Not so sure about that one SP.
Abbotts best assets will be next year when the Victorian Labor party goof and if Labor take over the reigns in Queensland...Both states will be in a hell of a financial mess by then and voters will start to realize Labor aren't all they are cracked up to be.
Palaszczuk has not indicated any plan how to fix the Queensland finances, so she will go on borrowing money like Anna Bligh did....More debt and deficit is in Labor's DNA....They just do not know how to handle money.
By the same token the punters are already waking up to the fact the Abbott Govt has no answers to the massive economic issues we're facing.
When was the last time you heard a Govt minister talk about productivity reforms that didn't involve cutting wages?
The Abbott Govt hasn't stabilised the budget, let alone got it anywhere near balanced. Do you think by late 2016 the picture is going to be any prettier than it is now? Talk of Ford pulling up stumps this year, with the associated closures of component manufacturers. Will probably make Holden close early too. Then there's 10000 direct jobs for the CSG LNG plants in QLD as construction is completed, with another 10000 gone from the associated support services and retail jobs in the area. Roughly 500 jobs survive in the operational phase.
Both major parties have no idea. They're hooked on the population housing ponzi. We've nothing left. What's left of the tradeables sector isn't nearly enough till fill the dearth of demand that's coming. Yet the Abbott Govt is hell bent on bringing in more and more "workers" to suppress wages. That in turn keeps pumping up land prices and exacerbating our lack of competitiveness, increases congestion, and causes the need for more spending on infrastructure to cope with the increased demand.
Where's the adult conversation about our world leading tax expenditures? Where's the desire to see the balancing of the budget shared by all, instead of what we got in the last budget of forcing most of the costs onto the poor and those who are least able to afford it?
The current mob in power are pretty much toast. Why not go out with a bang on some meaningful reform and target super concessions and negative gearing? Why not talk about getting Govt revenue back up to around 25% of GDP which is what seems to be required to balance the budget? How about stepping out of the way of Infrastructure Australia and let them decide where spending will best boost productivity so that we can save some construction jobs from the mining CAPEX cliff. We can't afford more Abbot infrastructure investments that provide a 55% economic loss.
The thing is, good economic reform has the facts behind you, with a lot of support not only from businesses but from a lot of other groups. How about the Abbott Govt sit doing with ACOSS ACTU and BCA and nut out some good policy that will have active support from these groups? They got together themselves in despair over what Abbott has been up to. Isn't that the kind of support this Govt needs?