Political Schadenfreude

derty said:

Well my little moment of schadenfreude for this election was seeing that old fossil and racist coward Wilson 'Iron Bar' Tuckey lose his seat. Especially as he became my federal member with the generation of the seat of O'Connor.

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Yes, loving it that Wilson has gone. However the new bloke sounds like he will be high profile, saying he could back the ALP if they scrap the mining tax.

My favourite moment was Fielding copping a coupe de grace at the hands of the Greens in the Senate. It would have been even better if it had been the Aussie Sex Party but you cannot have it all.

Man still buzzing from this election.

Bushman said:

Yes, loving it that Wilson has gone. However the new bloke sounds like he will be high profile, saying he could back the ALP if they scrap the mining tax.

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You would think that the Greens' guy would threaten to withdraw his support if Labor were to drop the mining tax, as the Greens' agenda requires a mining tax to finance it.

If they can drop the mining tax and still keep the Greens' guy on board, then that might actually work in their favour. Just like they did for the ETS, they could claim that they are in favour of a mining tax but that political reality prevents them from implementing it. They then put it on the back burner for a few years and let it die a peaceful death. That also has the advantage of removing an unpopular (at least in WA and QLD) item from their agenda. They would still have the issue of how to fund their other policies without the tax, but Labor are good at carefree spending so they won't lose much sleep over it.

Two more sleeps before we can indulge in an orgy of Schadenfreude. It will be doubly satisfying if the electors of Griffith toss the krudd out along with the rest.

Julia said:

I reckon if you'd included the option in yesterday's ballot of returning to the Howard government, with the proviso that workchoices was dead, there would have been a stampede to the ballot boxes.

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He'd also have to remove the tax free super for over 60s and halving of CGT to undo most of the structural damage he did to the budget.

i fear the massive increase in house inflation has crippled Australi for a generation at least. Our wages HAVE to be uncompetitively high to afford the rents and mortgages high property prices require.

Factor in all the shops we buy things from, the massive rents charged for them, and we've got a huge structural cost disadvanatge to most of the world. Our best hope is a slow deflation in real terms, otherwise we'll end up an Ireland should an uptick in unemployment cause a fast drop in house prices.

As the below graph shows, it took 40 years for real house prices to double, then stagnate for a decade and then low and behold look at the inflation post 2000 and the halving of the CGT. Housing debt is current around 140% of income. Imagine if house prices hadn't increase by near 200%. This country would have hundreds of billions less in debt, rents would be lower, mortgages smaller, most shops would have far lower rental costs.

Because it's "private debt" people ignore it, yet our banks have borrowed the money and at the end of the day the Govt has to stand behind the banks during any recession, so at the end of the day it really is off balance sheet public debt. halving of the CGT in combination with NG was economic vandalism!

How tax free super is supposed to stack up I have no idea. It was barely affordable wen it was introduced, and probably wont be by 2020 as increasing numbers hit 60

We had around 4.5 workers per dependent when tax free super for over 60s was introduced. By 2020 it's forcast to be just 3.5 per dependent. A few hundred thousand less workers paying tax, a near doubling of the over 60s paying minimal to no tax. Absolutely brilliant idea. Nearly sounds like Clive Palmer economics.