The Abbott Government

[drsmith]

Negative gearing against wage income represents only one part of the problem in relation to property tax/transfer.

The reform perspective needs to be much broader than just this one item.

 

[sydboy007]

Negative gearing against wage income represents only one part of the problem in relation to property tax/transfer.

The reform perspective needs to be much broader than just this one item.

It's a start that's yet to happen. Bring in some MP till the various levels of Govt can get off their collective flabby buts and increase supply. I'll head back to my flying pig spotting. Never seen one but still hoping.

Tis a shame we as a society have changed our perspective from housing providing shelter to all property being an investment.

 

[sptrawler]

I just can't believe Abbott will be inclined to even try to get the kind of consensus Labor achieved in the 80s

http://www.businessspectator.com.au...cs/can-abbott-rebuild-bungled-politics-reform

Perhaps the best example of how to sell ‘tough love’ to the electorate came with the election of the Hawke government in 1983. That was an era of runaway inflation and soaring unemployment -- but Hawke did set out an agenda in his campaign launch that explained the pain to come, and how it was to be shared. At his February 1983 launch he said: “... in this hour of Australia's worst economic crisis for fifty years, we shall ask all sections of the Australian community to show the common restraint and share the common burden for the common national purpose.”

He laid out a prices and incomes policy that would not cut incomes in nominal terms, but would crimp spending power and business profits, while still allowing economic rebalancing between supply constraints and booming demand.

In the same speech he promised: “We undertake, immediately on assuming office, to convene a national economic summit conference, fully representative of Australian industry, the Australian workforce and the Australian people through their elected governments ... Its purpose is to create a climate for common understanding of the scale and scope of Australia's present crisis, to explore the policy options, and to ensure that the relevant parties, governments, business and the unions, clearly appreciate the role that each of them will have to play in pulling the country out of its present economic mess.”

What different days. The National Economic Summit was held in April of that year. Hawke described the effect of that summit on ABC Radio in 2012: “We had the representatives, federal government, state government, local government, large employers, small employers, trade unions, churches, welfare organisations. They were given by Treasury all the information that we had and so you had the people of Australia, through their representative organisations, informed in a way that they had never been before.

“... it was out of that that I got an unanimous communiqué except for one person, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, unanimous communiqué agreeing with the analysis and accepting the things that had to be done, getting a constructive relationship between employers and trade unions, reducing the increase in money wages in return for acceptance of the social wage. Virtually all of the success -- the economic success of 1983 -- stemmed from the summit.”

Speaking from living through the Hawke years, I can tell you the people on the workshop floor were well and truly fed up with Hawke and the unions, by the end of the wages accord.
The unions kept a lid on wage rises and the government promised to keep wages in line with inflation through wage increases and or tax relief.
The problem was the wage rise always came in less than inflation, the government always had a reason why it couldn't be the same and was always short.
By the time Hawke and the Accord was thrown out wages had gone backwards 18% in real terms. That's my memory of it, the biggest scam perpetrated on workers in my opinion.
By the way we all, on the workshop floor voted for Hawke, everyone thought he was going to be the mesiah.
We all ended up very disappointed and disillutioned by Hawke and it was a very militant blue collar workplace.

 

[IFocus]

Has the Government doubled the budget deficit?

Treasurer Joe Hockey is the "Masterchef of cooking the books" according to his Opposition counterpart Chris Bowen, who has repeatedly accused the Coalition of using "voodoo economics" to create a sense of crisis to justify dramatic spending cuts in the May 13 budget.

"Now what's happening here is that Joe Hockey has doubled the deficit, adding $68 billion to the deficit by changes to Government spending and changes to Government assumptions, and now he's asking the Australian people to pay for it", Mr Bowen told journalists in his electorate on April 27.

ABC Fact Check examines whether this statement is correct.

The verdict

Mr Bowen accurately quoted changes totalling $68 billion in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook.

The MYEFO forecasts a budget deficit twice as large as it was in the PEFO. The economic assumptions in MYEFO are different from those used in the PEFO, and there is spending in the MYEFO that was not in the previous forecasts.

It remains to be seen how the two sets of forecasts stand the test of time, but as of today, Mr Bowen's claim checks out.

 

[sptrawler]

Has the Government doubled the budget deficit?

Well IFocus, one thing that can't be disputed, is the Labor government certainly more than doubled it.lol

 

[sptrawler]

It's a start that's yet to happen. Bring in some MP till the various levels of Govt can get off their collective flabby buts and increase supply. I'll head back to my flying pig spotting. Never seen one but still hoping.

.

You may well see the flying pig, you appear to seeing to all the speculative kites, that the media keep floating about what the governments going to do.

 

[sydboy007]

You may well see the flying pig, you appear to seeing to all the speculative kites, that the media keep floating about what the governments going to do.

If the Govt chooses to leak then the Govt has to wear the cost. they'r ethe ones who've chosen to dog whistle / kite fly.

IMHO they'd have been smarter to have continued with their current policy of everything is a state secret and released the bare minimum on budget night.

 

[drsmith]

Has the Government doubled the budget deficit?

Labor budgets have a history of being works of fiction and that includes Wayne Swan's "delivered" surplus.

This government was just correcting the record.

 

[sptrawler]

If the Govt chooses to leak then the Govt has to wear the cost. they'r ethe ones who've chosen to dog whistle / kite fly.

IMHO they'd have been smarter to have continued with their current policy of everything is a state secret and released the bare minimum on budget night.

That is, if it's government leaks.
My bet is media speculation and sensationalism, they are the ones who pushed for the audit to be made public and since then have been hyperboling it to be government policy.
Thankfully the government didn't release it earlier, it has been nauseating watching Shorten and the media beating it up since its release.
Just mindless dribble, which Shorten seems to be very good at.
In my opinion Labor haven't got a chance with Shorten, his lack of credibility is like a millstone around their necks.

 

[sydboy007]

That is, if it's government leaks.
My bet is media speculation and sensationalism, they are the ones who pushed for the audit to be made public and since then have been hyperboling it to be government policy.
Thankfully the government didn't release it earlier, it has been nauseating watching Shorten and the media beating it up since its release.
Just mindless dribble, which Shorten seems to be very good at.
In my opinion Labor haven't got a chance with Shorten, his lack of credibility is like a millstone around their necks.

So you're saying someone outside the Govt made up the deficit tax and Abbott and Joe have decided to not refute it. If that's true then they're pretty sad politicians.

The CoA was a waste of money. terms of reference so narrow as to pretty much make it usless in educating the public about what needs to be done. How was it going to help build a policy direction when it had no input other that big business and extreme economic rationalists.

 

[sydboy007]

Labor budgets have a history of being works of fiction and that includes Wayne Swan's "delivered" surplus.

This government was just correcting the record.

Christopher Pyne, December 10, 2011: “Well if there had been a Coalition government for the last five years, Kieran, I think most people accept that we would have had continuing surpluses.”

About as believable as no new taxes and a FTTN by late 2016

 

[drsmith]

Christopher Pyne, December 10, 2011: “Well if there had been a Coalition government for the last five years, Kieran, I think most people accept that we would have had continuing surpluses.”

About as believable as no new taxes and a FTTN by late 2016

The books would have without a doubt been in far better shape as would have our border security and that would have been without new taxes or Labor's disastrous NBN.

A lot about the upcoming budget is about repairing the mess Labor left but as we already know, it will also deal with some of the longer term issues on the entitlement side.

 

[sydboy007]

The books would have without a doubt been in far better shape as would have our border security and that would have been without new taxes or Labor's disastrous NBN.

A lot about the upcoming budget is about repairing the mess Labor left.

Yet no one mentions all the damage Howard and Costello did to the budget. How much revenue has been lost to removing the petrol excise indexation ($5B just this year), halving of CGT, tax free super, transition to retirement pensions, baby bonuses?

A lot of the upcoming budgets should be about repairing the stupidity of the last 10 years, but I'm got my doubts that's what they'll actually try to achieve.

Unless households are willing to go on another debt fill binge to ramp up GST / SD / CGT revenue (they ballooned from 65% to a peak of 150% of disposable income under Howard and just peaked at nearly 180% or $1.8T) the only way forward is via productivity and meaningful tax reform.

 

[sptrawler]

Yet no one mentions all the damage Howard and Costello did to the budget. How much revenue has been lost to removing the petrol excise indexation ($5B just this year), halving of CGT, tax free super, transition to retirement pensions, baby bonuses?

A lot of the upcoming budgets should be about repairing the stupidity of the last 10 years, but I'm got my doubts that's what they'll actually try to achieve.

Unless households are willing to go on another debt fill binge to ramp up GST / SD / CGT revenue (they ballooned from 65% to a peak of 150% of disposable income under Howard and just peaked at nearly 180% or $1.8T) the only way forward is via productivity and meaningful tax reform.

A lot has been said about the Howard /Costello years, not the least by you. Also a lot has been said about the Rudd / Gillard years.
However we find ourselves in the present, the beginning of the Abbott / Hockey years, lets wait and see before getting ourselves into a rabid frenzy. Like i said earlier they haven't implemented anything yet, try and save your youthfull enthusiasm untill they do.
The sky isn't falling in this week.

 

[sptrawler]

Hey Syd, I heard on the news first thing this morning, that the government is meeting today to soften the budget. As though the reporter would have been told that, what a joke.
So the useless media now has a bet both ways, if it's tough they told you so, if it's not so tough they told you so. lol
The reporting in this country is a national disgrace, all it does is give a reporter a platform for his/her personal opinion and really, who wants their personal opinion I can get that in the pub for free.
Is there any wonder newspaper circulation is falling.
Well, that's my opinion, for what it's worth.lol

 

[Calliope]

Hey Syd, I heard on the news first thing this morning, that the government is meeting today to soften the budget.

Apparently it will apply to incomes over $150,000. Poor old syd will still get slugged.

 

[sptrawler]

Well at last there is a budget article that states facts and is written in an unbiased way, hooray.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-07/koukoulas-hockey-has-us-tracking-towards-surplus/5434290

No sensationalism, no telling us what the government is going to say, just saying it as it is.

There will be plenty of time to bag the budget, when it is laid out.

 

[banco]

Hey Syd, I heard on the news first thing this morning, that the government is meeting today to soften the budget. As though the reporter would have been told that, what a joke.
So the useless media now has a bet both ways, if it's tough they told you so, if it's not so tough they told you so. lol

You seem to have trouble following the chain of events. Government leaks original plan a couple of weeks ago, is heavily criticised and then backs off and leaks again that they are softening it.

 

[sptrawler]

You seem to have trouble following the chain of events. Government leaks original plan a couple of weeks ago, is heavily criticised and then backs off and leaks again that they are softening it.

O.K Banco, give us a scoop, what is in the budget? What's the original plan? or are you just going to regurgitate what the press spews out endlessly.lol
Apparently you have the inside knowledge.
Actually better still, if you know it, put your money where your mouth is.

http://www.sportsbet.com.au/blog/sportsbet-media/budget-betting-begins

Or do you have trouble following the chain of events also.lol

 

[overhang]

O.K Banco, give us a scoop, what is in the budget? What's the original plan? or are you just going to regurgitate what the press spews out endlessly.lol
Apparently you have the inside knowledge.
Actually better still, if you know it, put your money where your mouth is.

http://www.sportsbet.com.au/blog/sportsbet-media/budget-betting-begins

Or do you have trouble following the chain of events also.lol

Well Peter Costello certainly seems to disagree with you, reading between the lines he insinuates the government leaked the levy to gauge public reaction.

The argument for increasing income taxes through some kind of levy is all about the politics. That’s why it was floated ”” to gauge reaction.

If the government had *irrevocably decided to do it, it would have just announced it in the Budget scheduled for next Tuesday night.

I think there has been enough reaction now for the government to conclude that, far from making it easier to sell repairs to the Budget, the levy would make things harder.

The Budget will be put to bed on the weekend. Tax proposals are regularly put in and pulled out in the last week *before a Budget.

Proposals can be changed or dropped altogether. The Prime Minister and Treasurer have cabinet authorisation to do that.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/ne...bt-levy-will-die/story-fni0cwl5-1226906423665