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The Abbott Government

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Calliope said:
One advantage of having a conservative government is that people will be more optimistic and start spending again. As a self-funded retiree I have a personal interest in bank deposit interests getting back to levels where taxes and rates don't cancel out the earnings. The official interest rates and bank interest rates are at record lows. Low interest rates are indicative of a faltering economy.

People in my situation don't have mortgages and hopefully an improvement in the economy will lead to a rise in interest rates.
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Agree with the sentiment... fully. Mum in the same boat.

But the economy is caught between a rock and a hard place in that regard... can't see substantially rising interest rates without economic Armageddon. :(
 
Calliope said:
I can't wait to see Bronwyn Bishop installed as Speaker by the Coalition. She has a lot of old scores to settle, especially with Anthony Albanese. He will probably be expelled from the chamber at the first sitting.
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If she is elected Speaker, I hope she will not be about 'settling old scores'. For the sake of the parliament, we need a Speaker who is objective and independent, not someone who is acting out of spite.
Despite Peter Slipper's obvious problems, he was a good Speaker in this respect.
 
Julia said:
If she is elected Speaker, I hope she will not be about 'settling old scores'. For the sake of the parliament, we need a Speaker who is objective and independent, not someone who is acting out of spite.
Despite Peter Slipper's obvious problems, he was a good Speaker in this respect.
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I'm delighted to hear that you don't believe in settling old scores. I am a great believer in schadenfreude. I am sure that Christopher Pyne as Manager of Business (replacing Albanese) will have a ball.
 
Regardless of whether the next government is Liberal, Labor, Greens, Palmer or anyone else.....

1. The debt is there and it's real. Private debt is at huge levels and this acts as a brake on consumer spending.

2. Government debt has also increased and current deficits are significant. Any measures to address this situation, other than those which result in less money flowing overseas, have the effect of dampening the Australian economy in the process. Love them or hate them, public servants spend their pay in private businesses just like everyone else. Yes Labor has borrowed a fortune, but they've been artificially propping up GDP in doing so - you can't just take that out suddenly without consequences.

3. The AUD is still at a level that's killing manufacturing and indeed most industries. Even mining is increasingly uncompetitive at these levels.

4. A fall in the AUD will however fuel inflation, most immediately and noticeably via petrol prices. A rise in the price of petrol seems to impact consumer confidence disproportionately to the actual impact in pure financial terms. That is, there's a significant psychological impact in addition to the actual cost as such.

5. Manufacturing is so far gone in most cases that it won't quickly rebound following a drop in the AUD. The tipping point has already passed - you can't increase production from a factory that has already been turned into flats, a warehouse for distributing imported products or outright demolished. It's gone and won't be coming back - at best we might be able to establish that industry again on a new site some years into the future if, and only if, the AUD and business costs went to a level far lower than anyone wants to contemplate at present. But that implies going through one hell of a lot of pain before seeing any real improvement.

We can't really ramp up car production when Nissan and Mitsubishi are already gone and Ford is committed to going too. We can't ramp up consumer electronics manufacturing when Philips and others have already closed or gone into niche markets only. We can't make more paper when the Pulp is now literally a pile of rubble being carted off to the tip. We can't make more tools when the factory that once made them is now a warehouse for unrelated businesses. And so on. At most, we might be able to restart a blast furnace or two and things like that - but anything more significant won't happen without massive investment taking place first.

6. We've already had a housing boom, debt boom and a mining boom so there's no "magic bullet" which can be quickly ramped up to create another boom, at least not without impacting the government's finances in the process (eg big tax cuts would likely achieve a result in terms of consumer spending, but that doesn't fix the budget).

7. The number of people who missed the house price boom is steadily increasing due to natural aging of people. Over time, a fall in house prices shifts from being a political problem to becoming desirable as the number of "priced out" voters increases relative to those who actually benefit from high prices (which for the majority of people is really only those looking to downsize or sell up). But a fall in house prices brings many other economic problems with it, at least in the short term. The saying "painting yourself into a corner" comes to mind with this one.

8. I hear that mortgage rates in the USA are now trending upward. In due course, what happens overseas tends to arrive here eventually. Massive debts and rising rates - ouch.

9. The imminent surge in natural gas prices isn't going to help household budgets or business in the Eastern states (which in this context means the whole country except WA and NT).

10. The weather has been favourable to agriculture in recent times. But as sure as rain follows drought, so too drought follows rain. Always has done and always will. It's hard to see things improving in terms of production volumes at least in non-irrigated areas.

So to be blunt, there would seem to be a lot of headwinds to any real improvement economically and that is true regardless of who is in power. In the absence of something unforeseen, we'll likely "muddle through" with modest growth much like we've seen in the past few years - there's no quick fix that I can see. Slowly but surely, we're heading into the same mess that much of the world faces - and we've been doing that under both Labor and Coalition governments for many years now so that's not a political outcome as such, only the details really change but the big picture doesn't.
 
Smurf1976 said:
So to be blunt, there would seem to be a lot of headwinds to any real improvement economically and that is true regardless of who is in power. In the absence of something unforeseen, we'll likely "muddle through" with modest growth much like we've seen in the past few years - there's no quick fix that I can see. Slowly but surely, we're heading into the same mess that much of the world faces - and we've been doing that under both Labor and Coalition governments for many years now so that's not a political outcome as such, only the details really change but the big picture doesn't.
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One difference hopefully between this government and the next is that we won't see the dysfunction and volume of poor policy outcomes that have plagued this government.
 
Ves said:
Translation for those who don't speak German: the concept attributed to those who have no self-esteem of their own enjoying others fail.
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Wrong again as usual.

schadenfreude
German word, original translation loosely comes out as 'malicious joy'. In English, it's thought of 'malicious enjoyment from the suffering of another'. As there is no succinct English version of the word, English-speaking peoples have approximated this word and use it whenever they see people like corrupt CEOs get dragged off to jail.
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Calliope said:
Ves humour... now there's an oxymoron for you.:rolleyes:
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Any way.

Don't let the bed bugs bite. You have a dictionary - but it can only tell you so much, usually it only fills in part of what we call reality.

http://www.livescience.com/17398-schadenfreude-affirmation.html

Those with low self-esteem (assessed at the study's start) were both more likely to be threatened by the overachieving student, and to experience schadenfreude. However, the researchers found that regardless of self-esteem, those who felt more threatened by this student also felt more schadenfreude.
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Calliope said:
:topic
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Not until tomorrow night!

In any event, you were wrong - I love the irony (or is it schadenfreude?) in that. Thank you for the humble apology. Don't drink too much champers tomorrow night, huh? ;)
 
Ves said:
Not until tomorrow night!

In any event, you were wrong - I love the irony (or is it schadenfreude?) in that. Thank you for the humble apology. Don't drink too much champers tomorrow night, huh? ;)
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Never mind, you backed a loser. It's now time for me to be gracious in accepting your humility:D

TONY Abbott is well on track to become prime minister today as Labor faces a wipeout in western Sydney, fuelling a national loss of up to 32 seats and with the ALP being reduced to less than 50 MPs in the next parliament.

The Coalition is on course to gain at least 22 seats and up to 32 in the worst case for Labor, including the seat of Treasurer Chris Bowen, and with Kevin Rudd's Brisbane seat of Griffith at risk
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Schadenfreude. :p:
 
Smurf1976 said:
Regardless of whether the next government is Liberal, Labor, Greens, Palmer or anyone else.....

1. The debt is there and it's real. Private debt is at huge levels and this acts as a brake on consumer spending.
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Great summation of the many headwinds we face.

Probably the biggest one you missed was the age quake rolling through the economy. The dependency ratio is going south pretty quickly too. Less tax payers and more wishing to decide what those taxes are used for without actually funding the spending.

I hate to think what petrol will cost when the AUD is at 70c US. This issue is always glossed over by those who want the AUD to drop like a stone to some magical renaissance target.
 
I was once very sceptical about Tony Abbott and to some extent I'm still a little cautious.

I don't agree with all his policies such as his PPL scheme, but in terms of discipline as a politician both in himself and strategy, he has very much stood the test of time.

He will face even tougher challenges as PM but if he is broadly true to his word, he will be an outstanding PM.

Congratulations to Tony Abbott and the Coalition on a well earned victory. :D
 
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