight years of austerity -- two for the compensation freeze and then six years of much lower funding increases. Indeed, the austerity we are currently seeing is very modest compared with the austerity proposed for the years beginning 2012-13, when program expense increases will, allegedly, fall to less than 1/3 of the increases the Liberals set up to 2008-9. If the austerity proposed for the years starting in 2012-13 is actually implemented, we would be in the hopper. For the current period the government says it has reduced program funding increases significantly -- from an average of 6.6% for the period up to 2008-9, to 4.8%. That&