Australian (ASX) Stock Market Forum

Is Shorten PM material?

Is Shorten PM material?

  • Yes

    Votes: 6 16.2%
  • No

    Votes: 31 83.8%

  • Total voters
    37
FAIRNESS......FAIRNESS....FAIRNESS......That is Shortens cry as an ex union hack.

I will always look after the workers best interests...I will always make sure workers get a fair deal.....But Shorten and his corrupt unions are duding workers time and time again.....I mean how hypocritical can they be when they are being caught out over and over again......Shorten's juvenile brain does not think out of the square...He must honestly think people are more stupid than he is himself.

The union deal with Coles workers is the latest scandal duding the workers again preceded by McDonalds, Chiquita and Clean Event.

Is it fair Bill or was it something in it for you and your corrupt unions again?


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...f/news-story/8e4ba7e3f412a2ba1ccc71d4ee91baa3

It wasn’t really a surprise the Fair Work Commission had to withdraw support for the Coles enterprise agreement. It never passed the better-off-*overall test in the first place, a test in the legislation to ensure workers are not disadvantaged by taking an agreement.

But the approach of the FWC has always been that if an agreement is signed by a union, it is *simply waved through without any serious analysis. Non-union agreements, by contrast, are subject to exhaustive scrutiny.

The trade union — in this case the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, which claims to be the biggest union in Australia — will tell us the vast majority of workers voted to *accept the deal. Well, that is of the workers who voted; most of the workers dudded by the agreement didn’t bother to vote.

For Coles, the agreement was a dream come true: pay slightly higher base rates and avoid penalty rates on Saturday and a much lower one on Sunday compared with the Retail Industry Award. For a business in which weekend trade is very significant, this is an ideal arrangement.

Add $5 million-odd it receives a year from the SDA for processing union membership dues and what’s not to love?

Woolies has a similar agreement, but the SDA has been careful not to offer an equivalent deal to smaller supermarket players.

For the SDA, the Coles (and Woolies) deal was also a dream come true. Union officials could attend employee induction sessions, the company handed out union application forms and the company deducted union dues from workers’ pay. The SDA should really be called the Coles (and Woolies) Staff Association.

As a bonus, the sole superannuation fund nominated in the agreement is REST, the union-*affiliated industry super fund whose union trustees are dominated by SDA officials. Coles supermarket workers are given no choice about which super*annuation fund to join.

But it’s not only the Coles deal that duds some workers; it is also REST. Unless workers opt out of the attached insurance arrangements, premiums are deducted automatically from the workers’ super accounts, even though there is no payout in the event of death or total disability unless the account contains at least $3000.

Students working weekends have accounts way below this figure. They are paying for nothing, yet the REST trustees allow this arrangement to continue. After a few years of working for Coles, these young people have precious little in their super *accounts after fees, charges and unwanted *insurance. I guess that’s what happens when the union stands up for workers’ rights.

It is the Shorten approach to industrial relations: what’s the problem if some workers are made worse off, think of the bigger picture, think of the benefits for the union. This was the Cleanevent scenario and the Chiquita Mushrooms scenario. It’s how the industrial relations club works. And the FWC is part of the club.
 
How embarrassing this must be for Bill Shorten when he keeps sprouting how he looks after the workers interests for fairness, better wage deals and one who will protect penalty rates on weekends irrespective of what the umpire comes up with....He is only protecting penalty rates applicable to small business while he allows big business to do do more dirty deals for the union money grab....What a grubby lot.


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...d/news-story/bc631c8b1eb6ac210d3cabb4a951080b

A wrecking ball just smashed through the front doors of Australia’s industrial relations club. A momentous legal decision has tipped shame on the industrial relations team at Coles, shame on the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association, and shame on the Fair Work Commission too.

Congratulations to Duncan Hart. An unlikely hero for some, he has done this country a great favour. After this, everything must change. The dodgy deals must stop. The IR club must be demolished. The same industrial relations rules must apply to all businesses, great or small.

Coles is the new Cleanevent. A legal decision proves it. Its enterprise agreement has been struck out because it rips off its lowest-paid workers. What a shame the recent royal commission into union governance didn’t look into the SDA and the current deals it has with employers such as Coles.

Cleanevent was a cleaning company that many years ago paid the Australian Workers Union $25,000 as part of a deal for an EBA. This EBA allowed the company to underpay its workers by $400 million. The Dyson Heydon royal commission into trade union governance examined the deal in detail.

Subsequently, recommendations were made to stop “corrupting payments” between employers and unions. If those recommendations were legislated now, Coles executives might be facing prosecution, because Coles has admitted it paid the SDA $25,000 a year for “training”.

We all know that penalty rates impose a cost on business operations. What is less understood is how in some sectors only smaller businesses have to pay them, because bigger businesses can do dodgy deals to avoid them.

Provided a business has a large workforce, is prepared to push its workers into union membership, and perhaps even pay the union money, an EBA with below legal pay rates can be secured.

These EBAs should not get registered by the Fair Work Commission, but unfortunately, if an EBA has union sanction, it just gets waved through. With a wink and a nudge, the members of the IR club look after their own.

For the SDA, this decision is devastating. There are other employers that have signed up to its dodgy EBAs. What if these employers dump the union, stop pushing their staff to join, and stop supporting the union financially? The only thing this union has going for it is its partnership with key employers in the corporate sector.

This decision is embarrassing for the Labor Party. How can it campaign on penalty rates when a major backer makes a living by selectively undercutting them? There are a few unions in this country whose core business is to sell cut-price wage deals. How can the party of the workers live with this association?

The FWC, too, needs to review the way it approves agreements. Scrutiny is applied to EBAs with no union involvement, but those with a union seal are simply rubber-stamped. There has always been an assumption that a union has the best interests of workers at heart and can be trusted with their pay cheques. This assumption is no longer true and everyone needs to adjust their thinking accordingly.

 
Once again we see the hypocrisy coming out of Bill Shortens mouth together with Penny Wong, Chris Bowen and Andrew Leigh whom all have advocated business tax cuts since 2011 to 2015....But now.....Oh No not now they say.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...w/news-story/0c22908e2933118c5267f3d107cf72d7

If the contradiction by Labor on company tax cuts ended there, we simply could put it down to politics — both sides backflip when they see an advantage in doing so. But the Labor retreat on company tax cuts is more brazen because its finance team has long argued in favour of such cuts, for exactly the same reason Turnbull is now.

None other than Chris Bowen — the man who would be treasurer, henceforth charged with implementing Labor’s economic blueprint if Shorten becomes prime minister — is in favour of company tax cuts. Or he was until very recently.

In his book Hearts and Minds, Bowen wrote: “It’s a Labor thing to have the ambition of reducing company tax, because it promotes investment, creates jobs and drives growth.” The book was spruiked by the publisher as Bowen’s vision for a better
Australia.

Opposition assistant Treasury spokesman Andrew Leigh told me last year on Sky News: “We know the company tax rate is a significant drag on growth, largely because capital is more footloose than labour and so there’s potential for us to miss out on high-quality investment if we have too high a company tax rate.”

Leigh is right. When Paul Keating, followed by Peter Costello, cut company taxes, Australia then had one of the lowest rates in the OECD. Today, we have one of the highest.

Lower company taxes stimulate investment. To take advantage of our geographical location we need to remain competitive, and attractive conditions for business do just that. But don’t take my word for it.

When Labor was last in government its finance minister at the time, Penny Wong, now opposition leader in the Senate and Labor’s campaign spokeswoman, said: “We understand that the cut in the corporate tax rate is important to increase productivity, to promote broad-based economic growth and to encourage more investment and jobs across Australia.” Jobs and growth is the Coalition’s slogan.

Labor now wants to suggest that company tax cuts don’t benefit workers, but the former head of the Department of the Treasury, Ken Henry, who also drafted Kevin Rudd’s tax reform paper, has said: “The consensus of public finance theorists is that in Australia, if the company income tax were to be cut, the principal beneficiaries will be workers.”

If you don’t believe Henry, maybe Leigh can convince you of the link between the company tax rate and the workforce. Before Labor flipped to oppose company tax cuts, Leigh wrote in The Australian Financial Review: “In a recent review of the literature, William Gentry (Williams College) concludes that most of the impact of a corporate income tax rise falls on workers. Increase company taxes by 10 percentage points, and wages fall by 6-10 per cent.”

Leigh wrote that in the countdown to the 2010 election, when Labor was campaigning on cutting company taxes. The slogan as to why doing so was necessary? For jobs and growth. Sound familiar?

Labor now argues that a higher company tax rate won’t leave workers worse off.

This week on Sky News Leigh didn’t back away from his past observations, because apparently the benefits for workers won’t be felt for years.

For some reason that didn’t matter back then but, hey, things change, I suppose. I’d have thought the lag time sounds like a good reason to get on with the cuts. Either way, it’s ironic that Labor is serving up 10-year costings forecasts to mask the imbalance in its books across the trad*itional four-year forward estimates, yet similarly long-term projections about company tax cut effects are too far off to secure Labor’s support.

So Labor’s finance team, once united in favour of company tax cuts, is now united against them.

In an era of presidential-style politicking, its collective backflip could be forgiven if it simply is playing follow the leader. Shorten opposes company tax cuts, other than one rhetorical overreach in his budget reply speech last year, so everyone else in Labor must follow suit.

Wrong. In a speech to the 2011 Australian Council of Social Service national conference Shorten said: “Friends, corporate tax reform helps Australia’s private sector grow and it creates jobs right up and down the income ladder.” Up and down the income ladder.

That was then; now, Shorten seeks to paint company tax cuts as all about helping big business, even though Turnbull’s cuts start with small business.

John Maynard Keynes once said: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Too often in politics this important caveat is disregarded in the name of consistency. However, the Keynesian defence doesn’t apply to the company tax backflip. Debt was an issue when Labor advocated cuts, and it’s still an issue. The fragility of the economy was evident then, as it is now. The need to stimulate jobs and growth was a priority then, just as it is now, which is why the rhetoric Labor used is so reflective of the rhetoric coming from the government today.

Why does Labor now oppose company tax cuts? For political advantage, nothing more — using the Coalition’s support for such cuts to paint it as only looking after business.


Isn't about time both sides of politics implemented policy in the Nations best interest?
 
Grace Collier sums up Bill Shorten for what he really stands for and it is not good.

I trust there will be plenty of viewers on ASF and the Australian Newspaper will take note before the election.



http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...e/news-story/e5f89036e0c1efe5de2c674836080caa

I’ve witnessed this union routine many times over. I’ve been in the audience listening, I’ve been with the union official standing up the front talking, and I’ve been the boss watching out of the office window. Now, as I sit on the couch at home with the election unfolding, I can see the same old union routine.

What we are seeing is an act. Shorten, a union loudmouth, is dragging a carpetbag of petty grievances around in a search for minds in which to instil them.

At every media opportunity he pulls out the grievances, waves them around and hopes for mass absorption. Minds full of grievance produce hearts full of fear and hatred. Collective fear and hatred can be ridden to the Lodge.

So Shorten tells us how terrible our lives are or will be (fear) and how this is directly the fault of other people who have it easy (hatred), and he spins for us a story and hopes we swallow
it.


So what about his war on business? Union organisers of the Shorten genre divide businesses into good and bad, depending on how willing they are to have “union relationships”. Labor legislates for all businesses, then some unions can give the good businesses a way to break the rules in exchange for cash. Some of the cash goes back to Labor and the circle is complete. So “Labor has excellent relations with business,” Shorten insists.

Let’s turn to the final report of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption to see what Shorten is likely to think an excellent relationship with business looks like.

The Australian Workers Union case studies revealed three themes. First, “the payment of large sums by employers made in the context of bargaining … in all cases, they were undisclosed to the members on whose behalf that bargaining was taking place”. Second, “the false inflation of membership numbers”; and third, “falsification of documents, for the most part, invoices”.

These three themes overlapped but together painted “an unattractive picture of a union concerned not with its role as the instrument through which to protect the interests of its members but with self-interest — interest in itself and its officials as a self-perpetuating institution”.

These are the findings about a union run by a man who will run this country as he ran his union. I hope he would treat the citizens of our country better than he treated the m
embers of his union.
 
FAIRNESS....FAIRNESS...FAIRNESS...SAYS BARNACLE BILL
Now proof he and his AWU had a hand in the dirty deal with Coles.


What a grub this would be Prime Minister has turned out to be.

What a hypocrite.

He is helping big corporate business, who he says is sending tax free profits overseas, and then neglect the small businesses.

It is all about filling the coffers of the unions who then fill the coffers of the Labor Party and the Greens......Yes workers join a union, pay your fess, ripped off and get nothing in return......Whether your are a Labor voter or a Liberal voter your fees will eventually find its way back to Labor.




http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...l/news-story/9386dbeb8285e11c78956139a18026b2

Bill Shorten’s old union signed off on a sweetheart deal with supermarket giant Coles that enshrined illegal underpayments for 30,000 casual workers before it was struck down by the industrial relations umpire.

The Opposition Leader has slammed “mistakes” in the 2014 agreement that needed to be “rectified” in a rebuke to the shopworkers union, which represents most Coles staff, after it emerged casual workers were underpaid as much as $100 million.

The Fair Work Commission struck out the deal last month on the grounds it breached the *“better-off overall test” that *applies under industrial law.

In the wake of the commission’s decision, ordering Coles to repay workers short-changed by the deal, Mr Shorten said Coles and the union “have to rectify the mistakes, full stop”.

But The Australian can reveal Mr Shorten’s powerbase, the Australian Workers Union, helped the Shop Distributive and Allied Workers hash out the Coles *enterprise agreement.

The AWU was also a party to the previous deal, filed with the Fair Work Commission in 2011 and signed by ALP factional boss and union “godfather” Bill Ludwig, then AWU president.

The deals drove thousands of members to the conservative *unions, payments to union-linked funds, and bolstered their influence inside the ALP.
 
Bills', already limited, credibility is being diminished every time he repeats his hypocritical lie.

I notice his nose is getting bigger and bigger.

As Gillard found out, liars are not PM material.
 
This is going to become insufferable as the election day gets closer isn't it!! :D

Everyone's going to don their pedant jumpers and yell out loud for their team and revile the cheating b4st4rds on the other side. And the odd thing is that not one of the opposing fans is going to listen to any protest or abuse that doesn't fit their own predisposition. :rolleyes:


The good news is that I had a call from a friend of many years, who is nauseatingly on the blue team, and he announced he has not donated a cent to the LNP for the first time in memory and is voting Pauline!!! When I announced that I too will be voting for a self inflicted wound in order to attack a political cancer, it was one of those male bonding moments only men can understand. :D
 
This is going to become insufferable as the election day gets closer isn't it!! :D

Yes

Everyone's going to don their pedant jumpers and yell out loud for their team and revile the cheating b4st4rds on the other side. And the odd thing is that not one of the opposing fans is going to listen to any protest or abuse that doesn't fit their own predisposition. :rolleyes:

Correct. But I was pretty confident that all the Labor voters would swing over to the Coalition after my last post!

The good news is that I had a call from a friend of many years, who is nauseatingly on the blue team, and he announced he has not donated a cent to the LNP for the first time in memory and is voting Pauline!!! When I announced that I too will be voting for a self inflicted wound in order to attack a political cancer, it was one of those male bonding moments only men can understand. :D

Love it
 
I watched Leigh Sales interview Bill Shorten on the ABC last night.

To be honest I’m not a great fan of hers but she tried valiantly (and doggedly), using facts and logic, to expose the moral bankruptcy of this man (and I use that word loosely).

We previously had Kevin Rudd declare that “Hi I am Kevin Rudd and I’m here to help” and I believe the egotistical wanker really did believe he was.

Then we had Julia Gillard declare “There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead” and I believe that she did not realise that she was lying at the time, but she really did show her real colours when she ranted (and knew she was lying) that Tony Abbott was a misogynist.

And then there was Bill Shorten. I must admit that I have never liked him.
But his performance last night with Leigh was a disgrace. He really has surpassed Kevin and Julia in misleading the Australian public. How does the man sleep at night?
Shorten really showed his Union background when time after time as Sales probed for some honesty in his replies that he is a downright liar, and he knows it! He is willing to say anything as long as he thinks it will foster his case.

So the title of this thread is “Is Shorten PM material?”
And the answer is that the man should not be allowed within 1 million miles of the Lodge. He is fraudulent even as a politician. He has shown that he has no moral integrity as his nose gets longer and longer.

I will be ashamed to call myself an Australian if this man ever becomes PM.
 
I watched Leigh Sales interview Bill Shorten on the ABC last night.

To be honest I’m not a great fan of hers but she tried valiantly (and doggedly), using facts and logic, to expose the moral bankruptcy of this man (and I use that word loosely).

We previously had Kevin Rudd declare that “Hi I am Kevin Rudd and I’m here to help” and I believe the egotistical wanker really did believe he was.

Then we had Julia Gillard declare “There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead” and I believe that she did not realise that she was lying at the time, but she really did show her real colours when she ranted (and knew she was lying) that Tony Abbott was a misogynist.

And then there was Bill Shorten. I must admit that I have never liked him.
But his performance last night with Leigh was a disgrace. He really has surpassed Kevin and Julia in misleading the Australian public. How does the man sleep at night?
Shorten really showed his Union background when time after time as Sales probed for some honesty in his replies that he is a downright liar, and he knows it! He is willing to say anything as long as he thinks it will foster his case.

So the title of this thread is “Is Shorten PM material?”
And the answer is that the man should not be allowed within 1 million miles of the Lodge. He is fraudulent even as a politician. He has shown that he has no moral integrity as his nose gets longer and longer.

I will be ashamed to call myself an Australian if this man ever becomes PM.

dutchie, I don't think you have too much to worry about as his disgraceful lie campaign is starting to fall apart and it is doing his credibility, what ever he ever had, no good at all.....There are a few naive and rusted on Labor supporters who will swallow it, but I would say those with level heads can see through Shortens tactic......WHAT EVER IT TAKES.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...e/news-story/f1c269f9304e02dea37f3080f31901ba

There’s no support for Bill Shorten’s Medi-scare

The Australian
12:00AM June 24, 2016
Save
Print

Bill Shorten must be ruing the departure of Labor-friendly AMA leader Brian Owler who seemed ever prepared to show his colours — and not in a shy way. The new AMA leader Michael Gannon presents a more temperate and considered position, exposing Labor’s Medicare privatisation scare for what it is.

Gannon welcomes Labor’s promise to unfreeze Medicare rebates for doctors but what else could the leader of a doctors’ union say? Australians aren’t stupid. They know that the burden for Labor’s largesse falls on the taxpayer, and if you’re a welfare recipient it simply adds to the downward pressure on welfare payments.

Mark Awerbuch, Crafers, SA

I have to wonder if Bill Shorten’s Medicare scare outdoes Malcolm Turnbull’s boat turnbacks scare, and whether there is any reality to either claim. It’s clear that prior to the last national conference, a significant number of Labor MPs voiced strong opposition to turnbacks while no one from the Coalition has ever advocated for privatising Medicare.

Further, in the event of a hung parliament, recent history would point to Labor partnering with the Greens to form government. The risk for the country is that the trade-off would include the adoption of its porous border protection policies.

Kim Keogh, East Fremantle, WA

Will Bill Shorten have the decency to apologise for daring to suggest that Medicare might be privatised under a Coalition government?

Does he have in mind a delegation of the taxation powers of the Commonwealth to a non-government body to raise the money which the government spends under Medicare? Does he then contemplate a private body being given the power to determine the content of the benefits schedule and the relevant Medicare rebate against a doctor’s bill for each service item?

Perhaps Shorten should tell voters that he doesn’t understand what it says about the exercise of commonwealth powers. Is he running scared and trying to frighte
 
I watched Leigh Sales interview Bill Shorten on the ABC last night.

.

You reached the Ad Nauseam plateau by the sounds of it dutchie

I'll have to have a look, but once we take any lies or truths predicated on lies, there usually isn't much substance leaving most politician's lips imo.

What it has done is put a spotlight on the LNP in the future if it tries to tinker with universal health care and any out sourcing associated with it.
 
What Shorten has done with his Medicare scare verges on the edge of being illegal.


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...e/news-story/e297bd5488a91ab028f144c11ce7159b

Bill Shorten said on ABC TV on Thursday night that Malcolm Turnbull and/or the Liberal Party were “dedicated to privatising Medicare”. The Commonwealth Electoral Act states that a person shall not publish any matter or thing likely to mislead or deceive an elector in relation to the casting of a vote.

Clearly, in making this political statement, Shorten is trying to influence the votes of electors. Turnbull has made it quite clear that Medicare will not be privatised by a future Coalition government, so what evidence does Shorten have for this assertion? Or is he trying to mislead or deceive electors as to how they should cast their votes before an election?
 
What Shorten has done with his Medicare scare verges on the edge of being illegal.


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...e/news-story/e297bd5488a91ab028f144c11ce7159b

Bill Shorten said on ABC TV on Thursday night that Malcolm Turnbull and/or the Liberal Party were “dedicated to privatising Medicare”. The Commonwealth Electoral Act states that a person shall not publish any matter or thing likely to mislead or deceive an elector in relation to the casting of a vote.

Clearly, in making this political statement, Shorten is trying to influence the votes of electors. Turnbull has made it quite clear that Medicare will not be privatised by a future Coalition government, so what evidence does Shorten have for this assertion? Or is he trying to mislead or deceive electors as to how they should cast their votes before an election?

He's deliberately lying trying to get some mud to stick.
A real idiot, securing his loss.
 
He's deliberately lying trying to get some mud to stick.
A real idiot, securing his loss.

Shorten thinks everybody is as stupid as he is and it is all back firing on him and serves him right...He deserves all he gets...He is an absolute political grub.
 
Shorten thinks everybody is as stupid as he is and it is all back firing on him and serves him right...He deserves all he gets...He is an absolute political grub.

Your over emphasis indicates considerable doubt.

Shorten is doing very well on ABC tv just now. Not someone I support but is a long way from a grub in my view.
 
Your over emphasis indicates considerable doubt.

Shorten is doing very well on ABC tv just now. Not someone I support but is a long way from a grub in my view.

Well what would you expect from the Labor run ABC except Leigh Sails who gave Shorten the run of the kitchen over his LIES on MEDICARE..

He is a grub when he talks about fairness for workers and then duds them of millions of dollars as the workers of Chicquita, Clean Event, McDonalds, Coles and Woolworths will tell you...Shorten is an absolute hypocrite which not even you could not deny...He lets McDonalds get away with 25% penalty rates on Saturdays and 50% on Sundays when other food outlets have to pay double the penalty rates paid to workers at McDoanlds.

Shorten has no principles....One thing he is good at is cheating and lying.

Shorten likes dealing with big business because he can extract more money from them over small business...Shorten could not care less about small business
 
Well what would you expect from the Labor run ABC except Leigh Sails who gave Shorten the run of the kitchen over his LIES on MEDICARE..

He is a grub when he talks about fairness for workers and then duds them of millions of dollars as the workers of Chicquita, Clean Event, McDonalds, Coles and Woolworths will tell you...Shorten is an absolute hypocrite which not even you could not deny...He lets McDonalds get away with 25% penalty rates on Saturdays and 50% on Sundays when other food outlets have to pay double the penalty rates paid to workers at McDoanlds.

Shorten has no principles....One thing he is good at is cheating and lying.

Shorten likes dealing with big business because he can extract more money from them over small business...Shorten could not care less about small business
I do not disagree but in very many other ways we can say similar about the libs. 40% (48billion) of benifits to business will go oveseas under libs. (university of technology NSW report) Not going to help tge corner store much.

Time to close ranks and join the Greens Noco. Democratic from the bottom up.
 
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