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I doubt Bill will ever be P.M, he just doesn't have 'it'. IMO
Shorten will be popping the champagne tonight, close call Bill.
The pantomime being played out in Canberra has only served to divert attention from the grim reality facing the economy and the absence of any cogent plan to restore the nation's finances, writes Ian Verrender.
Australia is facing a revenue crisis, far worse than former treasurer Wayne Swan was forced to confront. This time, China will not be riding to the rescue. If Goldman Sachs economist Tim Toohey is correct, $40 billion in previously estimated income is likely to evaporate over the next four years.
What is the Federal Government's response? It crows that it has eliminated revenue sources to the tune of $8 billion or more a year.
Why? Because it has pandered to the interests of big business rather than act in the best interest of the nation. And it is not the first government to do so.
Money has always bought political influence. But as Australian business power has become ever more concentrated among a collection of cosy duopolies, or at best oligopolies, the situation has become worse.
It is astounding that so few economists have bothered to pick up on the obvious; that why on earth during a revenue crisis, would a government's most urgent action be to eliminate revenue.
Even worse, with the carbon tax, it has replaced a revenue source with a multi-billion dollar spending program that is likely to make Labor's pink batts fiasco look positively tame.
It wasn't an entirely original idea. Paul Keating introduced one almost 30 years ago on oil and gas deposits in Australian territorial waters. It's worked brilliantly. And it is still in operation today. In fact, the Abbott Government endorsed its extension, to include oil and gas operations on land.
So, if there's one thing Abbott and his Treasurer, Joe Hockey, have never explained, it's why a mining tax on iron and coal is evil and a "handbrake on the economy", when they happily accept the revenue from a mining tax on oil and gas.
Given our mining industry is about 80 per cent owned by foreigners, it is astounding that most business economists happily endorse the idea that the one-off profits from mining should be allowed to flow offshore and that the burden of budgetary repair should instead fall on ordinary Australians.
Meanwhile, the circus goes on. The finale approaches. Bring on the clowns.
Tony Abbott is going to come good, despite the forthcoming efforts of the ABC.
There is no one to replace him from either side.
We've got baghdad bob over here.
It was some weeks ago now but he did make a comment to that effect if the polls stayed bad.My guess, as I said early on in this thread, he will become the sacrificial anode and fall on his sword. Absorb all the blame and move on, just not yet.
It was some weeks ago now but he did make a comment to that effect if the polls stayed bad.
It's going to be interesting to see if in the coming weeks she has a greater presence in domestic politics as part of a grooming process.She's smart Julie Bishop, I'd have no problem with her becoming PM.
On the money here: http://www.theage.com.au/federal-po...-protective-julie-bishop-20150209-13a9sj.html
I'm happy for Julie to be Prime Minister and Turnbull to be treasurer.
Julie has excellent credentials as a manager and would do a good job of keeping the dry's happy well being a proper conservative Prime Minister.
A truly excellent article in todays Age by a Conservative lawyer (Grey Connolly) accuses Abbott of betraying his own beliefs and letting the Libertarians control Parliament. For instance, it has always been Liberal policy to be pro family and encourage a Mum to stay at home with young children, and since when has it been Liberal policy to cut defence pay while a war is on?
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I know it is bit picky, but what you have said there is one of the main problems, the defence force were getting a pay rise not a pay cut.
Just shows the power of the press and their misrepresentation of the the truth.
What the fuss was about, was the pay rise was not more than inflation, this was o.k during the wages accord period apparently not so now.
Somewhat along the same lines that pensions were to be cut, when in actual fact they were to be linked to cpi instead of average wages.
“Decisions on a design partner and construction of the submarines will be based on a competitive evaluation process managed by the Department of Defence that takes fully into account capability requirement, cost, schedule, technical risk and value for money considerations”…
“Any Australian company that can credibly meet these criteria will be considered on merit, as will potential international partners.”
Morse code to Tony:
Team Straya is sinking in a sea of lies. That's what happens when you move all the deck chairs to Starboard....no that's the far right Tony but you have to be facing forward to know that.
No point in manning the life boats, Malcolm has mutinied knowing it's him and back benchers first. However, there is a submarine waiting off the coast so swim hard because the baggage of front bench people hanging onto your budgie smugglers is significant.
If you make it Tones you are officially a boat person looking for asylum...good luck!
Is that like Abbott's waving of a pensioner electricity bill in parliament claiming it had doubled due to the carbon tax.
Or the claims of a python squeeze on the economy that would see us all destitute?
A resource tax that would kill investment (no it didn't)
Or maybe his rallying for the 16000 super pensioners receiving over 100K tax free.
Maybe similar to his objections to keeping a log book to claim car expenses against taxable income.
Then it's come out he's bought votes from SA senators on the building of the next gen submarines. Suddenly we've gone from the Government doesn’t “have time to go through a speculation process”, to:
Then we have Joe hockey's misrepresentations of the truth. Remember his claims we work half the year to pay our tax to the Government?
We have Hockey claiming employment is growing, so the rise in unemployment isn't too big an issue, yet aggregate hours worked are back to 2011 levels, and that with something like an extra 1M people to share them amongst with a falling participation rate.
We had hockey claim treasury told him the fuel indexation was a progressive tax. Nope, they didn't. His claims about healthcare becoming unaffordable for the country. Nope. The richer we get the more we spend on healthcare, but then it actually isn't costing us much more as a % of our incomes.
So before we point the fingers at the media, the Govt really needs to be the ones who start telling the truth to the Australian public, though with the amount of lies and broken promises they've given us, I'm not sure if anyone will take notice or believe anything they say.
I'm sure if Abbott is P.M at the next election the LNP will be thrown out, I'm equally sure he won't be P.M at the next election.
I'm also confident smoking Joe won't be treasurer.
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