Further to the blog below entitled “Mistaken Money”:

Far from stunned that the NSW Auditor-General has found a billion dollar error in the NSW state accounts, the treasurer, Mr Mike Baird, insisted that the extra money changed nothing.

The Auditor-General said the extra money found by correcting accounting errors actually put NSW into surplus to the tune of $668 million. Mr Baird states however that if the federal grants were removed the state would be back in the red.

Now seeing that federal grants are a permanent feature of state budgets, Mr Baird’s statement makes no sense at all!

One might wonder whether the proposed cost cutting is actually required. Perhaps its ideallogically rather than financially motivated.