Sky News reports:
On a two party preferred basis, Labor’s support is up two per cent to 55 and the Coalition’s is down from 47 to 45 per cent. The survey, published in The Australian, shows the Coalition has lost two points in the primary vote down to 40 per cent, while Labor remains steady at 48.
UPDATE: The Australian’s graphic here. John Howard is down 3 per cent on both performance satisfaction and better prime minister.
558 Comments
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I think HECS is actually a good tax-I wouldn’t touch it. The good thing about it is that it doesn’t kick in until someone has the capacity to pay it without it being an undue burden, so to that extent it’s a progressive tax. Our tertiary education sector needs more money, and for most universtity graduates a degree is a passport to a satisfying job and a good income after a few years, so let’s keep HECS. It would be unfair for people in blue collar/lower white collar jobs to fund the university system from their taxes, when they don’t get the benefit. And you can play with HECS to encourage people to move to or avoid particular courses, depending on society’s needs.
I know much less about how TAFE is funded, but would something similar work there? People with a trade who work hard and are smart enough to make a business out of their skills can make big money, which is a great thing (provided they don’t cheat on their tax! I think the black economy is still alive and well, from my experience.) Isn’t it reasonable that people who are enjoying a high income through the TAFE education should also put a bit back into the system which got them started?
Howard will make a concession speech. He has lost elections before and he knows the taste of both victory and defeat. He is not so unrealistic to think he can prevent a change of government by wishing it away.
Help Help Help - This Liberal launch is VERY VERY VERY BORING.
Howard has just said that the government is free of debt. I read some where that it’s a furphy that they’ve paid off all the debt. Can anyone confirm that the govt has no debt and if it does have some debt, how much?
453
Observer Says:
November 12th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Help Help Help - This Liberal launch is VERY VERY VERY BORING.
….
It’s intentionally done, Observer: they want to dull you into submission.
Stephen Mayne @ Crikey has been banging on about this for a LONG time. I’ll look for a link.
$50 odd billion of govt bonds……..johnny keeps forgetting
RBA rate rise alert
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/rba-rate-rise-alert/2007/11/12/1194766554622.html
Homeowners reeling from last week’s interest rate rise may have to further trim Christmas budgets with another hike possible as early as next month.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), in its quarterly monetary policy statement released today, has warned that inflation pressures are likely to continue until March 2008.
Right before libs campaign launch ! Great stuff. We just need rodent to trip over when getting onto the stage
Depends on how you measure it.
There are slightly more than A$60bn worth of Government bonds on issue.
But these are only on issue to make the financial markets function more smoothly. The Government also holds other assets - most notably the Future Fund.
If you count the Future Fund as an asset, then they have a net 0 position becuase the amout they owe in Government bonds is cancelled out by the assets.
But the only reason they have the Future Fund is because of the unfunded Superannuation liability…. which probably should count as debt, to be fair. In which case the Future Fund and the Super Liabiliity cancel out and you are left with a net debt position (from memory).
If I had to guess I’d suggest about A$30bn.
When have no NET DEBT.
Reason is to keep the market in government bonds functional.
Smirk gave a commitment couple years ago. You never know when borrowings will be required by governments of either persuasion in the future.
Gippslander
Plenty of students will line up to do Medicine if more places are provided.
Re nursing and teaching, the pay rates post 5 years out of training are so low compared to other areas. But teachers and nurses have transferable skills. The 5 years they have put in and the skills they have developed make them very employable elsewhere. I know this from experience. I have worked in large corporates and there are plenty of ex teachers and some ex nurses there. These people are usually earning at least 1.5 times what they would be getting back in schools / hospitals, and often much much more. The stress is no where as great as being in a hospital or school.
It is society that is the loser here. The individual teacher or nurse can vote with his / her feet. But society will pay in the long run.
The RBA statement this morning hints at another rise in February. The chance of a Dec rate rise has fallen considerably.
Though if the main banks pass on a rate rise of their own accord, mortgage rates could still rise in Dec.
When is the next galaxy poll? Galaxy are proven to be the most reliable, so does anyone know when the next galaxy poll will be conducted/released?
Ladies and Gentlemen of Australia, today the people of this great country have decided who will govern our great land for the next three years. Whilst I am saddened that I and Peter are now out, I am greatful that he’ll never be Prime Minister. As for those people on Blogs, I never read anything you wrote so there etc etc
sigh - Shanahack won’t be deterred. What next?: “majority of voters prefer PM’s tie colour - Howard on the way back (film at eleven)”. Pity the newspoll he owns won’t deliver for him….
All they’re doing at the Libs launch is bashing state governments. BORING. I don’t think they realise that most people are entirely sick of the Federal Government blaming the States for everything.
Parammatta Moderate: HECS isn’t a progressive tax, because as soon as you get to the next threshold you pay that rate on all your income and not just on the income over that threshold. It’s quite possible that earning $1 more a year means you end up paying $370 more in tax (based on going from 2nd highest bracket to the highest). Recent changes to HECS also means the amount is not calculated on your taxable income but the which means tax minimisation efforts are negated. From the ATO’s website they say they calculate based on - “Taxable income plus any net rental losses, total reportable fringe benefits amounts and exempt foreign employment income”.
There are also some people, like me, who have SFSS debts and in the last few years I was paying 12% extra tax. You can’t tell me that that is progressive? How is one supposed to afford a house, little own afford rent. In my case that equated to about an extra $10K/y.
I don’t think anyone has an issue in repaying HECS, but the debts and the scales are so out of whack that its no wonder there are people struggling to afford a house.
I think it’s time for an overhaul in both calculating HECS for subjects, but also how it’s repaid and allow people to afford to live.
There were a few Pollyannas a few days ago who didn’t detest Keystone Keelty the way I did. I maintain he will be one of the first to go in two weeks and provide further evidence. Moronic sums it up.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22743536-601,00.html
Morning ‘Bludgers, depressed manics, Howard Haters, roller-coaster riders and Glen.
I’m finally going to make my call on the election results: 53/47 on the day (or should that be der Tag?)
The Coalition of the Narrowing has today’s launch to pull any remaining rabbits out of any remaining hats, after which any further rabbits will be turned into felt and thence to Akubra hats which will be duly supplied to the likes of Shanahan, Milne, “Saint” Paul Kelly, Greg Sheridan for their gastronomic pleasure.
Judging from Downer’s article this morning, it’s best to keep him on a Nil-Per-Mouth diet, no hats supplied for the eating, so that he may quietly expire from political starvation surrounded by friends and family, as he drowns in his own bile and hissy juices. Downer is one of a kind in the tantrum throwing stakes and we - from both sides of politics - should all work together to make sure the mold is broken there and then on November 24th, once and for all.
We are about to witness the final Götterdämmerung of the Liberal and National Agrarian Socialist parties as the backbenchers in outlying provinces realise the game is finally up and that it’s time to crawl through the sewers on the off-chance they may survive the coming storm, that it’s every man and woman for himself and herself… “Suave qui peut” indeed.
In the washup they may console themselves (and indeed more than a few Laborites, if said Laborites are honest with themselves) that if the mad Christians and neo-cons can be cut out of their belioved parties there’s a chance that some of the corrupt, bloated State Labor governments may just get the chop at their respective next electoral outings. Slim chance, I know, given the range of fundalmentalist, suicidal insanities that seems to have gripped to Tories - where a self-administered bullet to the brain is seen as more honourable than actually competing in and winning elections - but where there’s a spark of life, it seems there’s a spark of hope. However, fellow ‘Bludgers, don’t hold your breath on that one.
Somebody told Johnny that an orangutan might help him stem the tide, but with Rudd finally showing some cojones at last and actually sounding like he wants to win an election rather than adjourn it, meetingwize, until 2010, I think the security guards will be out in force at Kirribilli on the 25th, checking the removalist’s cardboard boxes for contraband bottles of claret and the odd crystal chandelier that their erstwhile master and mistress may seek to smuggle out as souvenirs.
Wenck is not coming. The 9th Army is a rabble. The edifice of Howardian invulnerability is rubble… and all but the last few remaining diehards know it.
This is not to say they can’t do some spiteful damage in the next two weeks, but I believe, to all intents and purposes, the Party’s over.
Hundreds of thousands of polled citizens in scores of polls have shopwn this for a long time. Way back when La Grattan first querelously wrote that a poll loss for the government after the 2006 Budget was “counter-intuitive” (but the loyal stenographers of the ABC were still insisting that Labor couldn’t take a trick) we saw the first hints that all might not be well in Howard World. Despite Trioli’s knicker-wetting protestations last August that L’il Johnnie could stay PM “for as long as he liked” after defeating… what?… a limp lettuce leaf in the form of Costello’s delusions of Lodge-linked grandeur, the slippery slide downwards has been inexorable. Even then, in that August-September sunshine of last year the Coalition had already won the last opinion poll that it would ever win in what would become its last term of government. The die was already cast, and the cast - Howard and his leadership team, plus the whole corrupted cesspit that the public service has become - would also die (politically, at least)… as dead as dodos… mourned even less.
Expect to see, in the next two weeks among the Tory faithful, sudden unexplained absences, quiet denials of fealty, the odd pocket of local Lib resistance wiped out as Labor’s campaign gets into top gear, steamrolling across the Molonglo, with the ammunition it has been hoarding until now expended fully, accurately and devastatingly in the direction of the Coalition bunker.
The public’s money - $200 million of it, looted from our taxes and the hated GST - has been paid out to their cronies in the advertising and media industries and, once the dust has settled, will soon start to trickle back into their greedy pockets as kickbacks in cash and kind over the next few years. They’ll be alright, Jack.
Labor will need to clean up a few outstanding issues: the Kids Overboard, AWB, Haneef, Hicks. The dispossessed and hopeless of Nauru will need hope. A Republic will be back on the agenda and will sail through without opposition.
And perhaps in the midst of all this we can think a little to the future, a Howard-Costello-Downer-Andrews-Ruddock-Minchin-Mirabella-free future. That, fellow ‘Bludgers, to this non-smoker, is a pleasant prospect, n’est ce pas?
LOL - They’ve blamed Labor for the drought! Now we know there are a few Gods in Labor - but really!
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/eaten-by-singapore/2007/07/21/1184560106866.html
“While other nations such as China, Singapore, Russia, Korea, Kuwait and Norway build up huge sovereign funds, Australia, with its world-beating dowry of natural assets, still has a Federal Government with a negative net worth of $10 billion in the middle of an unprecedented commodities boom.
Even including the $52 billion in the Future Fund and all land and defence assets, these assets do not exceed the $50 billion in outstanding federal debt and $111 billion in unfunded superannuation liabilities as at June 30, 2007.”
About HECS debts – they sure are a burden, especially with the lower thresholds introduced under Howard; one of my students was hit for HECS repayments before he’d even finished his degree because he earned too much working part-time!
But the bigger problem is that the total payment the universities receive from the Commonwealth isn’t enough to cover the cost of teaching publicly funded students. Last time I looked, it didn’t even pay wages. That means that the universities are falling over themselves to get fee-paying students, preferably internationals, because they at least cover their own costs. Tilts the whole playing field the wrong way, and makes any idea of equity a joke.
Where’s the “Liberal” logo?
The other thing about our dept levels, how have they ‘paid them off’, by selling the kitchen silverware to their mates down at the local members only club. Charles Old chap, we’ve found this old telecommunication business in the backroom, do you think you could whip up a few $’s for it. Its always amazed me that Australians aren’t shouting at this rabble, ‘you sold it for much less than it was worth”.
Is the projected JWH education rebate possibly part of a Secret Brethren deal to help save Bennelong, two birds one stone? Isn’t there a Brethren school in that electorate that has already benefitted from considerable federal funding????
Today’s Piping Shrike’s blog entry should be mandatory reading for everyone at the ALP campaign headquarters. Top-notch analysis.
He’s insane! Somone commit him!
GetUp is up to stuff again. Raising for the:
‘launching the final stage of “Australia GetsUp ‘07″– the largest independent election effort in Australian history. Our ambitious 2 week plan: focus the media on key progressive issues and directly reach thousands of swinging voters in key electorates nationwide.’
https://www.getup.org.au/campaign/AustraliaGetsUp07&id=226
god Costello is boring.
‘There were never reds under the bed, just economic conservatives!’ Oh Costello stop, my sides are splitting.
The federal government has no net debt. But the household sector and the nation as a whole has record debt. Remember Howard’s debt truck, which rolled around the country ahead of the 1996 election? Foreign net debt has more than doubled since then from $193 billion to $554 billion, or more than 50 pct of GDP.
Costello speaking - and every minute another 1000 or so people turn off……
It’s a sign of true desperation that Costello is clinging to the Garrett JOKE for dear life.
For the first time I was looking at the fine print of today’s newspoll. It says the voting intentions questions are based on a sample of 1694, while the economy question is on a sample of 1119. A footnote to the economy question says that the last few surveys have been of ‘voters only’ (this note doesn’t seem to apply to the voting intentions question).
Does anybody know why there is a 500+ difference in the two samples (presumably done with the same phone calls) and whether the difference relates to the ‘voters only’ footnote? If so, why would newspoll as voting intentions of 500+ non-voters?
Costello - there WERE reds under the beds !
Better then stand up. But all there today KNOW they are going down and its a long way to fall
I hope Labor change everything the Liberals have stuffed up.
Costello has learnt something from Howard, how to lie.
‘Which abolished superannuation…’
In spite of the applause, I think he meant TAX on superannuation. What a room full of clowns.
Mercifully, these premises are sky-tv-free
Costello, Zzzzzzzz
So we can fund education and health - piffle. Costello is a wally.
At least they have Can’t Do Newman as MC - he will be the the head Rat in 2 weeks.
Vaile now. Not sure if he has a skateboard under the podium…
Hemingway @358
Yep. I saw that 7:30 interview where both Sol and Stirton said that if by end of week 4 and no movement, then The Coal is stuffed.
The Nationals are now irrelevant they might as well just merge with the Liberals.
The Nationals might soon be the senior partner in the coalition.
Hang on, AM, the Gnats just might be the major party in the next coalition opposition.
I must say I’m feeling much better now with less than 2 weeks to run. Was a bit worried the rodent would manage to close the gap.
I think $Sweetie must have been gunning for a place on ‘The Chaser’, and if you thought $Sweetie was boring - Vailllleee……. ZZZZZZZZZZZ
Just reading a bit of local news online, how’s this for a comment from Family First. “Anti-Government activists have organised a disgraceful campaign” I thought they were anti-government, why start another party if you think that you are part of one already, Bizzare, mind you I never did understand FF.
Snap
OK. National Party primary voting intention collapses by 20% in newspolls between 2-4 Nov and 9-11 Nov (5% down to 4%).
Caponbackwardsgate?
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