The latest fortnightly Roy Morgan survey has Labor’s two-party lead increasing from 59-41 to 60-40. Labor’s primary vote is steady on 50 per cent, while the Coalition’s is down 1.5 per cent to 34 per cent. The balance is evenly distributed among the Greens, Family First and others.
Other news:
• Antony Green tells you everything you need to know about all this double dissolution talk.
• Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald reports the Liberal contest to replace Brendan Nelson in Bradfield could develop into a contest between two big conservative guns: The Australian’s opinion page editor Tom Switzer, and John Howard’s legendary former chief-of-staff Arthur Sinodinos.
• The Federation Press will publish a self-explanatory volume entitled Australia: The State of Democracy, edited by Marian Sawer, Norman Abjorensen and Phil Larkin of the Democratic Audit of Australia, on June 15.
• Brian Costar of Swinburne University of Technology reviews the implications of the Victorian Ombudsman’s recent report into Brimbank City Council and the related internal matters of the Victorian ALP.
• The Victorian Parliament’s Electoral Matters Committee has published the final report of its Inquiry Into Political Donations and Disclosure, which I won’t claim to have read at this stage.
• Two electoral events in Western Australian tomorrow: the daylight saving referendum, which you can discuss here, and the Fremantle by-election, which you can discuss and read about in very great detail here.
886 Comments
The next Morgan poll will be interesting in that it will show fairly accurately just what the Budget effect on voting intentions is as this poll was taken before the Budget although there were substantial budget leaks to at least give people a reasonable idea of what the Budget would contain.
That being the case, then there seems so far to be a tick of approval from the electorate.
And thus the natural order was restored to the electorate.
Stand easy
Wonderful times to be an ALP supporter eh?
Also it indicates that all the bluff and bluster by Turnbull and Hockey leading up to the Budget release was rejected by the electorate at large.
The fact that Turnbull’s Budget reply speech and the subsequent follow up commentary by both Turnbull and Hockey, (especially on Q&A last night) differed not one jot from the pre-budget commentary, should mean that there is unlikely to be “ANY” bounce in upcoming polls towards the Coalition.
This will be a major concern for their support base and will further undermine Turnbull’s leadership support.
Where’s Boerwar? The ASX is up 1.6% today… it must still be the budget, or Turnbull’s brilliant reply right?
I predict Labor’s lead will increase in next week’s Newspoll.
Yes, after all the buildup and hype from the Liberal media toadies, Turnball’s Budget Reply was a fizzer!
I agree with you but Kieran Gilbert on Lib…. err ….Sky Noos said it was a srong speech and should secure his leadership to the next election. Promises, promises.
srong = strong
I think the ASX is up because after Turnbull’s reply the market is confident that Swan will remain treasurer for some time
The proportion of people who went to the trouble of listening to Turnbull’s reply would be small compared to those who listened to the budget. Therefore, I think Tunbull’s effort will make minimal difference either way. The budget was likely to impress, with its rise to the pension and huge infrastructure investment. People can see that these are the measures appropriate for the times. Next Newspoll to show a 2-point improvement to the government.
I sees it but I don’t believe it. Now this is absurd and hurting their cause. Ungrateful pr…s.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/protesting-pensioners-stop-cbd-traffic-20090515-b5g1.html
Gary at number 11: You can bet your life they are the sort of geniuses who will join with the coalition in moaning about “the government going into debt”.
I agree GB – all those “representative” pensioners protestors are doing now is exposing that they are hopelessly partisan and anti-Labor, and will never be satisfied. Rudd or Swan should ask them where they were when Howard refused to raise the pension despite ten years of budget surpluses?
The answer is that Howard knew they would vote for him anyway and so did nothing, as Poss’s analysis shows:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2009/05/15/gen-blue/
Surely it would make more sense for the Libs if Switzer got Bradfield and Sinodinos got Mackellar (at the expense of the now increasingly-dead wood Bishop). It makes no sense for the two of them to get into a major preselection fight, when there’s plenty of deadwood lying around on the Opposition backbenches.
An even better idea would have been to put Switzer in Robertson (against the highly vulnerable Belinda Neal) and Sinodinos in Bradfield. That way, you get both of them into parliament as well as picking up a marginal seat.
Spot on Cuppa (12).
5 Dario, now come on, you know whatever Rudd does that seemingly turns negative somehow is his fault but when it seemingly has a positive effect it has nothing to do with him. Haven’t you learned anything yet?
The Budget speech was watched by about 1.07 million viewers. The Budget reply was watched by 0.72 million.
Seems the listening audience to Turnbull last night was 721,000.
Keiran Gilbert needs to take a cold shower but nothing like talking up your boy. Hewson was trying hard this to do the same with Gilbert on Agenda.
Malcolm has to get personal tho – his comment that his speech and the hard decision to increase ciggies’ tax shows he is a better man than that dreadful Rudd is hilarious too,
I watched Q&A last night.
Lindsay Tanner
Is a spanner
Loosening the nuts of the Liberal machine
Joe Hockey
Is too cocky
Whining and jibing and shouting obscene
I think even the most hardened Liberal fanwill find the above poem a self complete, self supporting argument.
Sorry, I should have known
Ah, you beat me, Itep. We tuned in to the 7.30 Report – watched footy tips on Fox for the first half which was far more interesting than Mr Turnbull’s half-truths.
Listening audience?
Lol !!! It was so boring and with Turnbull just droning on, I went to sleep two thirds of the way through.
My feeling is that those who tuned in to catch Turnbull were predominantly Coalition supporters, looking to see what “their boy” had to say.
Will Tom Switzer continue editing the opinion section of The Australian from the Liberal backbench? This would complete the merger, as well as transferring his salary to the taxpayer. A nice arrangement all round.
Adam, he hasnt done that for a while.
Looks like Turnbull is moving along the same lines as Howard in wanting to eliminate Medicare. They do love to give the Government a range of things to bash them about the head with, don’t they. Just love their strategy.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/15/2571709.htm?section=justin
Dario – yeah, you got me. It shld have been watching altho probably many of them were listening hard to hear what his debt would be.
He must be mad with Hockey for spitting out the $25b. less figure the other day. But his debt is the ‘name he cannot speak’ so there should be no more silly comments about Swannie not mentioning his debt.
Kindly do NOT spoil my jokes with tiresome facts, Possum.
Ooh, sorry.
Normal standup will now resume.
Hey, Vera – have I missed you out the front of Turnbull’s office in your ‘altogether’. I’d drive to Sydney for that. Especially if you were joined by Fielding in his. lol.
Heard Grattan, Malcolm Farr and Bongiorno on RN this a.m. – none of them were impressed with Turnbull last night except for in the delivery of the speech. His barrister’s wormly ways were good experience for delivery. None were impressed by the content. Their comments were interesting.
There is still one credible, potentially damaging team yet to give their critique on the budget – The Chaser Team.
Turnbull does a good line in haughty contempt. That may go down well in court but it won’t win him an election.
The claim that Liberals make against Rudd – “all talk no substance” – surely applies to Turnbull after last night’s little effort.
Wouldn’t that mean that the taxpayer ie the Government, have to subsidise those without the ability to pay for comprehensive health cover, wouldn’t that mean that the Government would have to cover the total cost of those who cannot afford comprehensive health cover like pensioners, the disabled, the unemployed and those on low incomes who can barely exist now?
Wouldn’t it be better to have a universal comprehensive health cover for “ALL” Australians rather than the costly and inequitable mismatch we have now which excludes a major portion of the population from decent health care and is becoming prohibitively expensive?
Oh, I remember now. We once had that. Brought in by Gough Whitlam, wasn’t it? And it was a program that John Howard and the vested interests in the Medical Profession and their Union, the AMA vowed to destroy and almost succeeded.
On a completely random note (mainly because I have nothing to contribute about Turnbull’s budget reply as I was winning money at poker), I think Labor has been extremely lucky with the news coverage this week regarding the budget.
On the week when it would ordinarily expect to get pilloried on the front pages every day, they’ve been relegated to the inside pages of the tabloids thanks to Matthew Johns (at least in the Northern states).
One has to feel mildly sorry for the Coalition (although I view it through the lens of schadenfreude) about this. They have one opportunity for a good week and they lose it through no fault of their own…
Yeah, no wonder Judges and Jurors go to sleep during trials. It lulled me off to sleep when I wasn’t even tired.
‘Haughty contempt’ is excellent, Poss. They’re the words I have been trying to find in my somewhat aged brain. Thanks. It is perfect.
http://business.smh.com.au/business/a-nation-of-whingers-20090515-b5bm.html?page=-1
Psephos
Do your cats wear pyjamas? With different designs on them? And with food stains? Because if they did then we could have this :
Adam’s cats’ pyjamases’s dinners’s stains match their patterns’s colours. I think.
Yo Ho Ho,
Looks like you can add whinging journalists to the tally.
In an ideal world Australia would have a health insurance industry which sold a product which Australians wanted to buy, without being forced to or bribed to do so with taxpayers’ money. Instead we have a health insurance industry which sells crap products which few people want to buy.
It’s quite an article. You can almost see the anger dripping off the page. Plust there’s plenty in there to agree and disagree with. Good times in my view.
Gotta love footy
Why does Malcolm want to fight the Govt. on Health issues?
Or was it a cunning plan to pass the Alcopops bill without a “back-flip” thus removing a DD trigger?
It was rumoured that the government was going to completely remove the 30 per cent rebate on plans that subsidised nonsense ‘medicine’ like crystal healing and homoeopathy, did they do this?
I have no problem with a person using those ‘remedies’ if they want to, but they shouldn’t receive ONE CENT of public money.
ShownOn, you’re just saying that because you’ve got shakra issues.
The new Liberal Private Medicare scheme is called: MalChoices.
Yes, who do you trust to make you better when you are sick, it’s MalChoices. We can guarantee that the Malpractice is always with you.
The Govt should ditch the 30% rebate on Private Health insurance premiums, ditch the increased Medicare levy for those high income earners who do not take out insurance.
This revenue should be returned to the Public Hospital system.
Then it would not matter if the policies include shakra stimulating – if people want it they can insure for it.
Dario et al
All right, all right, so the stock market is up today. Irrational exuberance emanating from day trading kiddies combined with thin volumes overcomes the commonsense of older and wiser investors who realize that the budget has cost them money. The instos are staying out as well. Just give reality some time. Youse’ll see.
BTW am I the only bludger who thinks the budget itself was based on irrational exuberance or is everyone here happy that Swan has based it on accurate forecasts?
btw Where is Centre? After his statement yesterday, I hope he didn’t short today’s market. lol.
Ahem…
Psephos
Posted Friday, May 15, 2009 at 3:19 pm | Permalink
Turnbull does a good line in haughty contempt. That may go down well in court but it won’t win him an election.
Bye for now
“Turnbull takes aim at ‘one-term’ Rudd”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25487718-601,00.html
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
BH, it’s blowing like buggery here and I allready got the Canine Flu (crook as a dog
) so I squibbed going to Sydney to get my kit off 
So these Pensioners for a decade preferred to eat home brand dog food on an inadequate pension to support their boy in office rather than protest and vote for someone who might and did increase their pension. And having received the increase they are unhappy and obviously prefer the good old days of home brand.
OK its no joke, we would like all our seniors looked after to the extent that we can afford.
Just how does Australia & States stack up on the international stage?
Psephos – OK I’ll give it to you as well. Still absolutely perfect and I’m glad Poss reiterated it.
Boerwar – A bloke who was, I think, either a Treasury or financial adviser to Fraser/Howard told La Trioli yesterday a.m. on Breakfast that he doesn’t believe Swan & Treasury’s growth figures of 4.5%. He believes they will be much LARGER. He thinks Swan is playing it down at the moment.
Make of that what you will.
Gee. Vera – no excuses please. Your altogether and a runny nose would be a wonderful sight. Hope you feel better soon tho cos you’ll need to cheer the Swannies on this w/end. We need a good win.
BH,
I’ve always thought him to be more collected and reasonable than Spears. Maybe he needs a holiday if Spears is rubbing off on him?
The protesting pensioners (all 9 of them) weren’t angry about not getting a big enough rise they were angry that it was Rudd and not their boy Howie that gave it to them and the chance that Rudd is now the darling of the majority of pensioners
that truckie whose wheels one of them was lying under should have run over the silly old C.
35,
You reap the karma you sow …… payback for the Howard years
It’s time Turnbull was sacked by his own party. His comment about everyone having private health insurance in an ideal world showed that he has absolutely no idea about health and public hospitals. If everyone had private insurance, all their operations would be done my consultants and there would be no training of registrars to replace them. The medical system would collapse in about 10 minutes as there are not enough specialists to do all the work anyway.
He clearly has no commitment to training and research, or to the future of medicine in Australia.
Have not! Go drink your own possum urine.
BH hopefully the Swannies can do the right thing by us this weekend, Hmm Labor holding off the dreaded narrowing, Rudd still going strong on his honeymoon and a Swannie and Bunny win
I’d settle for that
Juliem – yes he has always been more reasonable but he really was pumping up Turnbull this morning. I was surprised because the SkyNoos report on Turnbull’s speech was a very short, sharp bit which made me think he had mangled it.
We didn’t watch it – watched first half of footy tips on Fox and then 7.30 Report. Brissenden didn’t seem too enthralled with the speech and neither did Uhlmann which was surprising.
Was very surprised at Kieran’s take on it this morning. I have more regard for him than Spiers who is just a lib sycophant.
I wonder if Labor do in the end change the access rules to Superannuation to 67 to match that of the pension (as per Age article today in an earlier link) they will lose a large percentage of over 50 voters? I am guessing that it would be very unpopular.
Spiers has been spending the day chatting to John Howard, if anyone can be bothered to watch the 40 min interview is on Sky Noos at 8:15 tonight.
Jon Altman From yesterday’s Crikey.
‘The key message from Budget 2009-10 for Indigenous Australians in Australia (as distinct from just in the NT) is that there is too little targeting of enhanced support to the most marginal section of Australian society. There are a number of welcome new measures and additional allocations. But this Budget is, at best, about maintaining the status quo with the hope that economic recovery will see Indigenous re-engagement with the mainstream. This is a limited vision and strategy that might in itself not accord with the diverse aspirations of Indigenous Australians. The Global Economic Crisis will impact severely on the most marginal. If the goal is to close, rather than widen, the gaps, this approach just will not be enough.’
This is what I would call a real worry. Altman was absolutely fearless against the Howard Government and if he is saying this about the Rudd Government it is what I would call a real worry.
ruawake 48
The increased medicare levy for wealthy people who do not take out private health insurance is a source of money not a sink.
Goerge M has decided it’s time to get the Rudd haters and his editor on side.
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/meganomics/index.php/theaustralian/comments/not_nation_building_image_building/
Dr Good
I realise that, but it should be scrapped. If people think private health insurance is worth taking out there should be no carrot OR stick.
BH, I’ve seen absolutely NO TV at all vis a vis news programs in the last week SAVE Swannie delivering the budget and a night where Tanner was on late line with Coonan (turned it off after Tanner, not wasting good sleep on listening to Coonan
). I’ve picked up what snippets I can from other bludgers or a few news articles if they aren’t too long. I’ve been flat chat at my house this week and while things are settling down now, the weekend is here which devotes the TV to AFL whereever and whenever we can find it 
.
I will be surprised though, on what I’ve heard and read IF Turnbull lasts longer after his budget reply than Nelson did (late August/early September as I recall). And in the medium term, I also will not be surprised to see Labor jump and run with the cig. stuff. Any opening that the Coalition gives them to make the deficit smaller …..
Gary
Yes, Georgeous has not found the budget message management as stimulating as most commentators.
So what particular elements of the Megalonis analysis were factually incrorrect?
Kieran and David love Turnbull. They think he did a sterling job.
What were correct?
The Lateline Business sausage factory! See how Lateline Business is made:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDCeahuTcPA&feature=channel_page
Ingredients, 2 guests, 1 Ali Moore, 18 cans of hair spray!
Boerwar, just so I know where you are coming from politically, on what side of the political divide to you find yourself or are you a fence sitter or a greenie?
Gary
The bit below?
‘Infrastructure is the repeat headline the Prime Minister is seeking from the budget between now and polling day, as ministers dart from project to project, from marginal seat to marginal seat. But the flow of dollars in the real economy doesn’t match the rhetoric of $22billion worth of pump-priming.
The nation-building happens to be most timid in the year the recession is the deepest. In 2009-10, the budget provides just $700 million in new money under the banner of “building blocks of the future economy”. Of that amount, $400 million is explained by the clean-energy initiative.
The education investment fund and the health and hospital fund will add a further $1.06 billion in new spending. Let’s try the political trick of combining the lot. That only gets you to $1.76 billion in total new infrastructure funds for 2009-10. That’s almost $1 billion less than the cost of the pay rise for pensioners and carers in the same year ($2.72 billion).
In the years that follow, when the economy is meant to be in recovery, the handout to pensioners and carers still trumps all capital works by the same figure – about $1 billion. In 2010-11, the score is $4.06 billion for pensioners and $3.05 billion for infrastructure. In 2011-12, it is $4.26billion versus $3.28 billion.
Nation-building explains 14 per cent of the budget’s total new net spending in the coming financial year. Pensioners and carers are worth 22 per cent.’
As in Silver, not Gold
Some Libs are not happy that Malcolm has shifted the political debate to health and taxes.
So there are obviously no right and wrongs here. Some agree with the govt others don’t.
Ironically, most of the Bolt-ites think that they are both Labor hacks.
Which means they must be doing something right…
Swing Lowe
Excuse my ignorance, but who are Kieran and David?
Gary
Megalonis seems to me to be right based on his facts and his logic. If you want to say bad words about him you should explain where he is wrong.
John Howard reckons the cash handouts should have been replaced by cuts to payroll tax.
How does the Federal Govt. cut a State Tax? He must be going senile.
In the very years that unemployement will still be high billions will be soent on nation building. I can’t see the problem.
soent = spent
OK, so I’ve had a look at the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into political donations, and it can be summarized, I think, as a long-distance hand ball. In its conclusion, the committee says this:
There is a quite interesting discussion on caps for electronic campaigning, specifically the amount of airtime to be bought on TV.
Dr Sally Young from the Democratic Audit made a pretty strong argument, I think, that if we consider the reasons that parties fundraise and what they spend it on, we can better assess ways to limit the risk of undue influence by virtue of political donations. She reasonably argued that a major expense is electronic media advertising, and that by placing caps on such advertising parliaments could minimise the need for fundraising and the attendant risks.
By deferring any decisions other than to harmonize laws with the Commonwealth and other States, Victoria is taking a ‘neither lead nor lag’ approach and avoiding making a decision about this and other issues raised in the report.
April global stats in for those who have an interest:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2009/apr/apr09.html#global
The International Pine Beetle Collective is happy with the April stats, although they are only a month’s worth and, as such, really don’t count for much at all. Still, better than nothing.
The International Pine Beetle Collective also supports the Rudd Budget fully, recognizing that it is important for the Rudd Government to send a token signal about renewables and clean coal.
Goerge fails to mention that the high cost nation building projects are massive and take time to get on the board. Hmm
George also fail to mention the “shovel ready” projects happening, schools roads, rail etc.
86 = Aha – greenie.
He does indeed. His main point was the relevant spend on infrastructure and pensions and therefore how the budget should be framed. His point would be, I think, something like the budget should have been called ‘The Pension Budget’. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with providing the pensioners with more money. He was on about the political flim flam of calling it an ‘Infrastructure Budget.’
Don’t forget to gather around the TV tonight at 8.30, turn onto Sky Noos and watch that very interesting and relevant man, John Howard, being interviewed for 40 minutes by David Spears. Enjoy.
Well that certainly makes the budget a bad one. A FAIL. NOT
G. Megelo… makes a snide remark about flitting form marginal seat to marginal seat. Rudd and Swan were in safe National Party territory today to refute this message.
The Cooroy to Curra duplication is in Warren Truss’ seat. No pork in this bit of infrastructure.
Greenie? Glug.
Megalonis was on about totals not so much the timing. The totals over time mean that the budget could more rightly be defined as a ‘Pension Budget’. His point is that touting it as an ‘Infrastructure/Nation Building Budget’ is not backed up by the relative figures.
Boerwar
You missed Coal in your post.
ruawake
The old Howard/Costello furphy about there being more Liberal/National seats therefore naturally more funds land in those seats is coming back to haunt them. No thought for the future, those guys.
That bad, bad government. They’re not spending all of the money this budget on projects that aren’t ready to go. They’re spending money on those that are though.
If that is his only criticism then to me it is petty.
ruawake
LOL.
The Australian yesterday described Wide bay as marginal rofl
“Gympie sits in swinging-voter territory, where both sides of politics vie for the votes of regional “battlers” – tradesmen, farmers, pensioners and single-parent families.”
I think the 77.2% result for the LNP in the Queensland seat of Gympie this year says otherwise. Especailly as labor won that election.
His message is shot to bits
Rudd was in Campbelltown, Bankstown, Liverpool Woolongong and Newcastle this past week and a half. Only one marginal there.
Commenter ‘Glenn’ on Bernard Keane’s/es”ss’ess’ (damn you Possum) article;
http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/05/15/turnbulls-reply-ok-if-he-doesnt-want-to-be-pm-any-time-soon/
…has an unfortunate, but appropriate, avatar.
I have been watching Obama at a public meeting at a Town Hall in New Mexico on A-PAC. The place is crowded and Obama is absolutely incredible to watch as he answers questions from the audience.
Like watching a musician playing a symphony on a violin. Masterly and boy does he know his stuff. Both Rudd and Turnbull could learn a lot from this guy although from what I have seen recently, Obama has taken notice of some of the strategies of our own KR.
Maybe by marginal he means a fourth seante seat wink, wink .lol
Rudd takes questions from the audiences of 200/300 people at his Community Cabinets. The last one went ovetime by half an hour, people put up their hands and they have someone running around with a mike for them to ask their questions. Rudd does OK if he doesn’t know an answer he says so and gets the relevent Minister to reply.
No-one is playing the game “Malcolm didn’t even mention the word … in his budget reply speech”.
The speech is at:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25482933-5013479,00.html
So let me start. Some words not mentioned:
“investment”, “education”, “carbon”, and the phrase “economic leadership”
(and these were all in Wayne Swan’s speech)
Gary
Straw men. His criticism is not of the spending. It is off touting it as a Nation Building Infrastructure Budget when it is more a Pension Budget.
Dr Good
I predicted that Turbull would chicken out to King Coal so not surprising there. I would love to see a poll on Costello v Turnbull and Costello v Rudd. They have nowhere left to hide.
To all those DD talker-downers, read Antony:
http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2009/05/by-announcing-i.html
So ner.
It would appear that the Sunday Times online news, Perth Now, has been fed a line from the ALP and lapped it up.
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,25487779-2761,00.html
The story involves Colin Barnett breaking an election commitment.
From the 2005 election.
That’s right, four years ago.
Now, I’m not a Barnett fan, but surely it’s only a broken election promise if the Liberal party took the policy to the 2008, the one that actually saw them win government? Surely they could justifiably argue ‘well, we lost that one, so clearly voters didn’t like our promises, so we changed them’?
Joe Spagnollo, the journalist in question, should probably focus on the actual detriment to be caused WA voters by this year’s budget rather than concocting rubbish that merely serves to distract.
Diogenese
The following is from Alan Kohler’s Newsletter. I wouldn’t mind your views on his analysis.
‘The budget featured a six-year, $1.5 billion program for ”health infrastructure projects of national significance”, however when I looked at the projects in question, I estimated that it wouldn’t raise public hospital bed numbers by more than a few hundred.
For example, the second-most expensive project that will be funded, taking 17.5% of the new spending, is the $250 million expansion of Townsville hospital, which adds six operating theatres but only 100 additional beds. In Western Australia, the $180 million to be spent on the new Midland Health Campus, east of Perth, raises the number of public hospital beds in the area by only about 125. Some of the projects, such as the $120 million Australian Red Cross Blood Service principal site development, aren’t hospital-related at all. Virtually none of the spending is targeted at big teaching hospitals in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane where it could do the most good.
With the government unwilling to commit to serious spending on new hospital beds and more or less tinkering at the edges, public hospitals can be expected to continue crumbling in terms of their performance. This in turn will continue to provide a good case for people to have private health cover just in case they need to go to hospital.’
Kieran Gilbert and David Speers – the political correspondents from Sky News
SL
thank you
Do not mean Hospital bed numbers. Kohler should stick to voodoo economics where he admits he does not have a clue what is happening.
Boerwar
I’m surprised they created any beds at all. They certainly didn’t in SA. Most of the state governments don’t want beds. We’ve got thousands lying vacant already in SA, well almost. The RAH was a 1200 bed hospital 20 years ago; now it’s 550. If you have beds, patients go in them and they have to be looked after and that’s very expensive.
There aren’t enough nurses or doctors to look after patients in the beds even if they got extra funding for them.
Kohler has missed the point. As a health commentator, he’s an economist.
Not to mention that something like 85% of the $14.5 billion schools funding will be spent in the next financial year.
Diogenese
Thank you.
Diogenes #114
I agree that State’s don’t necessarily want more beds and that they’d only have to employ more doctors and nurses to tend to patients in them. But if that’s the case, what are we to make of this:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25295163-5006786,00.html
Yet another reason not to listen to Kohler
Sorry, I left a bit out, insert, before ‘But…’
You say that there are ‘thousands’ of beds currently vacant. But… (etc)
The issue is the lack of competent trained medical professionals, Tony Abbott, to his credit, admits that the Howard Govt. made a mistake by reducing the number of training places for Doctors.
Howard thought that Private Hospitals could train Doctors. In fact they committed $60 million to it but it was never spent.
Diogenese
I don’t want to verbal him, I think he was looking at the beds from a different perspective. Shortage of beds = reason to stay in private health care = reason to invest in certain shares.
If there were more GP’s so people wouldn’t rock up to Emergency Departments with a sore throat and a splinter, which could be treated the next day, of course there would be more room for Hospital Beds.
Bule
I’ll tip the bucket on SA Labor here.
John Hill is fully aware of those figures and that SA’s Emergency Dept’s are estimated to have an extra 150 deaths a year due to overcrowding. There is ONE reason only for that and it’s LACK OF BEDS.
Our Health Dept continues to close beds to save money, knowing that they are costing lives. The ED doctors were so disgusted that they insisted in the last Enterprise Bargain that the number of patients kept waiting in corridors be released to the media every three months to give Health an incentive to fix the problem, which the Health Dept agreed to.
Of course, Hill has reneged on this agreement. So we continue to have 150 preventable deaths in SA each year due to overcrowding. And we cover it up.
It’s a disgrace.
Turnbull’s speech was a steady performance – no major damage done. In some ways it was like Rudd’s 07 address – “modest proposals” etc.
The difference was, Rudd’s job was not to stuff up and blow his lead. Turnbull needs to do more than not stuff up. It’s like a footy team coach telling his side just to go out in the second half and go goal for goal and ignore the fact they’re 20 goals down.
Frank
That’s not true in big teaching hospitals only 3% of patients presenting should have gone to a GP. And they don’t use many resources as they get discharged pretty quickly. Governments like to blame people who go to EDs rather than GPs for ED problems but lack of beds is the problem.
Diogenese
What would be your top five things to fix health care in Australia, in order?
How would you rate the budget against these top five points?
*goes*
9 News says the Liberals have received $2 million worth of donations from the tobacco industry in the last decade.
Bernard Keane gives Turnbull credit for ditching the classical allusions, then highlights his use of the term ‘modest’ proposals.
1729 may not make it into the Classical era, but literary references harking back to that time may be considered as references to literary classics. In that line of reasoning, I question whether Turnbull really managed to rise above them.
Notions of universal private health insurance as a social good certainly seem to me to be verging on the level of satire made famous by Swift in A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public.
Boerwar
1. Reduce expectations/services
2. Co-payments
3. Employ decent administrators
4. Do a cost-effectiveness analysis to compare treatments
5. Mrs D says doctors get paid too much and have too much power
Tasty Bule
Geez Dio. You were given a chance to list the top 5 ways to solve the health problem, and you didn’t throw any money at the problem.
No future in politics for you mate.
Turnbull said on SBS News that increasing the tax on cigarettes is a “tough decision”. Surely this is rubbish, smokers are a very soft target because their habit has health effects for them and others.
A really tough decision would be proposing a complete ban on the sale and possession of tobacco products.
There comes a point where taxation on tobacco products becomes counter-productive. If cigarette prices get too high then it will be profitable for a black market to thrive.
This has been the case in the UK. As for banning – yes lets create more prohibition induced organised crime.
I don’t support banning tobacco products. But that would be a TOUGH decision, increasing taxes on tobacco products is an easy decision, that’s why so many budgets include such increases.
The problem with nurses is the same problem we are having with the ADF, or at least the less glamorous parts of the ADF – these are cr*p jobs and no-one wants to do them any more, certainly not for the money on offer. Australia is increasingly a country where everyone wants to go university and be a lawyer or a merchant banker or an artist or a brain surgeon. No-one wants to spend their working life wiping up vomit or slogging through jungles hunting terrorists.
Fortunately we are right next to countries where millions of people would be very happy to work in Australian hospitals or in the Australian Army, for whom the money on offer represents wealth unimagined. We could recruit a division in PNG in a week if we cared to start an Australian Foreign Legion, as we should. They would sign up for ten years, get a technical education and go home to their villages rich men at the end.
Similarly, we should open nursing colleges in Indonesia and the Philippines. People would queue up to get in. We pay for their training, they contract to work for ten years wherever they are sent in Australia. At the end they go home rich, or sign up for more with the prospect of Australian citizenship if they want. Problem solved.
Yep – the weakest decision I’ve heard in a long time. Even smokers are resigned to paying heaps of tax.
It;s also quite possibly the most boring proposal in living memory.
Here’s Malcolm Turnbull, he’s had all his life to get to this point so he can stand up and tell the Australian people his economic vision for the country.
And his vision is to tax cigs.
Well that was worth the wait.
This week’s Green Guide (TV guide) in The Age reports that:
“The ABC has commissioned a documentary about the Tampa and the “children overboard affair” from producer Penny Chapman (Remote Area Nurse)”
I wonder how much latitude the story line might be allowed. For example will there be a scene where the public servant speaks with Howard and tells him that the pictures are not of children thrown overboard but actually of people who have deserted a sinking ship – a call that Howard denies took place.
Should be interesting.
I hope it’s ready to screen just before Rudd calls the 2010 election.
Business Spectator has an interesting interview with Tanner :
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/KGB-INTERROGATION-Lindsay-Tanner-pd20090514-S29ZU?OpenDocument&src=sph
One interesting bit from the interview re discussion the other nite about Kohler being a right winger (I agree with whoever posted the comment) :
Alan Kohler: On budget night, Bob ( Gottliebsen) and Kerry O’Brien and I were yarning about the quality of the Hawke / Keating cabinet during the 80s and I think we ended up concluding that it was probably the best cabinet in history in Australia, certainly close to it.
—————————————-
The “born to rule mob” and now departed masters of the universe will not like that one little bit. Which is great.
I hope Max Gillies plays Howard.
Has anyone pointed out the massive backflip from the opposition on alcopops? Turnbull virtually confirmed they would pass it today.
And Bronwyn Bishop criticises the ciggie tax policy
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/15/2570989.htm?section=justin
Not a good week for Malcolm
Grog @ 137,
Pretty close to being the best post of the year so far. lol
Cant find a good alcopops link. Think the shadow minister was more definitive THis link indicates that Turnbull would consider passing it. He used justification of overall budget position
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/15/2571236.htm
Bronwyn Bishop shouldnt be in Parliament she is a has been.
Yes Grog how bizarre in the context of the oppositions dire poll position, Turnbull’s tenous hold on the leadership and the economy deteriorating, we get more ciggy taxes?
So that is talking about the selling of the budget, not the budget itself. So George doesn’t like the politics of it. Stiff.
It is still an infrastructure budget if infrastructure is involved, which it is. So it comes second to pensions.
True Glen but why tolerate the immediate and obvious dissent? ABC News was leading with Bronnie’s comments not Malcolm’s policy this morning. There was never this public disunity under Howard
Australian affairs will always be better managed under the Coalition – John Winston Howard, 8:30pm, 14 May 2009.
That’s because Howard was a true leader in every sense of the word.
For those who would have liked to see the Fox Channel interview with Howard but can’t access it, it will be on-line on A-PAC at 4 different times on Sunday.
http://www.a-pac.tv/
They will cave on alcopops. They are terrified of giving Rudd a DD trigger.
This sucks why cant Howard go on FTA stuff pay TV!
If they cave on the private health rebate we’ll lose our base they wont budge on that issue Adam I can assure you of that.
Yes, if someone wants to have a cigarette while they are having their kerosene bath, they have every right to do so.
Just make sure the fire extinguisher is handy though.
The Liberals have always hated Medicare, Turnball exposed himself today.
Rudd will make merry with this.
Glen, see my post @ 150. Cheers.
Dio
What about being able to send DES to unpopular places?
I thank you scorpio but I would have liked to tape it.
Just as Turnbull gets some good hits in he goes and gives Rudd a free kick, give me Nelson anyday!
Howie wants to have back: Workchoice, Pacific Solution and Protective Visa.
Fraser & howard killed Medibank for a start – and while the AMA have the Libs by the Testicles, there opposition to Public Health will continue.
I’ll bet an ALP Staffer is rolling tape or PVR as we speak and is taking copious notes.
Expect those quotes being replayed on TV News tomorrow night.
The Liberal party base = the private health insurance industry.
If Turnbull thinks tobacco products are so bad, why as the federal liberal party accepted $2 million worth of donations from the tobacco industry in the last decade?
I guess Howard’s economic policy would be to just bring back the mining boom.
They would be opposed to public health with or without the AMA. It’s in their ideology.
I mean send Drs?
plus No apology to the Stolen Generations, plenty of apologies and lunches to and with George W Bush and the yearning for the Kirribilli House.
I wish Glen or GP or some other Lib could give us the background as to why the ciggies?? Could be an interesting story
Cuppa, youre right, but the AMA needs to stop being a Lib mouthpiece. Its the reason I refuse to join
Good riddance
Andrew, and they’ve got the hide to say that Labor is in the grip of unions!
Actually I think she was “a never was”.
Well, after last nights pathetic effort it would seem that Turnbull’s only hope is that the ALP rolls over and accepts their swap of cigs tax for maintaining the full private health rebate.
If the ALP says “sod off loser”, then Turnbull either backs down or blocks the budget bills. Turnbull can only gain out of this if the ALP chose to allow it for some reason.
There is no way that Turnbull will force a situation where the country goes to an to an election based on keeping high income earners, (who apparently are more than compensated for the loss of the rebate, or part of it, by the tax cuts they get this year) receiving a government handout. Unless he is a complete tool……………
I think that Turnbull will be gone in weeks. Question is, serioiusly, who will replace him? Hockey is the obvious choice, but what about Bishop? She may fancy herself and try and play the “1st woman PM” card??
Evidently conscription is banned now so it’s a tough issue. They have policies to attract drs to the country but they haven’t sold them well. I’ve been going to Broken Hill for 5 years and got a letter from Nicola Roxon a few months ago saying I was entitled to a very large sum each year from now on if I continued going. I had absolutely no idea I was eligible for it. No-one I spoke to knew about it either.
Of course, Mrs D grabbed the cheque and spent it and it did me no good at all but the thought was nice.
How does the AMA have the Libs by the testicles? In SA, the AMA wrote the Labor Party Health policy for about three years. And I mean quite literally. And that was only because the Minister had no idea. She should have known that NO-ONE ever listens to the AMA. They are a joke.
If Labor now goes and brings in an increase to the tobacco excise, then Turnbull is likely to get the blame by the tobacco lobby and that source of funds to the Libs could dry up too.
He’s a real smart operator our Malcolm and it looks as though he’s offered another free kick by comparing the alcopops levy to putting an excise on one cigarette brand and not on others. The fact that the levy only brings it into line with the spirit excise seems to escape him.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/15/2571236.htm
Grog more like ‘a never never’ LOL!
Do you think the federal government should take over hospitals?
Maybe in SA they but in every other state the AMA is virtually beholden to the Liberal Party – especially when Dr Rosanna Capolingua has been touted to run for a WA Liberal seat. And of course Brendan Nelson – the only Union Leader to lead the Liberal Party
Yes but only in exchange for the States conceding that they are irrelevant without Health and we get rid of them at a referendum.
Dr Good
Here’s an excellent article on Voluntary Actions and the ETS II. They still haven’t got it right.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/05/15/voluntary-actions-cprs-changes/#more-1358
Scorpio @ 150,
Frank
Why would anyone listen to the AMA on anything? Their spokemen are not specialists in any area (there is always a specialist who actually knows more than the dimwits they put up). The only thing they know lots about is protecting their own interest and I view anything they say with complete cynicism, just as I do when a union thug gets up and tells us what would be best for his members.
Yep at most a wannabe.
My Australian history isn’t that great but didn’t the AMA object to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme proposed by Chifley only to embrace it once Menzies came in power and continued it?
Isnt funny how Glen still gushes at the man who lost the election and his own seat. I wonder what it takes for the Libs to actually question themselves…
Diogenes, whatever happened to the Doctors reform society? Are they still in existence and, if so, do they have any/wide acceptance/credibility with the medicos?
Tom.
Firstly, as more as voyeur than a contributor, I have to say that I enjoy the to and fro of the right and left wing bloggers on this site.
I can’t help but feel that Turnball and Hockey made the big mistake of rushing to condemn the level of indebtedness that the Rudd Government is entering into. Indeed it worries me somewhat. When asked about their response the only sounds seem to have been (initially) ‘crickets’ and now increase cigarettes.
In my opinion the Opposition have seriously dealt themselves out of the equation. It leave them open to accusations of hypocrisy (why not support the alcopops legislation) and to a large degree irrelevancy. Of course this perception may change of the Australian economy goes to hell in a hand basket… (Compared to the US and UK we’re sitting pretty).
I guess desperate people do desperate things.
Keep it up Bludgers – both Left and Right – I enjoy the witty repertoire and serious discussion.
Jules
Sorry about the ‘typos’ – a beer to far.
Oh dear. “…too far”.
Great speeches of history by Malcolm Turnbull:
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that the tax on cigarettes should be increased by 12.5%”
“We choose to tax cigarettes. We choose to tax cigarettes in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more let us increase the tax on cigs.”
“And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That was here the day I took the brave decision to increase the price of smokes.”
“We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind, We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to put a tax on cigarettes, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us.”
“Fellow Australians, It is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that in consequence of a persistent Global Financial Crisis, Great Britain has declared war upon it, and as a result, Australia is going to increase the price of cigarettes.”
I work in an office of about 10 people and somebody made the statement ‘I heard something about the private health rebate on the news this morning…’. I was the only one that knew anything about it. Turnbull isn’t getting any traction with the public – he’s a dead man walking, even makes Ruddock look like a paragon of health!
Tom.
Oh dear, Obama is doing water-boarding on himself.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/14/obama-to-revive-military-_n_203783.html
Tom
The Doctors Reform Society is still around. I think they are mainly GPs and don’t have much to say about the hospitals (as they don’t work there). They have a small but loyal following, but are viewed as do-gooder ratbags by other GPs. They are normally pretty sensible from what I can see.
A few major differences though Fins:
Finns
I was just about to link that. I get this sickening sense of foreboding every time I go to my Glenn Greenwald bookmark and find out just what travesty of justice Obama has just condoned for political expediency.
And Obama never fails to disappoint me in his craven indifference to the human rights abuses perpetrated by Americans and their Government.
Grog, Obama is finding that getting there is easier than being and staying there. before long, we will hear core or non-core ala Howie? Can he?
Hillary would be doing much better.
Herr doktor, didn’t we tell them about “political expediency” or as i preferred “under the bus”
Hillary looked woeful when discussing Myanmar which she stupidly called Burma LOL!
Glen, not as stupid as Howie looked tonight.
Psephos
I guessed that you agree with most of Obama’s detainee policies. Esp as I disagree with them.
I didnt see Howie and you arent capable of being objective.
Glen, Read all about it here
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/15/2572275.htm
you dont have to be objective when howie looked stupid
Someone mentioned this yesterday,
Good we now have a decent man as Immigration Minister
[Chris Evans has told ABC Radio's The World Today the department is talking to the man's lawyers about compensation and seeing if it can help re-unite the family in Australia.
"We're trying to work with him to ... give him some prospects for the future," he said.
"He is, as I understand it, very damaged and I've instructed the department to engage with him and provide all the support they can.
"We're also trying to contact his daughter and her mother and see what we can do to rebuild the family."
He says the Immigration Department is investigating whether the man's daughter and her mother had already tried to get back to Australia.
"There was a suggestion in the Ombudsman's report that they might have been [trying],” he said.
“I don’t have any information about that, other than I’ve instructed the department to follow that through.
“The parents have separated but obviously if we could organise for the family to have access and for the daughter to have access to her father, that would be a good result.”
Senator Evans says the department’s actions were unacceptable but there has been a culture change since then.]
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/15/2571880.htm?section=justin
Glen
You are wRONg. Burma’s name was changed to Myanmar by the military junta 20 years ago. Opposition groups don’t recognise the government as legitimate and so don’t accept the name change either. Hillary was expressing support for the Opposition.
Finns. How low have I sunk? I’m sticking up for Hillary now.
Yes frank, howie looking stupid:
http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200711/r206588_787661.jpg
Diog, i knew we could salvage your soul one day. Blame it on the K nowledge Tree.
Dio look at an Atlas it is called Myanmar.
Amigo Vera,
Is Diog auditioning to be an Amigo?
Diogenes is a bit of a lone ranger i think
Grog @188
Great stuff!
Well you can bet Insiders will play some of Howard’s speech so ill just tape that.
Always happy to jump on a right wing, corrupt bandwagon, Glen?
Glen if you have broadband you can watch it here 4 TIMES tomorrow
http://www.a-pac.tv/
http://www.dw-world.com/dw/article/0,,2804762,00.html
DFAT refers to it as Burma http://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/burma/index.html
Glen
I tried to tell you nicely. You will note that the US (where Hillary lives and is in fact SOS), UK and Australia still refer to “Burma”, not “Myanmar”. In lieu of an apology, you can make a donation to Amnesty International.
Various world entities have chosen to accept or reject the name change. The United Nations, of which Myanmar is a member, endorsed the name change five days after its announcement by the junta.[8] However, governments of many English speaking countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada still refer to the country as “Burma”, with varying levels of recognition of the validity of the name change itself.]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma
Mor eI think that it is easier to say things before you get there.
The recent stuff on “Don’t ask Don’t Tell” is a case in point
Jon Stewart does it well:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=227352&title=Dan-Choi-Is-Gay
BTW: Is Peter Costello moonlighting as an actor in the Hollowmen?
The country’s name has always been Myanmar in the Burmese language, just as Germany’s name is Deutschland. But the junta has no right to dictate what the country’s English name is. Aung San Syu Kyi, the elected leader of the Burmese people, calls the country Burma when she is speaking English, and so long as she does so, so will I, and I believe that is the position of both the US and Australia. The UN and other suckers-up to dictators can go bite themselves.
Nice work Dio.
Or to let Seinfeld explain:
Seinfeld?? Geez How old am I?
imacca @ 172
“I think that Turnbull will be gone in weeks. Question is, serioiusly, who will replace him? Hockey is the obvious choice.”
Hockey is just a motormouth. His performance on Q & A was woeful. Hockey is no leader. I think the Libs are stuck with Mr T. However as Possum stated in his Gen Blue, “the next Liberal Party Prime Minister is probably still in high school.” Now there’s a thought! How about giving the Leader of the Oppostion’s job to a High School kid as job experience!! He/She would probably do a better job than anyone else in the opposition.
Exhibit A: Generic Pinocchio
Will Stephen Long finally summon up the courage and ask Leigh Sayle for a date? sigh.
Frank 201
Thanks for the link to Howard (sort of). He must be getting bored in retirement. Funny how he thinks a Workchoices bill that makes it easier to sack people will help reduce unemployment during a recession. ROTFL
I wonder if Howard thinks his own super payout should be reduced during a recession? I’m sure he’d prefer it that way, being a free market man and all.
Gus, “Generic Pinocchio” is still in his nappy, too young.
Did Turnbull really say this?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/15/2572236.htm
Does the guy have any poltical nous at all????
Now here’s a guy I’m happy to see getting a state funeral:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/15/2572245.htm?section=justin
vale Bud.
It is the military dictatorship that insists Burma be called Myanmar. Since Australis, the U.S., and many other countries, don’t accept the legitimacy of the military government, we should continue to call the country Burma.
We may as well shut down the Australian film industry right now.
He’ll always be Gramps from “Charlie the Wonder Dog” to me.
The Weekend Oz Mag is doing a 20 years on from Tiannamen Square:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25486912-5012694,00.html
Geez, 20 years…
Grog
Mrs G’s response
“tell him he’s dreaming”
LOL
Look i call it Burma but they dont.
J. Peterman is a classic character but not as good as Lloyd Braun.
without wnating to buy in
BUT
nippon/japan
kampuchea/cambodia
eire/ireland
svenska/sweden
etc
so why the prob with Burma/myanmar ?
What does he know? He was in the nut house!
Mr T will be leading the Libs for a while yet – he is payrolling them after all. Would the Libs sell out to Mr T for a few million – you can bet on it as long as the money keeps flowing!
Tom.
He had the idea that all New Yorkers wear name tags so people will be more friendly and Dinkins loses the election to Giuliani LOL.
We should recall that 18 months into Howard’s first term, the next Labor Prime Minister was working as a consultant in China. And Beazley was a vastly more credible alternative than either Nelson or Turnbull has managed to be so far.
Serenity now!!!!
Insanity Later…
Goodness me
Do you people have any idea what you sound like?. A hint – look back over the last 2 days of comments
That’s pretty sobering. He also lost in 96. Any good Lib candidates lose in 07? (and please someone other than Mal Brough!!)
Can’t be bothered. Give me a precis will you.
Why the last two days in particular?
Good point, whatever it is we are, I think we’ve been it for a fair while now!
Oh well, I can’t be bothered waiting round to find out..
As Psephos would say:
pffft.
I think Leigh Sales had a few cocktails before going on air, she keeps mispronouncing words.
Mal Brough??
The refreshing thing about the Howard interview was to remenisce of a time when we had a Prime Minister that didn’t constantly speak in slogans, spin and soundbites.
No 238
He still lost two elections, irrespective of his perceived credibility.
You mean you are having an OTC Moment ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmn5cI5D4rc
Never ever
Cut and run
Go for Growth
Coalition of the Willing
WorkChoices
A New Tax System
Howard lost two elections too.
GP
Howard used Dog whistling, Fearmongering and Jingoism
Frank, have you worked out the Eurovision winner yet? Azerbaijan At 15.00 on Betfair looks a good chance to me.
No 252
ShowsOn, if you analyse each of Howard’s statements over the 12 years he was in power, I bet you’d struggle to find constantly repeated words and slogans.
Rudd is the opposite. Every single public statement he makes says the same thing, just reshuffled. Perhaps good media management, but really bloody awful to listen to.
212,
Glen owns that bandwagon and has sold franchises to GP and Bree
GP, try “Good economic manager” repeated until all sane people in Australia cringed with disbelief at the mention of the nonsense. Or Interest rates will always be lower under a coalition government.
228,
We are travelling to Thailand on holiday in December. The travel agency we are using to organize a majority of the details gave us several books up front with information, hotels, etc. on Thailand BUT those books also included information on the other countries in the area too. The name of the country in question here in each case in all 3 of these travel books is B U R M A. (all 3 books were put out by different companies as well)
I’m surprised that there has been no further comment on Adams suggestion for remedying the shortages in soldiers and nurses. I have thought along the same lines for many years, particularly when I was facing imminent conscription!
his use of ‘mateship’ was cringe worthy.
Actualluy, they all speak in soundbites, just the style is different.
As for workchoices.. go the whole hog and introduce enforced slavery, then technically there is no unemployment at all. Fixed.
Its called a civil society John.
No 260
Zombie, there was no slavery under workchoices. Don’t be such a dolt on the facts.
LOL! I can remember once during question time that he repeated the line “cut and run” about 10 times!
Unlike you, most people don’t listen to every single press conference the P.M. does. He is just staying on message, something the Liberals have been completely incapable of for the last two years.
No 258
I hope you’re stopping by Koh Samui. Lovely Thai island.
Turnbull has given Rudd the green light to increase cigarette taxes. How will he argue against it in the future if the government brings in such a tax without changing their ideas on the health rebate?
Yes, but I wasn’t talking about Malcolm Turnbull. I’m talking about Rudd v Howard.
Rudd constantly repeats the same slogans in response to every question. He certainly has no gift for the gab.
Howard had his pet phrases but he did mix it up a bit.
The Libs used to parrot the same lines in interviews, one after the other. Remember “cut and run”?
No 264
Gary, the Opposition will block the budget if the Government doesn’t budget on the private health rebate.
However, I am personally growing wary of Turnbull’s high risk block strategy. Let the government make its mistakes and then criticise those mistakes at the next election.
He was very mixed up. Even thought that tax cuts for the rich year after year would be a good idea.
Steve, you’re an absolute liar.
Thanks to Howard, people earning 50,000 no longer pay 48.5% tax, as they did in 1996.
By the time he left office, 80% of tax payers paid no more than 30% of their incomes in tax.
Really, get a clue and stop misrepresenting the facts.
So GP doesn’t like Rudd. Any other startling revelations you have for us?
And you are seriously proposing that Rudd’s ability to stay on message wasn’t one reason he was an effective opposition leader?
Who needs gift OF the gab when you have the keys to the lodge?
WHAT!? You never heard him talk about the NEW TAX SYSTEM (actually a French socialist party tax), or WORKCHOICES (actually a massive re-regulation of industrial relations)? You never heard him characterise Mark Latham as wanting to “cut and run” from Iraq (I find 13 different uses of that statement in Howard’s replies during question time).
ALL politicians repeatedly use particular statements that they think frame an issue in their political favour.
No 270
It would be more interesting if Rudd was occasionally funny like Keating. At least parliament would be mildly interesting.
250: He only just lost the first one, polling a majority of the 2PV and winning 18 seats (from memory). And he was clearly headed for victory in 2001 until derailed by Tampa and 9/11. Still, as you say, he lost, and that’s why Rudd, who was not even an MP in 2006, is now PM. My point is that it’s quite possible that the next Liberal PM isn’t in Parliament yet. I’m tempted to say they aren’t born yet, but that may be going a bit far.
GP @ 267 ,
Just like the alcopops legislation? Libs are pea hearts when put under pressure.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/turnbull-to-deny-rudd-poll-trigger-20090515-b64m.html
I notice you didn’t say “like Howard” and for very good reason.
shows
you forgot the mother of em all
UNAUSTRALIAN
Yes. The slogans to which you refer were generally used during Howard’s election campaigns.
Rudd is constantly talking in election mode. It’s like he has a check list of phrases to include when answering each question.
As I said, perhaps good media management, but awfully boring to listen to.
Parliament is interesting enough now. If you want a comedy act, go and pay to see a professional stand up comedian.
Rudd has been an MP since 1998.
No 275
Howard had his moments, but the star performer was certainly Costello.
Yep, he turned the parliament into a cringe worthy circus.
LOL! This is HILARIOUS because it was the Hawke LABOR government that cut the top rate from 60% to 48.5%!
Howard’s best parliamentary speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taGxIXApglM
Repeatedly like a clapped out robot.
If he was such as star, WHY THE HELL couldn’t he stop Howard from SPENDING?
283 – No thanks
Costello has really starred in opposition too. No wonder the polling figures have stayed sky high for Labor with stars like that performing to the best of their ability.
No 282
And it was a HOWARD LIBERAL GOVERNMENT that delivered tax cuts year after year, whilst Keating revoked his tax cut promises and didn’t have the courage to introduce the GST.
Is it the one were he apologised for the bottom of the harbour tax rorts, and was forced to explain to his back bench why the government had to pass emergency retrospective tax legislation?
Look at your own hopeless lot before criticising Howard. After all, we didn’t run up $200 billion of debt within a year.
1996 rather.
So Turnbull has backed down on alcopops. I suppose one should be generous since it is clearly the correct policy choice. But I’m not in generous mode tonight so I will say that it is a WEAK and COWARDLY backdown by a man who knows he would be utterly thrashed at an election this year. The next sitting week will be tres amusant.
And spent little on anything else when he had the chance.
Tax cuts that between 2003 – 2007 we now know the government couldn’t afford.
The tax cuts were paid for as increased superannuation contributions. Keating knew that providing the tax cuts would increase inflation at a time the economy was starting to recover.
He did what was POLITICALLY UNPOPULAR, but what was in the BEST INTERESTS of the economy. Something HOWARD never could bring himself to do.
EXACTLY you can’t explain why Costello couldn’t stop Howard from spending, because you know deep down that Costello is WEAK and a policy light weight.
TEMPORARY, ONE OFF spending during an economic down turn is when governments are MEANT to spend money.
Your beloved Liberals spend bucket loads of money when the economy was at FULL capacity, which is the WORST time for a government to increase spending
Debt, I might add that is well covered by Australia’s assets and which we have the capability of paying back the principle and interest as and when due.
You didn’t need to. You coasted on the boom for 11 years. We’re doing the heavy lifting, and you lot have no clue what you would be doing if you were in office.
GP,
This Howard worship is perplexing. The young Libs are like the Bob Marley Rastafarians who worshiped a dead Ethiopian dictator.
Looking forward to the reggae version of “God Save the Queen”.
John Howard in dreadlocks. I’d like to see that!
I don’t understand why G.P. doesn’t accept that the latter half of the Howard government was characterised by irresponsible big spending when Tony Abbott has made that precise criticism:
http://business.smh.com.au/business/libs-magic-pudding-years-20090403-9qjm.html
Kevin Rudd wouldn’t know heavy lifting if it slapped him in the face.
Honestly, Labor hacks think gargantuan spending = tough decision = heavy lifting.
The only heavy lifting will be done by taxpayers having to repay the egregious debt with higher taxes in the future.
Another thing, GP, just what was the amount of Government Bonds still to mature when Howard left office?
261,
tell that to the folks who had to give up their holidays and those who worked holidays or OT for the same rate as regular hours
No 297
ShowsOn, I have readily accepted that spending accelerated in the last term and perhaps irresponsibly so in some cases, but it’s a double standard to use that spending against me, when the Labor Party has broken all records on spending in just 9 months.
We are in the middle of a recession! You are proposing that the government should make a PROFIT on the misery of thousands of Australians who lose their jobs.
Moreover, your side hasn’t suggested ANY SAVINGS whatsoever, which means they approve of the debt.
Whereas YOUR plan is for tax payers to spend billions extra on dole payments.
No 300
Holidays were guaranteed juliem. Employees could trade them away for a lump sum or increased pay, but an employer could not refuse you your holidays. If they did, that would have been unlawful, workchoices or not.
Again, get a clue love.
It actually hasn’t broken records, it is only idiots like Malcolm Turnbull that measure debt in dollars, instead of as a proportion of the size of the economy.
Our debt is predicted to be LESS during this recession than the 1990 recession, and John Howard’s 1982 recession.
263,
Perth airport, Bangkok, the Death Railway, Chiang Mai, Bangkok and return to Perth. 3 weeks total in December.
After the budget reply speech it is obvious that the Liberals hate the Labour debt so much that they want to keep it and spend the borrowed money.
Former Victorian Premier John Cain lets rip at the Labor Party and the general state of politics in Australia.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/time-for-the-state-alp-to-stop-the-rot-20090515-b65t.html?page=1
GP,
Repeating lies does not make them true despite your wishful thinking.
272,
Between Tuckey, Hockey, Pyne and Abbott AND blokes like Tanner and Albo putting them into their place AND Jenkins putting up with no crap from the other side, Parliament is the best entertainment going around atm
……..
We don’t need entertainment value from Kevin
GG @ 308, good on you
…..
juliem, your holidays claim was wrong, admit it.
GP, so is your claim that the Howard government left Australia debt free wrong.
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/business/2007/09/13/122371/Australia%27s-central.htm
No 312
Net debt was zero steve. Get a clue.
Lol! Remember this old turkey,whatsisiname? http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/15/2572275.htm
Its funny, cos he – of all people, Mr $4 billion dollar handouts to pensioners – reckons “Kevin Rudd wasted money by giving away cash handouts”.
Oi, Rodent: there’s a reason people stopped listening to you about 2005. Its because you cant lie straight in bed with this stuff.
And oh look, sadly for ex-PM Whatsisface, actual economists blame …..him.
http://livenews.com.au/budget-09/we-stuffed-up-our-boomtime-budgets-access-economics/2009/5/11/206023
No 314
Chris Richardson is a Labor stooge through and through.
GP,
Denial is a river in Africa.
QUICK send this to Peter Costello, he often left that “net” bit out.
As far as I know, Crickey is the only organisation that noticed that Turnbull couldn’t even write a speech long enough for his budget reply. He had to make things up for the last 5 minutes.
Not only his he policy lazy, he can’t even write a speech that he had nearly a year to prepare for.
Even though immediately after Swan’s speech he said he didn’t think the government cut enough?
Didn’t matter what was supposedly guaranteed under WorkChoices GP. The AWA’s people were in many cases pressured to take were taken to be relevant employment instrument as soon as they were signed, little checking of content was done by the regulator and none was required.
I think your somewhat rude response to juliem was uncalled for. Maybe put it down to despair at your side of politics being hopeless losers obviously intent on enhancing their own already spectacular political irrelevance, except as cheap entertainment value?
To quote someone: “get a clue”.
Of course the Net Debt was negative after all the asset sales including three trances of Telstra and major city airports being flogged off. Hardly financial genius territory in the time of the biggest mining boom for generations.
http://business.theage.com.au/business/deficit-shows-why-accountants-make-bad-economists-20090515-b63w.html
How much debt was actually paid off under the Howard Government excluding the three tranches of Telstra and the proceeds from the sale of Sydney airport would be a fascinating figure to see. Any trained monkey can pay off debt when they have sold off public assets to private interests. Being able to pay off debt without the mass selling of assets is the real test.
I dont know how often Howard ‘repeated his slogans’ but he sure spent a lot on advertising to do it for him. He even sent us all a fridge magnet with his slogan of the day on it.
Gary
Glad to see you finally got Megalonis’ point.
Vera
@ 203
What an amazing difference a decent Immigration Minister makes. The cock up was terrrible but his reponse was just fantastic.
What a relief from those who used to think that bastardization was somehow normal and proper.
Those who think that employing PNG nationals to Australia’s dirty war work might want to think again. Apart from the ethics of the practice itself, the old colonial idea that you could use them up and spit them back when you have finished with them is under intense pressure in Britain where upwards of 300,000 (some claims) Gurkhas and their families believe that they should have a right to enter GB.
I really can’t fathom the Liberal party, they lost the work choice argument in real style and they want to go another round. Or is it just Howard, and people like GP that have no feeling for what political suicide looks like.
They seem to want to solve the Labor parties problem. Good ideas on how to beat the Liberals over the head one more time with workchoices?
Just heard a cut from the Howard interview on the radio. And it included the phrase of his that used to drive me nuts – “My Government”. Like government belonged to him personally.
GP @303
Totally uncalled for. You should apologise to juliem.
Rudd 10 Turnbull 0. As per usual another Liberal’s leader who has no balls. Bring on the DD.
The degree of cowardness will always be higher under the Coalition.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/turnbull-to-deny-rudd-poll-trigger-20090515-b64m.html?page=-1
Regarding spending, here is a link to an interesting article in the SMH about Sydney public transport.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/transport-for-all-need-not-cost-600b-expert-20090515-b62n.html
It highlights a basic problem with ideological obsessions to cut spending. There are many areas of services, like public transport and health, where government provision is the cheapest way. In these cases, usually the government only saves a dollar by making the community spend three.
The Smoko tax will be for Turnbull what the 5cents a littre was to Nelson. That is a big joke of a policy.
Is’nt it great to have a humanised immigration Dept., finally putting a face to refugees and humanising them and showing us what terrible hardship and loss they go through to find a safe place to live.
Socrates, the smart financial advice also missing these days is that only non-performing assets should be sold off. Selling good income producing assets just makes the tough times tougher. Better than selling of course is to find a way to make non producing assets a better fit where they can be more useful and productive.
Ideological obsessions based on slashing costs and selling everything not bolted down are usually a recipe for soft options which satisfy nobody.
OH YEAH
…… woke up to see this news on The Age 
….. (while a pleasant relief to see them not reporting on JF) ….. The mere fact that the government said that they were waiting until after 18 June to introduce it means that they will get it (alcopops legislation) passed now. While a DD would be nice to get rid of the rabble, it is nicer to see government policies being passed without opposition disagreeing for the sake of it only. And it shows that we can take Rudd at his word that he doesn’t want one, he only wants his stuff passed into law. Gee my Saturday morning is going well and I haven’t even had a sip of my coffee yet 
329 Finnigans,
I’ve commented upon this in 334 but Williams spam filter has swallowed it up. I ended by saying this ” Gee my Saturday morning is going well and I haven’t even had a sip of my coffee yet
“
William when you see #334 AND #335 in the moderation queue, please delete #335 and this post as well, leaving only 334. I’m trying to get my point posted in some way, shape or form and the spam filter won’t let me in this morning.
Except at least Nelson got some traction for his policy. (all the good that it did him though).
Workchoices made it impossible for outsiders to check on workers’ conditions.
I know that agreements were meant to be sent to a govt department for checking (which only took six months or so) but some employees would not know that.
GP, if you were a migrant with a poor grasp of English and your employer told you that the conditions you were employed under were legal, how would you find out if this was true or not?
As for slavery existing under Workchoices – well, it certainly did under the Howard Government. This isn’t a criticism of the HG, because slavery exists under all governments, being extremely difficult to detect (for reasons outlined above).
WorkChoices certainly made it easier for employers to convince workers that their working conditions were legal and harder for employers to find out if they were or not.
GP what’s happened? just as you seemed to see the light about your side’s woes, you retreat into attack and defend mode. Its not working for you or your side. Time for plan (b)
What happened Andrew is the Tories thought they were good economic managers who had made provision for the next bad times but the GFC is so comprehensive as to make them look totally incompetent with all their waste and neglect.
OMG!! I fell off my chair when I read this in the OO.
Swan’s financial straitjacket by Michael Stutchbury, Economics editor | May 16, 2009
“…Australia’s new fiscal straitjacket, required not just to repair the structural budget damage left by John Howard and Peter Costello…”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25489386-5017771,00.html
I hope that the myth that John Howard and Peter Costello is finally being shattered by the MM. They were just fiscal frauds. History will judge the Howard Years as the Wasted Years.
Not wishing to hijack this thread into pages of discussion on WorkChoices…
WorkChoices phase I (they appologised to business for not taking it further and said they had much further to take it….shiver!) put in the mechanism to allow the development of near slavery where gave business the ability to basically own the workforce.
Setting an individual against a corporate player and saying that the individual is better off because they can then negotiate exactly what they want is clearly rubbish, but it was the line they continually pushed. Making the whole process opaque, cumbersome and intricate favoured business. Basically cutting out unions where one ‘plant’ could stop the rest of the group from having a union be their negotiator.
And of course having taken so much power from the individual Business could themselves have an informal union where they informally set minimum wages and conditions leaving the worker no choice.
The statistics as they were in boom times showed that WorkChoices ripped wages and conditions from employees. Goodness knows what the effect would have been in normal times or even a recession like now. Maybe a working poor.
That Howard is out the defending these still is a nightmare for the Liberals. It ties them to the past and raises again the specter of WorkChoices. I am sure Labor can point out how business could have used Workchoices against the workforce in the current climate.
*the myth that John Howard and Peter Costello were great economic managers…
So Howard would not change ANY policy if he had it over again. What kind of delusion/denial/narcissicism leads to you to lose YOUR OWN SEAT and the election and STILL not be able to reflect on what you did wrong…GP has learnt it from the master
World Vision looks like it’s on a winner here. They plan on working with impoverished people to deliver programs which will soak up CO2, like planting fruit trees, and allow the people to get paid a carbon credit from international ETS’s, like ours. It could become self-sustaining if the carbon price is high enough.
Of course, Andrew Bolt is furious and is cancelling his World Vision child sponsorships and moving them to a denialist charity, or at least one that doesn’t have a position on CC.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25490812-11949,00.html
GP you must know it is the height of dishonesty to compare the debt and spending before and after the GFC. Do you understand how much revenue has been lost? I have my slogan now: Time for plan (b)
But Steve, whereas it seemed like they were beginning to be a bit more realistic, it now seems that the opposition and their supporters are now bunkering down behind Turnbull as the Titanic sinks
ShowsOn, you’re wrong there. Hockey proposed that Labor cancel the campaign for a seat on the UN Security Council. A total saving of $11million. WOW, that will go a long way towards reducing the deficit!
Diogenes, I thought you’d found the winner of Eurovision.
http://www.eurovision.tv/event/artistdetail?song=24694&event=1481
Diogs,
“Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce questioned the long-term viability for poor countries that might become dependent on carbon trading.
“Carbon trading is an amorphous concept based on the idea that you can trade in odourless, colourless gas…..”
Is this what politicians do for a living?
Why is it that every month, Joyce seems to attempt to win dumb comment of the year award?
GG
Perhaps Barnaby has bad breath so it’s not odourless.
He really is an idiot. A project that allows an injection of cash and feeds a starving African nation would be a good thing. Imagine them saying “we’ll let all these people starve because we don’t want to become dependent on ETS revenue at the expense of our booming nanotechnology push”.
He might want to reflect on the long-term viability of a country that stays dependent on coal. That hasn’t crossed his thick skull.
Did anyone hear bumbling Barnaby on the ABC the other morning talking about how the Nationals need to separate themselves from the Libs?? He was INCOHERENT. Could not name one policy but banged on about “moral issues”. If he is the best they’ve got, they’re in really serious trouble
Great policy – is sure to win over all the readers of Andrew Bolt and Greg Sheriden. Lots of swinging voters there…
He’s probably unaware that we already have emissions trading schemes in some parts of Australia already, for NOx.
Grog Hockey demonstrates well what a rabble they are. Can they cannot come up with better cost savings than the relatively small UN seat bid and revenue raising of a ciggie tax?
And these guys want us to believe that they are the SUPERIOR economic managers??
Isn’t he a member of the LNP, or did that particular development in Qld pass him by? I suppose it merely confirms that the “amalgamation” was just a buyout by the Nats. The conservatives are likely to lose more seats in Qld at the next federal election.
Andrew, the ciggie tax income is to offset the cost of retaining the private health insurance subsidies. So the only net savings Turnbull et al offer in a $57 B debt a few million in diplomatic promotions.
Tell us more. I didn’t know that. How does it work
GG, more to the point. where is the life that we have lost in living?
Yeah, the Howard economic myths are being exposed. Squandered surpluses and failures to invest.
And now, of course, punterland knows that interest rates will always be lower under Labor
Not to mention SOx
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/mother-of-us-marine-water_b_203902.html
Glen Stevens and Ken Henry’s memoirs would be a fun read when you got to the chapter on the Howard Years
Finns
amigo GG likes sorting his sox as a stress releiver while watching TV
“Yes, we can” is sounding more and more like: “yes, we can, if only they let us”.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5igASwfYn9o0CSTI0dbaHCZJNoCJA
Amigo Vera, i heard it’s going to be called “The Coward Years”
I’d buy that
Apparently there’s a grants program that dolls out $2 million a year to the Labor and Liberal parties but no one else.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25490740-5013871,00.html
A rort by any other other name…
*Doles out.
The Amigo in trouble:
http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,6627907,00.jpg
I’m sure they’d both be far too professional and have too much integrity to say very much.
NSW and the ACT have had the Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme (GGAS) running since 2003. It applies only to the electricity sector.
It works like any other trading scheme by setting a cap on total emissions for GHG like CO2 and NOx, issuing certificates to electricity generators and then allowing them to trade those certificates.
Unfortunately the scheme has collapsed due to poor targets and giving out free permits to all and sundry. There were other structural issues which allowed some of the biggest polluters (like Hazelwood in Victoria) to somehow earn and sell credits.
ShowsOn – that article you linked by Ross Gittins is terrific. Simply put and so pertinent. Pity some of the other journos and Barnaby Joyce won’t take note.
That sounds familiar….
So that was it then – a petty point.
Swanny puts howie back in his box.
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/swan-chides-work-choices-addict-howard-20090516-b6i7.html
Does anybody know when Ken Henry is due to hand down the his review of the taxation system?? Surely that is going to have a huge impact on federal politics when it is done.
Would be interesting to have 3 parallel themes of major importance running at the same time. GFC response, ETS, and Major Taxation Reform.
I suspect that the ALP has the front bench talent to handle that, and some coming through who could use involvement in major policy areas like this to establish themselves.
Libs have got nuthin. The shallowness of their talent pool is getting a bit scary. I’m all for the ALP and seeing the Libs thrash and bleed for a while, but i dont want a situation where there are no alternatives.
After reading Possum’s stuff on Gen Blue, i wonder if we are headed for the demise of the Libs and a new Govt / Opposition dynamic between the ALP and Greens. Alp morphing over time into the “new conservatives / right” and the Greens moving more to the center as the new center/left wing of politics?? Not saying it will happen soon, but if the Libs dont lift their game it could happen eventually.
As they say, if you want to know, search it you lazy prat.
Looked up on Google and found:
http://taxreview.treasury.gov.au/content/Content.aspx?doc=html/timeline.htm
Due to give final report to the treasurer in Dec 09.
This is going to make things much more interesting as it potentially opens up a new line of attack for the ALP in an area once considered to be very much Liberal terrritory. No-one will be able to call them lazy in 2010 (election year) if they have this on the boil. I suspect the Libs fear this greatly.
Yep. ANd to be honest, I’m sure they’d have things to say about both sides. (Afterall, as Rudd is ever at pains to say, they are independent).
But Henry let us know what he though of the Howard Govt in his speech to Treasury in March-April (?)2007.
Estimates will be fun. No doubt us deperate souls will be logged on watching and commentating.
We really need lives
When do the Estimates start, Grog. Will have to make time to watch that on apac.
I know we all know it’s crap, but I feel obliged to point out that legally we are still living under workchoices. Fair Work comes into play on July 1. Meaning that Howard either a) is an idiot or b) is deliberately misleading.
Ahhh. Sometimes it’s nice to feel that pre 24/11/07 anger…
Yo ho ho
Soooo true. The current Libs are so hapless that I feel sorry for them and actually hope they lift their game. But just seeing a photo of Howie and reading his perversions of the truth reminds me of just how despicable he was.
Swine flu has died from our minds but it’s still kicking around, trying to make a comeback. The 1918 Spanish Flu did a similar thing, but the mortality rate of swine flu is much less so it shouldn’t be a problem unless it mutates.
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25491750-5006301,00.html
May 25
Here’s the program:
http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/estimates/budget0910/index.htm
So we have to wait till June 3 and 4 for Treasury.
People getting excited about Senate estimates………
Finns,
“where is the life that we have lost in living?”
Always remember, these are the good old days. Scary, huh?
Yes I know Oz, we are hopeless.
But I remember your comment when you’re on here June 3 bagging Joyce’s questions to Henry
Haha, I’m at least as excited as the rest of you.
And just when you thought NSW politics couldn’t get any more… NSW, we have this:
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,25490143-5006009,00.html
I think Carmel’s tilt at the premiership might have something to do with her chances in Marrickville in 2007.
imacca @ 319, agreed, that was why it went through to the keeper.
Oz – I’m just hoping Joyce asks a quesiotn that results in Henry letting out a long sigh. (I don’t think I’ll be disappointed)
They should have put Tebbutt in instead of Rees in the first place.
They should do it now – it’s well past the break glass in case of emergency time.
Oh OK, so this is going to save about $10 million over 3 years or 0.000001% of GDP.
The budget probably has ROUNDING errors worth 100 times that much.
This is to be expected, he thought WorkChoices, along with tax cuts, was a solution for everything.
Would she be Anna Bligh or Joan Kirner?
I said they should’ve put Tebbut in there ages ago. She’d offset the negative image of Labor hardmen like Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi.
She’s been pretty weak as Environment Minister so far – the biggest thing the government was touting when Rees took office, for the environment, was a feed-in tariff for solar but she keeps getting rolled in cabinet by the Treasurer and Minister for energy.
Adam, I don’t think she’d win the election for Labor but she might narrow the loss and lessen the time they have to spend in Opposition. Presuming she wins her seat, of course.
I was just japing before, but Im serious about this: if Talcum wants to pretend that the deficit is nothing to do with the GFC, and everything to do with economic management – then Rudd should do the same on interest rates.
SO MUCH LOWER UNDER LABOR. LIBS = HI INTEREST RATES.
Rinse and repeat.
You like the sound of that Talcum? Might look good on a truck! After all, its true. Look at the numbers!
ShowsOn, that’s why I thought it was such an important budget saving.
Also can’t do “smileys” very well.
Yes, just as you thought it was safe to go back to the hacienda, the Journalists’ Friend – Swine Flu – makes a recovery.
Even more reason to be thankful for the common sense of the electorate to consign him and his woeful Government to the dust bin of history.
Yeah, BB, the Howardista media are ever grateful for that and the NRL s#x scandal so as to be able to give Turnbull and the Coalition some breathing space following their woeful response to the Budget.
OK, introspective navel gazing trivia time bludgers.
I just had a look at the last thread. There were 2495 posts, so I thought it would be interesting (well in a boring kind of way) to see the make up of PB.
How many individual posters do you think there were? ie what is the size of the Bludger community (not counting watchers-only)??
Who was it that fabulously said: “A pig is still a pig, even with lipstick”.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_1V7wnZxPqok/RmD3xOBegAI/AAAAAAAAEuM/aQgV8RwoluM/s400/lipstick+on+a+pig.bmp
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-military-commissions16-2009may16,0,975101.story
There’s only about 20 regulars.
Much higher number of posters though (and I’d argue a lot higher number of regulars – post midnight though the numbers dwindle!)
Psephos, Possum, Glen, GP, GG, Finns, Vera, Juliem, Ruawake, Socrates, Cuppa, Gary B, Diogenes, Grog, Gusface, Scorpio, Dario, Swing Lowe, LTEP, Thomas P, ShowsOn, Boerwar.. maybe 30 regulars.
Yeah that’s closer to the number of regulars… but all up??
Gotta go cook some lamb shanks will post the answer ‘ron.
Kevin Rudd is broke so now he wants to raid our superannuation money. Shame Shame Shame.
No 394
It’s certainly more affordable than $200 billion of debt.
Grog
I’m guessing about there are about 60 who post. The smart one’s just watch us makes fools of ourselves.
Putting the swine flu in perspective, there have been 7500 cases so far and 66 deaths, so the mortality is about 1%. The mortality rate of common flu is 0.1%. The mortality of the nasty flu’s like Spanish was about 10%.
There are more deaths in the health middle aged population than for common flu, but less than for Spanish flu. And I still haven’t seen any in vivo evidence that Tamiflu works.
Do I count as a regular poster, Psephos?
406, add BH and Yohoho and probably a handful of others we’ve forgotten; I would say 3 dozen or a bit more is closer to the mark?
Including the irregulars, partimers and sporadicists
I would say that close to 80-100 post here.
This is fascinating. Jon Huntsman (Jr) is going to be named US Ambassador to China. He will resign as Governor of Utah. We talked abut him a while ago as a possible Repug candidate for 2012. He is very similar to Rudd in many ways. He was a diplomat, he’s fluent in Mandarin, he has a rich relative (his father is MEGA-rich as in multi-billionaire) and he’s a very moderate centrist. He backs civil unions for gay couples.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/15/jon-huntsman-to-be-named_n_204201.html
Here’s a really good article on the magnitude of the problem of an aging population that will test out even the most astute financial and economic geniuses.
The depth of the problem, GP, is something that your heroes, Howard & Costello were more than aware of and ignored for eleven and a half years.
It is a pretty poor effort to try and place blame on the Rudd Government when they are prepared to acknowledge the problem and are trying, in troubled times at that, to set in train a program to try and address, what is going to, very soon, be an economic headache of monumental proportions.
http://business.theage.com.au/business/moving-the-goalposts-20090515-b63s.html?page=-1
In the last thread – http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2009/05/11/essential-research-61-39-5/
By my count there were 82 posters.
Regulars? Harder to say I won’t bore you by typing out the entire list.
More likely the super funds see the prospect of good safe yields from government bonds and NBN and want to be in them.
That’s what happened when you linked to an el cheapo site Crikey. We should be provided with the blogger stats, ala Youtube.
Youtube gives you full stats. Who are your subs, how many links to your vids, how many watched your vid, where, who etc etc etc.
Why shouldn’t super funds be allowed to invest in infrastructure projects? I HOPE my super fund invests in the National Broadband Network, because that network will become MORE AND MORE valuable as EVERYTHING from telephone to TV is sent over that network.
Finns
Can we get an opinion on this?
Diog, he is also:
Muskiep @ 332
Chris Evan’s reaction was wonderful. After a severe disappointment about Rudd’s flim flam policy it was nice this week to be reminded of two reasons why I also voted for Rudd:
1. Putting common decency back into the way Government treats asylum seekers.
2. Reversing the shameless way in which the Howard/Costello government defined battlers as those earning more than $150,000.
Big red roses for both of these.
I suspect most are long time voyeurs, rare posters like myself… hi bludgers!
This is what he looks like with Pumpkin’s dad:
http://www.pclaptops.com/images/dans_photos/John&Dan1.jpg
OK make that 83!
Ah bugger it here’s the list….
Meanwhile, back in the real world, Europe’s first quarter GDP decline, annualized, is 10%.
My main criticism of the Rudd Budget is that it is based on hopelessly optimistic guesses about where the rest of the world is going.
Rudd will seek to spin it that he based it on the best available forecasts. This is what Howard/Costello did as well. But ultimately Rudd/Swan are responsible for picking the right guesses and getting this one wrong will come back to bite them.
Isn’t it the battlers earning over $150 000 a year whose private health insurance rebates Turnbull and GP will defend to the bitter end?
(Spoiler – this link is not for Glen, GP or Bree
…..)
From an article describing why this bloke is a “progressive” (He is from the US, he is an author and not a career politician but clearly a Dem., chooses the label of “progressive” as opposed to “democrat”). Given his reasons, I can’t say that I’m in any disagreement with his choice of words
…
Substitute “Australian” for “American” and tick the various good things Labor have introduced over the years. Keating, I believe, introduced Superannuation. I could go on but that is just one example.
I better be number one Grog.
ok Oz because you asked
Ta, darl.
Oh, and another thing. In parliament on Thursday, and for the last two weeks on Q&A, the Liberals have started up an racist campaign lamenting that a lot of the debt will be bought by foreigners (either banks or governments).
If that is so bad, shouldn’t the Liberals be MANDATING that Australian super funds buy the debt, so that it remains in Australian hands?
Again, it seems that the opposition has given the government the perfect excuse to make super funds buy SOME government bonds – the opposition told them that having debt held by foreigners is bad.
Grog, if I understand you correctly you are compiling a list of posters to PB? Must be really bored with the footy then atm
….. can’t say I blame you though if that is the case as my team is facing a predictable outcome which is why I’m not watching atm and sitting here 
That’s astonishing, it is nearly double the U.S. decline.
Yep north are hardly putting up a yelp.
Here you are – Pretty much in chronological order of the last big thread (except for Oz!):
Oz, Psephos, Dario, Possum, jaundiced view, scorpio, zombio mao, cuppa, polyquats, Andrew, Oz, flaneur, juliem, GP, Socrates, itep, It’s Time, Grog, Olivia Cunningham, Centre, Frank Calabrese, ruawake, ShowsOn, Thomas Paine, Glen, BK, Bushfire Bill, steve, bob1234, castle, Boerwar, pendant, Diogenes, J-D, Musrum, Tom, Greensbourough Growler, Acerbic Conehead, Gusface, vote1maxine, The Finnigans, Ratsars, The Heysen Molotov, Stewart J, evan 14, Patrick Fogarty, dogma, Yo Ho Ho, Dr Good, Gary Bruce, vera, a a, dave, William Bowe, Muskiemp, Winston, red wombat, mexicanbeemer, Mr Squiggle, Harry “Snapper” Organs, Steve K, lefty e, fredn, zoomster, centaur009, imacca, yoyoma, Kevin Bonham, Bree, BH, Bird of Paradox, PAAPTSEF, TCEPSER, Singha, Inner Westie, bule, Tom the First and Best, Caroline Church, philmour, Big Bob, Steve B, Ad Astra.
Whew. Just realised I double counted one poster – so there were 81
grog
What’s taking so long? are you doing profiles to go with all those names?
GP you should stop reading the Australian, it distorts ones view of the world. They are going to create new methods for super funds to invest directly into the infrastructure projects, as an alternative to government bonds. If they make it attractive enough some funds may stop the nonsense of investing in overseas shares in an attempt to spread risk. It will be a good thing for the stability of super fund returns. I suspect it will be no big deal all round.
What are you suggest GP, that we should not build infrastructure, that super funds shouldn’t have the opportunity to invest in the infrastructure, or that you read the Australian don’t think and parrot their nonsense.
missed by that much!!
In reality, Kevin Rudd has inherited a veritable “perfect storm” of issues to deal with that have built up and been ignored by the previous Howard Government.
1. The almost total neglect of the problems facing indigenous Australians.
2. Trying to maintain the integrity of an economy left with a “structural deficit” inherited from the previous Government which was only intent on retaining office and handing out cash to every sector of the community which didn’t necessarily need it in order to harvest votes.
3. To maintain employment levels and prevent the economy from crashing in the face of the Global Financial Crisis.
4. Trying to implement a viable Climate Change policy to set the country up for a meaningful engagement with the rest of the world in this endeavour as well as dealing with the current issues relating to current effects caused by GCC. ie the problems with the chronic water shortages in the Murray Darling System storages, wetlands and lower lakes.
5. To attempt to restructure the Taxation System and restructure the economy to be able to deal with the enormous increases to the budget which will result from a doubling of the over 65 demographic by 2020 and the huge impact on the budget for pensions and increased health care and aged care costs.
All the while the Opposition, the Greens and Independents with the help of a compliant media, are doing everything possible to stymie the efforts of the Government when they should be doing everything possible to offer assistance and constructive advice to help get the country through this troubled time.
Forgot who quesiton the LIb’s number on the cig tax (Diogenes?)
Seems he was spot on:
Why likely? “Errr dunno, cos it would be”? the Spokesperson said.
patience!!!
Now there’s a challenge…. (that is beyond me)
Did you note GP that the Australian article actually didn’t mention what was being planned, that it was nothing more than about 1000 words of emotive crap. It really is sad that that paper has fallen so low.
The ABC has:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/16/2572460.htm?section=justin
Suck eggs Robb.
Nate The Great,
You weren’t a rare poster at one time. lol
Steve
Yep. But here’s an improvement:
Turnbull’s Battlers = Those on $150,000 or more. (Copyright: Boerwar).
If Rudd wants to use that one I will want reasonable royalties.
Geez, Melbourne-Bulldogs game is a ripper for those who have foxtel
Shows On
Astonishing yes, surprising, no. (Note they are figures for a single quarter).
I think it equates to about two or three times the total size of Australia’s annual GDP.
Where are the Australian editorials condemning the Liberals for running a scare campaign on overseas countries buying Australian debt?
If Rudd can hold the deficit for 2009/2010 to 5% of GDP with this budget, he will be hailed as a genius.
Other world Leaders will prostrate themselves at his feet and the Libs will slink away to hide in a culvert somewhere.
What! With the Matty Johns issue running so hot. How dare you suggest that. Where are your priorities ShowsOn?
The Liberal’s can’t quite bring themselves to say China in relation to buying Govt. bonds.
Don’t worry Barnaby won’t be able to help himself, he will blurt out something along the lines of – Rudd sells our grandkids to China.
Speaking of the LNP this should give people a laugh.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25488470-5006786,00.html
Why doesn’t the Australian government:
1. announce a homeland defence policy ie one that starts at our borders
2. announce that hencefort it will no longer go off to war somewhere else
3. cancel the order for three air warfare destroyers but not the joint strike fighter
4. with the air warfare destroyers buy an Australian merchant marine out of all those ultra-cheap ships swinging at anchor around Singapore?
ruawake
Well, that looks like Qld at least is going to deliver some gains to Labor at the next Federal election. Apart from a frustrated white shoes fella, who else would fund this bunch of turkeys?
(Oops, apologies to the turkey: a noble, useful, bird, attractive to look at, sociable in its habits, tasty to eat and which, when compared to the denizens of the LNP, talks good sense.)
And what renounce all treaties??
George Megalogenis gives the Coalitions claim as great economic managers another big hit. GP is going to have some difficulty arguing against this. The headline is very telling too. Come on ABC, where are you?
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25489387-7583,00.html
This is the really telling part:
having read the thoughts of Howard and considering the inner turmoil of the liberals, i am near certain that howard is still part of the dynamic
1. he may well be looking to protect his “legacy”
2. no succession was planned and even now there is no clear “leader”
3. costello’s hesistancy in part is because he ,costello, is still aware of howards presence
4. I less jokingly believe,esp. after his interview (interesting word) that Howard will run again.
I think there is no other logical reason for the internal shambles that is the libs
Interesting that Germany, who led the argument against stimulus then reluctantly introduced a very small package composed largely of tax cuts are now leading the European plunge with 3.8% contraction in the last quarter.
PAAPTSEF and the funny thing is that they have to explain their inaction to the electorate later this year in Germany.
Wow, I’m surprised that the Oz let Megalogenis include that damning statistic regarding the future budgets in his article. I thought most of the MSM were just Coalition parrots.
Megalonis says it like it is.
We often argue about the relative merits of public vs private hospital care, wrt costs and outcomes etc. The Productivity Commission will tell us in 6 months.
http://www.aushealthcare.com.au/news/news_details.asp?nid=13949
Yep, and the article also has some pretty telling points against the Govt as well.
PAAPTSF
Yep, good point.
However the relevant test might not be who falls the firstest and the fastest but who climbs back up the firstest and the fastest.
Japan did not make the hard decisions when its bubble burst and stayed down for a decade.
Can’t see it myself.
* Age: Howard will be 70 in July. He will be 71 at the next election and if elected PM would be 74 at the end of his first term. He seems to be in good health, but there’s plenty of evidence that his once legendary political judgement faded during his last term. If he won, he would face exactly the same debilitating “will he retire or run again?” questions as he faced after 2004, only more so, because if he ran again in 2013, he would be 77 at the end of a second term.
* Finding a seat: He won’t win back Bennelong. The obvious seats to run in are Berowra or Bradfield, but Ruddock says he isn’t moving and there is already a blue-riband field in Bradfield. It could probably be arranged, but it would be messy.
* Policies: Howard would be inextricable entangled with his own legacy. Will he bring back WorkChoices? No? Does he admit it was bad policy then? No? So why not bring it back then? And so on…
Diogenes, it has always struck me as odd that doctors can get trained up in Public hospitals at taxpayers expense and then disappear into the ether of private practice.
grog, make that 82, I think I might have posted one or two posts on the 2000+ thread, more of a lurker though and I often get a laugh thanks. Finns dolphin sex post had me ROFLAO.
I don’t think Australians have the energy to go down the xenophobia path with the Liberals again. In fact it is those pesky foreign types we are depending on especially the no European types.
I think the last lot of dog whistling on boat people left many with adrenal gland exhaustion. Another whistle down that path may lead to a lot of head shaking instead of fear. Gee even the likely new US Ambassador to China is an sinophile mandarin speaker. The Pope was in Palestine and Obama is trying a less agressive approach with the middle east. The good old days of them and us will be bit harder to scare up for the Libs.
Im not sure Howard would want to do a Berlusconi Adam.
How much lower can the Liberal support sink before somebody puts their hand up to take responsibility for getting back on track?
Trainee doctors working in public hospitals are paid by the taxpayer but they actually do most of the work there, so the tax-payer is getting quite a lot for their money. 75% of work in public hospitals would be done by trainee doctors, with appropriate supervision from consultants. Most operations etc are pretty easy and need no supervision at all.
Very few doctors finish their training and go to work purely in private practice straight away. It’s frowned on as selling out and not giving anything back to the system (and colleagues) who helped train you. Most specialists do a mixture.
There’s very little peer-review in private practice and you really need that for at least ten years after you graduate or you can easily end up a bit on the fringes of what is acceptable practice.
Are doctors still required to do stints as “honoraries” in public hospitals as repayment for their free education? That used to be the deal. When I had my acute appendicectomy 20 years ago, the surgeon, one of the best in Melbourne, was working at the Alfred as an unpaid honorary.
Diogenes, Danke.
Oz
That’s interesting. I was only saying to ALP friends at lunch today – after a couple of looseners – that Tebbutt is the only apparent leader who can add value to the party’s vote from here. But will the Obeid/Tripodi uglies group be prepared to install a left-winger? It would speak volumes for how they perceive the hopelessness of their chances next election if they did put her up. When you think about it though, she would be totally beholden to the right until the election. But if she somehow conjured up yet anothe runlikely win for Labor, she would have a much stronger arm, and maybe could bring on some decent progressive policy, while telling Eddie, Joe & Co to get stuffed.
(And then I woke up!)
406, you forgot Frank
If it’s good news the government will tell us in 6 months, if it’s bad they’ll sit on it.
Grog @ 448,
That is not to take anything away from Melbourne, they are playing very good atm and today, they were playing in memory of a guy who passed away in the last week. But the Bulldogs are very ordinary this year and Jason A. is even more hot and cold than Fev and that is saying something. If the Bulldogs had brought their usual game to the gate today, the Dees would have won by about 14 the other way.
The Dees aren’t far off. Two weeks running now they have run out of puff at the end after performing well most of the day.
Like any government would, even a Green government.
Pretty much. And she’d have all the current problems the government and Rees have. Regardless of how intelligent she might be, the fact that she’s going to be relying on the right for her leadership is going to leave her completely hamstrung. The only possible benefit would be from her image. But I guess that’s better than nothing.
Someone was commenting a few weeks ago that the leadership candidates touted when the privatisation stuff was going on was a sad indictment on the Right. The only non-Left candidate was Sartor, and he ended up losing his portfolio. At the moment he’s still the only one that they could support even though he’ll probably be less popular than Rees.
The sad thing for Labor about 2011 is that even though Labor is most likely going to lose, the hacks like Obeid, Roozendaal and Tripodi will still be there. I imagine there’s a sense of desperation in the Left. They’ve already lost Watkins and are likely to lose Tebbut and Firth in 2011.
Probably. I was just warning Diogenes not to get his hopes up.
Adam we dont want to win but play games like we did today, showing that we’ve got some promise.
We want to make sure we get draft picks.
How bout that Cale Morton?
The libs are quickly reaching the desperation stage if they start hinking of Howard again. I think it was around the time of mad Mark that there wer half hearted calls for Keating again.
But Howard is saddened, his economic legacy has been trashed and shown for what it was, twice now, once from his time as Frasers treasurer and now his most recent wasteful years.
Most PMs leave a legacy, Gough had medibank, uni education, the awakening of Australia as a nation amongst others. Keating had his economic reforms. Howard saw WorkChoices as his legacy and warned it was in for good if the libs won in 07 and then pleaded it should not be dismantled. If the libs lose in 2010 and 2013 and WorkChoices is totally dismantled, including the ABCC, then Howard is left with no legacy, except that of Frasers as one who did not do much for Australia.
Castle need i remind you of the waterfront, gun laws, GST ect?
Colluding with business to sack workers simply because they belonged to a union, being a member of a party that voted against banning automatic weapons in Tasmania before Port Arthur, and the big one – introducing a sales tax. Wow.
No, Glen, we want to win. I won’t support a team that plays for draft picks. “Feed your troops on victory.” (Monash)
I’ll give him gun laws. That’s the one good thing he did for Australia.
Though he was pretty much forced into it by the Port Arthur massacre. Wouldn’t have thought of it otherwise.
What good has that got us in the past to finish 10th or 11th and get no draft picks.
I want us to play really well so that we can rebuild the playing list.
We can if we lose the rest of our games win the last 3 on the trot and still get priority picks.
I’ll give him dogs and balaclavas as enduring legacy.
You’re there dogma:
If you’re going to bottom out, this year is the one to do it – next year the Gold Coast get picks 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15
http://www.afl.com.au/tabid/208/default.aspx?newsid=76855
On the Productivity Commission report, I’ve signed up to get updates on how it’s going and a copy of the Report when finished.
Psephos
All that honorary stuff died a long time ago. It was based on good will. There’s no good will anymore.
he was hot last week against the Crows
Scorpio at 457 posted the OO headline:
… and asked, “Come on ABC, where are you?”
I can see the ABC headline now:
Castle
interestingly MIL,BIL and a few others have said how things would have been handled better if Howie was in charge,and yet they were part of the cohort that voted him out in 2007
maybe howie is still attractive to them via the hip pocket nerve.
Psep
Any idea who the oldest leader was who staged a comeback ??
The Oz shot down again:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/16/2572460.htm
He didn’t support it when Unsworth proposed it, Unsworth who said it will take a massacre in Tasmania before we get proper gun laws.
Howards gun buy back was a half arsed effort that saw licensed gun owners get a motza for their old weapons that enabled them to buy brand new ones. I even remember a stroy about some bloke getting thousands for old artillery. It wasn’t hard to get a license and buy a gun after his buy back which I thought was the whole point.
Still, something was done, but it was not something any other pollie would not have done, and may have done more, given the circumstances.
Glen if that is all you can think of it proves my point, he is worried about his legacy.
geez, sorry Grog, glasses are needed I think, I went over that list twice.
There was a decade that followed the gun laws. What of that decade? Wasted, that’s what.
Howie is a bullet proof vest was a hoot.
The gun buy back may have been a good idea, but using the medicare levy as way to fund it was crud.
Well you’ve got the aboriginal intervention, East Timor, 10b murray darling scheme, medicare safetynet, FTA agreements, 20b surplus’, paying off 96b of debt, Auslink im sure i could think of others if i went to the Lib website.
In that case doctors ought become public servants, trained, employed and paid by the state, and required to work as directed. Otherwise they’re just a cartel holding the community to ransom.
Welcome back, rip van Adam.
It’s Time, I don’t claim to be an expert on everything.
SHHHH! Don’t mention the Medicare safety net, that’s the one that the Howard government completely broke its promise on!
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/PM-Abbott-sorry-about-Medicare/2005/04/15/1113509928257.html
Oh, I also forgot to point out that all these things were supported by Labor.
Bilateral FTAs are bad policy whoever supports them. They are institutionalised sweetheart deals, they corrupt international trade, and they make it harder to get a global free trade agreement, which the poor countries desperately need.
Would there have been an Aboriginal Intervention if an election had not been looming? I doubt it.
Grog, back at 499. It’s still being flogged as a story on ABC TV News, along the lines of “Wayne Swan denies blah, blah”.
Damn silly, I reckon. I’d rather like my super funds to invest in the FTTH. Better bet than the certifiable share markets of late.
The 10b murray darling scheme was the one written on the back of an envelope during a Brisbane cabinet meeting and had not been assessed by Treasury or the Finance Department. Not part of a legacy, more a sign of a PM who had lost his way, I’d have thought.
http://www.thewest.com.au/aapstory.aspx?StoryName=355774
There was an article – an interview with Tony Abbott, I think it was – wherein he recounts the desperation of the Howard Party during 2007. Everything they tried failed to lift their dismal polling figures. They tried the mammoth budget; and were almost frantic when it failed to produce a bounce. They tried the Intervention, and were again panicked when that failed to have the desired effect. Seems pretty clear everything they tried during their last term (apart from SerfChoices lol) was aimed at getting them back for a fifth term.
INTERFET was a UN security council mandated force. Guess who thinks Australia should not be a member of the UNSC?
Didn’t Nick Minchin say $10 billion was not a lot of money in a $1 trillion economy?
The way they went through money in their final term 10 billion was a drop in the bucket!
Just slightly off topic, but has anyone else been gobsmacked by the outstanding rorting of perks by the U.K. pollies? If there was an Olympic sport of rorting, they’d have to be gold medal contenders. Two thousand ponds to clean out the moat round your manor? What are you peasants complaining about? It’s a job isn’t it, shovelling mud with a teaspoon between your teeth. Just STFU or we’ll find a safe seat for whatsisname, you know the guy…deputy to Dubbya?
Australia was screwed every which way to midnight in the US FTA. Truly a Howard legacy.
So we have come to the conclsion that the poll bludger party room has 81 members! It woulod be Interesting to see how many Federal Seats are represented in that 81 and if the political sland of the 81 actually matched which party how the actually seats we live in.
The only resaon I don’t post more often is I have other things to do and slao there is a bit of deja vu with the polls all showing the same thing, the continct talk of media bias and the poor performance of the Liberals and the clear lack of scandel within the Government.
Is William going to have a live thread of the Fremantle by-election and daylight savings results tonight?
Psephos
Mrs D wishes to comment on that.
Disclaimer: The following comments do not necessarily reflect Diogenes’ opinion and he takes no responsibility for them.
“I completely agree. Doctors in private try to justify their exorbitant fees by the principle of the “free market” completely ignoring how they got to be doctors in the first place and the fact that medical services in the private sector are heavily subsidized. They also have total control on who gets to be doctors, how many in each field and to a large extent where they are going to work. This allows control of any potential threat to their personal incomes. At the least a compromise arrangement of 10 -15 years as a public servant before given a provider number. But even better would be the wresting of control of the entire health service from the medical profession.”
Errr, two thousand pounds to clean out the moat. Then you’ll be needing the massage chair. Good grief!
Hello mexicanbeemer, I reckon it wouldn’t faze most who post here to state what electorates they live in. I certainly have before, and rejoice in the neighbourhood who regularly return the current Federal Minister for Health. Damn good party here last November!
ShowsOn @ 408.
Go easy. That was a “non-core” promise. They don’t count for the Howardista’s.
Whenever I listen to Turnbull and GP and co I am struck by the lack of Historically understanding that the we have had passed recessions and depressions in which Governments have tried to remain in surphlus whilst spending dries up and the we know full well what the result was.
The whole political debate up to the 1970s was driven by the memory of the two great depressions this country has seen, both caused by excessive private enterprise that was under regulated and Governments cam eto realise that they have a role to play in ensuring society remains strong.
Is history that hard to learn, considering the Liberals obession with the need to teach history (I agree with that) at the same time the Liberal supporters seem not to have learnt.
Sure Rudd has several serious questions to answer and I am sure he will answer them or the voters will remove him but at this stage the Liberals are not putting forward any real policy solutions other than cut spending and even to supprot workchoices which did not offer a better deal for the Australian workplace I suggest people whio disagree actually go and read it.
mexicanbeemer
I live in Fairfax and was surprised to see Alex Somlyay mentioned in the list of dud members of the Liberal Party.
The surprise was that someone has finally realised he is in parliament.
Diogenes, I reckon it’s a bit more complicated than that. I’d agree that the health system ought not be run by doctors on the whole. Doctors are trained to diagnose and treat illness and disease, not to run complex human service delivery system. I’m in the fairly happy position ATM of having a consultant with whom I’m sympatico, in terms of how to do service delivery, how to train mental health professionals, how to not go crazy given the bonkers bureaucratic demands on us, and, most happily, how we actually work together to get people back to functioning, if we can.
Is Ms Diogenou also a doctor?
I suspect Somlyay has remained in Parliament all these years because the Qld Libs have forgotten all about him, and no-one has remembered to replace him. Someone should go round to his house to see if he is still alive.
Very droll, ruawake. Gotta go for now, bludgers, but would appreciate anyone’s take on the extraordinary “perkgate” in the U.K.. Gotta put moronic sexual behaviour by the young and the drunk into perspective, at the very least, wouldn’t you think?
Regarding Howard’s comments they ran an extended clip of his interview on Channel Nine news here in Adelaide prior to the footy tonight. At first I thought – why is this man still spoiling my dinner? Then I realised how many people were watching and smiled. They showed Howard rabbitting on about his economic record, completely unrepentant about WorkChoices, and then Swan responded pointing out how Liberal policies haven’t changed. So unless the public suddenly has decided that WorkChoices would be great now that their jpbs are at risk, I’d say Turnbull just lost a few thousand more votes.
520 Mexican Beemer,
Pearce here in WA (Judi Moylan, LIB) for myself and Frank Calabrese if someone is compiling a list
It’s called “Doing a Cheney”.
521 Glen,
I’m sure if he isn’t (@ DST vote) than someone else will here or on the DST thread
…. I’m scouring the net atm myself in that regard …..
If we are compiling lists of seats, I’m in the seat of Canberra.
Over my life I’ve been in Cowan, Nedlands and Eden Monaro as well.
HSO
That was my wife, not me.
Psephos
No! She used to be a nurse. She is now studying health ethics for her Bachelor of Justice and Society Honours degree. Now you know what I have to put up with. I trust you will treat me with more sympathy in future.
Glen on the Fremantle byelection ask and ye shall receive, he’s got a live thread going …..
At least Bush II has had the decency to shut up since Obama took over. Cheney and Howard should follow him into the dark night.
A bit of quality work from Alex Who. What a pathetic effort, why bother to make a submission to the AEC on electoral boundaries?
Maybe William or Adam will draw up a list or maybe only those who are certified regulars have seat in name title.
Mexicanbeemer of Kooyong!
Psephos 474
If doctors really did get freee training I’d agree they owe the public health system, but do you realise what they pay in fees these days before finishing a medical degree? It can be over $100k. One of the major downsides of turning universities into largely self-funding institutions is that expensive degrees that are required to produce skills needed for public services are not most viable. Graduates these days finish feeling that they owe nothing. Then, as Dio said, if they form a pool of cheap labour in hospitals while interning they won’t feel they owe much again either. I think the whole idea of full cost recovery for students in courses like medicine, nursing, teaching and some branches of engineering is quite short sighted.
Wont abolishing seats to creat new ones do excelty what he wants the AEC to avoid.
Dio 535
That is interesting. Xanthippe lectures in moral philosophy at Adelaide and has done some lectures in public health ethics.
Ha! No doubt many people in the Qld Libs would be pleased if Ryan was abolished, provided the Hon Member for Ryan was abolished along with it.
would love to see a list of PB represented electorates. imacca from Brand.
Abolishing a city seat I imagine would be good news for the ALP for it would bring a seat like Dickson into the north western suburbs which I believe tend to vote for the ALP.
Socrates. The alternative presumably is not charging fees for medical degrees, but requiring doctors to repay the cost of their education by working at modest wages for the state for, say, ten years after graduation. Then they could go and make some serious money dispensing placebos to bored women or doing rhinoplasties in Point Piper. It would be a sort of super-HECS. I’m not sure politically sellable that would be!
Psephos now lives in scenic Eden-Monaro.
Psephos
Another alternative would be to increase public funding of universities, which under Howard sunk to one of the lowest levels in the OECD. It still is. IMO the tertiary system is on the brink of failure.
Socrates
Mrs Diogenes (I might add that the real Diogenes did not believe in marriage and he was wiser than I) is at Flinders Uni. She currently has a bee in her bonnet about Big Pharm, water policy and the commandeering of science to promote capitalist interests.
I’m Socrates of Sturt. If only there was an electorate named Athens
Glen has stated previously he lives in Melbourne Ports. GP lives on the North Shore somewhere.
I’m in Boothby. Mia Handshin will be my next MP.
Sydney for me.
GP’s in Lowe I think.
Dio
I won’t try to put too many words into Xanthippe’s mouth but she is less concerned about big pharm (except for the ethics of drug trials and reporting biases) and more interested in ethics in medical practice, women’s health, allocation of resources, and political interference in things like the PBS. Her mum is a doctor and she is not anti-doctor, and pro-science. She is a pessimist on CC, water and the Murray too, as am I.
Gusface-
currently dobell ,
soon to be whatever noosa sits in,
formerly
eden monaro, wentworth, fraser,sydney,hotham,werriwa,hotham, ruddocks one,robertson
(I might have missed one or two)
Showson is Sturt and MayoFeral is obvious. My guess is more of us will be in Lib than Labor seats.
My burrow is in La Trobe
I’ve previously been in Kingsford-Smith and Lyne.
I believe our host William is from Fremantle!
India’s Congress Party wins their elections, the opposition conceeded defeat.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/5334077/Congress-wins-Indian-election-as-BJP-concedes-defeat.html
Solomon
Currently of Capricornia, previously of Dawson. Was asked to run for the ALP in the latter back in 1989. Would have won too but knocked it back. No regrets.
560, yes indeed so
North Sydney for me
Dario, Hockey eh?
……
Oh no, not Moreton! I like my local member.
The extremely marginal Swan.
more info?
Don’t think I would be considered a regular but non the less ……..
Macquarie
Was Chifley’s seat and now held by Bob Debus
Bob was born in 1943 so at best I think he will only have one more election in him.
Sadly yes, I have the buffoon as my MP
Thanks, Diog. If either yourself or Mrs. Diog are interested, there’s a bloke called Arthur Kleinman, psychiatrist and anthropologist, who’s written some very interesting material on illness, disease, sickness, culture and help seeking behaviour, amongst other things, that you may find useful. You’d easily find his books and articles via any Uni library.
Gusface,
Member for Moreton, and my local member, is Graham Perrett. I vaguely remember that we recently had some boundary changes, so don’t want any more, as suggested in Ruawake’s post at 538.
Dario, that Hockey is your MP does provide opportunity for some truly entertaining mischief??
How about weekly email scorecards on just how poorly he under-represents your outrage about whatever that poor excuse for a PM has done over the week?
1 more quarter Vera, GO get ‘em Barry
…….
Grog of Fraser
Chisholm. Anna Burke Deputy Speaker
Grog,
The moniker “Grog of Fraser” gives me images of some middle aged (like 1500 – 1600’s, QE1 times) knight rumbling through a city on his horse drunk as a skunk
……
You have got me nicely pegged there juliem
Hahaha, actually the less attention I have to pay to Joe the better I will feel
Nelson forever at Bradfield. If Howie comes here, I move to Bennelong.
Tom is was in Calare (Peter Andren) but redisribution now has him in Macquarie (Bob Debus).
Tom.
It’s Time at Longman – Brough’s Waterloo.
You better get used to them. Qld is growing so fast it is gaining one full quota every three years, so there will be a redistribution after every election. Since NSW growth is lagging both Qld and Vic, that means NSW will lose a seat to Qld every cycle, so there will be redistributions after every election there as well.
Must have been a fun night in 2007 up there for you
Certainly was. Won a little pocket money on the overall ALP win, Brough going down and Howard going down. What more could one ask for?
Peter Martin points us to a NYT article on Norways economy.
NYT-OSLO — When capitalism seemed on the verge of collapse last fall, Kristin Halvorsen, Norway’s Socialist finance minister and a longtime free market skeptic, did more than crow.
Espen Rasmussen for The New York Times
Norway’s economy grew 3 percent last year as many nations plunged into a recession.
As investors the world over sold in a panic, she bucked the tide, authorizing Norway’s $300 billion sovereign wealth fund to ramp up its stock buying program by $60 billion — or about 23 percent of Norway ’s economic output.
“The timing was not that bad,” Ms. Halvorsen said, smiling with satisfaction over the broad worldwide market rally that began in early March.
If only Howard & Costello were just as prudent and saved more money from the mining boom instead of wasting money on pork.
oops link http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/business/global/14frugal.html?_r=1&em
GO SYDNEY !!!!
……… have a few on me, Vera 
A typical response from Ruddock regarding the 7 year old girl sent to Iran. Not a day goes by that I am so pleased that we no longer have to tolerate these characters. Kerosene baths, anyone?
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25490817-5013871,00.html
This fits in well with one of my earlier comments to ShowsOn.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/opinion/cartoons/
I’m in Deakin.
Bill Leak back to his best.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/gallery/0,26637,5024288-20581-2,00.html
Tangney… yes that electorate with that loopy Jensen as MP.
Banks here. Daryl Melham is our man in Canberra.
Juliem,
we got a delay here on 10
28thmin last qtr 104/101 swannies
Melbourne Ports
With the only Labor MP who could tempt me to vote Liberal.
Full Time now Juliem
bugger I got no beer so you’ll have to settle for a coffee.
I’m in Gilmore, my member is on the Lib reject list
In wonder if Diogenes can work out what Turnbull is on?
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25487718-601,00.html
Que?
I didnt rank as a poster, being very infrequent, but I scan regularly. I live in Canberra, previously Fraser, Gilmore, Hume, North Sydney, Sydney, Port Melb and various others.
Ahh
another electoral gypsy
It seems as though nobody has thought to tell Malcolm that there is a Global Financial Crisis and that Australia has been severely effected by it.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25487718-601,00.html
Well I guess he’d know.
I live in Higgins.
It amazes me that Malcopops is still running the deceptive claim that Rudd’s caused the economic downturn and deliberately influenced monetary policy (with no evidence to back it up I might add). I think (or at least I hope) that the average voter isn’t as stupid as they were when they believed all that Howard misleading rhetoric about interest rates and economic management during the 2004 election. As long as the rest of the world experience economic downturns, Malcopops will have more egg on his face.
I suppose he thinks that if you ignore it, it will just disappear of its own accord or more likely, that it is just in Rudd and Swan’s imagination nee “spin”!
I think someone should run a Book on how long he can cling to the Leadership???
Peter Costello to wake up from his hammock and promote the book.
That was quick and decisive!
http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/wa-rejects-daylight-saving-20090515-b5wj.html
Scorpio, it’s like the old joke about the tourist in Ireland asking directions – the local’s reply was something like “well if that’s where you want to go I wouldn’t be starting from here”.
Malcolm’s in the same situation as the tourist. He’s unlikely to get there given the position he’s in.
I’m in Berowra(Ruddock’s electorate, North Shore of Sydney, Hornsby/Normanhurst/Thornleigh/Pennant Hills).
Greens polling well in Fremantle by-election.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/16/2572606.htm
Man, is this boy fast. In more ways than one.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/16/2572524.htm
599,
Vera, all the Libs are on the reject list
603 Gus,
I’ve previously lived (since Dec. 04 when arriving in Australia) in Lindsay Tanner’s electorate, moved from there to Werriwa in NSW, to Canberra in the ACT and now Pearce here in WA. Electoral gypsy here too but just answered the where are you now question earlier
Yep….ya can really fire up those Massey-Ferguson tractors.
606, my condolences Tom
That is one of the most stupid assertions Turnbull has made yet. You would hope the MSM would pick him up on it and question his understanding of even the most basic economics because of it. That is almost on par with …”unemployment would not be heading up, nor the Commonwealth’s tax take down, if Mr Rudd and Mr Swan had not worn a blue tie one the same day”
611, yeah, I know
….. but the Eagles went DOWN 
…. so I got half of the WA results I wanted today 
esp if you are part of the NOx trading scheme
Turnbull receives the “kiss of death” from John Howard. Costello misses out.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25491166-2,00.html
Quite simply the intelligentsia of pollbludger
Lilley here – apparently it’s Swan’s seat, although no one has seen him lately to confirm it
Thomas Paine @ 620,
I bet Howard told him to run with that line. Probably outlined most of the content of his Budget Reply speech too.
Translation: Costello is gutless
Translation: I support whoever happens to be leader, as long as it isn’t Costello, he’s Gutless.
Translation: Turnbull is as bad at politics as he is at economics, but Costello would’ve been worse, he’s gutless.
Well that’s OK, Winston, because for every one of you there’s two voters who usually vote Liberal who vote for Danby. So he’s perfectly safe in what ought to be a Liberal seat given the decline in Labor’s demographic base.
Probably been a bit busy lately, saving the Australian economy from a meltdown!
I imagine one of the short ‘easily understood by the common man’ answers for some of Australia’s problems would be, that world trade has collapsed, though I actually don’t know what the figures are. Nothing to do with anything done by govt on the domestic scene.
Yeah, the locals do seem to be cutting him some slack. Last I heard, he was even getting favourable commentary from the local nursing home residents (not something to be sneezed at for a Labor pollie)
Ryan here.. with the UberTool Michael Johnson as member – another on the Lib deadwood list.
Hey, Possum, have you read George Megalogenis’ article today and if so, what is your take on his statement that most Blue Generation people on the “full pension” vote Labor?
ShowsOn @ 627,
Didn’t know you were bilingual
Oh, and Possum, any chance of an answer to my comment @ #7 please?
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2009/05/14/150k-thresholds-the-electoral-demography/#comments
I’m an expert at Howardese.
Nice to see that Sandeep Dikshit has held East Delhi.
Any relation to Quicksand Richard Head from East Street Deli?
Sorry, time I went to bed.
Night all, catch you all tomorrow.
or that distant relative -richard face
or his cousin Michael Hunt
Well, well another Liberal myth dispelled.
“Bonanza for private health firms”
http://www.theage.com.au/national/bonanza-for-private-health-firms-20090516-b6su.html
On those figures X & Fielding have absolutely no excuse to deny the 30% changes. I’m sure they will bluster and make something up though.
I do hope the Libs. continue to take all advice offered by whatsisname, you know the guy who was Dubbya’s deputy. It worked so well last time. I bet Malcolm just hangs on his every word.
I’m in Page, Jannelle Saffin ALP. Formerly Hinkler Nats Paul Neville.
I am in Mayo – & Heysen at the state level.
I had a pompous cross-dressing (not that there’s anything wrong with that) git till last year. Now I have some smugg, tory, Howard adviser, blow-in that helped frame WC. Neither “represent me” one bit! Downer famously derided all the “ferals” in his electorate to the local rag. Bring on proportional Representation!
Heh Possum, youv’e been mentioned in Milne article you lucky thing you.
The other myth Catsaras’ research highlights is that of the Budget “bounce” in the polls. As statistician Scott Steel has found: “On average, Budgets struggle to make a difference (in polling terms). The occasional one does, but most simply do not.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,25492995-5001030,00.html
Milne as many journo’s fail to do the numbers on Turnbull’s tabaccky tax and assume like Turnbull that all will stay smoking and produce the $1.9b. Some people will give up and the figures will fall short of his amount announced on his budget reply speech.
Who the hell is Andrew Catasaras?
He’s described as a “political blogger” by Milne there, a “Daily Telegraph reader” by Malcolm Farr here http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/opinion/story/0,22049,22778981-5001031,00.html, an “opinion poll tracker” by Farr here http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2008/12/02/41831_opinion.html, an “astute polling monitor” by Farr again here http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24414625-5001031,00.html, a “sharp witted polling monitor” by Christian Kerr here http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/3506476/part_3/politics.thtml and Mike Steketee says he’s a “Market research consultant” http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25415286-25072,00.html
Is he some really famous analyst I’ve just not heard of? Or is he a creation of Murdoch hacks.
Milne goes back over 25 years when Rudd wasn’t a pollie to try and pin him. I’m surprised he just didn’t follow porky’s lead and dredge up Heiner again. Talk about scraping the barrel.
If I’m right, and I’m going by those quotes you’ve done, then…
May answer your query…
This one really is a nasty:
‘UP to 20 per cent of defined benefit superannuation funds may have insufficient money to meet their payouts, according to the national regulator.’
Apparently there are about 6 million people in defined benefit funds.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25483428-664,00.html
One of the Howard/Costello Government’s favourite pastimes was transferring risk from the Government to individuals, although they never quite put it like that, and they never will. While the stock market was bubbling away this did not appear to the Howard’s Battlers to be anything of a problem.
If the the APRA analysis is accurate a whole lot of people are about to discover the true meaning of individual risk.
Unlike the most bludgers, I reckon the 2009 Rudd/Swan Budget is based on irrational exuberance. You could call it a Green Shoots Budget.
TROUBLED auto giant General Motors says it will seek to eliminate nearly 40 per cent of its US dealers or more than 2300 sales outlets by the end of next year as part of its reorganisation.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25491363-31037,00.html
ANOTHER RUDD/GILLARD GOVERNMENT FAIL
Something they did not tout loudly in the Rudd/Swan budget: Land and Water Australia is to be closed down. Decisions based on the best available scientific information, anyone?
The Howard/Costello Government failed in terms of strategic investment in Australian science. Bludgers, this Rudd/Gillard Government decision is a bloody disgrace.
‘Closure information
The Australian Government has announced that as part of the 2009-10 Budget it will be abolishing Land & Water Australia.’
http://lwa.gov.au/
#420, Diog, about Jon Huntsman (Jr) is going to be named US Ambassador to China.
Looking at his background and especially his time as “a Mormon missionary in Taiwan”, he reminds me of the Bible bashing brigade from the South that still looking for that someone “Who LOST CHINA?”.
i sincerely hope he is not on a mission to get China back.
Presidential Election, Indonesian style:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/05/16/presidential-candidates-take-health-tests-sunday-monday.html
The three pairs are:
1. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (Ex General, The current President, SBY) and Boediono (Current Central Bank Governor)
2. Megawati Soekarnoputri (ex President) and Gen. Prabowo Subianto (Ex President Suharto’s son-in-law and General of Special Forces)
3. Jusuf Kalla (The current VP) and Gen. Wiranto (Ex Armed Forces Chief)
Really, there is no contest.
1. SBY – has done well as the President for the last 4 years. Very popular as SBY. No major scandal or hints of corruption.
2. Boediono – a real surprise choice. Civilian and technocrat. Together with Sri Mulyani Indrawati (Coordinating minister for economic affairs and finance minister), has provided stability to the Indonesian economy. In this GFC, it still expects to grow 4%. No major scandal or hints of corruption, but anything to do money (Central Bank) smells rotten to me. They just cant help it.
3. Megawati Soekarnoputri – weak as piss. still her father’s daughter. The only thing she knows what to do is to shout “Merdeka (Freedom). She thinks it is still 1945. Should retire to cook Nasi Goreng.
4. Jusuf Kalla – a “businessman” from one of the most corrupt region in Indonesia, Makassar, Sulawesi. Where the boats for the people smugglers come from.
5. Gen. Prabowo Subianto & Gen. Wiranto – I think if Amnesty International want to put then on trial for human right abuses. say no more.
It really makes you wonder the political judgement of Megawati and Kalla that they picked two such obvious duds and liability as the VP.
But the thing with Indonesia is still, the more they change, they more the stay the same. The Military has smartly retreated in the background since the demise of Suharto in 1998. But in reality the Military is just as powerful as ever in Indonesia’s social economic and political elites.
Many praises have been lavished on the Indonesian election lately, but if you scratch below the surface, the rule of power is still prevalent with the best democracy that money can buy.
Presidential elections will be held on 8/7/09, with a run-off on 8 September, if needed.
I am in Bonner.
Boerwar–
I write water policy. Last year, I wrote a detailed lesson by lesson curriculum for a Year 10 school unit on the Murray Darling Basin, which included looking at all the water instrumentalities involved with its functioning. I’m a member of LandCare. I campaigned during the last Federal election on water issues.
Until it was ‘leaked’, weeks before the Budget, that Land and Water Australia was to be closed, I’d never heard of it.
I’ve listened to hours of rural radio banging on about L&W being closed and I’m still no wiser as to exactly what it was and what it did.
Can someone enlighten me?
Ooooh aren’t LWA naughty?
Surely a govt dept should not be using public funds to agitate against a govt decision?
And I’m sure that there’s a couple of porkies there – for example, they say they’ve been in existence for 19 years and then refer to project they’ve supported since 1993 (neat trick), and talk about contracts being broken due to their closure (illegal, if that was true – would suggest the contracts will be transferred to other depts to administer).
Yes that press release is a bit odd to say the least.
Zoomster @655 & 6
That last press release is a doozy. If that’s the level of cooperation they normally give to Government policy, it’s no wonder they are getting the chop. I think there might be a very specific interpretation of the Productivity Commission advice as well.
http://lwa.gov.au/news/2009/may/12/lwa-closure-contrary-expert-advice
We already have CSIRO Land and Water for research, and Dept of Environment, Water and Other Stuff for implementation of policy. Plus we have National Water Commission, Dept of Climate Change (one of the research areas claimed by LWA) and more specific organisations like the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.
I work in water research, and I hadn’t heard of LWA either.
Oh dear, Turnbull is being ripped apart, again, by Laurie Oakes. He just cannot handle tough interview.
…….. and Turnbull is absolutely furious and seething with Oakes
The Queensland Country Life had this piece on LWA.
http://qcl.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/general/greens-blast-land-and-water-australia-shut-down/1507318.aspx?storypage=1
Finnigans, will there be a link for a rebroadcast of this (podcast I think it might be called?). I normally don’t watch the Sunday news shows (at the expense of the footy and footy pregames)
BUT this sounds really really good. Problem is that my 11yo plays junior footy and his games are on Sunday. Its an away game today and we will be leaving home within the next 15 to 20 minutes. Cheers 
“So says she who did NOT vote No”
Private heath firms surge, despite warnings from the oppositions and private health insurance industry that last years budget changes would cause a “mass exodus”. Untrue. Good luck with the same argument this time boys
http://www.theage.com.au/national/bonanza-for-private-health-firms-20090516-b6su.html
Albanese great on Insiders. Put Barry in his box
Turnbull simply does not seem to understand economics. For example, he claims the stimulus didnt give “bang for your buck” by comparing retail sales month to month. For example, the March figures need to be compared to what they may have been in March 2009 were it not for the stimulus, not February.
Why does he not deal in facts? He pretends Rudd has invented this debt because he likes it, rather than due to the GFC/global recession. He is losing the economic argument and that frankly is all the Howard government had going for it. They are truly lost.
652 Boerwar – You are the one so uptight by this decision, maybe you can answer Zoomster’s question at 655.
How different is Insiders without porky and the poisoned dwarf??
Juliem, i am sure a video of it will be available either on the Nine program site or the NINEMSN site. You might have to dig for it.
Let the 11yos rip. cheers.
zoomster
Mrs D is writing an essay on water policy, in particular water restrictions and it’s effects and alternatives. Do you have any advice for her? She is interested in your thoughts on allowing the trading of water permits between rural and urban areas.
And a couple other usual suspects.
It was bliss this morning.
Loved George’s final line about before any concrete is laid the Minister opening the project must be able to talk under it.
Oh geez, they’re desperate now:
From memory that trip to Chile was for the International Whaling Commission. Imagine the outcry from the Libs if he had stayed home? What do they think Garrett should have done? Ask the IWC to move the venue to Victor Habour? (they did afterall do whaling from there back in the 19C)
Rather than just attack the final total figure, how about attacking what was done on these trips. I’d love Eric Abetz to actually criticise some details rather than some gormless overall thing that is meaningless.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/17/2572688.htm
Dio
I read Mike Young (Adelaide Uni) on the water trading topic. HE seems very knowledgeable. From lectures of his I have listened to water trading is at best a partial solution until the excess fo permits is wiped out and trading extends across state boundaries. Trading water permits between urban and rural would soon wipe out some farmers. That may be entirely rational, but has ben politically avoided so far.
Mike Young’s website is here
http://www.myoung.net.au/water/
Boerwar652
Thanks for the good news! Elimination of another Howard rural pork barrel will mean less pointless duplication and mroe moeny for real research into water. I too had not heard of this group until you posted the good news about their demise. From what I saw of their website they don’t actually do hydrological research – just fund other groups doing research into water and farming with emphasis on the latter. Most of their directors are farmers. In other words, more money dissappearing into the farming lobbying industry. With the work of the CSIRO, universities and govt on policy, they seem to be purely a duplication of the efforts of others, with a focus on protecting farming with no balance of environmental or urban water uses.
Surprise, surprise. People are happier under social democracy than they are conservatism. The happiest country in the world is Denmark, where they pay two-thirds of their income in tax.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-happiest-places-on-earth-are-heavily-taxed?siteid=rss
The thatcherite notion that people want “choice” above all else is just empirically false. I recently saw Australian research on this as well. What most people want above all else is security (in the broad sense), certainty and prosperity, in that order.
Funny ol’ question everybody’s answering. I’m enrolled in Armadale (state – safe ALP) and Canning (federal – equally safe Lib for some reason, the slimey Don Randall who I voted against in 2007). I don’t live there any more, but I could never be bothered to change my details, and when the state election turned up and I lived in Cloverdale, Eric Ripper excited me so little I forgot to. Had to trek down to sunny Kelmscott to vote without messing about with absent forms, where even the Greens volunteer looked scary. These days I live about five doors up from John Hyde’s office, which would have me in two electorates both named Perth and safe ALP.
Also, when I fist got interested in politics I was living in the wheatbelt – Pearce, which will always remain safe Liberal no matter how hard Frank tries.
When I was too young to vote, I’d rant at my mum about political issues that annoyed me, notably Tampa / SIEV X, on how dreadful the Liberal govt of Howard / Reith / etc was, and I’d finish those rants with “vote for the local member, she’s good” – of course, a Liberal. It ended up that the member for the unglamorous wheatbelt (no latte strips in the Avon valley) did more good on the refugee issue than the whole of Labor at the time. I guess that’s what they call ‘being inside the tent, pissing out’.
juliem it’s not up yet. Still has last week’s interview with Swan… check back later . It’s the Today Show so a warning, there will be pictures of Richard Wilkins and Karl S.
Opps , link porblems: http://today.ninemsn.com.au/
and spelling problems too!
Big win for the Congress Party over the nationalists in India:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/ruling-congress-sweeps-to-victory-in-india-election-20090516-b6pu.html?page=-1
Possum’s name is Scott, not Andrew.
Finally got to watch the Howard interview with Speers.
Howard gave one honest answer in the whole interview. Who was the best Labor leader he had ever faced in his career? He gave it some thought, then said Rudd. Rudd was the smartest, then Keating.
Other features of the interview:
* Felt no regret or remorse that thousands have been killed because he got it wrong with WMD’s, and says he would have done it all over again.
* Thinks Rudd should thank him for inheriting a strong economy regardless of the fact that he didn’t thank Keating for likewise.
* Let it slip in the interview that business should lower their costs employing people in the recession. (That means lower pay for workers for those too stupid to work it out).
Not to mention the strong state of the economy had nothing to do with the government.
Speers was actually pretty good asking Howie about no WMD’s and its consequences. But he could have made a big name for himself if he pinned Howie for letting it slip that workchoices meant lower wages for workers, which he missed!
Is this a new format, or was Pies too busy eating to remember to attend and/or TPD too hungover?
TPD was probably in therapy after bringing himself to quote a Crikey source in his column.
669
and she wants all this in a post on this site??
I’m sure William will give you my email address if she’s interested.
Broadly though: I’m inter5ested in questions of best use and practicality. Can’t see why water should go to farms which are unviable both now and in the long term at the expense of other uses. My ideal would be a regular justification by ALL users of water for their entitlements, with evidence provided as to water savings measures adopted.
Impractical to move cities (and given that rural towns have much the same problems with water restrictions, not sure where you’d move them), so much cheaper to provide them with water from other sources.
This would include redirecting water from (non viable) rural areas, desal, reuse, stormwater etc where applicable.
Also see a need, especially with climate change, for multiple water sources. Up until recently, most cities/towns relied on dams as their sole water source. This is no longer practical – drought and fire mean dams no longer the reliable supply they once were. A wise urban area now will be planning for multiple sources. The mix will depend on the town’s individual circumstances – might be bores, tanks, desal, stormwater etc.
So short answer, no problems in my view with water going from rural to urban areas but on a case by case basis.
Can any Bludger ever recall Howard using the word “lunacy” in any interview? I honestly can’t. He used it in the Speers interview.
Howie was asked by Speers what he does in his spare time. I bet he reads Pollbludger LOL
You got a link to the interview?
Don’t worry, found it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaJx8lQLX18
There if anyone else wants it.
Oz it was on Fox Sky News channel. Don’t know if it’s on the net.
scorpio went:
It’s probably true, Labor’s 43% voteshare in the over 60’s has to come from some sub-sample of that population.
I’ve answered your North Sydney question too.
Who or what is the “Blue Generation”? Where did this stupid habit of ascribing virtues to chonological cohorts come from? Can we get rid of it?
668, thanks, I will look for it at halftime of the early game (due to start in about 20 minutes time) …. cheers
(big spoilers to any WA Labor voters out there as I know you aren’t all like me)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
BOP @ 676,
What I fail to understand is WHY the WA version of a Labor voter (as opposed to the Adelaide or Hobart or Darwin variety, frankly anywhere else, even Brisbane) is more conservative than their counterparts elsewhere in the country. Conservatism I expect from Liberal voters and am quite pleasantly surprised when I don’t see it. But WA Labor voters (natives, not temporary like myself) are inherently more like their Liberal counterparts than they might like to admit.
677, thanks Nate
… I’ve opened another window with the link and will get it at the half.
Poss – Do you think the TPD is angling for a job with crikey?
Though George M’s last bit on Costello’s was good altho Cassidy didn’t take it up.
Costello, if in Govt. now, and without stimulating the economy during the recession would be looking at cutting $31bill. from spending in 2011-12. His graphs showed that Rudd & Swan were correct to move early to catch the recession before it gets too dire.
Also said again that Costello left a structural deficit. Loved it so wonder if Cossie will answer that.
Crickey is still an El Cheapo site and probably cant afford someone like TPD.
Butt Finns – I love the bits where they some gossip re the Libs. They think they are perfect so I grab every morsel I can. So thanks Crikey for handing out the stuff the Murdoch press won’t.
I’m at the end of the scale where I need to see them out of power for a long time to come. They’ve spent most of my life in it and I can’t see too much except wasted opportunities during those years.
Malcolm getting his excuses ready for his upcoming backflip on Alchopops
QT will be fun again!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/17/2572732.htm?section=justin
BH are you wearing your Swanny scarf
Meant ‘but’ and ‘where they print some gossip’ – it’s Sunday so I must be still asleep or my fingers are.
Jovial Monk in Boothby. Haven’t hardly posted since the election so forgive you for overlooking me in the count of ‘Bludgers
Vera – the scarf is always wrapped around the telly on Swannie match days, but would you believe it, I haven’t seen the match yet. Daughter rang at 10.30 to say we had won so I had a cheer then. Don’t care how we won, just that we did.
2009 and we still can’t get free to air in our little spot of heaven. Fox aren’t allowed to play Swannie matches when they play home. Will have to wait until Tuesday/Wed. to see it on Fox.
Watched Sky Business this am and it was pretty favourable towards the Govt. Bloke from Optus was happy with the way his talks are going re broadband.
Then Insiders was actually interesting and not just a gotcha session by journos.
Toohey, Crabb and Mega were all good contributors. What a difference they are to the rightwing ravers.
It wasn’t definitive – just a count of those who posted in the last big thread, which I thought would give a pretty good snapshot. I know a few have not been around for a while. And of course previous regular poster Adam in Canberra was deposed in a bloody, schizophrenic purge by Psephos.
Grog – everyday reader but not always able to stay posting for long. I find that lots of links from Bludgers saves me trawling the news sites so that saves heaps of time in a day.
Wish I could get into the small wee hours with you lot but I can’t seem to keep the eyes open. Think I should be 20 years younger – or more.
Dario – I’ll play you ‘my buffoon is bigger than your buffoon’ if you like. Paterson is the electorate. 2010 will change back to Labor I hope.
You were on the list BH!
A page or so ago I posted about the dumb “travel costs of ministers” story.
Props to Bolt for not taking the easy line:
Missed it first time Grog – taa. This site helped save my sanity from just before Rudd was elected Leader in 2006.
I actually saw it mentioned in the SMH, I think, along with LP or it may have been Mark B from LP who commented on William so I thought I’d have a look and was wonderfully surprised. Much better infor than some of the MSM.
You really are an educated lot and Dio’s comments are great as well as those who work in ‘green’ areas or political ones. I truly appreciate them all and pass them on to the old fella who has been hanging off my arm for donkey’s years. He now thinks he is more knowledgeable than the neighbours. One up to Bludgers there.
BTW – I used to live in Berowra (Ruddock’s seat). He was a young member then. Bloke I worked for was Ruddock’s father’s best mate so I heard a lot of insider Lib gossip then.
Turned me right off them, I must say.
I’m told Adam is doing well in rehab and can now go several hours at a time without checking his emails.
On insiders this morning, GM mentioned that the Howard and Costello had the surplus in deficit in 06/07. I didn’t quite believe I heard right and was waiting for anyone else to mention this at PB.
I’m reading GM’s newest article in the OO and his first two sentences verify what I thought I heard this morning.
In other words the Howard/Costello government left a deficit for the Labor government. This rhetoric about them being good economic managers is a fairy tale.
One thing I don’t understand is why the Labor government didn’t pronounce it loud to everyone, maybe keeping business confidence, because they knew what was coming.
had the surplus – had the budget
Ah well. I tried.
As such, I’ve come up with a blank…
The Andrew in question is a PB regular.
I’m sure he’ll let you all know who he is if he wants to decloak.
Tomorrow should be a big polling day – Newspoll has been known upon occasion to bring forward certain polls early (not saying they will, but if I was them I would), Essential Report will undoubtedly have budget reaction stuff and there’s the whiff of a Nielsen in the air.
Poss
What what what
Who is andrew and what has he done (esp. to who and when)
Gus, the Andrew Catsaras that Glinn above was talking about , and whom was mentioned earlier by Oz and others from #646 onwards.
Oh
fair enough then
here’s link to above story I posted at 2.51pm (the post numbers don’t come up help!)
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/meganomics/index.php/theaustralian/comments/budget_honesty_in_the_eye_of_the_beholder
Is anyone else reading it ….unbelieveable
I’m guessing he lives in Eden-Monaro.
Of course, this could just be a cunning plan by Gus to feign ignorance in order to deflect suspicion away from him onto others.
It wont work Andre^..^..^ Gus!
Poss, I spotted your name last night or I should say this morning in TPD article. Now if TPD reads your article’s, we know they of the right might have a clue, which is such a pity because it’s fun to watch them stumble around.:D
George M speaks the truth:
Poss
the day I write for rupe is the day I get a voluntary lobotomy
Cut out all the BS. It’s all to do with what money can be made out Hillary stuffs. Why dont they just split the royalty 50-50.
http://www.theage.com.au/world/hillary-children-in-museum-bequest-furore-20090516-b6rv.html
I’m fairly certain that’s a requirement now, yes?
Has anyone been watching The Amazing Mrs Pritchard on Showcase, on Foxtel?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amazing_Mrs_Pritchard
It’s pretty quirky for a political series. Makes me wonder whether someone should make a “what if” mini-series in Australia based around a scenario where Pauline Hanson became Prime Minister in 1998!
Will there be Zeppelins?
dogma, I share your puzzlement as to why labor has not pointed out the structural deficit they were left with. given how much mileage got out of the “black hole” budgetary position, I dont why Labor isn’t working harder to dispel the myth of the libs as great economic managment
Whaddya mean
pauline was PM in ‘98, or at least had her proxy in place
Actually, there is a third explanation. Increasing the pension represents long-overdue justice for people who have no option but to rely on the pension. The age pension should provide a tolerable standard of living. The dole is meant as a stopgap for people who will soon re-enter the workforce. It is not meant to provide a comfortable alternative to being in the labour market. We have seen before how easy it is to encourage welfare-dependence, and we don’t want to go back there. Obviously if large numbers of people are pushed into long-term unemployment that may need to be reconsidered, but that’s not where we are at the moment.
Fair enough.
No doubt the greenies will still find fault with this
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/17/2572847.htm?section=justin
vera
The Greens will complain that the proposed solar plant has steel in it. The steel used contains coal. All solar power stations should be constructed of recycled tofu.
It should be built in South Australia.
ruawake I’d beleive that! no winks needed
There are nations that have higher unemployment payments for people unemployed for less that a certain period of time. On Lateline recently Senator X suggested higher unemployment payments for the first 3-6 months of unemployment.
I think that the there should be a higher unemployment for the first few months of unemployment for people who have been in the workforce for two or more years. This would enable people to not have to contract their spending quite so fast and would be good for those who find jobs quickly and would be an incentive to look hard so your income did not drop so quickly.
Rent assistance should also be expanded to pay the interest on mortgages but not the principal so less people lose their home because of unemployment and so there is yet another incentive to find work (getting back to paying down the principal and not being given up upon by the lender as someone who will not repay the principal).
The diference between Gen Blue and the rest? Formative and teenage years ex that new fangled thing TV, commencing 1956.
Interesting blog post that summarises key features of the proposed U.S. carbon trading scheme:
http://cleantechlawandbusiness.com/cleanbeta/index.php/3697/house-democrats-finalizing-climate-bill/
So the more informed people are about the world when young the more likely the will vote labor, green?
Zoomster
Thanks for that information. I was also wondering about domestic grey- water recycling as an alternative to the much promoted rain-water tank. Seems a much better option because it generates a lot more water, especially in Adelaide where it doesn’t rain, but doesn’t get rebates or publicity. I’ll get your email from William.
PS That was from Mrs Diogenes
It occurs to me an even worse “what if” alternative history series would be if Jo Bjelke Petersen had actually made it to The Lodge.
Shows On, Why would you want to build the biggest solar power station in S.A.? I understand there’s an awful lot of sunlight beating down on the place, however, I’d have thought locating them near big population or industrial centres would be the way to go.
The liquid asset test for “newstart” should be increased to what it was in 1991. $5,000 for singles $10,000 for a couple and the time period should also revert to the original 4 weeks.
Howard reduced this to bugger all and up to 13 weeks before payment. (more blame the victim).
The Greens negotiated half this to pass stimpac 2. But it should be returned to the original Hawke-Keating amount.
SA also has good geothermal resources.
The problem with putting solar plants in near large cities is that the land around them is of a higher value than the vast deserts in Central Australia.
Australia should have a steel industry in the North West converting the iron ore into steel before we export it. This industry should be being converted to solar at the moment.
Australia a a very logical place for a large steel industry because we have all the components and cheap energy and vast potential for some of the cheapest renewable energy because of the vast deserts as well. This is also why the Aluminium industry should stay here because it is easier to convert to renewables.
I agree with 744. This is an example of the good policy benefits of the Greens having some power.
Examples of Great journalism #142:
Storm?? There’s been one headline on a Sunday tabloid. There’s no sugestion any of the trips were undeclared, done on the sly or even done for poor reasons.
But yes, now it’s a “storm”.
Gotta love Sundays. The day of hairdryers, hostesses and “Travel storms”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/17/2572863.htm
Because in summer S.A. only produces 2/3 of the power it uses. If it could breach that 1/3 gap it wouldn’t have to import expensive power from coal fired power stations from Victoria.
ruawake, I thought they’d knocked off the waiting period for Newstart altogether. Unless I was dreaming, I recall Julia G. announcing this on the context of another company going belly up, and a couple of hundred people losing their jobs.
Ooops looks like the Govt. already did it. Sorry Greenies.
“From 1 April 2009, if you are a single person without dependent children you will have to serve a Liquid Assets Waiting Period if your liquid assets equal or exceed $5,500, increased from $3,000.
For couples and customers with dependent children, you will have to serve a Liquid Assets Waiting Period if your liquid assets equal or exceed $11,000, increased from $6,000.”
Our energy is unrealistic cheap because it is overwhelmingly sourced from fossil fuels. Once our power sources no longer put CO2 in the air, it will be much more expensive. At least double, if not triple.
A person who is now 70 was born in 1939. They are too young to remember the great days of the Curtin government, but they grew up in the wake of the defeat of Chifley in 1949, the Korean War and the Cold War. As adults they experienced full employment, home ownership and a standard of living which their parents in the Depression never had. Naturally they gave Menzies the credit for this and voted for him. Many of them have stuck with the Libs the rest of their lives.
But I still don’t know why they are the “blue generation.” Is this a political characterisation? Or are they all really depressed?
Tom
Very good idea. It is also more energy efficient and value added for us to be exporting steel rather than iron ore and coal.
Shows On, do you know how S.A. compares to the other States in relation to power production? I know that Vic. has to import powere from both NSW and Tas. at times of high demand.
But wait there’s more – here is the Greens position a few days before.
http://rachel-siewert.greensmps.org.au/content/media-release/greens-achieve-win-liquid-assets-test
Tee Hee.
A pun on blue rinse.
Blue rinse set. Psephos?
Ore renewable energy will be on a large scale and because of the desert and low density pasture where land is cheap because there are not many land uses to compete with solar. We have all this good for solar land domestically so we will not have to import it unlike Europe and Japan which will have to import most of their electricity from North Africa and China/Mongolia respectively.
I don’t think many 70yo men have rinses of any shade.
The new solar power station will be built close to an existing power stations. It is not economical to built a high voltage line into the desert.
Over the course of an entire year, S.A. only requires a small net import of power from Victoria. The problem is during the summer where on some days 1/3 of the power comes from Victoria at extremely high prices.
Victoria is a net exporter of power if you include its share of the Snowy Mountains Hydro scheme. NSW is a net importer of power from Queensland. There’s heaps of detail in this PDF:
http://www.ret.gov.au/energy/Documents/facts%20statistics%20publications/key_facts_aust_energy_industry.pdf
We are being literal today Psephos!
The tv generations got to start with elvis, the beatles and so on. Not surprising default attitudes began to shift left. The earlier gens had 74s newspapers and radio. Also when was the advent of 38s and stereo?
Thanks, Shows On.
78s? Cant remember now
Of course I was forgetting the immortal Quentin Crisp
http://theescapepod.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/my-brushes-with-fame-volume-two-quentin-crisp/
I don’t think Quentin Crisp could ever, in any one’s wildest imagination, be thought to belong to the blue rinse set. He would have screaming from the merest suggestion.
TP
I just bought a brand new turntable that plays 78s, 45s, 33.3s. Direct drive with magnetic cartridge, diamond stylus AND USB port.
My major hobby is transferring the close to 1,000 vinly recordings I have to digital. The only problem I have is Ms ru loves op shops and the collection keeps growing by 20 or so a week.
Psephos, I think it has a bit to do with the colour used by Possum in a chart in his latest Blog. ie Blue for over 65 Liberal Voters and Red for Labor 2PP voters.
Hence, Blue generation.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/
cf Land and Water Australia.
Farming contributes enormously to Australian standard of living.
Have a look at their list of publications. Good stuff for information-based decision-making.
CSIRO has been gutted by cuts by all stripes of government cutting, cutting, cutting… expecting CSIRO to take up any slack for LWA is pipe dream stuff.
I am not aware of any duplication in research. If there was, someone could point to it.
So if the ALP had won in 1961 then more of those born before 1947 would vote for them because of the good times under them in the 1960`s including the more comprehensive public health system we would have had earlier. Australia would be a much better place.
Boerwar
Farming contributes to the standard of living of farmers (along with subsidies from the other 90% of taxpayers who live in cities). Farmign is less than 3% of GDP, adding both food and other crops like cotton. It is trivial, though we pretend otherwise. Hairdressing is a bigger industry than most crops.
Six large cotton farms near Deniloquin use more water permits than Adelaide. We are now building a desal plant for over $1 billion. Those farms are worth much less, yet consume more water. Better to get rid of the farms. Curious hat most right wingers park heir competitive market ideologies to the side when pork barrelinh in the bush
Boerwar
LWA is funded by:
•CSIRO Land & Water
•Department of the Environment and Heritage
•Murray Darling Basin Commission
•National Land & Water Resources Audit
•CSIRO Plant Industry
•CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems
They then use this funding to fund other projects, they are a cosy little office in Canberra churning funds – get rid of them.
Hey, Socs, what red are you on at the moment.
CSIRO is about to rake in billions in royalties from companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Dell, HP, Toshiba and Nintendo because they hold a patent on wireless LAN technology.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/22/1545238&from=rss
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/22/2549678.htm
Scorpio
None – but I understand your asking. I had an attention seeking cat trying to sit on my lap as I typed that last post.
Without a doubt!
No Vietnam War for a start…
Is it just me who’s stopped listening to anything the CSIRO says anymore after they agreed to become the Howard Government’s Ministry for Scientific Propaganda?
Dio
I have a mixed view on CSIRO. There are different parts of it and some do some great work on a few areas that interest me. However they are perhaps too narrowly focused on rural science IMO.
RUawake at #768
Where did you get the turntable with the USB?
I’ve been looking for one of these things, but the JB Hi Fi stores in Melbourne that I have checked with say they are out of stock and won’t have any for a few more months
Glad to see the
after that sentence!
Yes polyquats @ 775. That’s good news for Aust.
For those who follow the footy, Geelong are at $2.3 to win the flag this early in the season. Maybe they could go through unbeaten? It’s a much closer competition in League.
Squiggle
I got it from WoW it is a DJ Tech (bright orange – yuk). The best one I looked at was a Denon, you can plug a USB “stick” into the front and it records directly onto it, but my budget would not stretch that far.
The DJ Tech was $300.
http://www.djtechpro.com/product_detail.asp?category_id=62&sub_id=106&product_id=258
“The idea of India — a vibrant, secular, plural, resurgent nation that can transcend its myriad differences and complexities to reaffirm an essential unity of purpose — received a resounding victory today as the world’s largest electorate shed the politics of extremes.” (Calcutta Telegraph). Congress smashed *both* the BJP Hindu chauvinists *and* the Communists. A great victory for democracy, moderation and modernity. Bravo Indian voters!
Huntsman has officially been appointed US Ambassador to China. And he’s sounding like Finns already.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25495900-663,00.html
I had plenty of liquid assets this afternoon.
None are left now tho.
C2H6O is a bugger Jovial, it evaporates far too quickly.
Yes ladies and gentleman, as of 17 May 2009, $1.9 billion can be classed as “tiny”. (or more acurately “tiny, tiny”).
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25495813-601,00.html
hehehehehe ruawake
I found this at AB’s site. It’s a great story.
http://u.tv/News/Guatemala-in-uproar-after-lawyer-predicts-own-murder/96906d7e-4faa-45ee-83a0-f7ba5836e707
782,
I went 8/0 this week. First time in my life for that
……. that having been said, I don’t look forward to picking the game between Geelong and St. Kilda when it happens this season, I reckon that each time are the only other ones who can put each other out. The team that wins that game will run the table …..
Thus ensuring that the Repubs lose their only possible viable candidate for 2012. A very clever move. It’s also interesting as it shows that Huntsman knows Obama will not be beatable in 2912. Now the Repubs are left with the grisly choice of Huckabee, Palin or Romney, although others will probably emerge.
Psephos, see 769!
791,
opps, ‘time’ should read ‘team’ …. sorry
Diogenes @ 790,
Looks like PH didn’t know how to do it “properly”!
But I reckon you will have felt stimulate for a while at least.
Thanks RU #783 – I’ll look at tracking one of these down this week
stimulated even
Obama will not be beatable in 2912 because he will not be in Office because he will be dead and he will have had 2 terms.
Big call
(damn those typos!!)
I would like to see a Labor govt be able to reap the rewards of its reformist work for once.
I arrived in Oz in ‘57 as a (nearly) 10yo, just in time for one of Mr Menzies’ credit squeezes that meant Dad wasn’t able to find work. I know now it was John Curtin’s visions to have the postwar immigration and projects like the Snowy Mountain Scheme to employ them. Chifley managed to to lose the ‘49 election and the ’somnolent’ Menzies coasted on Curtin’s work until the late 60s and Labor did not get into power until ‘72, when I became politically aware–I had to register for the draft! Yech!
While Whitlam presided over a very undisciplined cabinet at least raw sewerage no longer dribbled down the streets suburbs of capital cities. Fraser then coasted until the early 80’s and his two Treasurers did nothing much. Anyone remember balding, sweaty Phil Lynch?
‘Our Paul’ as Treasurer and PM completely reformed the economy only to see the dreadful Rodent win in ‘96 and coast on his work for a decade.
I would love to see, before I shuffle off this mortal coil, a Labor govt do the hard yards and then be able to enjoy years of government as a reward for their ground breaking reform work!
Hopefully the cautious Rudd will usher in such a period of ‘golden years’ for Labor! As long as he isn’t ‘too’ cautious!
The love that dare not speak its name.
Pity the US constitution doesn’t allow more than 2 non-consecutive presidential terms. Then we could have the pleasure of George Dubbya taking on Obama in 2011. Result would be the most one-sided in history and consequential mass suicides of neo-cons. No downside that I can see.
President of the galatic federation?
Psephos
You could also look at it in another way. Huntsman knows that a moderate, with adopted international children, who has liberal views on gay marriage and it determinedly bipartisan and diplomatic is not someone the Repug Party could choose in 2012 as it’s candidate. Either way, it’s more bad news for the Repugs.
BTW I’m in Batman. Ferguson is as dull as dish water but it’s a good old fashioned working class area.
Congrats Julie @ 791. When I was in high school, there were two big bookies betting on Rugby League, myself and another kid. I used to offer everyone who could pick all the winners for the round odds of 5/1. So one week this kid starting offering everyone else 6/1. Well I had to put a stop to that. He was stealing all my business.
One week, I thought all the winners were a certainty. So I spread the rumour that for that week that I was going to offer 7/1, knowing that the kid would go to 8/1. And he did. So I turned around and bet nearly half of all my winnings on that round with him at odds of 8/1.
After that weekend of footy, all my teams had won, and I sent the kid broke and he couldn’t pay. If you are out there Doug Bowen, you still owe me LOL
#768, WTF the USB port for on the turntable. Surely if you take the audio to be digitised, you’d take it off the amplifier?
William
There was a brilliant comment posted on AB’s site in response to that article. All the posters had been very respectful with no political point-scoring. And then this:
That sent them off
Centre
I bought my first house when I was still at school ( Canberra Grammar ), running an SP book on Sydney races at the Belconnen Way Hotel.
Lots of dumb punters.
And plug it in where? Unless you have a very good sound card USB-2 is far superior.
I’m going to have to put more effort and thought into my posts. I’ve just discovered that everything we say is archived at the National Library of Australia.
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/3118781
Who is AB?
Andrew Bolt
Hope you thought about that one, Diog.
Wow, that’s hard to top Ruawake
Diogs are you saying how much we loved Howard and his Liberal Party is stored forever? Cool
jovialmonk @ 801
Labor had 13 years in government from 1983 to 1996, which is longer than either the Coalition period from 1975 to 1983 or the Coalition period from 1996 to 2007.
If any of us ever wanted to run for public office, I imagine that archive would provide a treasure trove of career-ending quotes if anyone worked out who we were.
Exactly…and that’s why I’m not saying which electorate I live in!!
I remember those Vic Libs who were blogging to try and get rid of their Leader who were outed. That didn’t end well.
Too late for me…
JD @817
But they weren’t golden years tho. Recession, then when Paul’s reforms had just about fixed that along comes Howard!
I wonder what would have happened if Keating had handed the PMship to Beazley say in 1995?
jovialmonk @801:
Great post.
They simply cannot help themselves. Nepositism is not in the dictionary at all.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25495864-601,00.html
But there is more than one Gandhi on the horizon:
Rahul Vs Varun, a family affair.
jovi Keating would never hand power off to someone else.
The real what if would have been if Hewson had beat Keating in 1993 as he should of = no Howard = Keating a has been failure (bar early period as treasurer) also probably no Rudd either…
Psephos (759). When the missus is down at the hairdressers getting the blue rinse done, that’s when the blokes get the blue movies out of the hidey-hole in the shed. Hence, males are part of the blue generation also. That’s what my old man told me anyway.
Keating has said repeatedly that he would’ve ultimately handed over to Beazley if he won in 1996.
Keating is the most influential Australian politician since Menzies. The choices he made have had a greater effect on Australian society and the economy than any other politician. Howard’s major policy achievement – WorkChoices – was thrown away 3 years after he implemented it.
Big call
I would add gough and rfx and possibly daly
Non labor I would add chip,fraser,brown and possibly georgiou
Well, looks like LWA will not only be late, it will be unlamented by bludgers.
If someone working on water policiy in Canberra does not make it rain soon in the MDB then a lot of farmers will go away, which should make some bludgers happy as well.
CSIRO may get itself off the Government tit by commercializing, but it may in the long run lead to the death of public-good research. Not sure what bludgers would think about that. Looks like some have mixed feelings and others would not give a hoot.
What a strange world some of you people inhabit.
Each one, in their own way has had a major influence on oz politics.
NB we are talking as a politician as opposed to as a leader
Remind me what Fred Daly did again?
wrote some good books
was the last of the old guard
maintained links between lib and lab post 75
made gough
Remember the comment about the torture pictures leaking? It turns out SBS in Australia had them, or some of them. And they’re coming out. The slide-show is not nice at all. Something brown is going to hit the fan in a big way.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/5325444/Prisoner-abuse-photographs-surface-as-Barack-Obama-prepares-to-block-publication.html
That’s got to be close to the strangest statement I have ever seen on PB and I have seen quite a few strange ones!
Boer
I don’t have any axes to grind on this but, as I said, as a rural person interested in water and conservation issues (and at one stage on a catchment management committee) I’ve never heard of them before.
So what exactly did they do? (I’ve read their website and still am not sure).
Scorpio
are you and wilhelm tag-teaming on put downs tonite.
Zoomster, I heard a former head of the organisation on the radio last week or the week before who was explaining why an organisation we had never heard of was absolutely indispensible. Seems they were set up yonks ago to decide “apolitically” who should get research funding. They did no research of their own, were merely a mailbox for funding decisions.
William Bowe @ 832
“Remind me what Fred Daly did again?”
As Minister for Services and Property in the Whitlam Government, Daly brought in the legislation which lowered the federal voting age from 21 to 18. Other legislation he brought in reduced the redistribution tolerance from 20% to 10%, and in doing so started to break up the cosy consensus around rural weighting which had existed for decades before. That was quite an achievement – these days only wingnuts try to argue that rural seats should be substantially lower in enrolment than urban ones.
He also tried for a lot of other electoral changes which bit the dust in the Senate (see the Electoral Laws Amendment Bill 1974), but which underpinned many of the reforms which the Hawke Government was finally able to implement in 1983-4.
For some reason the CSIRO is completely unacceptable to the conservative elements in politics and society, but is acceptable to rural socialists as long as it concentrates on rural research and doesnt mention global warming.
Personally I find its track history to be excellent, and I believe that with the consistently low research spend of Australian industry we desperately need to see it work expanded in both breadth and depth, probably to the detriment of old fashioned rural research.
Pedant
I had always picked you as a gentleman , now I gladly add scholar
Michael Cusack
bingo.
Real nation-building stuff. Just looks invisible to most folks. Unlike rail lines to Darwin that cost a squillion to build and millions to keep going.
Blue rinse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_rinse
The ‘real what-if’? Is it?
I would nominate as the real what-if ‘What if Robert Cook had not mistaken the closing time and instead had submitted his nomination before the deadline?’ I think that’s a strong candidate for a ‘for want of a nail’ scenario.
The CSIRO’s willingness not to mention global warming under Howard did it irreparable damage as an independent scientific body. Fortunately, the Ruddster is not as anti-science as Howie, who fitted the scarily accurate stereotype of increasing hatred of science as you go further to the Right.
William
anyone else you wish to be reminded of?
Do you have a person/s you would nominate?
Without (I hope) denigrating Fred Daly, I suspect the electoral reforms he achieved and also the ones he pushed unsuccessfully were party and government policy which would have been promoted for that reason by whomever held the relevant ministerial portfolio.
The rest of your post does.
Daly promoted both a cultural change and simultaneously tried to hold on to some tradition
beyond being a raconteur he had a quick mind and never bore a grudge
much admired,within and without, he was the quintessential everyman
he is sorely missed among todays crop
We’d all have a few extra seconds of our lives to spend constructively, for Sophia Mirabella’s tiresome arsenal of anecdotes would be somewhat smaller in number.
What should the Government policy be if a major Australian super fund goes belly up?
(1) Nothing – let those who miscalculated the risks take the consequences.
(2) Step in to maintain faith in the superannuation funds.
(3) Tighten up the regulator regime on super funds
Thinking of influential politicians of my lifetime in Australia, I am forced to conclude that all the Prime Ministers from Menzies onwards fill the bill. Most were in power so long that they were influential even if by default. The shorter term PMs such as Whitlam and Keating are included because one was Whitlam and the other was perhaps our most influential Treasurer since WW2. Others that fill the bill are B.Petersen, Dunstan and ……?
The most influential Australian politicians since Menzies were Whitlam, Hawke, Keating and Howard. Obviously you could tweak that list a bit, but no way in the world could you include Fred Daly or Petro Georgiou.
Does anybody know whether Sophies’ grandfather had connections with the Vic Market?
statewise
N wran ,C court, R askin, R bolte, J kennett possibly R Carr
You surprise me considering the impact he had on our voting system to name but one tangible
J-D @ 847
By the time the Whitlam Government came to power, Daly had so long been the ALP’s spokesman on electoral matters that it becomes difficult to disentangle personal influence and party policy.
Apart from all of that, I don’t recall ever hearing the slightest whisper of impropriety about Daly’s personal or ministerial behaviour – not bad for someone who was in Parliament for 32 years, and a great contrast with many subsequent Ministers from both parties, to say nothing of the goats currently governing New South Wales, and Mr Bowe’s Treasurer in Western Australia. Our public life is the poorer for having fewer Fred Daly types these days.
Daly wouldn’t make the top 100.
He had a reputation (mainly self-promoted) as a wit, but if you’ve read his books there’s not much evidence for it.
I recall he bragged that he kept personal files on Liberal members so he could attack them in Parliament.
If you are looking for someone other than a PM who made a real contribution, try Moss Cass.
Pray tell why would the good Dr would make your list
re fred
well you had to be there
Like J-D says, if Daly hadn’t introduced the legislation, some other Whitlam government B-lister would have done it instead. I don’t deny he was a delightful character, but they’re not the terms of reference here.
Daly was shadow minister for Immigration prior to the 72 election but was removed for supporting some aspects of the White Australia policy. He became minister for Services and Property upon the election of the Whitlam Government.
I was.
Winston @ 856
Wit is very much a matter of personal taste, and I can’t claim to have read all of Daly’s books, but I did see him speaking on the stump during the 1974 election campaign, as well as in Parliament, and he was very quick with his responses – a far cry from modern politicians who won’t go out in public unless the people they will be seeing have been vetted by an advance party. Fred wouldn’t have had any trouble dealing with the silly old English pensioner in Tasmania who gave Mr Rudd the rounds of the kitchen for distracting his choir during a campaign event.
Centre 807, that is very funny
…… Port darn near gave it away though 
… I was out walking the dogs and missed the end of that game so will be hanging out for the replay 
…..
Juliem
I see the Dockers snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Again.
link pls
brilliant orator eh
then you must admit he straddled both sides (bowen anyone?) and certainly dwarfs todays bunch of wallflowers
How long had he been in Parl?
As Minister for Environment and Conservation Cass was responsible for establishing the environment as a national issue. He was also a major player in the anti-war movement and a man of great principle,
environment as a national issue- ?
How long had he been in parl?
Geez, I go away for an evening and suddenly Fred Daly is on a list of most significant politicians?
As the guy who wrote “The Politician Laughed” I guess he’d see the funny side of that.
As I have already pointed out, it ain’t so. He was shadow for Immigration in 69.
From Daly’s wikipedia bio:
Just imagine that length of time. And the current ALP talk about the 11-12 years they had in opposition, try doubling it. No wonder the Whitlam Govt ‘failed’ – too many men who’d waited too long.
No, not really ….. they were riding a winning streak probably one week longer than they should have (given their form and place on the ladder atm). I reckon (for now, might change my mind before next weekend) that they will get up against my mob in Melbourne and start a new winning streak
. (Pav had 150 Super Coach points in a loss Friday night.)
Can you tell I am a bit cynical?
Daly was also Leader of the House right through the period of the Whitlam Government, and therefore had quite a prominent parliamentary profile. And unlike almost all of his ministerial colleagues at the time – including most of the ones I suspect Mr Bowe might classify as A-listers – he didn’t really perpetrate any policy stuffups.
Pedant
forget scholar you go straight to emeritus
one would hope to be significant you need to do a bit more than not stuff up!
juliem
who are your mob in Melbourne?
I thought we were talking about best politician as opposed to best PM/leader
there is a difference
Winston @ 868 – The notion of having strictly defined shadow ministers is a relatively modern one. My recollection is that prior to the 1972 election the ALP had an “Opposition Executive” with certain individual policy specialisations. I share your recollection that Daly looked after Immigration at one point, but that doesn’t exclude his having a focus on electoral reform, on which he was seen as the leading ALP voice (after Gough, of course). Is your memory good enough to point to anyone else who was the designated ALP spokesperson on electoral matters pre-1972?
Incidentally, in none of this have I been trying to argue that Daly was in any sense a major historical figure – he wasn’t. I have simply been responding to Mr Bowe’s request to be reminded of what Daly did in his time.
Got me there.
Too early to say, really but I think I would give the title to Howard. Here are his achievements:
(1) through his megalomania and his winner takes all social conservativism, he has virtually eleminated the conservative side of politics as a serious force, probably for a decade to come.
(2) he took us into two wars – consequences yet to be paid.
(3) he ate up the boom years – consequences yet to be paid.
(4) he normalized xenophobia
(5) he ate up the boom years
(6) he fostered an entitlements mentality that will be difficult to roll back.
(7) most of all, he cost us a decade of do nothing on climate change.
Ahhh
But try as he might, and god did he try, he couldny oust the wily P georgiou, yet he disposed of how many labor leaders?
still awaiting your link re @859 [72 election but was removed for supporting some aspects of the White Australia policy]
#875: Yes, this isn’t the first time you’ve ended up having a different conversation from everybody else. This one had its genesis here.
I suppose the question is, ‘By What Shall Ye Judge Them?’
I watched Eurovision for a laugh tonight and can take comfort that, however flawed, our voting system is not as bad as that one. The peception of voting blocs picking songs other than on merit isn’t jsut peception; it has been analysed quite a bit:
http://www.liacs.nl/~tcocx/songfestival/indexenglish.html
This made me think though, just how unrepresentative the international one-vote-per-nation type systems are, including the UN. Some like to think we “punch above our weight” in such fora. But is that what we should be aiming for? It would seem better if everyone punched proportional to their weight. Considering issues like the GFC and soon CC, the need for coordinated international action is rising, but our ability to deliver it is still low.
Hmmm
Socrates
Let’s see, 20 million into 1.2 billion goes China has 60 times our voting power. Europe has roughly 30 times our voting power. Africa ditto. India also about 60 times over voting power.
My guess is that the HowRudd Convergence has just about shredded our international cred on global warming…
Why would people listen to an Aussie King Coal?
New thread.