Is that all there is?
On December 30 the Liberal Party posted a graphic on their facebook page summarising the “progress made in 2014”.
Scrapped the Carbon and Mining Taxes
In August 2013 PEFO estimated $9.6 billion of carbon revenue and $3.7 billion of mining tax revenue, over the forward estimates.
Projected annual savings in electricity costs of $550 per household from scrapping the carbon tax have not materialised and may be dwarfed by the withdrawal of up to $3500 per household in other government payments linked to it and the mining tax.
The Australian Institute assessment of the financial impact of the repeal has tallied this as high as $3500 in one year alone based on a family with three children, one at primary school and two in high school, and where both adults earn just above the minimum wage of $37,000.
The bulk of that loss comes by removing the School Kids Bonus, which, for the above family, is currently about $2050. At the moment, the Senate is resisting this and it is still being paid which will punch will punch quite a hole in the budget without the revenue coming in.
That household will also lose $1000 from the repeal of the low income superannuation contribution scheme, which pays $500 to low-income individuals to boost inadequate retirement savings.
Another $456 will be lost by the scheduled $1200 rise in the tax-free threshold next year to $19,400, which will go as part of the clean energy repeal package.
The 6 year delay in increasing the superannuation guarantee will also have a cumulative effect for all employees.
We have also seen a rapid increase in emissions with the repeal of the carbon tax.
Stopping the Boats
As far as we know, the Coalition has been relatively successful in their endeavour to stop asylum seekers reaching our shores by boat.
To achieve this they have indefinitely incarcerated asylum seekers including children to act as a deterrent to anyone else considering seeking our help. Many people have been beaten and some have died.
We have returned asylum seekers to the very people they are fleeing where they have been gaoled, some have been tortured, some have disappeared, and some have been murdered. We have given warships to their oppressors.
We are giving hundreds of millions to poor countries, where allegations of corruption are rife, to temporarily house a few refugees with no prospects for the future.
We give billions to security firms to police detention centres while denying access to humanitarian and aid groups and ignoring medical concerns.
We risk the reputation and waste the time of our Navy patrolling to stop these frightened people at enormous expense.
The collateral damage is human – more than 2,000 people still in offshore detention with no idea what will become of their lives, and more than 30,000 in Australia now facing the lifelong uncertainty of a temporary protection visa with no legal right of appeal.
Free Trade agreements with Japan, Korea and China
Aside from the deal with China just being a Memorandum of Understanding, if these were such a good deal for us one wonders why we are only allowed to know the bits Andrew Robb chooses to tell us and why, after so many years negotiation, were these countries all of a sudden so eager to sign? What have we given up? Have we made ourselves vulnerable to lawsuits and given up our right to make our own laws about health and the environment? Will the PBS survive?
Hockey’s second MYEFO gives us some indication with a revenue write-down of $1.6 billion due to the FTA with Japan and it will mean even more manufacturing industries go to the wall as they cannot compete with cheap imports.
The Chinese deal on beef is only for an extra 10% exports before a trigger where tariffs will be charged again. Chinese companies are also buying up our dairy farms and have made a deal to be able to bring in their own workers.
We are now courting an FTA with India and we kicked off by returning a stolen statue that we had been proudly displaying.
165,000 New Jobs Created
Between December 2013 and November 2014:
Unemployment increased from 5.8% to 6.3%
The number of unemployed persons increased from 722,000 to 775,400 .
Aggregate monthly hours worked decreased from 1,636.0 million hours to 1,606.1 million hours
146,000 more people were in employment with the increase mainly in part-time jobs.
To put this in perspective, the population increased by 364,900 people from 30 June 2013 to 30 June 2014. We need about 30,000 new jobs a month to keep up with population increase.
$1 trillion in major projects given environmental approval
I find this extremely hard to believe though the thought of it scares the hell out of me. The maths they must have used to come up with it scares me even more. I have no intention of trying to verify or understand this ridiculous figure.
Budget repair underway
In August 2013’s PEFO, the deficit for the current financial year was expected to be $24 billion, falling to $5 billion in 2015-16. A surplus of $4 billion was projected for 2016-17.
The deficit for this year has blown out to $40 billion, over $10 billion in the five months between the budget and December’s MYEFO. Looking further ahead, the deficit is expected to be $31 billion in 2015/16, $21 billion in 2016/17 and $12 billion in 2017/18.
The Federal Government says it is “on the right track” to put the budget back in the black in 2019-20.
They may be underway but it seems someone forgot to put the bung in.
Cutting $2 billion in red tape
When interviewed on the ABC Josh Frydenberg admitted he couldn’t explain how they came up with this figure.
The first repeal day was about correcting punctuation, getting rid of typos, and repealing archaic laws that didn’t affect anyone at all.
When the government held its first repeal day, parliamentary secretary Josh Frydenberg crowed about liberating Australians from thousands of items of costly and unnecessary regulation. On closer inspection, that included 39 individual amendments changing the term “electronic mail” to “email”, and several hundred amendments adjusting spelling, grammar and punctuation. It also encompassed the repeal of business obstacles such as the Dried Fruits Export Charges Act 1927, the Lighthouses Act 1949 and the Nitrogenous Fertilizers Subsidy Act 1969.
The second repeal day was a little more worrying with attempts to roll back the FoFA reforms and to disband the charities watchdog ACNC. These two repeals were requested by the banks and the Catholic Church – all other stakeholders were against the changes.
More than 70% of surveyed company directors identified workplace health and safety and preparing and paying taxes as the aspects of their business most affected by red tape.
The tinkering around being done by this government is, in the main, the normal housekeeping that any government does. It’s the paybacks for mates hidden in the fine print that is a worry.
Australia’s largest ever ($50 b) infrastructure investment
According to an analysis by the Grattan Institute, commonwealth transport investment totals $7.5bn in 2014, $6.3bn in 2015, $8.8bn in 2016, $10bn in 2017 and then $6.6bn in 2018, unless new spending promises are made in the meantime. Mostly the government is switching all commonwealth funding from public transport to help finance new roads.
And despite promising that all infrastructure projects would be subject to rigorous cost-benefit analyses before federal money was promised, they weren’t, and if they were, the results didn’t seem to matter. The commonwealth still wants to give $3bn to Melbourne’s East West Link road despite the fact the new state government doesn’t want to build it, and that it turns out to give a return of only 45 cents for every dollar spent.
Any benefit from this spending is quite a way off and the Asset Recycling Fund will be used to blackmail states into selling off our assets to fund Mr Abbott’s desire to be remembered for something.
And these were the successes? Nice graphic but, as Paul Keating said, is that all there is?
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Return to home pageWhat is his problem? We’ll remember the jeffing sod!
It seems that the LNP’s response to having so many caught repeatedly lying so often is to not only lie more, but lie bigger.
They are always dumbing-it down.
He got rid of carbon pricing
He got rid of any chance to make money from our resources
He killed the NBN
He gutted the Gonski reforms
He tore up the hospitals agreement
He diluted environmental safeguards
He got rid of gambling reform laws
He delayed the Murray-Darling buyback
He delayed the superannuation guarantee increase
He humiliated us countless times on the international stage
He is “slowly and methodically” eroding welfare and medicare
He slashed university funding and saddled our children with huge debts
He slashed funding to research
He attacked leave entitlements of the ADF and offered them a reduction in real wages as he sent them off to war
He slashed funding to charities and silenced advocacy groups
He cut tens of millions in funding from Indigenous groups
He got rid of changes to taxation laws to curb evasion
He has spent hundreds of millions on Royal Commissions, Audits, White Papers, Green Papers, consultants, spin doctors and media watchers (hi kids)
He has committed tens of billions to buy war machines
He trashed our reputation as global citizens
I could go on but I am depressing myself. I am going to sit on the verandah and listen to the ocean and have a glass of wine. No doubt my mind will be reeling with things I have left off the list
Leaving aside ‘welfare’ for the moment, people who visit a doctor in the coming weeks are going to feel some significant pain. Your ‘bulk billing’ doctor who renewed your prescription for ongoing conditions (such as blood pressure problems for example) and did so for less than a 10 minute visit, currently receives something north of $37.00. Under the new arrangements, the rebate will be reduced to less than $17.00.
Seems to me that medical practitioners will have little choice other than to charge a co-payment of at least $20.00 for a short visit (to keep the ‘business’ viable), and it matters not whether you are a pensioner or not.
BTW, it’s not only bulk billing Doctors who will be affected and effected.
I should add the level of rebate is even lower come July.
I know that Doctors will protest, (not sure when) but I am yet to hear of any ALP /Green’s organised outcry.
BTW a ‘disallowance of the Regulation’ could end this nonsense.
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With Netflix starting up in Australia our crap broadband … not …. um …not enhanced by Abbotts Fraudband ….. means that Netflix will have to compress their downloads so much due to Australia's slow broadband speeds that quality will suffer.
The only way to get quality Netflix that you can use on your 4k tv is if you have download speeds of at least 10 mbps.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-12/australian-internet-speeds-rank-44th-in-the-world/6012570
Thanks a lot you arsehole Abbott.
If this is the GOOD of what this idiot has done then this once beautiful country is truly SCREWED !!!
The trouble is that Tony, who can only remember things by counting slogans on his fingers, probably thinks he HAS done a good job because he wouldn’t read any of the actual facts…anything longer than a headline and he is licking his lips and looking at his watch.
I had an interesting experience today. I got polled. The poll was conducted by “an educational institution in Melbourne” and it was basically about the economy. Unlike many other polls in which I have taken part, they asked me what I thought about a variety of things. The interviewer started laughing as I gave my responses, apologising saying “I’m not spose to react to your answers let alone laugh but I can’t help it”. She said she was having trouble fitting my answers into the required space and I said “That’s the trouble with surveys, you shouldn’t ask me what I think.” She laughed again and encouraged me to continue while she worked on a précis. It was a very cathartic experience. 🙂
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Fact check shows the Indigenous population have received nothing from Abbott.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/factcheck/promisetracker/
Unless you count Abbott bringing Indigenous Affairs into his office …. alongside Women's Affairs I suppose.
Reminiscent of the landed gentry with Aboriginal woman doing all the ironing and cleaning.
Hey, he went and spent his first week with them….well not his FIRST week, and not actually WITH them, and it turned out to be a few days of photo shoots in the end but hey, isn’t that what counts? Now that that “ABC leftie” Mark Simkin is in charge of Tony’s “media team” it will be interesting to see how the spin gets spun. Will we notice a change? Good luck with that Mark, I hope he is paying you a lot because it could be a short gig.
Good old Tony is doing a stellar job for his mates.
I would love to be present at the strategy meetings trying to find devious ways to sell their lemons too us.
The good old IPA list is hanging in the ether and will not suddenly vanish even if Dear Leader commands his Lord God to do a fix to fool the feral scum.
How’s the war thing going with Russia mate. Damn seems to have dried up a bit though I would imagine the GOP, Cameron, Merkel, Obama and Tiny Tim will do all they can to stir the hell out of Putin in the coming election years.
Damn he couldn’t make it to France to stand with Netanyahu to demonstrate his complicity with terrorists while he supports the “we are just holidaying in the West Bank non occupation lie.”
We all know their doing it to save Europe from Russian oil while the US want’s to export their rubbish.
Dear me wait till the petrol prices turn around, which they will in the not too distant future, and see how happy the surfs are.
More dumb bum austerity for Europe. Oops hang on a minute Greece is in a bit of a tizzy while Portugal and Spain have greater unemployment levels than the Great Depression so lets give em more austerity.
US GDP is growing while the Banksters make a killing as part time jobs save the massed from poverty by paying an unlivable $7.50 to $10.00 and hour. She’s right just take away food stamps from millions and try to screw up Obama Care.
Supreme court Judge Clarence Thomas’s wife is a lobbyist and fund raiser for the Tea Party.
The Bush and Clinton Dynasties are returning to rule the good old USA.
Lots of fun wars to play with and new weapons to peddle of to coalition suckers like us.
Its all good in conservative fantasy land.
Why not just tag along for the ride?
Tony’s got it all worked out in his good old fashioned paper notebook.
My ‘comment’ to Tony, left on the Australian Liberal Party Facebook Page under the above Post. Of course I am not a journalist, but this is exactly how I feel:
“C’mon Tony, tell the truth for a change. You will be building stronger Australia for Rupert, Gina, IPA, fossil fuel industries, and all ‘big business’. Certainly not what you should actually be doing, that is building a stronger, SAFER, economically sound Australia for ALL Australians. With the axing of the very important CarbonPrice(not tax), the damage done to all agencies that were doing an excellent and imperative job, in Climate Change mitigation, the continued effort to wind back the RET, all you have done is to send Australia back into the ‘dark ages’ of advancement, and lost our premier position in the World with renewable energy technology. You have preached investment in Australia, but by wanting to abolish the RET, so many big Foreign Renewable Energy Businesses pulled out of projects which were about to commence. Your Government has borrowed $billions more since being in Government (the proof is out there), and you are still blaming Labor for all your woes. Wake up. Start to govern for all Australians. Fix the damage you have inflicted on our education system, on our health system, our taxation system, and the most important of all the huge damage you are inflicting on our very precious environment. All those that groan and say ‘not a Greenie’, should wake up too. Remember, without a healthy productive. natural environment, we will not survive. We won’t survive with a degraded landscape (coal mining a prime offender, with coal seam gas a close second), with extinction of native animals which have been paramount in keeping plague species in check and surviving well under the ‘top to bottom feeder’ system. Once this is unbalanced, all hell breaks loose. By surrounding your Government with self-interest, vested interest, climate deniers, you are doing Australia a great disservice, and you will be remembered for this into the future, “
There’s a Leunig cartoon (as there always seems to be) that sums up their ability to lie. I can’t work out how to attach the cartoon, but here are the words:
‘Father, what is reliability?’
‘Reliability is the ability to tell a lie over and over again . . .’
PAUSE
‘to lie and re-lie and re-lie until the lie seems to sound like the truth . . . THAT’S RELIABILITY.’
“I thought until about a month ago, you were going B-plus, I think you’re now a D-minus,” Mr Hadley told Mr Abbott.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/ray-hadley-attacks-tony-abbotts-response-to-martin-place-siege-during-interview-20141218-129kfr.html
From the comments section after that article …..
“Abbott’s only achievement in his “year of achievement” is to unite the people against his party. Well done you.”
“Apparently, repealing a tax counts as an “achievement” these days.
Most of the so-called achievements seem to be getting rid of or negating things – eg stopping the boats and getting rid of the carbon tax and mining tax.
You could call tearing down a house an achievement, however, building one is more worthwhile.”
Now even the RSL are politely calling Abbott a hypocrite.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/rsl-attacks-the-abbott-government-over-diggers-pay-and-veterans-pension-20150113-12n88u.html
Reading Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything.
About the ‘corporate globalisation process’ (p. 19): But what remained successful were the ideological underpinnings of the entire project [from the first free trade deal to the creation of the WTO …], which was never about trading goods across borders…It was always about using these sweeping deals, as well as a range of other tools, to lock in a global policy framework that provided maximum freedom to multinational corporations to produce their goods as cheaply as possible and sell them with as few regulations as possible – while paying as little in taxes as possible. Granting this corporate wish list, we were told, would fuel economic growth, which would trickle down to the rest of us eventually. The trade deals mattered only in so far as they stood in for, and plainly articulated, this far greater agenda.”
Klein goes on to say how these deals are meant also as hedge against Climate Change, as signatories are bound by the terms of the deals restricting climate change abatement initiatives. Fascinating. Sound familiar?
Thank you Ms Lee for an unsurprising dissertation on his obfuscation, which has caused me mirth. Only as the alternative was tears. If you would like another giggle, there is an article on Independent Australia’s site by Steve Bishop on “The Climate Wars” (13/1/15). It has a really good rundown on the IPA and notes there are two publications available on climate change. One is from the IPA, at $24.95, and is a synopsis of why climate change is crap and we are all fools for believing it. The other is from the Royal Society representing the 97% of scientists who publish facts on why climate change is real and urgent. It is free. Again, I found the choice was mirth or tears. Take care
keep the list going…it will be great to use against Libs at the next election.
as for getting repeat prescriptions filled at the doctor for under 10 mins, I’m sure doctors will refuse to write any prescription repeat without THOROUGHLY examining the patient stretching it into a longer consultation thus getting more rebate. well a smart doctor/medical centre will do this won’t they!
I cannot believe that any sensible Australian who was not already a millionaire (or better) could support Abbott.
Kaye Lee’s list is telling, but you should look at http://www.sallymcmanus.net/abbotts-wreckage for a very comprehensive and continually up-dated list of all the damage Abbott’s government is doing – 412 items and growing daily.