Have Another Beer Because There’s No Such Thing As A Free Lunch!

Now, I know that some of you have trouble understanding basic economics. That’s because you’re all Labor supporters. Or even worse, you’re one of those environmentalists who are sabotaging the coal industry by using the courts to stop the Envrionment Minister from ignoring the law.

But I think that I need to explain why the Liberals are much better economic managers. Let’s take Bernardi and Abetz. They’ve recently been criticised for spending taxpayer money to attend a group concerned about taxpayer money being wasted. What their critics overlook is that this was in 2012 when Labor was in charge, so if these two wasted money, it – like all economic problems – was Labor’s fault!

Of course, we know that some of the reason that these two are being singled out is because of their stance on same sex marriage. Bernardi and Abetz have managed to articulately argue that children need a mother and father to be well-balanced, so if they happen to have two parents of the same sex, then these parents shouldn’t be able to formally declare their commitment to one another by marrying. This might lead the children somehow not realising that they were deprived by not having a mother AND father, and then they’d be even more unbalanced because they might grow up to think that it was perfectly ok to be raised by two men or two women. However, I’ve seen “Modern Family” and I know that two gay parents may lead to their child growing up Asian.

But we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about the Liberal superior economic performance. As Tony Abbott said, “Growth and jobs!”

Or was it “Jobs and growth”?

Whichever, you have to admit that it’s a damn fine policy because it’s only three words long, and it’s just what we need now that unemployment has just reached a thirteen year high. The last time unemployment was this high, Tony Abbott was a lowly employment minister.

Unlike Labor, who were fortunate enough to have the GFC to boost employment, the Liberals have had to deal with such setbacks as the closure of the car industry and the enormous number of public servants being made redundant, as well as many, many people refusing to work just because the government cut funding to the organisation which employed them.

But I saw that Joe Hockey has a plan to fix things: We need to reduce personal income tax. It’s stifling growth. Just like the carbon tax. And the mining tax. (The GST, on the other hand, is completely different and not something we should discuss until we’re prepared to have a mature conversation and not just have a scare campaign where Labor try to suggest that it’s a great big tax on everything because that’s just the sort of scare campaign that they’d tried before the election when they tried to suggest that the Liberals would raise the GST!)

He’s right. The reason I wouldn’t take $500,000 a year jobs if one was offered to me is the realisation that I’d be paying nearly a quarter of a million dollars in tax and that’s more than my mortgage. No wonder all those high paying jobs need people on 457 visas! (Mm, random thought: are there 456 visas and, if not, why not?)

It seems that the reason that the Abbott government hasn’t been able to bring the Budget back into surplus is because of all these taxes. If we can just reduce government revenue then we’ll be ok, because if the government doesn’t have any revenue then they won’t have anything to spend and then everything will be ok.

But somehow the Liberals are having trouble getting their message out, in spite of the front page of a Murdoch paper telling us that if Labor were to reduce emissions by lots and lots then it would add several billion dollars to the power bill of every household by the year 3129. Somehow, the criticism of the ex-Speaker for taking the odd flight has been the only thing that people talked about. Andrew Bolt said that it could be called “misogyny” if only Bronwyn Bishop were Julia Gillard, and not prepared to play that card because she’s someone who got where she was by merit and not because the Liberals had an artificial quota system which might boost the number of women in Cabinet to somewhere near the number of National Party members who have all been appointed on merit – because let’s face it, there is some merit in being a member of the National Party.

However, it was Greg Hunt’s performance on AM this morning that impressed me most of all.

GREG HUNT: Well we’ve already achieved 47 million tonnes of reductions at under $14 per tonne from what has been not just a successful auction but a stunningly successful approach as opposed to massively higher electricity prices, massively lower household costs

So, just by beginning the Direct Action scheme, we’ve already reduced emissions by millions of tonnes. Just a few weeks later. They’ve already achieved it!

Amazing!

No, when I said that I didn’t believe that Abbott could cut taxes for everyone, not cut spending, and still balance the Budget, particularly as the carbon tax was a gigantic tax on everything, I overlooked the obvious: Saying that you’ll do something in the future is just the same as doing it.

P.S. Whatever happened to Mal Brough? I mean, apart from being elected to Parliament. He took a particular interest in the Speaker’s position in 2012, and was once touted as a potential leader of the Liberals, but nobody ever seems to mention him as a possible minister. Guess he must be too busy giving advice to staffers…