Oz Federal Election 2013 - Discussion and Comments

[Moody]

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.

Sorry, drron, I thought you were inferring that it wasn't the fault of the financial sector and uncontrolled greed that triggered off the GFC. My bad.

And home insulation and BER projects were never touted as infrastructure - they were stimulus packages. I know it's a very complex distinction but try to keep up. (If nothing else it will reduce the sarcasm I try to employ to show my disdain for deliberately misleading statements .... or did you REALLY think they were infrastructure projects?).

And what propaganda have I swallowed and how does it differ from reality? Wayne Swan I would give 6 out of 10 as a treasurer, mostly because he has not had the vision and balls to carry his arguments against KR and JG (I miss Paul and whats-his-name, don't you?). Joe Hockey is an unknown in a practical sense, but if he really did all the things TA has anounced over the past 3 years then it would be an epic fail. I guess we will have to wait for the election campaign proper to see what they reallly believe in, I just hope they get their costings right this time. But what I'm really worried about is the phenomena where thry say very little about what will change, and then once they come to power they suddenly believe in measures like ripping the guts out of public education (ala BoF). They are the nasty sort of politicians that we, quite frankly, deserve.

 

[Pushka]

How can you give Swan a 6 when he was the only person on the planet who thought we would have a surplus?

 

[drron]

You will believe what you want to Moody.Doesn't matter what I say.I wasn't praising TA at all in my response.he didn't even get a mention.but there you go off on a tangent again.
As for greed in the financial sector of course it is there.Human nature.Some though think power is a good substitute for money.
However Moody I did mention Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke.By increasing credit to never before seen levels they threw fuel on the fire.
A day of reckoning must come.The debt has to be paid sometime.The pain will be felt by the ordinary people anyway.If not because of a severe recession but by inflation that will destroy their wealth.Unintended consequences?

Of course you say that if stimulus wasn't tried we would have had a severe recession and be no better off.Well Iceland went down that path,banks as they should for taking on extra risk went belly up.However they came through that much earlier than any other country.Particularly compared to Ireland which had similiar problems.

Then Wayne goes on about our strong banking sector.But why then did they have to go to the US Fed and borrow an extra few billion.A fact Moody.Look it up.

 

[Moody]

Then Wayne goes on about our strong banking sector.But why then did they have to go to the US Fed and borrow an extra few billion.A fact Moody.Look it up.

We don't have a strong banking sector??? That is surprising news - I thought the efforts by various federal governments over the last 3 decades had successfully limited our exposure to the GFC, and the quick move to guarantee the "Big 4" quashed any ideas that they may be in trouble. Sucked for the rest of the sector but we are now back to a more even playing field and I certainly see the benefits of looking outside the square for my financial needs ..... as does the government.

So if we can get some cheap money from the US then what's the downside??? Sorry - you will have to explain that to me.

 

[drron]

They got bailout funds from the US fed.look it up.No need for that if everything was fine.

 

[Hvr]

They got bailout funds from the US fed.look it up.No need for that if everything was fine.

Is this documented? and available from reputable sources?

 

[irv]

The interesting thing about infrastructure spending IMHO is that when the Howard government had bucket loads of money flowing in they gave most of it back in reducing tax rather than taking the opportunity to invest in upgrading aging public assets.Both sides do it, instead of looking at the long term.

By the way drron thanks for the tassie travel tips, had a great time.

 

[Sprucegoose]

I suppose the Amish were the real perpetrators of the Holocaust.

.

Please do not bring my clean living friends the Amish into the Jewish debate please

 

[Sprucegoose]

Nah, they wont do that. They've all ready been warned (and paid off) by the mining companies that that is not acceptable. Their view (and supported by the Liberal party) is that only poor people pay taxes.

Taxes??

What are they?

 

[Sprucegoose]

Pink Batts?

Stop the boats??

 

[whatmeworry]

The interesting thing about infrastructure spending IMHO is that when the Howard government had bucket loads of money flowing in they gave most of it back in reducing tax rather than taking the opportunity to invest in upgrading aging public assets.Both sides do it, instead of looking at the long term.

What I can't figure out about the Howard years was did they actually achieve in making Australia better, other then entrenching middle class welfare. There was so many infrastructure projects that could have made the capitals and regional cities better yet they kept dolling out money to the masses. Howard and Costello lucked out in terms of the economic situation the globe gave them yet for some reason a certain subset of the population think they were economic magicians rather then luckkers they really were.

 

[Fruitcake]

Is this documented? and available from reputable sources?

drron is probably referred to the USD swap lines made available by a group of central banks around the world during the peak of the financial crisis. The RBA became part of the program just after the Lehman Brothers collapse when regular interbank lending channels were completely inoperable due to a lack of counterparty trust.

Essentially, the program allowed banks around the world to approach their local central banks and enter into fully collateralised USD loans. The central banks then funded these USD loans through foreign exchange swaps with the Federal Reserve. These came to be known as "Central Bank Liquidity Swaps." Wikipedia has what at first glance seems to be a reasonably good treatment of the topic:
Central bank liquidity swap - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Australia the RBA made USD liquidity available in much the way it usually manages liquidity in the domestic markets - via its term repurchase agreement operations. Banks would bid for USD funding for a given period, and would then provide AUD denominated assets as collateral for the loan (note that most securities have a haircut applied to them when offered to the RBA via repo, so banks actually had to stump up assets with slightly greater value than the USD they were borrowing).

Information on the RBA's USD Term Repo program is here:
RBA: US Dollar Term Repo Operations

Statistics on its use are here:
http://www.rba.gov.au/mkt-operations/xls/usd-repos.xls

So drron is correct that banks here were provided with billions of US dollars during the GFC. However, it's important to note that these funds were short term fully collateralised loans, and the funds were intermediated by the RBA. This does not meet my definition of a bailout and nor were the funds sourced from a "bailout fund" program like TARP.

 

[amaroo]

The man is the village idiot...

He is not alone.......just watched Stephen Conroy on Lateline. The line "out of his depth in a car park puddle" come to mind!

 

[casanovawa]

What I can't figure out about the Howard years was did they actually achieve in making Australia better, other then entrenching middle class welfare. There was so many infrastructure projects that could have made the capitals and regional cities better yet they kept dolling out money to the masses. Howard and Costello lucked out in terms of the economic situation the globe gave them yet for some reason a certain subset of the population think they were economic magicians rather then luckkers they really were.

Australia had it pretty good during the Howard years, we survived a couple of major ripples around the world during that time, including as i have said previously the 1997/8 East Asia Financial downturn and the 2001 dot.com crash... They put money away into the future fund (does that exist anymore or has it been totally raided) as well as were able to reduce some of the top tax rates and reform financial relations between the States and the Federal Government with the GST...

Now i know to some leftie types, the concept of actually giving some money back to the people who earn it, rather than continually transferring it to everyone else is anathema, but the lower paid got quite a bit of tax relief as well... Is there any particular reason why my money should be continually taken from me to build all these amazing capitals and regional centres??? At what point do you start eating into the incentive to work hard and increase productivity because others seem to be the main beneficiaries of it... I know this is heresy to the left who think people who have invested in themselves and done the hard yards to make something of themselves should be a honey pot to support many of the others who didn't or won't... I am for some measure of helping the less fortunate but i am also a believer that the people who earn the money are reasonably good at deciding how to spend it to give themselves a measure of satisfaction without the Government taking it and saying we'll spend it for you as we know best...

There is also the issue of who is responsible for some government spending between the Federal and State Governments, the Federal Government has never been responsible as far as i know for building, solely anyway, schools, hospitals, roads, stadium etc, etc... They certainly usually partner with State Governments to deliver that and meet some of the costs, but what were the States doing in this period and how hard were they lobbying?? Its a bit easy to say Howard and Costello should have built everything...

To say they were lucky with the economic situation to me also doesn't hold up as they did navigate several difficult situations i think maturely and intelligently... The fact that they didn't have more is hardly their fault you can only play the cards you have got at the time and be assessed against those, and if they did have more tricky situations (9/11) i think they would have been capable from their record of managing those as well... I think they also left the economy and the budget in a pretty good state to help Kruddy and Julia navigate the GFC... The budget situation was certainly in a much better state than what was handed to Howard... And will probably be handed to Tony...

 

[casanovawa]

All good points, now does the Liberal Party have any clue as to what to do to fix it? Or is their agenda to divert as much government money to their business mates and rich people in the form of middle class welfare such as baby bonuses etc?

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?

Since when has the middle class (the welfare you talk about) consisted of "business mates and rich people"?

Or is anyone who earns over the minimum wage living the high life and deserving to have any spare money ripped off them... This class warfare, envy of anyone doing better than me is tiresome tripe, but Julia is pushing it with every breath like a drowning man looking for something to grab hold of...

 

[casanovawa]

Nah, they wont do that. They've all ready been warned (and paid off) by the mining companies that that is not acceptable. Their view (and supported by the Liberal party) is that only poor people pay taxes.

Sorry HVR, but anyone with any sense knows that the "poor people" pay little if any net tax... They are usually much larger recipients of government handouts or subsidies or incentives than any piddling amount they contribute, even if they do still want to p!ss and moan loudly about it... With some of the middle class welfare that may have been enacted by Howard and Costello this largess moved a bit higher up the income distribution (and did the poor p!ss and moan even more when it was someone else getting a bit of a leg up in addition to them)

But short of Kerry Packer types, and people who run their own businesses who maybe able to juggle their taxes (and who have taken the risks to do start a business, there aren't lines a mile long of people wanting to have a crack at that), by and large it is businesses and often the higher wage earners (who have improved and invested in themselves) who are paying all this money to subsidise the poor and down and outers as well as increasingly some of the middle class, so can you lay off all the "poor people are getting so hard done by" cough, they often get looked after exceedingly well here in Australia... The pensioners probably deserve a bit more, but plenty of others could get off their duff and help themselves...

 

[Sprucegoose]

He is not alone.......just watched Stephen Conroy on Lateline. The line "out of his depth in a car park puddle" come to mind!

He is a goose. He runs the NBN puts in black box salesmen to run a $23b capex works program who have no idea of an appropriate risk reward matrix with industry and wonders why contractors won't take on an all risk limited return model!!

Dear oh dear.

How much does the NBN cost per household ?? $3k??

We are the laughing stock of the developed world.

 

[amaroo]

Nah, they wont do that. They've all ready been warned (and paid off) by the mining companies that that is not acceptable. Their view (and supported by the Liberal party) is that only poor people pay taxes.

Australians who don't pay tax......interesting article.

Infographic | Australians who don’t pay tax: what would Romney say?

 

[Moody]

We are the laughing stock of the developed world.

I agree. Had some US colleagues over to help run a training course recently. They couldn't believe how slow our so-called broadband was. You can argue about the best way to fix it but you can't argue that it is currently broken and is hampering productivity.

 

[chrisb]

I agree. Had some US colleagues over to help run a training course recently. They couldn't believe how slow our so-called broadband was. You can argue about the best way to fix it but you can't argue that it is currently broken and is hampering productivity.

Is always going to appear slower because you've got an extra approx 200ms of latency to cross the pacific to get to a lot of the content they might be accessing, especially if they're using a VPN back to their office.

Even the difference in content speed between accessing stuff in Perth and Sydney can be noticed sometimes.

But yes, bring on NBN.