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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| Tannin wrote: | | David wrote: | | Labor at times looked bereft of ideas over the past six years, but they were veritable geniuses compared to the current lot. Their present strategy seems to be to wind back the few good reforms the previous government achieved and replace them with an intellectually retarded commitment to balancing the budget at any cost. |
No. Not even close. Labor left office with a smallish deficit of 60 billion dollars. Hockey and his clowns are putting the nation through its worst economic experience since the Great Depression, with massive cuts to services across the board, and a swathe of dishonest tax hikes they lied and lied and lied they would not have, and all for what? In four years time, Hockey hopes to have achieved a deficit of ... wait for it ... 60 billion dollars.
All this savage pain, and - $60B = $60B - no gain whatsoever.
Worst government in Australia's history. Already. |
| Quote: | This budget isn't as bad as Labor will claim and the Liberal heartland will privately think. It's undoubtedly the toughest budget since John Howard's post-election budget in 1996, but it's hardly austerity economics.
I give Joe Hockey's first budgetary exam a distinction on management of the macro economy, a credit on micro-economic reform and a fail on fairness.
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| Quote: | Labor supporters want to believe that because Hockey and Tony Abbott are exaggerating about a ''budget emergency'' and ''tsunami of government spending'', we don't really have a problem. They are refusing to face reality.
After running budget deficits for six years in a row, we faced the prospect of at least another decade of deficits unless Hockey took steps to bring government spending and revenue back together. Failure to make tough decisions wouldn't have turned us into Greece, but since when was that the most we aspired to?
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Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/federal-budget/federal-budget-2014-tough-and-unfair-its-business-as-usual-20140513-3882r.html#ixzz31acIto4R
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Dave The Man 
Joined: 01 Apr 2005
Location: Someville, Victoria, Australia
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| Quote: | Budget 2014: People on disability support pension to have ability to work reassessed
Updated Sun 11 May 2014, 5:39am AEST
RELATED STORY: Disability pension changes flagged for budget
MAP: Australiamany on the disability support pension have the capacity to work, but there is little incentive.
"Pretty much forever [the pension has] been one that hasn't recognised people's ability or capacity," he said.
"It's just said well, if you qualify, we put you on a payment. It's kind of a set and forget for the rest of your life, more or less, or until you qualify for some other pension, such as an age pension.
"There are a lot of people who are disabled who have capacity, who have ability, and with the right sort of approach we could actually encourage them to be in the workforce and that's what we're trying to do." |
That sounds Super Sus there. He just want People off the Pension and these Called Indpendent Doctors would send just about everyone to work even if they unable to.
Fu*k You big Turd Hockey
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-10/people-on-disability-support-pension-ability-to-work-reassessed/5444110
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I am Da Man |
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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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Yes Stui, and your point is?
You are still carrying on as if Hockey is actually doing something about the deficit, which on the latest figures I have seen he is not. Hockey's horror budget will achieve nothing we hadn't already got before this mob of shonks took office. 60 billion was what he started with; 60 billion is what he hopes to "achieve" in four years time.
What a shithead this man is.
* Disclaimer: I'm going on the latest news available so far. It is possible that we will get different numbers in a day or two.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| Dave The Man wrote: | | He just want People off the Pension and these Called Indpendent Doctors would send just about everyone to work even if they unable to. |
Yes. Meanwhile, Gina Rinehart and her ultra-wealthy cronies are still getting a $3 billion government handout every year, and nothing has been done to make the mining industry start paying its fair share of tax like everyone else. (Mind you, Rinehart is a huge donor to the Liberal Party hard-right think-tanks and slush funds, so they make sure she gets lots back.)
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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Dave The Man
Joined: 01 Apr 2005
Location: Someville, Victoria, Australia
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| Tannin wrote: | | Dave The Man wrote: | | He just want People off the Pension and these Called Indpendent Doctors would send just about everyone to work even if they unable to. |
Yes. Meanwhile, Gina Rinehart and her ultra-wealthy cronies are still getting a $3 billion government handout every year, and nothing has been done to make the mining industry start paying its fair share of tax like everyone else. (Mind you, Rinehart is a huge donor to the Liberal Party hard-right think-tanks and slush funds, so they make sure she gets lots back.) |
Show’s How F**ked up the System is.
Those Rich People pay off the C**ts in Government
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I am Da Man |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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^ Exactly.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| Tannin wrote: | | Yes Stui, and your point is?. |
My point is that the economics editor of the Aged gave the budget a distinction on management of the macro economy, a credit on micro-economic reform and a fail on fairness.
The first two boxes are hardly 'worst government ever" material, and I'm not carrying on like anything cos I haven't even read in any detail what they've actually done.
Disclaimer: once more information is available i may change my mind based on that information as any sensible person would do.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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And your point is?
You still haven't addressed the thing we started with - all this massive pain, all this savage punishment of those least able to afford it, all these huge spending cuts and job losses and Hockey has reduced the deficit by exactly zero.
What a shocking joke of a man.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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How did "we" start with that? And where are you even pulling that info from?
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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We "started with that" when I posted it and you replied, quoting my post. Since you quoted it, I assumed that you read it. Since you replied to it, I assumed that it was what we were talking about. Did I do something wrong?
Source for the 60 billion was the news tonight; this is Hockey's own figure, according to them. We will have to wade through the paperwork tomorrow to find it in writing somewhere.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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OK, so I should have bolded the last sentence when I quoted you. Apologies, I thought that was self evident.
I'll read the comment tomorrow when people have had time to do some analysis on it. I expect as usual people will focus on the bits they like/don't like and it will be difficult to get an objective overall assessment but we'll see how it spins.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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I'm a long way away from this, but Tannin, if the deficit is being so savagely cut, and it remans $60 Bil in 4 years time - doesn;t that suggest that either (i) the cuts are not as savage as they are reputed to be ; or (ii) the trail of public spending commitments is so high that it takes these deep cuts even to keep the deficit level (in MOD terms, ie declining in real terms) ?
Not particularly defending Hockey, who seems (from this distance) a buffoon, just intrigued to understand how the numbers actually work.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| Mugwump wrote: | | I'm a long way away from this, but Tannin, if the deficit is being so savagely cut, and it remans $60 Bil in 4 years time - doesn;t that suggest that either (i) the cuts are not as savage as they are reputed to be ; or (ii) the trail of public spending commitments is so high that it takes these deep cuts even to keep the deficit level (in MOD terms, ie declining in real terms) ? |
A worthwhile question, Mugwump!
No, neither of these things. Hockey has been spending like a drunken sailor and has more than doubled the projected deficit in just six months. The damage has been twofold: first, he relaxed the tight overall spending controls in place when he took office, second - and probably the more important of the two - Abbott and Hockey took the axe to revenue in a big way. A great long list of tax reforms and anti-rort measures was canceled; for example the lucrative car leasing tax rort was restored, the 100% tax break for very wealthy people with huge amounts of super was similarly brought back. I forget the rest of the list, but it was long. (Was it 56 different things? Some large number, anyway.)
Next up, they plan to slash revenue further by abolishing both the mining tax and the carbon tax, and cutting company tax so that people wealthy enough to have their assets in a company and not in their own name can pay less than you and I do.
Not only that, there are some massively wasteful, massively expensive new expenditures: the $50,000 baby payment (for rich mothers only - poor ones get nothing) will cost a bomb; the absurd and useless Direct Inaction climate change scheme - which will achieve practically nothing and all the economists agree on this - is set to hand over huge sums to big polluters. There are many smaller ones as well, and they all add up.
And then there are the already-in-train costs you mention. These are expensive things which both parties were already committed to: the new fighters for the Air Force, the NDIS, and the Gonski education reforms are very, very expensive. Abbott is weaseling his way out of as much of them as he dares - Pyne has been slashing away at education and they have already delayed the NDIS to save a bit, but these are big things to pay for just the same.
Finally, all this is taking place against a background of long-term decline in government revenue. There are three main reasons for this:
(1) Howard's over-generous series of income tax cuts (that poltroon Rudd added one more, which was equally stupid).
(2) The sustained failure of Liberal and Labor governments to address tax avoidance on a grand scale through many different and often technically legal strategies - for example,
(3) The shift in the economy as a whole away from general goods and services towards other goods and services which are GST-exempt. A much smaller proportion of the average household budget now goes to things (which generally attract GST and are much, much cheaper than they used to be, partly because of our absurdly high dollar but for other reasons also) and a much larger proportion goes on GST-exempt services such as private education and health care, both of which are much dearer than they used to be and still going up.
Government expenditure, as a proportion of GDP, is now much lower than at any time in living memory, and it's now significantly lower here than it is is almost all comparable advanced nations. Simply, we don't have a spending problem; we have a revenue problem, and Hockey isn't doing anything about it. Neither did Rudd - in fact, like Howard, he helped create the problem. Gillard and Swan did a little better - a very little - but they were merely the best of a very bad lot.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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^Excellent post, Tannic one.
The complete idiocy here is having the most fortunate economic platform in the OECD on which to turbo-charge prosperity, but being so brainwashed by quasi-religious 1980s lies that you apply mercury to a non-problem and poison the nation, rewarding capital misallocation and hoarding (by rewarding dated, over-allocated, and parked capital), widening social polarisation (by making life harder for the poor, students, and so on), allowing productive infrastructure to decay further (see the NBN and rising education costs being heaped on young people—yes, creating education disincentives is every bit a kind of productive asset decay), and imposing career disincentives (forget your creative, productive ambitions; just shut up and keep digging to prop up your masters' investments).
No serious analyst on the planet thinks Australia has a debt problem and neither does the debt market. The main criticism is that Australia has structural challenges based on its mining bias and a lack of productive investments to balance that bias.
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Piesnchess
piesnchess
Joined: 09 Jun 2008
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One term tony, the man who swore hed never touch pensions,benefits, medicare, education, health, brings down a budget that smashes every promise this bogan moronic extremist religious maniac ever $£$%^%%$ made. He castigated Julia for just one porky, yet he lies every $£$%^%%$ day, day after day. No wonder his polls are shocking, and now, thanks to Cuban cigar smokin joe, and his austerity budget, that leaves millionaires alone, many pay no tax, as we just found out,while smashing the poor, sick and elderly. Now the fat prick charges really sick old people and disabled, seven bucks to see their doctor,each time, never mentioned pre election, and he damn well knew what the budget was like,cos of charter of budget honesty. Yeh, one term tony, consign this religious zealot, who gives millions to bible bashers in schools, yet cuts millions to indigenous health, consign this looney tunes to the dustbin of history, sooner the better.
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Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.
Chess and Vodka are born brothers. - Russian proverb. |
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