Day to Day Politics: Why reward a bad government with another three years?
Tuesday May 10 2016
1 It’s going to be a stretched and arduous campaign. Labor is promoting the idea that a future Australia, an innovative, healthy and prosperous one, will depend on better education for our children and a world-class health system. It argues that the money saved by addressing tax rorts, tax evasion, taxpayer-funded subsidies and taxpayer-funded reductions in company tax is better spent on health, the environment and education. Jobs can be created in the new economy. In short, it’s about a fairer share of the nation’s equity to address inequality.
The Coalition argues that every need of every citizen can be addressed by using taxpayer funds to subsidise big business together with the rich and privileged because they alone generate the prosperity of the nation. That by using taxes to aid business they will create jobs and growth. It’s the notion that the poor and middle classes will be looked after by the drip down effect from the wealthy.
Of all the recent elections this one offers a distinctive choice, even a stark one. It’s two distinct philosophies, both to do with tax. One, that tax should serve the common good, or two, that tax be reduced for the wealthy in the hope that their wealth will leak into the poorer areas of society.
So we have a choice. Well for me there isn’t one. I’m locked into voting for a fairer society.
Some observations.
“In light of the Coalitions statement that they reject the full funding of Gonski I can but repeat the following and I shall do so many times prior to the next election”.
“For the life of me I fail to understand how anyone could vote for a party who thinks the existing education system is adequately funded and addresses the needs of the disadvantaged”.
“There is no greater need than the need for equality of opportunity in education”.
The reader might conclude that in drawing a distinction of the use of tax between the two major parties is just creating a class war. My answer to that is that the big end of town don’t need any reduction in tax rates. They are making enormous profits as it is. The rich and privileged don’t need to evade tax. They need to pay their fair share of it.
If it’s a class war it’s a bit one-sided. Corporates continuously lobby government for handouts. Right wing governments fight to give them all the assistance they can. The middle and lower classes have no fight in them. Some of them even vote for the bastards.
2 The Coalition would also argue that you should vote for them because they are the better economic managers. You should ignore it.
These facts are supplied by Alan Austin:
- Labor’s last deficit, 2012-13, was $18.8 billion.
- That was achieved when many OECD countries were still in recession.
- The deficit for 2013-14 was projected by the department heads to be $30.1 billion.
- After nine months of the Coalition it blew out to $48.5 billion.
- The department heads projected the deficit for 2014-15 to be just $24 billion.
- After 21 months of the Coalition it blew out to $37.9 billion.
- The department heads projected the deficit for 2015-16 to be just $4.7 billion.
- After 32 months of the Coalition that has now blown out to $39.9 billion.
3 Three polls were published on Monday. Newspoll has 51/49 to Labor. IPOS has the opposite and Galaxy has them 50/50.
The Crickey Bludgertrack summarises this way although it must be said that unless there is a uniform swing the polls won’t disclose, it’s obvious that for Labor to win 22 seats the election will be fought seat by seat.
UPDATE: BludgerTrack has had a feel of the four new opinion polls and found them to be, if not exactly budget bouncy, then tending to ameliorate what was probably an excessively favourable reading for Labor last week. The Coalition is now credited with having its nose in front on two-party preferred, assisted by a ReachTEL result that was better for them than the headline figure of 50-50 made it appear.
Morgan had some interesting figures on preferred PM. Turnbull 57% (but down 19%) still preferred Australian PM. Shorten 24% (up 10%) after Federal Budget handed down.
4 GPs are certainly not happy with the government’s plan to trying to enforce a GP co-payment by stealth by extending the freeze on Medicare rebates for another two years, saving them almost a billion dollars and forcing doctors to put their prices up. Posters are going up in every waiting room in the nation warning patients of the government’s plans. The bastards would privatise the Parliament if they had half the chance.
5 How could anyone seriously vote for a party that has performed so pathetically – that has so many unfair policies? Firstly with a leader in Tony Abbott who was nothing more than a grubby uncouth loudmouth gutter politician. Secondly, in the short time he has been in the job Malcolm Turnbull has proven to be the most hypocritical Prime Minister in our history. A party full of obnoxious liars with a ‘right to rule’ attitude. A party that has been in power for three years and on the eve of an election finally tells the country that it has a plan.
A party that argues it is the one better placed to govern for the next three years when it hasn’t done so for the past three. A party that has wasted three years into which nothing will be recorded by political historians as being worthwhile.
A party who boasts a plan for growth and jobs while there are more people looking for work now than at any time in the past twenty years. A plan three years in the making. Are the people of Australia really going to reward such abysmal governance with another term? Surely not.
A party that thinks Climate Change is an invention of the left to replace communism.
I had better stop there, my fingers are cramping.
Why reward a bad government with another three years? It’s tantamount to giving your approval to do the same thing again. You wouldn’t do that to your children.
My thought for the day.
“We dislike and resist change in the foolish assumption that we can make permanent that which makes us feel secure. Yet change is in fact part of the very fabric of our existence”.
PS. The Panama papers go online today.
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Return to home pageIt is becoming more evident that coalition policy on keeping people in detention on Manus and Nauru has some sinister political implications.
Dutton has pointedly done nothing to resettle these people beyond the expensive and futile exercise with Cambodia which, surprisingly, he has copped very little criticism.
As soon as anyone in Labor suggest that we need to sort out his fiasco – more so after the PNG Supreme Court ruling – Dutton is primed to jump in and claim that Labor are soft on people smugglers etc etc etc.
This man is dangerous.
I enjoy reading The Aim, but please “who” is for people, “which” is for things. A political party is a thing. It is possible that even to call one a thing is too much praise!
So it’s not class war!
1. So the coalition are not trying to keep wages low, or debt pressure high, creating workers who will be less likely to complain or make demands.
2. So the coalition don’t believe in a social hierarchy of “haves” and “have nots”. Which all boils down to the cheap labour they depend on to make their fortunes.
3. So the coalition love social spending and a “safety net”. and don’t want working people “over a barrel” and in a position to “work cheap or starve”.
4. So the coalition loves the minimum wage!
5. So the coalition hate “free trade” agreements. Why? Because they do not want to use a huge supply of desperately poor people in the third world who are “over a barrel” and will work cheap.
6. So the coalition love unions. Why? Because when labour “sticks together”, wages go up. That’s why workers unionize.
7. So the coalition have loved compulsory superannuation and Medicare since their inception.
8. So the coalition loves public education.
9. So the coalition loves progressive income tax.
THE LIBERAL DEFICIT is criminal. It’s called the wrecking the joint policy by Tony Abbott. Are you awake Australians? They haven’t done a bloody thing apart from blow out the deficit. Labor had great policies though some badly implemented in Gillard Rudd times.Though i am a hardliner on border control.
Citizen equality (1 vote = 1 value) lasts the 4 minutes it takes to complete a ballot paper – balance of the time, (as our democracy is constructed) it is money powerful (guess which party) over the money powerless (guess which party/ies) – what is missing in our democracy is a systemic mechanism to extending those 4 minutes.
I don’t think that having Kelly O’Dwyer on Q&A last night was helpful to Mal’s course. Sadly there’s not much to choose from…
Turnbull might hail the assassination of Australian citizens Neil Prakash and Shadi Jabar Khalil Mohammad a “very positive development in the war on terror” but I call any sentencing to death with unproven allegations an act of murder. Interestingly, the death penalty without trial also has the full support of the Labor Party. Welcome to the United Stated of Australia.
Liberal voters are bad people.
Why reward a bad government with another three years? It’s tantamount to giving your approval to do the same thing again.
My nan used to say: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.
If this mob is re-elected then we really do get the government we deserve and we are asking to be treated like fools.
It’s funny that the incumbents declare the opposition is starting a ‘class war’ by seeking equity. The underlying premise is that;
A) capitalism is good;
Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system, and competitive markets.
B) socialism is bad;
Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production, as well as the political ideologies, theories, and movements that aim at their establishment.
Our new world requires that we have socialism for the rich subsidised by capitalism for the poor.
Not a new concept. I came across a brilliant belated obituary for Gore Vidal, which I could not commend highly enough, in which one part refers to;
“Mr. Wilson then asks a simple question: Why must we pay so much? He notes the conventional answer: Since the cold war, foreign aid, and defense account for seventy-nine per cent of all Federal expenditures, putting the nation in permanent hock to that economic military complex President Eisenhower so movingly warned us against after a lifetime’s loyal service to it. There is of course some consolation in the fact that we are not wasting our billions weakening the moral fiber of the American yeoman by building him roads and schools, or by giving him medical care and decent housing. In public services, we lag behind all the industrialized nations of the West, preferring that the public money go not to the people but to big business. The result is a unique society in which we have free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich.”
Written in 1961.
The same article references his opinion of politicians;
Politicians: “Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.”
http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=10&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjav_H1ws7MAhWJl5QKHXx-Bu4QFghdMAk&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.marxist.com%2Fgore-vidal-belated-obituary.htm&usg=AFQjCNHoEXtsGKBTr0PQmoq6ucoKyVSnUw
There was a more contemporary assessment from 2014;
http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjav_H1ws7MAhWJl5QKHXx-Bu4QFggmMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbooks%2F2014%2Faug%2F29%2Fsocialism-for-the-rich&usg=AFQjCNEjl8mQlsuQX4mNjg1KmiCciFwu4g
The incumbents insist we not only ignore facts, as evidenced by recent history, but we keep doing it till it works. Was it Einstein?
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Another quote I found, that wasn’t attributed, went along the lines of;
“If they do it often, it isn’t a mistake. It’s their behaviour.”
It’s going to be a long eight weeks. I really do commend the Gore Vidal article. Thank you, Mr Lord. Take care
Chris Bowen at the National Press Club : articulate, well informed and across his brief.
What a contrast to Morrison who is a snake oil salesman with very few facts but oodles of Flim Flam .
What happens when the top 20% have all the money?
How do their businesses survive if the rest of us have nothing to spend?
So both LNP and Labor have come out with a no deal with the Greens policy
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says there is “absolutely no chance” of the coalition accepting a deal with the Greens to form a minority government.
However the Liberal Party has not ruled out preferencing the Greens ahead of Labor in marginal Victorian seats
But Opposition Leader Bill Shorten also moved to head off talk of a new deal and emphasised how determined he was to win enough seats to form government in his own right.
“He’s dreaming. Labor will fight this election to form its own Government,” he said.
Labor’s deputy leader Tanya Plibersek said the deal struck with the Greens in 2010 hurt the ALP.
Now the choice is clear that either LNP or Labor will form Government.The choice is yours
I’m retired, and should be feeling a small sense of security now after a lifetime of work and thrift, but I don’t.
I have 2 children and 4 grandchildren and a rising level fear and anxiety for them and their futures given the increasingly obvious prominence and power of the global corporate plutocracies, their agenda, and the craven government minions who have enabled them by accelerating the commoditisation of people.
The only things I have are a voice and a vote . . . and, it seems, only for as long as I’m allowed to use either.
‘The choice is clear that either LNP or Labor will form Government’.*
*Except, of course in the event of a hung parliament, in which case all the lofty hardlines of ‘NO DEALS’ being flung around will amount to mere wafts of wind, as the two major players (coke and pepsi) proffer their posteriors to the best bidders amongst the indis and minors.
Either way, my vote on the little sheet (HoR) amounts to very little, since my electorate is generationally a safe redneck seat.
On the other hand, my vote on the big sheet (senate) will actually give me a good chance of landing a few of my preferred candidates in the upper house of governmental oversight and review.
This is especially true given that I now have full option of making my own clear below the line preferencing .
The choice, again, is mine (unless, of course, a long-shot court challenge by some reactionary fundamentalist whack-job [Family First] takes this democratic option away from me).
If we end up with minority government will mean we have more than Labor and Liberals contributing. That was the message that Windsor was trying to spread when he supported Labor to form government.
Alliances, deals not necessary. it is up to minor parties and independents who and what they vote for.
Except for few matters that where li line with Labor policies, all where free to vote as they like.
We don’t have a 2 party system, but sadly that is how many believe should happen.
At any time during the term, all MPs are free to withdraw their support. The GG will then ask the Opposition to see if they can garner the vote. If not successful, call new election.
Abbott was cocky when dealing with the independents because he wanted nothing less new election. He truly believed in his own spin, that Gillard would fail. Sadly the Gillard government was productive, passed 3 budgets and survived full term. It was Rudd, not Abbott that pulled Gillard down.
I recall back to first time Howard run after he had been treasurer in a Coalition government. He run strongly on small business platform, as Turnbull is doing today.
I worked the poll in a area that was made up number of small businesses. All had grins mile wide during the day. All believe that Howard was their Saviour.
I had a great night when I watched Howard stumble on to the dais to announce he had failed. Don’t recall any Coalition government doing much for small business since then.
Why does Morrison scream at us, every time he comes on air. Would do well to move smug looking Kelly out of range.