The Abbott Government

sptrawler said:

Funny you should mention that, a mate who works on the council on $60k, is going to do a traffic management course for a pay rise.

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Yeah its the biggest pile of rot in the world, construction unions. Our mate owns a big firm in Brissy, when he told me about the sign flippers i nearly fainted. The cleaners and sweepers is true too, food preservers union.

There's no other place like Australia for this...

I thought the same thing, Julia, with the Sarah Ferguson and Joe Hockey interview, compared to how she spoke to Bill Shorten.
Maybe she was upset about the cuts to the ABC.

You'd think after Abbott going into bat for the salary packaging industry they'd at least try to help the poor guy now he's in power.

But no. They're already out spruiking to high income individuals on how to salary package their new car so as to tax arbitrage between the new 49% debt levy rate and the 47% FBT rate that will exist till April next year.

Wonder if it will make them rethink their opposition to how the statutory method for claiming car expenses is done? They've broken so many other promises in the name of getting the budget to surplus, why not another one that actually has some fairness and economic merit to back it up?

Abbott may have to go back to the negotiation table with Barnett, over the offshore LNG processing.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/business/wa/a/23552597/rocky-outcrops-worth-billions/

Ms Bishop was meeting the first group of students travelling to Singapore under the Federal Government's New Colombo Plan, a scheme which offers Australian undergraduates grants to study in the Indo-Pacific region.

Bebe D'Souza from the Sydney University Union says the minister was not fazed by the action, which attracted about 200 students.

"Julie Bishop came up the stairs surrounded by police and then all of the students kind of surrounded [her] and the police," she said.

The students were] yelling 'shame' and talking about how terrible these cuts on education are going to be for ordinary students.

"Julie Bishop kind of just like looked bemused, she didn't look shameful at all, she looked proud of what she was doing."

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Perhaps she was thinking about six of the best with the rattan for each.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-16/julie-bishop-student-protest-sydney-university/5458636

sptrawler said:

Abbott may have to go back to the negotiation table with Barnett, over the offshore LNG processing.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/business/wa/a/23552597/rocky-outcrops-worth-billions/

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Either that or dispose of a used empty asylum boat with a little too much C-4.

Henry Ergas hits the nail on the head and points to the necessity of Hockey's fiscal action.

A spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down.....Suck up up Labor and do the right thing by the nation or pay the consequences..


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...w-finish-the-job/story-fn7078da-1226920688190

noco said:

Henry Ergas hits the nail on the head and points to the necessity of Hockey's fiscal action.

A spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down.....Suck up up Labor and do the right thing by the nation or pay the consequences..


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...w-finish-the-job/story-fn7078da-1226920688190

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It will be interesting to see what your hero does when the majority of this Budget lies in tatters in the Senate.

Mrs Carbon Tax offers her two bobs worth on the budget.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-17/cate-blanchett-slams-budget-cuts/5459416

SirRumpole said:

It will be interesting to see what your hero does when the majority of this Budget lies in tatters in the Senate.

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He will probably be too busy, to stand alongside your hero's, they seem busy answering questions about their policies ATM.lol

drsmith said:

Mrs Carbon Tax offers her two bobs worth on the budget.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-17/cate-blanchett-slams-budget-cuts/5459416

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You missed a great opportunity Dr Smith

"Mrs Carbon Tax offers her two boobs worth on the budget."

drsmith said:

Mrs Carbon Tax offers her two bobs worth on the budget.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-17/cate-blanchett-slams-budget-cuts/5459416

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Doc, what else would you expect from a dedicated GREENIE.

That lying piece of ****:

Well, I can understand why just at the moment politicians aren’t much trusted because we’ve had too many politicians who say one thing before an election to win votes and then do the opposite after the election…

Tony Abbott, Newcastle radio, June 13, 2013.

noco said:

Doc, what else would you expect from a dedicated GREENIE.

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Got this in an email

SirRumpole said:

It will be interesting to see what your hero does when the majority of this Budget lies in tatters in the Senate.

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Well, if Abbott can't negotiate or knock some sense into those "RED RAGERS AND THE GREENS", then he will have no alternative but to let the people decide whether they want to go down the same track as the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd chaos from 2007 to 2013 or whether they choice to weather out the storm that has been whipped up by the Greens and the comrades of the Greens or to attain some stability in our economy.

It is very simple, if Rudd and Gillard had not wasted so much of tax payers money on hare brain schemes and committed the Coalition into future schemes such as the NBN, Gonski and the NDIS and their own PPL, there would have been no need for such restrictions on the economy today..

A double dissolution maybe the only solution.

Abbott must hold his nerve and not let the polls sway him one way or the other......if a double dissolution is the only way to settle the difference between the two major parties, so be it.....it will let the voters decide whether to go backwards of move foooooooooooooorwards.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...ic-warrior-clash/story-e6frg74x-1226920686461

He (Shorten) says the budget problem is a myth, that Labor left a brilliant legacy and a strong economy. It has clean hands. This is not a credible position and the public will not accept it.

The consequence is that Labor has no solution to the nation’s contemporary budget dilemma because it refuses to admit the problem. It seems politically incapable of such an admission because that condemns its own record. Yet the gap between spending and revenue is upwards of 3 per cent of GDP and without policy change the budget sits in deficit for another 10 years.

The problem for Abbott and Hockey is they are taking pre-emptive action short of any crisis. There is no budget emergency now. Herein lies the seduction of the “no problem” school, which is alarmingly strong within the political system given that it is embraced by Labor, the Greens and the Palmer United Party to varying degrees.

While Labor has gone hard against the budget, its aim is to damage the Abbott government, not force an election. Labor would not want an election and is not ready for an election despite its bravado. Abbott’s obvious preference is to horse-trade his way to securing most of his budget measures. Indeed, necessary compromises may soften some of the harder edges of the budget.

The situation is unpredictable and the extent of any future deadlock pivots to a large extent on the Greens and Palmer. Antagonism between Palmer and the Abbott government now runs deep and such negotiations may not be fruitful as they once seemed.

The prospect of a long double-dissolution list of blocked bills by mid-2015 cannot be ruled out. In the interim Abbott must maintain discipline on his own side in the teeth of likely falling opinion polls. The lessons of the Rudd government loom large. It allowed itself to be panicked by the polls. Rudd retreated when he should have stayed strong. Labor in office exaggerated the strength of the Coalition opposition and got spooked.

Shorten is wedging himself with self interest instead of the interest of the nation and I feel sure he is heading for another train wreck of his own makings.



http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/...ould_be_very_serious_about_an_early_election/

My pet hate, the press and poor reporting.

Today's Sunday Times in W.A. page 2 exclusive by Samantha Maiden, National Political Editor.

To quote" The controversial measures such as raising the retirement age from 65 to 70".

Where has she been? Labor lifted the retirement age to 67 a couple of years ago, but don't let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Niki Savva made a very good point on the $7 GP co-payment on the ABC's Insiders today.

She's of the view that there's haggle room over the detail. It's the principal the government wants to establish.

In that context, Joe Hockey's comments on Andrew Bolts Show were also interesting today.

Yesterday, I saw some interesting tables in the West Australian on earnings compared with net income after tax and benefits for a range of household scenarios. These were at $10k intervals.

What struck me was there are some instances where the combination of marginal tax rate and benefit withdrawal resulted in EMTR's of 70 to 80%.

That's almost the classic poverty trap.