2013 Federal Election: 7 September 2013

[sails]

...Abbott has a massive spend and tax program the very thing all the rabid Abbott fans here criticize Labor for...

Hmmmmm - labor's track record is coming up towards $300 BILLION in debt with around a $12 billion interest bill per annum. Five massive deficits in a row...

What has labor done with the money? And don't tell me the GFC - that was considered to be officially over around 2010. What about the last three years - where has the money gone?

Look in your own backyard first, IF...

 

[Gringotts Bank]

What I want is a "middle of the road" man.

Rudd = geek/nerd with a mean streak. Chaotic. Overly concerned with his hair.
Abbott = old-fashioned, 1940's values, awkward, stilted speech, can't just relax and be himself.
Palmer = fat rich guy, bull dozes whomever he wants with his QC's.

Where are the normal people?

 

[moXJO]

Looking forward to the next three years BTW its going to cost most of you money.

Whats the alternative, vote labor back in and have it cost us twice as much?


I'll be the first to admit that liberals have a long list of policy that I think is absolute ****e. But at least it will clean labor out and they may put forward a credible team in six or so years.
Right now I am having a hard time picking between either. Labor can't implement policy at all, in fact they must be the most terrible and corrupt stuff ups I think I have seen. If they carry on they will blow the debt through to half a trillion before they are finished.
Libs on the other hand are presenting policy I don't like that much if at all.
But they don't have the proven track record yet of policy failure that labor has, which is why I will probably end up voting that way.
It will have to come down as a choice between the two, as I don't want to see a minority govt again.

 

[pixel]

What I want is a "middle of the road" man.

What's wrong with a woman?
Tanya Plibersek for example - seems "middle of the road" enough. And cute to boot; Abbott might even say she's got sex appeal.

Methinks we have a much bigger problem: The backbenches are overcrowded with below-average drongos, who lack the skills to work for a living, so they follow a party leader and take home a big pay cheque for nothing. Some of them may also have vested interests of their own or some minority groups, but lack the broader intelligence to make useful long-term plans.

 

[Gringotts Bank]

What's wrong with a woman?
Tanya Plibersek for example - seems "middle of the road" enough. And cute to boot; Abbott might even say she's got sex appeal.

Methinks we have a much bigger problem: The backbenches are overcrowded with below-average drongos, who lack the skills to work for a living, so they follow a party leader and take home a big pay cheque for nothing. Some of them may also have vested interests of their own or some minority groups, but lack the broader intelligence to make useful long-term plans.

She seems ok. Nothing wrong with a woman leader.

I'll end up voting Libs but only because of the possibility that Turnbull will come to the fore.

 

[Julia]

Assuming Labor loses on Saturday, what are the odds for Kevin Rudd to get out of politics?

Will he finally realised that he has now failed twice?

 

[IFocus]

Whats the alternative, vote labor back in and have it cost us twice as much?

Labor are gone.

But to wave Abbott though while he plays shonks with cuts, costings and debt is a travesty.

Everyone here thinks he has magic fairy dust that makes all the issues go away.

- - - Updated - - -

Assuming Labor loses on Saturday, what are the odds for Kevin Rudd to get out of politics?

Will he finally realised that he has now failed twice?

Suspect Labor will burn him at the stake.

Barrie Cassidy looks at what is likely to happen for both sides.


This is the calm before the political storm

Labor's internal hatreds have been percolating ever since the negotiated victory in 2010. After September 7, the lid will blow sky high.

So many players on one side have wanted to go to town on the initial Julia Gillard coup. They want to publicly argue, free of the constraints of office, that Labor's problems started with that event, and went downhill from there.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-30/cassidy-this-is-the-calm-before-the-political-storm/4922744

 

[bunyip]

A bit of light reading.....make of it what you will.

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Stimulus Myths & Facts

There are many lies being spread this election season, but none more galling than the claim by Prime Minister Rudd that he "saved" us from the Global Financial Crisis.

Sadly, it seems many Australians still believe that Kevin throwing $80 billion dollars away, and spending us deep into debt, was a good thing. To combat this, we have prepared a short fact sheet detailing the myths and facts about the so-called stimulus.

Every point is researched meticulously, supported by hard data, and has been fact checked by a number of professional economists. I would encourage you to forward this to all your contacts, as we must get the truth out.

Here are the myths and here are the facts:

MYTH: Australia only escaped the “Global Financial Crisis” because of Kevin Rudd

FACT: Australia’s escaped relatively unscathed from the so-called “Global Financial Crisis” due to the legacy of the Howard Government leaving strong budget surpluses and eliminating the debt - Australia had no net debt federally, and, according to the IMF, some of the lowest gross debt in the world. Furthermore, the Howard government's reforms to industrial relations ensured a flexible labour market and increase productivity. This – combined with some prudent monetary policy (the lowering of relatively-high interest rates by the Reserve Bank giving Australians a higher disposable income, thereby boosting consumption) and the strength of Australian banks – is what spared us.

MYTH: Government Spending can stimulate an economy

FACT: Academic research overwhelmingly finds that the exact opposite is true: government spending makes a poor economy worse. There has been no case in history where a country has spent itself out of a recession. Here’s a great 3 minute video summarising why.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgPggTlnoxM
Dr Julie Novak found that in Australia, “an increase in government size by ten percentage points is associated with a lower annual GDP per capita growth rate of between 1.2 and 2.5 percentage points”. Empirical evidence proves that the only way to boost an economy is through tax cuts – instead, Kevin Rudd did the exact opposite

MYTH: Countries who cut spending did worse between 2008-2013 than those who increased spending
FACT: In every country where governments cut spending, the economy started to boom. Estonia is a good example of this, and even , Sweden – the darling country of the left! - slashed spending which resulted in an “economic miracle”. Other examples are numerous.

The facts speak for themselves:


MYTH: The Stimulus helped save and create jobs

FACT: Labor’s cooked the books! There are now 350,000 people receiving unemployment benefits who are classified as “non-jobseekers”, meaning they are not required to work and don’t come up in the unemployment figures. In fact, a conservative estimate by the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that the number of people without jobs went up by 222,000 between December 2007 and July 2013! Treasury didn’t even bother to do proper modeling, but a peer review paper by John Humphreys, our Deputy Director, has shown that even using the Treasury’s own approach, the stimulus directly cost 30,000 jobs. To make matters worse, productivity also has plummeted under the Labor Government due to their winding back our industrial relations system back to the 1960's.

MYTH: The Stimulus Boosted Consumption

FACT: Detailed academic analysis has shown that Kevin Rudd’s “Stimulus: had – NO effect household non-durable consumption. None. In fact, even the Australian Treasury found that Kevin Rudd’s $900 cheques equaled only $1 of economic activity – that’s right, $1.

MYTH: “The alternatives [to the stimulus packages] were to do nothing or, worse, effectively replicate the Premiers' Plan of 1931 when governments cut expenditure, thereby compounding the problems created by a private sector already in retreat. The result, of course, was an economic rout, appalling unemployment and a decade of negligible growth through the 1930s” – Kevin Rudd, 2009

FACT: Despite what our left-wing high school syllabuses may say, it is a matter of historical fact that the Premier’s Plan was a success – and saved Australia. I know this is difficult for many people to accept - so steeped is the left wing myth in our culture - but the facts speak for themselves. In the United States, where President Hoover and then FDR increased spending, and the economy went into a tailspin, after the premier’s plan, the Australian economy sharply recovered: GDP went up, and unemployment started to rapidly fall. No wonder that in the United States Henry Morgenthau – FDR’s very own Treasury admitted “we have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. . . . I say, after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started . . . and an enormous debt to boot.” Even the icon of the left, Lord Maynard Keynes, admitted that “the Premiers’ Plan saved the economic structure of Australia”

MYTH: The stimulus packages – which totaled a staggering $79.1 billion – were well spent.

FACT: Can anyone really claim that ‘home insulation’ can restart an economy? Or that tearing down one school hall to build another boosts productivity? Examples of waste are endless: An outback school with one student is among nine tiny schools handed $2.25 million in federal grants to build new halls, libraries and classrooms, even though they face closure. Mulgildie State School west of Bundaberg received $250,000 to build a basic 60sq m shed, after receiving a $29,000 quote from a local shed builder for a similar structure. An undercover playground with concrete floors and no doors costs $1.8 million under the Rudd Government’s schools stimulus funding,

MYTH: Labor is a “low taxing” government

FACT: Labor has increased taxes a staggering forty three times. That's right - forty three. Should we all be paying the price for their mistakes?

The facts speak for themselves.
Kevin Rudd's policies - according to every serious expert - were destructive, damaging, and are destroying our economy. They didn't "save" our economy - instead, they took us to the bring of ruin.

This saturday, let's make sure everyone is aware of the facts.

 

[bunyip]

Labor are gone.

But to wave Abbott though while he plays shonks with cuts, costings and debt is a travesty.

Everyone here thinks he has magic fairy dust that makes all the issues go away.

Not at all. We just think he’ll be a big improvement on six years of Labor’s stupidity, reckless spending, pathetic record on border protection, lies, in-fighting, inability to balance the budget and control our debt, and general incompetence.

I doubt if there’s a single person here who believes that Abbot will do everything right. I don’t think any of us are kidding ourselves that we’ll agree with everything he does. We just think that Abbot and his team can improve on Labor’s stumbling efforts to govern our country.

Kevin Rudd has already done and is still doing pretty much everything that you’re claiming Abbot will do. And he’s made a hell of a lot of ****-ups that I’m sure Abbot won’t make. Yet I’ve never once heard you refer to Rudd as ‘a brainless tosser', or any of the other colorful descriptions you’ve directed towards Abbot.

Unlike you, most of us on here recognize the stupidity of re-employing a mob of proven incompetents to run our country down for another three years. Unlike you, most of us on here know that a more intelligent choice is to give someone else a go, and hope they do a better job. Whether they will or won’t do any better remains to be seen.
But nobody in his or her right mind who looks at the debacle that has been the Labor government of the last six years, is going to say ‘Hmmm – I think I’ll vote this crowd back in for another three years even though they’ve done a pathetic job for the last six’.

 

[dutchie]

Not at all. We just think he’ll be a big improvement on six years of Labor’s stupidity, reckless spending, pathetic record on border protection, lies, in-fighting, inability to balance the budget and control our debt, and general incompetence.

I doubt if there’s a single person here who believes that Abbot will do everything right. I don’t think any of us are kidding ourselves that we’ll agree with everything he does. We just think that Abbot and his team can improve on Labor’s stumbling efforts to govern our country.

Kevin Rudd has already done and is still doing pretty much everything that you’re claiming Abbot will do. And he’s made a hell of a lot of ****-ups that I’m sure Abbot won’t make. Yet I’ve never once heard you refer to Rudd as ‘a brainless tosser', or any of the other colorful descriptions you’ve directed towards Abbot.

Unlike you, most of us on here recognize the stupidity of re-employing a mob of proven incompetents to run our country down for another three years. Unlike you, most of us on here know that a more intelligent choice is to give someone else a go, and hope they do a better job. Whether they will or won’t do any better remains to be seen.
But nobody in his or her right mind who looks at the debacle that has been the Labor government of the last six years, is going to say ‘Hmmm – I think I’ll vote this crowd back in for another three years even though they’ve done a pathetic job for the last six’.

Well put Bunyip. But your synopsis will go over some peoples head.

 

[dutchie]

I'm still trying to work out who is biggest liar Rudd or Gillard

I think Gillard was way in front before but I think Rudd has taken the lead.

 

[explod]

Just had a bit of a yawn through this after a week of abscence, and I must say it is a big yawn

The polls are just a wild estimation of a small cross section. More and more they miss the younger voters who have very different idas to us older ones. Found this on pre-polling booth last week. Young women mid 20s in BMW's made straight for the Green ticket on a surprising number of occasions here at Geelong. Anyway lets see on Saturday.

In my 55 years os following politics the polls have increasingly favoured who they want and not the reality.

So sticking to my guns here as predicted 4 weeks ago, two party preferred 55% versus 45%. Green vote above 15 %

 

[johenmo]

This won't make this election but how about this as an alternative for next time?

African king's 'bizarre' political vision - a monarchial democracy
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/african-kings-bizarre-political-vision-a-monarchial-democracy/story-e6frg6so-1226709998397

 

[Logique]

What's wrong with a woman?
Tanya Plibersek for example - seems "middle of the road" enough. And cute to boot; Abbott might even say she's got sex appeal.
Methinks we have a much bigger problem: The backbenches are overcrowded with below-average drongos, who lack the skills to work for a living, so they follow a party leader and take home a big pay cheque for nothing. Some of them may also have vested interests of their own or some minority groups, but lack the broader intelligence to make useful long-term plans.

Middle of the road? Feminista, maternity leave and all the trimmings. Ask her about that poster of Tony Abbott in her electoral office. Bailed on Julia Gillard when most needed.
As with M.Turnbull, OMDB.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Plibersek
As Minister for the Status of Women in the Rudd Labor Government, Plibersek initiated policies such as convening the National Council to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children in May 2008, and releasing the National Council’s Plan for Australia to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children in March 2009.[9][10] Plibersek also addressed the 2009 United Nations International Women’s Day event, attended by United Nations.

...Following the 2010 federal election where Labor retained government with the support of the Australian Greens and independents, parliamentary numbers were finely balanced. Plibersek was granted a 'pair' by the Coalition so that her absence from the House of Representatives while on maternity leave did not affect the result of votes.[25]

 

[moXJO]

Rudd might stay and they wont pass libs direct action through to try and push for a DD and another election. You would think it would buy him another year to slag off Abbott enough to do damage.

 

[Gringotts Bank]

Middle of the road? Feminista, maternity leave and all the trimmings. Ask her about that poster of Tony Abbott in her electoral office. Bailed on Julia Gillard when most needed.
As with M.Turnbull, OMDB.

You don't like Turnbull?

 

[qldfrog]

Not at all. We just think he’ll be a big improvement on six years of Labor’s stupidity, reckless spending, pathetic record on border protection, lies, in-fighting, inability to balance the budget and control our debt, and general incompetence.

I doubt if there’s a single person here who believes that Abbot will do everything right. I don’t think any of us are kidding ourselves that we’ll agree with everything he does. We just think that Abbot and his team can improve on Labor’s stumbling efforts to govern our country.
....[/I]

+1 I really do not like Abbott but I really believe it is a matter of economic life or death to stop labor now..Otherwise I see Australia taking the road of my native country which I had to leave 20y ago to have a future.
Sadly a lot of damage has been done already and I only hope Abbot will be strong enough to take the harsh measures needed to clean the mess....

 

[drsmith]

Rudd might stay and they wont pass libs direct action through to try and push for a DD and another election. You would think it would buy him another year to slag off Abbott enough to do damage.

Tony Abbott returned the carbon tax in his press club speech yesterday I would suggest on the theme of trust.

It's clearly been successful in luring Kevin Rudd in.

 

[Logique]

You don't like Turnbull?

Hi GB, no I do not support "Carbon Malcolm" for Liberal leadership!

 

[wayneL]

....in BMW's made straight for the Green ticket

This is the astonishing thing about the so-called Greens. They drive big fast gas guzzlers, flashy SUVs etc, central air conditioning/heating, automated kitchen etc etc... and preach to me on my treadly about global warming etc.

An alliterative string of adjectives would be fun, but only one word actually suffices => Idiots.