Bilby Pork

The government’s budget cuts may not amount to much, but they certainly range widely:

Plans for a $5 million national bilby centre in south-western Queensland have been shelved, after the Federal Government pulled out of a funding deal.

However, the bilby lobby seem to understand the political economy of government spending all too well:

Manager Jane Morgan says that money was to be used to build a new observatory, but those plans have also now been shelved with the funding cut.

“Yes we are a little bit disappointed, but it’s not as if they’ve said ‘forever and a day there will be no more grant programs in this area’,” she said.

“This is the looking at Government expenditure that they went through and it is disappointing because we had some great plans, but we’re not going to put those plans away.

“We’re just going to put them on a shelf which is easily reached and pull them out again.”

CORRECTION:  The quote is actually not from the bilby people, but from those involved with another project that got cut.  Same point applies, however.

posted on 21 May 2008 by skirchner in Economics

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