Tony Abbott for PM

[Ves]

Tony Abbott pledges to privatise Medibank Private in a speech last week.

Is this the first of many big-ticket sales to boost short-term revenue and fudge a return to budget surplus? The Libs have a history of it.

 

[JTLP]

They would also like Auspost sold, but this makes a lot of moolah for the government. Wasn't that on the agenda at some stage? I think there is a strong case for the postal service to be run by the Government.

Would find it very interesting if they sold Auspost. With the boom in parcel movements and the slashing of post offices they must been finally turning a corner!

Saw a very interesting article the other day...think it may have been on my flipboard (great app btw) that said that AusPost subsidises international parcels into AU Found that a bit rich of them...

 

[Julia]

Saw a very interesting article the other day...think it may have been on my flipboard (great app btw) that said that AusPost subsidises international parcels into AU Found that a bit rich of them...

Apparently quite true. It was extensively covered on "The World Today" on ABC radio today.
International postage prices are so low, AustPost loses money on international transactions so is seeking to make up the loss via quite massive local price rises.

 

[drsmith]

Poll shows Tony Abbott now more popular amongst women than Julia Gillard.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/...als-abbott-s-popularity-post-misogyny-speech/

 

[moXJO]

A lot of women I know are very bitter and nasty towards Gillard, they don't vote liberal either and are going for a donkey vote

 

[sptrawler]

Poll shows Tony Abbott now more popular amongst women than Julia Gillard.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/...als-abbott-s-popularity-post-misogyny-speech/

Well that just shows they're not mysogynists.

 

[sydboy007]

Tony seems to need to have a chat with Chris Pyne about budget surpluses.

Considering Mr Pyne has stated the LNP would have run surpluses over the last the last 5 years, I would have thought it would be relatively easy to run a surplus now.

Maybe Tony is starting to contton on the fact that Govt tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is lower than he ever experienced while in power with Howard.

From memory I think the previous LNP only ever cut Govt expenditure in their first term. We had around 8 years of increased Govt spending from the LNP after that. I'm not talking increase $$ here, but actual increase as a percentage of GDP.

Governing an economy where nominal income growth is faster than GDP growth is quite easy. Much harder when nominal income growth is lower than GDP, and quite likely to be negative over the next year or two.

 

[drsmith]

The following graphic from the ABC shows tax revenue and payments on a yearly basis from 1991/92 as a percentage of GDP. These aren't the figures that make up the headline surplus or deficit, but it puts the Coalition's and Labor's terms into perspective.

I would agree that the Coalition were too loose on fiscal policy in their final years during the resources boom and in particular with their middle class welfare. The subsequent over-stimulation of our economy and the resultant rises in interest rates was part of the reason for their downfall in 2007. Labor though fell for the same trap, largely agreeing to the Coalition's tax cuts in order to get elected. While stimulus was required during the GFC, it was wasteful in both it's overall volume and nature. We were still stimulating the economy with school halls while the RBA was raising rates again.

Labor in it's second have failed to adapt to the economic realities of the world post GFC and make the appropriate structural decisions to bring the budget back to surplus. They have raised new taxes and spent the money only to discover the taxes had structural deficiencies. The carbon tax and MRRT are the two examples that come to mind. The former is disproportionate to the rest of the developed world overall and thus saps our economic performance and hence government revenue from other taxes. With the MRRT, only fools would base recurrent spending on such a variable tax. Then there's Labor's border protection policies which have cost this nation billions and will cost billions more before that is solved.

As a proportion of GDP, Labor hasn't had the revenue the Coalition had, but that doesn't excuse the overall quality of their government.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-08/budget-2012-tax-receipts-vs-expenditure/3999170

 

[moXJO]

Much harder when nominal income growth is lower than GDP, and quite likely to be negative over the next year or two.

What are some of the factors you would blame lower GDP on?

 

[sails]

drsmith - those figures supplied by the ABC are different to these on the government web site - maybe they are only looking at tax revenue and not total revenue which is actually more than the coalition had - see below:

Why would the ABC do that???




http://www.budget.gov.au/2012-13/content/overview/html/overview_44.htm

 

[sptrawler]

drsmith - those figures supplied by the ABC are different to these on the government web site - maybe they are only looking at tax revenue and not total revenue which is actually more than the coalition had - see below:

Why would the ABC do that???


View attachment 51844

http://www.budget.gov.au/2012-13/content/overview/html/overview_44.htm

You haven't divided it by a fudge factor.lol

 

[sails]

You haven't divided it by a fudge factor.lol

And lefties try to tell us the ABC isn't politically biased...

How convenient just to print up a chart with only taxation revenue...

Are they trying to drum up sympathy for the poor, hard done by labor.
But what about the money they have spent - where is it?

 

[drsmith]

I'm surprised the lefties here missed this one,

At some point towards the rear-end of the evening, Mark Roberts, director of policy for Tony Abbott, reportedly made unsavoury remarks to former investment banker and lawyer Andrew Penfold, who is head of the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation.

Roberts allegedly told him that a Coalition government would ''cut the throat'' of funding to Penfold's organisation.

Then I suppose acting like a goat is not restricted to one side's political staffers,

When Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced her recent ''crackdown'' on 457 skilled migration visas, it was politely pointed out that her media director, the Scottish-born John McTernan, was on one himself.

When questioned on this sensitive matter, McTernan told a journalist it was ''hardly f**king relevant'', which did little to douse his reputation as a head-kicking Labor hardman.

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/po...tray-from-partys-songbook-20130419-2i5ko.html

 

[sails]

I'm surprised the lefties here missed this one,



Then I suppose acting like a goat is not restricted to one side's political staffers,



http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/po...tray-from-partys-songbook-20130419-2i5ko.html

Hasn't Van Olsen since admitted that he didn't actually hear what was said? There were also words about "cutting funding" so wording could have been mixed up.

The difference between labor and the libs is that the libs are quick to demote or discipline wayward MPs or staff while labor seem very slow to act.

Bold is mine:

Van Onselen on Sky now says the threat was to cut the throat of the organisation, not the throat of its head. As he put it: “I heard him say either slit the throat or cut the throat” and “that extended to the funding”.

Reference was made to slitting the throat of the organisation… It was the cutting of funding that was the reference.

Van Onselen says the staffer then said he “could be a source to me”, but “I can’t remember the exact words”.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/.../abbott_staffer_threat_you_mean_with_a_knife/

 

[Ves]

drsmith - those figures supplied by the ABC are different to these on the government web site - maybe they are only looking at tax revenue and not total revenue which is actually more than the coalition had - see below:

Why would the ABC do that???


View attachment 51844

http://www.budget.gov.au/2012-13/content/overview/html/overview_44.htm

Because one set of figures includes revenues passed onto the States and Territories, and one excludes them. Pretty sure that is the reason.

 

[drsmith]

Hasn't Van Olsen since admitted that he didn't actually hear what was said? There were also words about "cutting funding" so wording could have been mixed up.

The difference between labor and the libs is that the libs are quick to demote or discipline wayward MPs or staff while labor seem very slow to act.

Bold is mine:

Van Olsen was naughty in the way he initially put it, but then I suspect so was the staffer in what he initially told his boss. Tony Abbott initially stated the actual phrase was denied and that the staffer was counselled. The staffer was subsequently demoted.

Not a good position to put your boss in when he's the leader of a political party.

 

[drsmith]

drsmith - those figures supplied by the ABC are different to these on the government web site - maybe they are only looking at tax revenue and not total revenue which is actually more than the coalition had - see below:

Doesn't significantly change the proportions of revenue to GDP ratio comparison between Howard Coalition and Rudd/Gillard Labor.

I'm not defending Labor btw. Their fiscal management has been atrocious.

2012/13 onwards are forecasts which obviously won't be met.

 

[sails]

Because one set of figures includes revenues passed onto the States and Territories, and one excludes them. Pretty sure that is the reason.

Fair enough, but are the revenues passed onto the States and Territories included in the expenses provided by the ABC?

a quick look at the figures on both charts suggests that the payments in the ABC chart show 100% of all payments but not all of the revenue as per the budget link I provided - why is that?

 

[sails]

In any case - why is percent of GDP so important when that is clearly only as good as China keeps buying from us? It is not a guaranteed income.

It seems that this labor government have mortgaged more than we own and they have been living it up on borrowed money - and what is there to show for it? They crow about things being a percent of GDP - but what happens if China slows down in buying from Australia?

What sane person would mortage their entire wealth and then leverage that up even more simply to live it up? And then they lose their job and have to exist on centrelink. How are they going to pay the interest on their massive spendings?

 

[sails]

An excerpt from Terry McCrann:

THE decision by Woodside and its partners to abandon the $40 billion liquefied natural gas project at James Price Point in north-western Australia signalled the beginning of the end of Australia’s greatest and most extraordinary resources boom…

What of course makes this boom different is that it is built entirely on the extraordinary, utterly unprecedented growth, both in size and speed, in demand from China. And the fact that this coincided with the global financial meltdown and the worst recession in the developed world since the 1930s””with, critically, fundamental and massive economic and financial structural fault lines, entrenched in every major developed economy.

In short, if this boom does come to a shuddering halt, it will be not simply worse than any previous end-of-boom, but both the context and the consequences will be severe and unpredictable.

One thing would be very predictable. A budget which is already in significant and arguably sustained deficit would plunge deep into catastrophic levels of deficit…

Put all those realities and contexts together, and it would not be a good time to be running two””perhaps large””budget and current account deficits. To put it, at its mildest.

Mad spenders, betting everything on China