‘The defence minister, David Johnston, has blamed the previous Labor government after Tony Abbott’s departure for Indonesia was delayed by technical problems with his RAAF jet on Wednesday.
‘Abbott was due to meet Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Batam Island later in the day to improve relations damaged by spying revelations and asylum seeker policies.
‘But his departure from Canberra was delayed for several hours and a replacement jet had to be brought in.
‘Johnston said the Rudd government had given the Coalition a “hospital handball” by renewing the contract on the current fleet of jets just before the 2013 election.
“I was very unhappy about that,” Johnston said.’
The Guardion
God, are there no depths to which Labor will sink to sabotage the Liberals. Making Tony Abbott late. Of course, they should have SPENT MONEY on new jets. I mean, it’s not like anyone was complaining about their SPENDING.
And this is on top of the way they have the Budget blowing out over the next four years. It’s not Joe Hockey’s fault that it’s projected to blow out to three times what it was when Labor left office. There’s nothing he could do to stop that. After all, raising taxes isn’t an option because they specifically ruled that out before the election. (Although Hockey did say that it was nonsense to suggest that they’d promised no new taxes when it was via a new levy that they were going to pay for the PPL, and a levy is clearly a tax unless it’s being temporarily applied to high income earners.)
Then, on top of all the things that Labor has done, we have the Fair Work Commission increasing the minimum wage by a whopping $18.70 a week. That’s going to cost jobs, according to Mr Hockey. After all, it’s about four middies and while a visit to the doctor is only two middies and not worth worrying about, four middies is serious money.
I suggested to a Labor voting acquaintance that if we abolished the minimum wage altogether, people would work for half the wage – particularly after the freeze on the dole for under 30s – then we’d be able to employ twice as many. He showed his economic ignorance by asserting that if people were earning less, then they’d spend less and that’d lead to a slump in economic growth, but that just shows how out of touch Labor people are.
“That’s just the sort of woolly logic that led to the recession Australia experienced during the Global Financial Crisis,” I told him.
“There was no recession in Australia,” he argued.
“Well, not technically, but that was only because Labor spent all our money. If they hadn’t done that, we’d have had a recession like the good lord meant us to.”
He attempted to change the subject by arguing that economics has nothing to do with religion.
But I steered him back to the point: How our lack of a balanced budget was Labor’s fault for introducing a carbon tax when Julia Gillard promised in one speech that she wouldn’t.
“She said there’d be no carbon tax,” I told him, “and that speech was replayed over and over again after the election, so it’s not like the Australian people didn’t hear her broken promise!”
“But what about Abbott’s broken promises?”
“He had to break them because of Labor. If Whitlam hadn’t introduced Medicare, the country would have plenty of money.”
“Actually, Whitlam introduced Medibank, then Fraser and Howard trashed it to the point it wasn’t recognisable.”
“That has nothing to with what we’re discussing. We’re discussing ways of getting the lazy, unemployed back to work.”
“Why is that just last year, anyone losing their job was due to Labor incompetence?”
“You mean like when they mandated keeping a log book for leased cars? That nearly caused the death of our car industry.”
“Which Abbott and Hockey finished off by cutting subsidies…”
“Why should unprofitable companies expect to be subsidised by government?”
“Then why do they give such handouts to mining companies?”
“Because mining companies are profitable and they create jobs!”
“Then why do they need subsidies?”
“Oh, so you want to indulge in class warfare and attack the tall poppies. You just hate anyone who’s successful.”
“I give up,” he said, throwing his hands in the air and walking off.
Typical Labor man, I thought, they can’t stand it when you use a logical, consistent argument.
