Oz Federal Election 2013 - Discussion and Comments

[amaroo]

Howes

The ALP seem happy to follow him into electoral oblivion.

ALP need to start recruiting from a different gene pool.

 

[Sprucegoose]

The ALP seem happy to follow him into electoral oblivion.

ALP need to start recruiting from a different gene pool.

The man is the village idiot...

 

[drron]

There is an old but true saying-Oppositions don't win elections,Governments lose them.
This will be right again in September.
Love how people that will never ever vote for TA want to know his "vision".Well he has actually written a book on it,some visions have already been released.
I want to know just what is the ALP's vision apart from Motherhood statements.
Mining tax to spread the benefits of the mineral wealth to all Australians.Hogwash.The mineral rights are owned by the State governments.The mining tax real purpose is to divert money from the States to Canberra.And gullible people fall for it.

 

[amaroo]

Surely now is the time to for the Liberal party to show that they deserve to rule in their own right rather than because Labor has failed?

Timing is everything!

Standing back & watching the ALP bag each other is better than launching a 1000 policies.

They'll wait & let Swanny deliver his 5th deficit in a row with a very real likely hood that No's 6, 7, 8 are already in the bag.

 

[Pushka]

Pink Batts?

Declining Educational standards?

 

[Skyring]

And so far both parties have failed to deliver any straight talking and honesty. As the alternative government who will very likely be in power soon surely the Liberal party owe it to us to tell us what their vision is?

It's fun to watch as you attempt to turn the discussion away from Labor, and equally enjoyable to turn the tables on you, but really, we're not achieving anything useful here beyond adding to the noise.

I tend to agree that straight talking and honesty is generally not seen as a way to play the political game, but that's in the short term. One may win an election with a Big Lie, but the voters will remember and they will punish. Especially if reminded by the other side.

The feeling I'm getting is that the voters are waiting for Julia Gillard to give them the chance to punish her with a baseball bat. Or a cricket bat. Or a fruitbat.

Seriously, it doesn't matter what the Opposition promises or puts forward. They could just about all go off on holidays, come back the day after the election and get sworn in.

 

[whatmeworry]

42 Minutes? Is that still on?? Do people still watch it???

So is Tony continuing the "Nice" campaign that seems to be all the rage? I don't know why he bothers - he could be his normal anti-feminist, anti-gay, anti-refugee, anti-union, anti-atheist, anti -{whatever I've forgotten} self ... and still romp in to government in September.

Oh I see - it will give the aspirational voters the excuse later on to say "I had no idea he would do all these things!" Of course the members of this forum are not so stupid and know exactly what a Tony Abbott government will say and do. Australia will endure and I will continue to live here because regardless of the moronc rhetoric that we are now subjected to, the incumbents don't usually screw things up so badly it can't be fixed.

I mean - what if Labour wasn't in charge during the GFC? We would have gone into recession but a very minor one, the unemployment rate would have peaked higher and more companes may have gone under, the schools would have missed out on a lot of infrastructure .... but in exchange for the extra misery we would be roughly in the same spot now and with less debt. I personally don't mind swapping misery for debt (hence my mortgage) but others don't mind misery so much as long as it doesn't happen to them!

Anyway, democracy will have its say in September and at the moment the outcome is not in doubt. I just wish it was an increasingly informed democracy, but instead everything is being dumbed-down and we seem to exist in a policy vacuum. How sad.

I agree Abbott should just keep being his usual anti-feminist, anti-gay, anti-refugee, anti-union, anti-atheist ... In the long it will hurt him when he probably wins in September. and the real Tony comes out.

Labour listened to Treasury just like previous coalition and labour governments and spent the money to protect the wider economy. The problem with not doing nothing is we could have ended up like Europe where their economies are still down the gurgler.

Agreed that the message from both sides have been dumbed down. I would love to see a leader with some actual vision.

 

[Skyring]

I Labour listened to Treasury just like previous coalition and labour governments and spent the money to protect the wider economy. The problem with not doing nothing is we could have ended up like Europe where their economies are still down the gurgler.

If we'd done nothing, we'd have had China buying our coal and iron and stuff and turning it into pollution. Oh, we did. Mining kept the nation going - not Swan.

 

[whatmeworry]

Ok so what is the Liberal vision for Australia? Surely they have one? Surely now is the time to share it? The people of Australia deserve to know how their future leaders will run the country.

The Libs have no vision and plan for Australia other then saying NO NO NO... Once they probably get elected, they will blame Labour for 4 to 8 years.

 

[Sprucegoose]

The Libs have no vision and plan for Australia other then saying NO NO NO... Once they probably get elected, they will blame Labour for 4 to 8 years.

I wont dignify that statement terribly much apart from the fact it will be at least 10 years.........

 

[Sprucegoose]

I agree Abbott should just keep being his usual anti-feminist, anti-gay, anti-refugee, anti-union, anti-atheist ... In the long it will hurt him when he probably wins in September. and the real Tony comes out.

keep up please, you didnt see Tony on 60 minutes last night !!!!

 

[whatmeworry]

keep up please, you didnt see Tony on 60 minutes last night !!!!

A leopard can't/doesn't change its spots (Unless advised by his political advisors).

 

[whatmeworry]

I wont dignify that statement terribly much apart from the fact it will be at least 10 years.........

Just have a look at the libs in Victoria and Ted Faileue. Easy enough to win government but fail to deliver on promises or actually do something and the public will turn (Or more importantly your backers).

 

[amaroo]

Labour listened to Treasury just like previous coalition and labour governments and spent the money to protect the wider economy. The problem with not doing nothing is we could have ended up like Europe where their economies are still down the gurgler.

IIRC most of the European economies are in dire straits because they kept on handing out money - they didn't have!

 

[Sprucegoose]

Just have a look at the libs in Victoria and Ted Faileue. Easy enough to win government but fail to deliver on promises or actually do something and the public will turn (Or more importantly your backers).

Please don't tell me you've picked up on the one liners already so much street cred down the drain!!!

 

[Moody]

IIRC most of the European economies are in dire straits because they kept on handing out money - they didn't have!

It's always a fine balancing act - how much to prime the economy when the chips are down and how much to haul it back when it gets too frisky. Thanks to decades of economic reform, the independence of the Reserve Bank, and quick action by the Labour government, we managed to (just) avoid recession. You won't find an economist who will claim otherwise, and only Alan Jones and the people who listen to him in taxis believe that the government played no part.

Rabid belief in the market economy and the greed is good mentality sent the US and UK down the gurgler and they took most of the rest of the world with them. They are now trying to perform mass CPR with money they don't really have, evidenced by the UK losing their AAA rating. It's a long way back for them but we need them to get there, because relying upon one industry is myopic.

 

[drron]

It's always a fine balancing act - how much to prime the economy when the chips are down and how much to haul it back when it gets too frisky. Thanks to decades of economic reform, the independence of the Reserve Bank, and quick action by the Labour government, we managed to (just) avoid recession. You won't find an economist who will claim otherwise, and only Alan Jones and the people who listen to him in taxis believe that the government played no part.

Rabid belief in the market economy and the greed is good mentality sent the US and UK down the gurgler and they took most of the rest of the world with them. They are now trying to perform mass CPR with money they don't really have, evidenced by the UK losing their AAA rating. It's a long way back for them but we need them to get there, because relying upon one industry is myopic.

Of course you forgot Europe.It is also down the gurgler and their economies are heavily managed.The one thing about the US,UK,Europe and Japan that is common is they have all tried to spend their way out of recession.It hasn't worked.
And dont try and tell me that the US and the UK are free market economies.They were some time ago but that ended quite a while ago with governments of all hues increasing government interference in the economy.
Also you dont have to do much of a google search to find economists that dont think Wayne has done a great job.
One of his cheerleaders has turned in today's SMH(and yes it is not an economist)-
The government question: is it stupid or misleading?

And this for the ALP's vision-
Labor's failure on infrastructure

 

[Moody]

Of course you forgot Europe.It is also down the gurgler and their economies are heavily managed.The one thing about the US,UK,Europe and Japan that is common is they have all tried to spend their way out of recession.It hasn't worked.
And dont try and tell me that the US and the UK are free market economies.They were some time ago but that ended quite a while ago with governments of all hues increasing government interference in the economy.
Also you dont have to do much of a google search to find economists that dont think Wayne has done a great job.
One of his cheerleaders has turned in today's SMH(and yes it is not an economist)-
The government question: is it stupid or misleading?

And this for the ALP's vision-
Labor's failure on infrastructure

Errrr... so you're saying that nasty socialist regulation of the market economies caused the GFC??? That's a new revisionist twist! I suppose the Amish were the real perpetrators of the Holocaust.

As for your links .... business commentators in the media are rarely on the side of the people, but he has a point about the 457 visas. Whilst there will be a certain amount of rorting of the system to substitute cheap (and discardable) overseas workers for locals, this is a drop in the ocean compared to the "outsourcing", "right-sourcing", "anywhere-but here-sourcing" that has ripped through Australia during the last 2 decades. Interestingly the CEO of Westpac has changed her mind about the value of the practice and put a moratorium on it for now. A few nasty outages in their systems might have been a factor.

As for infrastructure investment ..... it is quite poor at the moment and really should be ramped up. But the slavering mob have been told that a good government is always in surplus, and Labour stupidly made it their #1 focus. Fine if all you care about is re-election but as the recent downswing in the economy has made a surplus nigh impossile it would seem that they have been wasting their time screwing money off single-parents. They should just ignore the media and spend the next 6 months working on legislation and their retirement plans.

 

[casanovawa]

Hmmm

A few things:
We hunger for a leader with vision - That would be good, but lets face it, the last leader with the balls to put out a big vision or change a long time before the election was John Hewson and we all know how that ended up and ever since oppositions of both sides have been very happy to release their policies within the final couple of months before the election, that's how it will happen again no doubt...

The Libs should be telling us their vision/policies - There is that old line about "Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself" and Labor are going at it so willingly (at least 3-4 years worth), with the whole minority government lash joining in of late, why would they come barging in to switch the focus??

The real Tony Abbott - How many different versions of Julia have we seen, depending on her polling numbers, she actually came out and changed herself to the "real Julia" mid-election campaign last time didn't she?? I think your over estimating the impact a person can have with their personal beliefs, there are a bunch of safe guards built into legislation and the parliament to stop any leader taking us too far down their own personal vision of what Australia should look like... I suppose anyone who isn't completely Ra-Ra cheerleading for every social position out there is anti-eh and immediately disqualifies themselves??

Swanny saved us all - I seemed to recall that the Libs did a pretty good job of navigating us through the 1997-98 East Asian Financial crisis and the down turn after the 2001 dot.com crash... Those, and the current Govt's response to the GFC, would all have been a combination of a Govt response as well as public sector policy advice and reserve bank actions... I think the room we had to act economically during the GFC was as a result that the budget position had been left in a very healthy position by the Howard Government while many Europeans Govts and the US were already wedded to living with budget deficits.. That way we had our powder dry to be able to act rather than desperately resorting to just printing money... The world is still in a pretty parlous state so seeing we have managed to navigate the GFC why not start trying to get the budget back into a position to rebuild our financial position in case we need to take future corrective action or we have a round 2 of the GFC? You don't just keep spending and spending and digging the hole deeper, especially when up until recently the private sector was pumping so much money into the economy that the Government didn't need to... Effective regulation, from previous Govts, of our banks had also stopped them being in the same state as many of the European and US banks, but saying that, we were a small nothing player on the very fringes of global financial markets so probably can't congratulate ourselves for being excessively smart...

Village idiot Howes and his mates - I wonder how many union big wigs are going to put them hand up to try and make a run at a parliamentary career at this upcoming election???

 

[drron]

No Moody read it again.Nowhere do I say regulation.I do say Governments intervening in the economy is a major cause for the economic problems the world has.
In the case of the USA there are many decisions that have made the current situation worse.From Nixon going off the gold standard completely so now the Fed can print money.Reagan where government spending first started taking off.Clinton for removing some regulations on Investment banks and bringing in Fannie Mae and freddie Mac to use low doc loans so that those who could not afford housing could get a mortgage.Alan greenspan for keeping interest rates low for too long so making credit more available so supercharging the housing bubble.George W for more rapid increase in Government spending.Obama for putting Government spending on steroi_s and for the massive money printing now going on.
If the USA is to avoid really serious economic problems it will be mainly due to them becoming energy assured.And that will be because of nasty capitalists bringing in shale oil and gas fields using that nasty fracking process.

As for infrastructure what has the Rudd/Gillard governments acheived-the NBN but that is off budget and doesn't add to the budget deficit.So it comes down to pink batts,school infrastructure in many cases of dubious value and mainly not adding to productivity and a convenient fund to buy off Independent votes.They did set up an Infrastructure Board to rank projects as to priority then ignored the results of that.Sorry Moody you really do need to read some alternative economic opinions and stop swallowing the proaganda coming out of Wayne Swan's office.
Do I think Joe Hockey will do better.Marginally at most.But that is still an improvement on the World's most Overated Treasurer.