The Gillard Government

[sails]

Who do you suggest should be Ms Gillard's replacement then, Sails?
I'll say again that I don't think it's just to do with the leader but way more to do with their woeful policy attempts.

You're right, Julia. I don't know that any labor MP could fix the messes already created. Some have suggested Martin Ferguson, but it's hard to say. Until they are in the driver's seat, it's difficult to guess.

I have heard too that Shorten with Combet as deputy is a possibility, however, I don't know that those two would perform any better than what we have now. Perhaps they are all just lining up to get their PM life time perks and then resign so the next one can have a go.

Maybe Turnbull will swap sides - but I don't think labor wants him. I have heard that one needs to be a unionist to be a labor MP - not sure though. Although I am sure IFocus will correct it if wrong...

Here's a 2009 article where Turnbull apparently approached Labor:

Full story from the Telegraph by Glenn Milne 23/8/2009: Malcolm Turnbull wanted to join Labor

Speaking for the first time on the issue, Mr Hawke said Mr Turnbull approached him on November 6, 1999, at Sydney's Marriott Hotel following the referendum's defeat.

Mr Hawke said yesterday he remembered the conversation clearly. Mr Turnbull told him: "Bob, the only thing I can do now is join the Labor Party.'

I would think it unlikely, but we are in unusual political times.

 

[Logique]

To think that one extra vote would have seen this chameleon as Coalition leader. Enjoy your retirement Sen Nick Minchin, you did good.

And so, in a cruel irony of the election slogan, we continue 'Moving Backwards Together'. Berlin Wall East Germany is the template ordained for us.

We will become an even greater laughing stock around the world - the country that took huge advantages and put it all 'up against the wall', for the sake of an outdated school blazer ideology, and junior high school economics.

 

[Julia]

Enjoy your retirement Sen Nick Minchin, you did good.

So agree. He has been excellent and should have had more prominent positions. Even now, he's unafraid to say what he thinks about anthropogenic climate change.

 

[IFocus]

To think that one extra vote would have seen this chameleon as Coalition leader. Enjoy your retirement Sen Nick Minchin, you did good.

And so, in a cruel irony of the election slogan, we continue 'Moving Backwards Together'. Berlin Wall East Germany is the template ordained for us.

We will become an even greater laughing stock around the world - the country that took huge advantages and put it all 'up against the wall', for the sake of an outdated school blazer ideology, and junior high school economics.

Never trusted him and for good reason, I never appreciated during the Howard years he was further right than Howard. Howard who was certainly canny knew this and kept him out of social portfolios.

See his hero was Peter Walsh Labor finance minister from WA.

 

[Julia]

Never trusted him and for good reason

I'm sure that's no reflection on Mr Minchin. You wouldn't trust any non-Labor politician.

 

[trainspotter]

Dear Employees: As the CEO of this organization, I have resigned myself to the fact that Julia Gillard is our Prime Minister and that our taxes and government fees will increase in a BIG way because of their spending spree and proposed Carbon Dioxide tax. To compensate for these increases, our prices would have to increase by about 10%. But since we cannot increase our prices right now due to the dismal state of the economy, we will have to lay off sixty of our employees instead. This has really been bothering me since I believe we are family here and I didn't know how to choose who would have to go. So, this is what I did. I walked through our parking lots and found sixty Rudd and Gillard bumper stickers on our employees' cars and have decided these folks will be the ones to let go. I can't think of a more fair way to approach this problem. They voted for change.....I gave it to them. I will see the rest of you at the annual company picnic.

 

[IFocus]

Minchin is praised for having surplus's during his time as finance minister but take the sale of TLS out and it all looks pretty ordinary.

Minchin was also pro tobacco on the basis that it was a persons freedom of right to smoke. He raised this publicly a number of times.

He also pointed out that it save the government money people dying earlier of lung cancer and heart attacks and not being a cost to the system later in life.

As some one elected to serve the interests of his electorate it sort of rubbed him out as a humanist and as been trust worthy socially wise IMHO hence my line.

 

[Aussiejeff]

Apparently, in a matter of days the Senate will become a plaything of the Greens, courtesy of balance of power in their own right.

Wonder what shade of Green the Gillard Gummint will turn?

 

[Julia]

Minchin was also pro tobacco on the basis that it was a persons freedom of right to smoke. He raised this publicly a number of times.

He also pointed out that it save the government money people dying earlier of lung cancer and heart attacks and not being a cost to the system later in life.

From a purely pragmatic point of view, isn't he absolutely right on both counts?

One of the things I like about him is his refusal to adhere to the politically correct comment and in preference point out reality.

As some one elected to serve the interests of his electorate it sort of rubbed him out as a humanist and as been trust worthy socially wise IMHO hence my line.

As far as I'm aware, he'd have no interest in being classified as a humanist.
And, if anything, I'd regard someone who is as candid about expressing his views as Mr Minchin has been, as much more trustworthy than most of his colleagues.

Much rather that, than the mealy mouthed hypocritical sycophantic bleatings that come out of the insincere mouths of most of our leaders and would-be leaders.

Apparently, in a matter of days the Senate will become a plaything of the Greens, courtesy of balance of power in their own right.

Wonder what shade of Green the Gillard Gummint will turn?

It's a pretty scary thought. We can, I suppose, only hope that the government and the coalition will vote together to dispense with the Greens' more outlandish proposals.

 

[sails]

...As some one elected to serve the interests of his electorate ...

Haha, and Gillard is serving the best interests of her nationwide voters by lying to them about carbon tax? Very little renewable, affordable and reliable energy to replace the main source of power that she plans to tax the hell out of?

And that's only one issue. From the Liberal website: 50 Labor Lemons

Let's get our priorities in order here...

 

[trainspotter]

FAIL "D" on Juliar Gizzards Report Card

READERS have overwhelmingly given Julia Gillard the thumbs down on almost every measure in her first year as PM.

An estimated 20,000 readers of News Limited mastheads across the country - including news.com.au - gave Ms Gillard a resounding "D" for her performance on almost every important issue, one year after she took the mantle as Australia's first female Prime Minister.

The interactive report card, rating her performance on an A-D scale, shows Ms Gillard has precious little support for her handling of the mining tax, asylum seekers and the carbon tax.

http://m.news.com.au/TopStories/pg/0/fi762782.htm;jsessionid=9C759D2E37BC7D11B18F7B710BA081D4

 

[dutchie]

“There will be no carbon tax under the Government I lead.” --- Lie

"I've explained, of course, to the Australian people that I never meant to mislead anybody during the last election campaign about carbon pricing". --- Lying about lying

Fit to be Prime Minister of Australia?

 

[drsmith]

Fit to be Prime Minister of Australia?

In Julia's defence ,

1) Circumstances change. This is a government Bob Brown leads and he said, during the election campaign, there would be a carbon tax this term.
2) It was not my intention to mislead anybody. It was my intention to mislead everbody, except the Greens.
3) The Australian people arn't anybody, they're nobody. Just ask the Greens, and Tony Windsor.

Tony Winsdor has declared that he would like to "do something about this issue irrispective of whether it kills him at the polls or not". That's his own words.

https://www.aussiestockforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21961&p=641416&viewfull=1#post641416

 

[sails]

FAIL "D" on Juliar Gizzards Report Card

http://m.news.com.au/TopStories/pg/0/fi762782.htm;jsessionid=9C759D2E37BC7D11B18F7B710BA081D4

And a poll from the Herald Sun:

Is Australia better off after 12 months of Julia Gillard as Prime Minister?

Yes 6.19% (1160 votes)
No 93.81% (17594 votes)

Total votes: 18754

 

[Julia]

Christian Kerr, in this weekend's "Australian" writes of his interview with Nigel Lawson, Margaret Thatcher's once right-hand man, who is to be in Sydney to participate in a public debate on the proposition: "We need a carbon tax to help stop global warming".

The combatants themselves should raise temperatures.
The former British chancellor of the exchequer and energy secretary will lead a negative team comprising former Keating government minister Gary Johns and University of Adelaide geologist and author of the sceptic's bible "Heaven and Earth", Ian Plimer.

The affirmative will be put by two former opposition leaders, John Newson and Mark Latham, backed by University of NSW climatologist Benjamin McNeil.

A few extracts from the article:

He (Lawson) dismisses as complete nonsense the argument that Australia has a special responsibility as a carbon intensive economy and big coal producer to show global policy leadership.

If China wants to develop and wants to increase productivity through, among other things, increasing electricity output capacity and has been building coal fired power stations and wants to import the coal to fuel them from Australia, I think you would be mad if you didn't supply it.

Lawson sees continuing strong demand for Australian coal despite promises by China and India to reduce their energy intensity, calling the pledges 'cover'.

Lawson dismisses as economic illiteracy claims of a green jobs boom powered by renewables that will mop up unemployment from the structural adjustment to a low carbon economy, recruiting one of the great classical liberals to back his case.

"The French 19th century economist Frederic Bastiat said you might as well go round breaking windows saying you're creating jobs for glaziers.

What you've got to be concerned about are jobs in the economy as a whole and you don't create jobs in the economy as a whole by promoting something that is wholly uneconomic and has to be subsidised."

Lawson has strong views about what decarbonisation means.
"The plain fact is the total economy will be harmed.

A lot of these green jobs will be in China. The Chinese can see there is a market in the West for solar panels and other things so they are producing them very much more cheaply. Insofar as there are jobs they will be there, not in the consuming countries.

 

[Julia]

Further from Mr Lawson:

Julia Gillard regularly points to British Prime Minister David Cameron's environmental plans to embarrass the Coalition, but Lawson says Tory backbenchers are increasingly uncomfortable and indeed hostile to policies that are being proposed on the climate change front, which mean higher energy costs, which are bad for consumers.... and bad for British industry.

He points out Cameron and his ministers have a Plan B. "The government has said it will review the matter in January 2014 in the light of what other European countries are doing and this is clearly a get out clause, this is clearly new and it was clearly put in at the behest of the Treasury as both the Treasury and Treasury ministers are very concerned at the cost of going it alone".

 

[sails]

Set top boxes off to a dubious start:

Full article from the Daily Telegraph by Samantha Townsend:

Broken Hill residents who received free digital set-top boxes are not happy

A FUZZY reception, just half of the promised channels, digital set-top boxes and antennas that don't work, and hundreds of dollars in extra, out-of-pocket expenses. Welcome to the future of watching television in NSW.

IMO, it is a scary prospect for this government to be let loose with a major tax change. Their history of managing anything is dismal at best.

 

[springhill]

Congratulations Gillard, you have now put our Chinese exports under threat and have been labelled an 'unstable government'.
Nice work, anything other industry you clowns want to pull down?

http://sl.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/livestock/cattle/landmark-looks-to-nz/2209006.aspx

 

[moXJO]

Congratulations Gillard, you have now put our Chinese exports under threat and have been labelled an 'unstable government'.
Nice work, anything other industry you clowns want to pull down?

http://sl.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/livestock/cattle/landmark-looks-to-nz/2209006.aspx

lol what industry will get the 'Gillard touch' next?

 

[Julia]

lol what industry will get the 'Gillard touch' next?

The scope is immense. As Ms Gillard protects her job by accepting any and all direction from the newly powerful Greens, no industry will be safe unless it's engaged in producing feelgood green things which - if the record so far is any guide - will be shown to be anything but cost-effective.