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The Abbott Government

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wayneL said:
The politico/journalistic landscape has gone a bit troppo IMO. No sober analysis and watching ho the new gu'mint goes, just non stop sensationalism and totally BS hanging of **** at every opportunity.

I cannot recall such a puerile and poisonous period at the beginning of an administration.

Hell, I'm not agin hanging sh8t off any government and have slagged off both sides at various times, but at this stage of proceeding I find it ridiculous, pointless and societally disappointing.
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The paparazzi have no freeze frame moments, the scriveners require ink to be flowing, the blue penciler needs a headline and Rupert is wakening from his slumber. Expect a lot more of this SH!TE to be devoured by the proletariat as gospel :banghead:
 
sydboy007 said:
They can't even reduce PS head count by much because Labor had already done a pretty good job of it, though I dare say they could save a small amount of money by removing a few more of the chiefs and leaving the indians alone.
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Are you referring to this ?

THE style and timing of the Abbott government’s promise to cut 12,000 public service jobs is being reviewed after it was discovered that the previous Labor government’s policies were estimated to result in 14,500 job losses in the next four years.

Labor’s projected job cuts could save up to $14.5 billion through to 2016-17 but only a handful of the proposed redundancies were funded and have already pushed some government agencies into operating losses.

The cost of additional redundancies has the potential to push the budget further into deficit, already expected to be about $50bn in 2013-14. The job loss estimates, lack of funding and broadside manner of the redundancies have further complicated the preparation of the mid-year fiscal and economic outlook because there are now added costs and uncertainty about the timing of the Coalition savings based on an “additional” 12,000 job cuts.

It’s understood the Coalition government will stick by its target of 12,000 job cuts over the next four years but wants to target the job losses to match the Coalition’s policies and ensure the cuts don’t undermine priority tasks…

Before the election, Bill Shorten, Penny Wong and Chris Bowen criticised the Coalition’s declared plan to cut 12,000 public service jobs but did not issue a total figure for the impact of Labor’s policies on public service numbers.

During the election campaign Mr Shorten, now Opposition Leader, said the proposed job cuts were “economic vandalism inspired by conservative ideology” and Labor’s plan was “not to cut to the bone”.
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http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/waiting_for_the_cuts/

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...-axe-14500-jobs/story-fn59nsif-1226762895135#
 
Really disappointed about the criticism of our new PM.

I wonder if its the female thing, I think Peta Credlin is doing a great job as PM given the material she has to work with. :rolleyes:

I also think its disgusting how those wasteful Labor Commies just keep spending wildly even though there is a Coalition government in power.

What is wrong with Labor when will they stop?
 
I do wonder why senior MPs and Senators are being vetoed on their choice of head of staff, eg Eric Abetz.

It's like the PMs office is saying, you can only have someone that we can work with.

I wouldn't be happy either.
 
Logique said:
I do wonder why senior MPs and Senators are being vetoed on their choice of head of staff, eg Eric Abetz.

It's like the PMs office is saying, you can only have someone that we can work with.

I wouldn't be happy either.
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There is another view point on it here - could it be simply more nasty bias from Fairfax?:

Here are some of the Fairfax media’s main criticisms lately of Peta Credlin, Tony Abbott’s chief of staff, now a hate figure of the Left that once decried the “misogyny” of critics of Julia Gillard.
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Read more: The case against Peta Credlin - three strikes and Fairfax is out of control
 
sails said:
Hmmm... so where are Fairfax getting their sources? Obviously not from Morrison. So, do they make it up?
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You have to give Fairfax credit for still backing losers.
Even after a flogging in the election, they are backing Labor to the hilt, despite the Greens jumping ship.:D
Labor are wallowing around trying to say the carbon tax`was crap and made no difference, but now we need to adopt their next plan. Give us a break.:D
Now we have some female politician, making disgracefully sexist coments about a male Liberal politician and it hardly makes a ripple. What a joke for misoginy.:xyxthumbs
Now the boat influx has dropped from 1000 per week, to 100 per week the silence is deafening from Fairfax.
What a hoot, Qantas loses $300m after paying $100m in carbon tax, then guess what, Bowen says we need to bail them out. That has to be the joke of the year.lol,lol,lol
How the Labor die hards support these idiots is beyond comprehension.
 
sptrawler said:
Here's another classic Faifax report.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/blowout-in-debt-is-governments-work-20131208-2yzem.html

There is mention of everything possible, including the Howard era.
Yet no mention of the Labor six year $300billion blowout, what a dick.lol
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I like the way Labor's policy reversal on spending cuts for higher education is brushed over.

Labor's surprise decision to use the Senate to block spending cuts for higher education that it had previously proposed will cost $2.3 billion.

''It looks like something the last opposition did to the last government, blocking something it shouldn't,'' said Deloitte Access director Chris Richardson.
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This goes well beyond Chris Richardson's view about an opposition blocking something it shouldn't. The election result isn't even cold and Labor walked away from its own policy position.

Joe Hockey was right in Parliament last week when he described it as pathetic.
 
This will test whether Abbott is prime minister material or will he lose his nerve?

TONY Abbott and the Liberals have lost their three-year carbon tax advantage over Labor, with support for the Coalition dropping to its lowest since 2011 to leave the opposition leading on preferences for the first time since the election of the Gillard government.

Just three months after being elected, the Abbott government's primary vote support has dropped to 40 per cent while Labor's two-party-preferred support has jumped five percentage points to put the ALP in front 52 per cent to 48 per cent.

And for the first time since the September 7 election, more voters are dissatisfied with the Prime Minister than satisfied.
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http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...-latest-newspoll/story-fn59niix-1226779257233
 
Some unfortunate truths about Holden.
Labor promised $500 million a year as a co-investment and then reneged reducing it to $400 million.
The Libs have since reduced it to $200 million. This was the present model. GM have therefore concluded they can't trust Australian politicians to abide by existing agreements.

Word is Holden want $400 mil a year to invest in a new car.
The diesel rebate to mining companies is $3 billion a year.
It cost $5 billion a year to subsidise negative gearing.
That stupid car leasing scheme cost $250 million a year.

Predicted jobs lost will be 45,000 people and reduce national output by $7.3 billion per year.

When the dollar goes back down to 50c, and we have lost our manufacturing industry, we will regret this decision.

I voted Liberal in both the state and federal elections. I believe in Liberal values but I also believe that, as it appears, that if they deliberately sacrifice our car industry, it will be a massive mistake. The debate in the related thread has been of such low quality that I am just shaking my head.

The word is that we will still be able to buy Commodores but they will be made in Korea. Before the dollar rose, cars cost no more to make than they did in Korea. Some Liberals are fighting to keep Holden but they are not in Cabinet.
 
Knobby22 said:
Some unfortunate truths about Holden.
Labor promised $500 million a year as a co-investment and then reneged reducing it to $400 million.
The Libs have since reduced it to $200 million. This was the present model. GM have therefore concluded they can't trust Australian politicians to abide by existing agreements.

Word is Holden want $400 mil a year to invest in a new car.
The diesel rebate to mining companies is $3 billion a year.
It cost $5 billion a year to subsidise negative gearing.
That stupid car leasing scheme cost $250 million a year.

Predicted jobs lost will be 45,000 people and reduce national output by $7.3 billion per year.

When the dollar goes back down to 50c, and we have lost our manufacturing industry, we will regret this decision.

I voted Liberal in both the state and federal elections. I believe in Liberal values but I also believe that, as it appears, that if they deliberately sacrifice our car industry, it will be a massive mistake. The debate in the related thread has been of such low quality that I am just shaking my head.

The word is that we will still be able to buy Commodores but they will be made in Korea. Before the dollar rose, cars cost no more to make than they did in Korea. Some Liberals are fighting to keep Holden but they are not in Cabinet.
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On the issue of trust, the Libs spent a lot of capital on their Gonski funding only to achieve nothing in the end in a budgetary sense.

With regard to Holden, the worst aspect of that politically is that a conflict within the party has spilled into the public arena.

There's shadows of the previous Labor administration on both these two issues and I suspect this is why the government has taken a pummelling in the latest Newspoll.

Tony Abbott to me also comes across as very tired after a very long political year. This government desperately needs the Xmas break to regroup and refocus. It also needs to work out how it can better politically manage electoral disappointment which has shown up as a clear weakness in strategy.

My bolds.
 
Knobby22 said:
Some unfortunate truths about Holden.
Labor promised $500 million a year as a co-investment and then reneged reducing it to $400 million.
The Libs have since reduced it to $200 million. This was the present model. GM have therefore concluded they can't trust Australian politicians to abide by existing agreements.

Word is Holden want $400 mil a year to invest in a new car.
The diesel rebate to mining companies is $3 billion a year.
It cost $5 billion a year to subsidise negative gearing.
That stupid car leasing scheme cost $250 million a year.

Predicted jobs lost will be 45,000 people and reduce national output by $7.3 billion per year.

When the dollar goes back down to 50c, and we have lost our manufacturing industry, we will regret this decision.

I voted Liberal in both the state and federal elections. I believe in Liberal values but I also believe that, as it appears, that if they deliberately sacrifice our car industry, it will be a massive mistake. The debate in the related thread has been of such low quality that I am just shaking my head.

The word is that we will still be able to buy Commodores but they will be made in Korea. Before the dollar rose, cars cost no more to make than they did in Korea. Some Liberals are fighting to keep Holden but they are not in Cabinet.
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Well, knobby aside from the emotive issue of job loses, on what basis is your support of the car industry founded.
Since the early 1970's, we have lost Leyland/BMC, Chrysler, Nissan and Mitsubishi.
All of these closed due to small sales volumes and this was during a period of high import tarrifs on imported cars, from memory 57%.
Currently the import tarrif is 5%, the Labor government under Gillard was asked to raise this, when Ford announced it intentions to close, they refused.
So it's a bit rich for them now to be finger pointing at Abbott, with the help from sections of the press.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-24/actu-calls-for-emergency-talks-on-car-industry/4710100

Continuing on, how far do you go supporting an industry, which is obvuiously in terminal decline, most of which is self inflicted.
It was only about 10 years ago Holden reneged on building the alloytech engine in Australia, prefering to import it, the same as it does with the V8's.
If GM were serious about making its operations here viable, they would be adapting production facilities to make cars for export.

Not continuing to roll out cars for the local market, in lower and lower numbers, where do you draw the line subsidising an industry that can't compete?
When they are producing cars, just to take them out the back and crush them, do you stop then? Or just pour more money in.

If Australians are prefering to purchase something other than an Australian car. Then it is upto the manufacturer to either adapt his product or look to expand his market. The idea of public funds being poured in to sustain a model that is failing is crazy.

The justification for the aid is also flawed IMO.
Why is it sensible to use public funds to prop up a car industry, on the basis of protecting jobs?
Why wasn't the same ideology applied to save our footware, textile and electronics industries, which have gone offshore for the very same reason.

Why not use public funds to prop up all small businesses? Why limit it to automotive related industries?
What about independent petrol stations, we could have a public funded 4c discount card for them, so they can compete with the duopoly.

How many jobs are being lost in small retailing, because they can't price compete with large retailers, my guess a lot more than 50,000.
So how do we address this, give small business a bigger tax break than large business, or increase the tax impost on large businesses so they have to charge the same prices as small corner shops.

In the end it comes back to the same old story, one way or another, you adapt or you go under. If we are going to support all and sundry, we will need more money, which will mean our costs go up and make us less competitive. Therefore we will need more money and so it goes on.

GM is the only one that can save Holden, it just depends if they want to. It may have to shut a plant in Germany or Brazil or Korea or South Africa and transfer its production here. Let's see if that happens.:D
My rant for the day.lol
 
sptrawler said:
You have to give Fairfax credit for still backing losers.
Even after a flogging in the election, they are backing Labor to the hilt, despite the Greens jumping ship.:D
Labor are wallowing around trying to say the carbon tax`was crap and made no difference, but now we need to adopt their next plan. Give us a break.:D
Now we have some female politician, making disgracefully sexist coments about a male Liberal politician and it hardly makes a ripple. What a joke for misoginy.:xyxthumbs
Now the boat influx has dropped from 1000 per week, to 100 per week the silence is deafening from Fairfax.
What a hoot, Qantas loses $300m after paying $100m in carbon tax, then guess what, Bowen says we need to bail them out. That has to be the joke of the year.lol,lol,lol
How the Labor die hards support these idiots is beyond comprehension.
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Not when you consider the mentality of your average Labor voter!:)
 
sptrawler said:
The justification for the aid is also flawed IMO.
Why is it sensible to use public funds to prop up a car industry, on the basis of protecting jobs?
.
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It is not about protecting jobs, its about keeping our manufacturing base.
There are many companies that supply components to the car industry that also compete on the world stage supplying niche products.

Once we have lost our engineering design skill base it is difficult to get it back.

The other point is that running the country involves priorities. The previous governments priorities were wrong. This governments priorities so far appear to be wrong also. We should reduce some of the money paid to the rent seekers and use it to support our industry so it can renew itself once the $A drops.

Other countries have industry policies. Germany is a great example. For instance, we in Australia invented ceramic fuel cell technology. Due to government encouragement the factory has been built in Germany! Germany with high wages and 8 weeks holiday a year for workers! You can't tell me we couldn't have built it here, but we have no long term vision.

This stuff about us all being on a flat playing field is rubbish. We all know its not true so lets develop an industry policy and compete!


Good comments Dr Smith. Quite perceptive about it being a long year. A few weeks off with reflection should do a world of good.
 
Knobby22 said:
It is not about protecting jobs, its about keeping our manufacturing base.
There are many companies that supply components to the car industry that also compete on the world stage supplying niche products.

Once we have lost our engineering design skill base it is difficult to get it back.

.
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It is about protecting jobs, if it was worth producing cars here, Ford and GM wouldn't be leaving.
They would be investing in updating their manufacturing facilities, to produce 'world' cars for export.
 
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