Oz Federal Election 2013 - Discussion and Comments

[vetrade]

So what you personally think trumps what you think is a supposition?

Point taken...........but wireless will obviously be dramatically cheaper than installing cables to every house and prototypes for this have already been successfully in use for a couple of years so once it can be implemented commercially (as is very likely) the techs still advocating fibre to every home will be regarded as neanderthals.

 

[chrisb]

Point taken...........but wireless will obviously be dramatically cheaper than installing cables to every house and prototypes for this have already been successfully in use for a couple of years so once it can be implemented commercially (as is very likely) the techs still advocating fibre to every home will be regarded as neanderthals.

Wireless doesn't scale! It's very well documented. We don't have the spectrum to support the current broadband usage requirements let alone the future.

The other issue is that no one wants wireless towers near their house. Good luck building enough to cover an entire city. Look at how many councils have already objected to the NBN building towers. It'd be a nightmare to do across every city.

 

[Fruitcake]

Wireless doesn't scale! It's very well documented. We don't have the spectrum to support the current broadband usage requirements let alone the future.

Precisely. Anyone who have been using Telstra Next G nextwork in the Sydney CBD would know this for themselves - 3G data performance has plummeted since Telstra's big price cuts a few years back drew a lot of new subscribers to the network. Vodafone users will certainly have similar stories (although they never had a good network to start with!).

Of course, the new technology, 4G, is extremely fast. But that's because no-one has 4G devices yet.

A partial solution is to dramatically ramp up the density of - and ramp down the transmitting power of - mobile phone towers. But the same parents who complain their technologically backward school can't have fast internet for Johnny's iPad are the same parents who complain when there is a mobile phone tower within five kilometres. Oh, and you'll need to run fibre to those mobile base stations anyway - you can put one on my roof if you leave an ethernet jack open on the back .

 

[drron]

Fruitcake unfortunately I am away from home.I did write down some of the facts but of course cant access now.I remember at least 2 of the Big 4 directly borrowed from the FED.One was NAB and I believe CBA was not involved.
However other facts re our banks worry me.The CBA is said to have a market capital greater than all the German banks.Doesn't really sound that there is great upside though the market is never rational.It also concerns me that the CBA has ~ 60% of it's loans in domestic mortgages.I do not subscribe to the theory that Australia is so different to the rest of the world that we could never see a profound fall in house prices.


And to the NBN.First why hasn't their business plan been scrutinised by the Productivity Commission.I amn cynical enough to think the figures dont stack up.

Then everyone brings up the medical benefits of the NBN.Most are occurring now with the old technology.where I work in Tasmania the hospital's Xray dept has been outsourced to the private sector for years.At night if I want an urgent CT brain done the radiographer performs the study,it is read in Melbourne immediately and I have the report in 5 minutes.This is much better than in the larger public hospitals I workin,or indeed the Private Hospital.
If I have a problem I usually know who to ring.Much easier than setting up a teleconference.Which by the way the medical education programs at my Tasmanian hospital have always been by teleconference and I started there just before Kevin07 came to power.
Then there is the question of what further advances in Medicine are there going to be that make these supposed benefits less needed.In 40 years as a physician the changes are immense and in some areas way outside the box.Genomics may be the area that will fundamentally change the way we practise.

 

[Fruitcake]

Fruitcake unfortunately I am away from home.I did write down some of the facts but of course cant access now.I remember at least 2 of the Big 4 directly borrowed from the FED.One was NAB and I believe CBA was not involved.

Thanks drron - but I'm now pretty confident we are talking about the same thing. For me the key is, as you said, they "borrowed from the Fed." Which indeed they did if they accessed USD via RBA swap lines. My primary issue with your points is that earlier you referred these loans as "bailouts" which I don't feel is accurate. Aus banks most certainly did need to borrow USD for short periods but they had assets to back the loans. Different to the US where banks were running out of cash for day-to-day operations and their assets were worthless. Any bailing out of domestic banks would be purely an RBA/APRA prerogative - the big 4 might be too big to fail domestically but the global capital markets system would probably let them go fairly easily.


Also I've always wondered what e-medicine meant in practice. Thanks for those examples.

 

[eastwest101]

Thanks for the comments about current medical technology drron, as an example of another better alternative - despite its obvious privacy issues - I have often thought that a transferrence to ehealth records would be a much better improvement to healthcare. Imagine if it were designed so that an incoming patients entire medical history of test results/scans/xrays consultations and succesful and failed treatments could be downloaded or accessed by staff treating an unconscious patient, so that all relevant info and any allergies and past medical issues could all be seen and acted upon. I would like to see an electronic system that would allow medical staff to spend less time doing meaningless and repetetive paperwork and have more time to make considered medical treatment and face to face treatment of patients. I know its a bit arm-wavy but would you agree with the general premise? (if rolled out gradually and properly of course).

 

[drron]

Eastwest101 I am a dinosaur when it comes to technology.Not sure about E-health.Obviously worried about privacy issues.But then there are so many different attitudes from patients.I am often told "thank goodness finally finding a doctor that looks at me rather than a computer screen".And it is not only the elderly though they make up the majority.
However on another level I agree with you about the paper work.The problem is a lot of it is just unneccessary.At one hospital I was forced to go to a 1 hour session on understanding the hospital's mission statement.I thought it would be simply-we are here to do the best we can for our patients but sadly I was wrong.
We are supposed to practice evidence based medicine.It is about time we had evidence based administration.

 

[Pukka]

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...

Absolutely and if you want to sack someone because they turn up reeking of booze at 9am and are pi$$ing off all your clients is that easy ? No it's not you need to give them counseling otherwise you are a bad employer and you need to pay them 6 weeks wages or more. I actually think the liberal work choices was way better, I mean I'm not going to get rid of someone that is good but I'd like to get rid of the bad ones,I don't think that's unreasonable whichever side of the political fence you are on.

 

[casanovawa]

The problem with Workchoices is that in a perfect world it might have worked very well, but Government makes legislation for a very imperfect world and often has to dabble in trying to manage and encourage good behaviours of business and the public while business just looks at making a profit, a much simpler amoral goal.. So while Workchoices may have reduced over regulation of business and the ability to take psotivie action to keep the business healthy, obviously some bad employers took complete advantage of it to screw some workers... It may have only been 5-10% of employers, but unfortunately it really gave those employers who wanted to be unscrupulous an ability to do so...

The backlash obviously that workers wanted a bit more protection and for the balance to be redressed to a fairer level... Unfortunately that then opens up the opportunity for unscrupulous unions and judges who need a bit ofa reality check to tip the scales to far in the other direction of holding employers to ransom... In some ways its a no win situation to be a Government trying to find the balance to promote good, ethical behaviour, there is always someone wanting to circumvent it for their own gain, its why the tax act needs to be the size of the old yellow pages...

 

[Hvr]

So-called middle-class welfare is now counted upon. Can the genie can ever be put back in the bottle?

The Baby Bonus is a case in point. By the end of the Hawke-Keating government in 1996 Australia had one of the tightest social security systems in the world. On one estimate, 92 per cent of government payments went to the half of the population that earned the least. By the end of the Howard government a decade later, many more of the payments were spilling over to the top half. A lesser 87 per cent went to the bottom half.

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The Baby Bonus was one of Howard's most brazen spillovers. Instead of directing it to parents who had earned the least, it was funnelled to those who had earned the most. Mothers who had high incomes in the year before their child was born were able to claim $2500 per year. Mothers who had been on low incomes got $500.

Read more: Middle class has cake, eats it too
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Surely all welfare payments should be reviewed to ensure they are going to people who really need them rather than think they do?

 

[Skyring]

Surely all welfare payments should be reviewed to ensure they are going to people who really need them rather than think they do?

Excellent idea. I'll do the reviewing, if you don't mind.

 

[Hvr]

Excellent idea. I'll do the reviewing, if you don't mind.

We can do it together and we'll include corporate welfare.

 

[Moody]

Surely all welfare payments should be reviewed to ensure they are going to people who really need them rather than think they do?

I get three-fifths of FA so it is certainly working for me!

I am a bit anti the baby-bonus thing .... probably because I missed out by a week. In my opinion the money would be better directed towards services that help struggling mothers, regardless of their socio-economic status. Nothing can really prepare you for the shock of a newborn baby, and if you get a "dud" one then things can unravel fairly quickly.

But with all of these assistance programs so much is spent administering them (mostly making sure they aren't being rorted), that the effectiveness gets diluted. An unfortunate consequence of our convict past, perhaps?

Whether it's better to have the baby-bonus money wasted on pokies or wasted on making sure it doesn't get wasted on pokies is a perfect right-wing vs left-wing argument!

 

[Skyring]

But with all of these assistance programs so much is spent administering them (mostly making sure they aren't being rorted), that the effectiveness gets diluted. An unfortunate consequence of our convict past, perhaps?

Whether it's better to have the baby-bonus money wasted on pokies or wasted on making sure it doesn't get wasted on pokies is a perfect right-wing vs left-wing argument!

I'm not a big fan of just giving people money to make up for problems with health, age, whatever. Here's why.

First, there's the problem of money being spent on things for which it wasn't intended. Then there's the cost of administration.

But mainly there's the effective marginal tax rates that make for poverty traps. Let's say that you earn a certain amount, not a lot, but you get all sorts of targetted welfare. If you get a raise or do a bit of overtime, that lifts you into the next assessment bracket and all your benefits reduce or disappear entirely. If you count the loss of benefits as a tax rate, then you might be paying over a hundred percent in tax for a modest increase in income.

For some scenarios, the EMTR jumps to several hundred percent. You go backwards in large lumps.

This doesn't really do a lot to reduce the gap between rich and poor if it's not worth your while making an effort to improve your circumstances.

Now, I believe very strongly in the measure of a culture being the way in which it treats the most vulnerable. I am appalled at seeing people sleeping out in the snow in Washington DC, for example. Maybe the Yanks can walk from one side of the Atlantic to the other on the decks of aircraft carriers, but if they can't look after the homeless, then that's a fail in my book.

We need programs to help those in need. Doctors for the poor, houses for the homeless, jobs for the unemployed, teachers for the ignorant. I say make the resources available, make them free, make them so that the government can help people help themselves.

And cut back on administration. Jack Waterford tells the story of a chap in a remote Aboriginal community who spoke to some government official. "You the tenth government bloke out here this week. And you all come in different cars!"

If we are building public service empires rather than solving problems, we're wasting our money.

 

[eastwest101]

I get three-fifths of FA so it is certainly working for me!

I am a bit anti the baby-bonus thing .... probably because I missed out by a week. In my opinion the money would be better directed towards services that help struggling mothers, regardless of their socio-economic status. Nothing can really prepare you for the shock of a newborn baby, and if you get a "dud" one then things can unravel fairly quickly.

But with all of these assistance programs so much is spent administering them (mostly making sure they aren't being rorted), that the effectiveness gets diluted. An unfortunate consequence of our convict past, perhaps?

Whether it's better to have the baby-bonus money wasted on pokies or wasted on making sure it doesn't get wasted on pokies is a perfect right-wing vs left-wing argument!

Agree with most of your sentiments there Moody - and as Skyring also points out - while everyone loves income testing welfare - that creates its own worse problem called the effective marginal tax rates - which are the real disincentives built into the welfare system, and consequently then built into the economy.


Its these distorting parts of the tax system that have to go, and I summarize that anything that discourages moving from welfare to work or moving from one job to another are the culprits that have to go. So yes - a serious look at all of the income tax and welfare system, plus eliminating the horrible stamp duties that stop people from moving & buying houses, plus a broader but lighter touch tax system that is simple and difficult to avoid.

The demographic time bomb that we are looking at is a future with a bigger older population whom are not working, or paying income taxes, but demanding better health services, and then add a larger and more inefficient public service requiring more revenue to keep and inserting ridiculous bureaucratic rules into the private sector and you can see a revenue problem from a generation away. As things become less efficient private investment moves away - the result is exactly the same when you look at the diverging economies of say TAS compared to WA.

All this results in the remaining few young people are either going to be taxed to death, or simply relocate out of Australia. We all know that Greece and Italy did not address these budget and demographic problems and look where they are. Luckily we are not so far down the road demographically and that's why we need to have a sensible debate about whether we increase immigration and rebalance our demography to be sustainable, or tell the millions of baby-boomers and older that we can't afford everything and everything. A mixture of Kevin Rudds "big australia" and Hockey's "end of the age of entitlement".

Its funny that the current government is demonizing the 457 Visa system to bring in skilled immigrants to Australia when as a matter of fact - the 457ers are the solution to many of the governments own problems like demography, labour shortages, shrinking taxpayer base etc etc

A skilled immigration program is simply another economic "shock absorber" to keep things on track just like a floating exchange rate, less tariffs, increasing superannuation, a budget surplus and an independant reserve bank setting interest rates. I note the ALP used to get things like this, why can't the current lot?

 

[Pukka]

A skilled immigration program is simply another economic "shock absorber" to keep things on track just like a floating exchange rate, less tariffs, increasing superannuation, a budget surplus and an independant reserve bank setting interest rates. I note the ALP used to get things like this, why can't the current lot?[/QUOTE]

I think the skilled visa is a good thing but that's what got me into Australia so I suppose I would.

It's not actually as easy as you might think. Once you are over 35 it's actually difficult even if your spouse is also a skilled professional ( they only get an extra 5 points) we had to put $100k in a bond for 12 months to get an extra 5 points so we weren't in the general pool. It was a good rate of return and fortunately we had it so it wasn't a problem.

8 years on we employ 19 people and pay shed loads of tax so I'd like to think we are a positive for Australia.

I do love it here

 

[vetrade]

8 years on we employ 19 people and pay shed loads of tax so I'd like to think we are a positive for Australia.

I do love it here

Examples like this reinforce my theory that we allocate too much money on subsidising or generating jobs (eg in the car industry) when we should focus on how to create and encourage more employers.

Unfortunately we have short sighted people like our treasurer who fail to comprehend the subtle difference and prefer to characterise employers as the enemy.

 

[Moody]

Examples like this reinforce my theory that we allocate too much money on subsidising or generating jobs (eg in the car industry) when we should focus on how to create and encourage more employers.

Unfortunately we have short sighted people like our treasurer who fail to comprehend the subtle difference and prefer to characterise employers as the enemy.

And everyone knows that Union Bosses are the real enemy (or was that boat refugees, or muslims, or bad teachers ..... I get so confused!!!)

The 457 system works when it is being used to fill shortages in skilled labour, and doesn't work when it is being rorted for cheap and disposable workers. I expect the former far outweighs the latter, but as has been mentioned before... a few unscrupulous employers can really screw the pooch and give the scheme a bad name.

 

[Skyring]

The train wreck rattles on.

i bought a new iPad yesterday - to go with the new iPhone - so that I can run the latest apps, such as the new version of Zite. Naturally I went to Big W, flashed my EDR card and added another nice heft of points to the Amex spend.

On flashing it up, I updated my Zite app, and one of the fist stories was from Crikey: I’ll call it now. The tap on the shoulder has finally come for Prime Minister Julia Gillard. She will be out of the job by Wednesday next and second-time-around Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will face one day of parliamentary sittings as leader before the long spring break. Roll on 14 September 2013.

Granted, this is only Crikey, but there are rumbles from other directions. Could the ALP really be so stupid as to reinstall Rudd? Yes, the voters think he's sweet and say they would vote for him, but that presupposes a united party behind him, which would be a long way from the truth, as the Libs know and would swiftly exploit.

Their campaign ads would focus on the public statements made by Rudd's opponents last challenge. About loyalty and so on.

Not to mention the certainty of a cabinet bloodbath just as soon as Kevin can whip out those knives he's been grinding for three years.

Yeah, okay, there's a certain amount of glee here. I don't like the way either Rudd or Gillard has led the nation. Rudd gave us nothing but pretty words when he should have acted, and Gillard acted when she should have thought. She gave us an asylum-seeker mess of massive dimensions, a carbon tax that does nothing here but glosses over the fact that it's Australian coal that China is burning to turn the air over Eastern Asia into a mixture of CO2 and coal smoke, and a mining tax that yields no income. Not to mention the ongoing debacle over 457 visas and media regulation.

I like to see shoddy leadership exposed and punished.

The bottom line is the old one: if you can't lead your party, you cannot lead the nation. The voters aren't mugs.

 

[Hvr]

<snip>
I like to see shoddy leadership exposed and punished.

The bottom line is the old one: if you can't lead your party, you cannot lead the nation. The voters aren't mugs.

Well in the Labor party anyway.

I don't see Tony Abbott as being any better and there may well have to be a night of the long knives once the party realises his true character and incompetence. The Liberal party are essentially hiding him in plain site at the moment telling him not to say anything in case he stuffs up the unlosable election.

And the Liberal party can do it, they've done it to two state/territory leaders recently. One of who was overseas at the time.

Refugees will be a big issue. There are huge 'push' factors especially with the end of Howard's illegal wars when there will be hundreds of thousands of people desperate to flee the countries (Iraq and Afghanistan) involved.