Diary of our stinking Govt.

[boris1gary]

As it's more than 100 days now, it has been suggested that a new thread was needed.  The current govt has been breaking promises and telling lies at a rate so fast it's hard to keep up.

This below is worrying, "independent" pffft, as if your own doctor is somehow what? biased, it's ridiculous. So far there is talk of only including people under a certain age 30-35, for now. Remember that if your injured in a car, injured at work or get ill, you too might need to go on the DSP. They have done a similar think in the UK with devastating consequences.

and this is the 2nd time recently where the Govt has referred to work as welfare???? So when you go to work tomorrow (or tuesday), just remember that's welfare.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-20/disability-pensioners-may-be-reassessed-kevin-andrews/5400598

Independent doctors could be called in to reassess disability pensioners, Federal Government says

The Federal Government is considering using independent doctors to examine disability pensioners and assess whether they should continue to receive payments.

Currently family doctors provide reports supporting claims for the Disability Support Pension (DSP).

But Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews is considering a measure that would see independent doctors reassess eligibility.

"We are concerned that where people can work, the best form of welfare is work," Mr Andrews said at a press conference.

[boris1gary]

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@am*3 wrote:

 

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blue goat?

[freakiness]

Oh dear, another blogger. What would he know?

http://www.canberra.edu.au/blogs/vc/2014/06/03/anu-uc-forum-on-deregulation-of-student-fees/

Here is my speech from the ANU-UC forum on deregulation of student fees held at ANU on 2 June.

I won’t beat about the bush.  I oppose fee deregulation, in itself and when coupled with the other reforms now being proposed.

On average universities will need to increase student contributions by about 30% from where they are now just to compensate for the Commonwealth reductions to course costs: that is, just to stand still.  So expect about a 30% increase anyway. 

But on top of that the only upper limit to domestic student contributions will be the international student fee level.  I understand this was Ian Young’s proposal.  It is entirely irrational of itself, being exposed to currency and world market considerations.  And anyway, where a university models that it would gain more in domestic fees than it loses in international fees it will just put its international fees up to give it more headroom to gouge Australian students.

Now comes the real kicker.  HECS or HELP debts on these higher fees will be subject to a lower repayment threshold and a real interest rate which compounds even when the student or graduate isn’t in employment.

In fact it is the combination of all these components that makes this the worst piece of policy I have seen in Australia in my 26 years here; and certainly in my 7 years as Vice-Chancellor, during which there have been 7 Education Ministers (although I might have forgotten one or two).

In summary, as I will explain, these changes, taken together, are; unfair, unethical, reckless, poor economic policy, contrary to the international evidence and being woefully explained, raising suspicions about how much thought has actually gone into them.

UNFAIR

First, they are unfair generally because of the level of indebtedness all students might face, but particularly unfair on the disadvantaged, on women and on those who take career breaks or go overseas.

The disadvantaged don’t have parents who can pay off or reduce their HECS debt as the student goes along.

Women are particularly disadvantaged, as shown by Rebecca Cassells in The Conversation, see higher-education-changes-another-hit-for-australian-women-27370

UNETHICAL

These reforms are unethical.  Nothing can ever stay the same, but it is unethical for a generation of leaders who largely went through university free, or with much lower student contribution levels, to impose this amount of hike on the generations coming behind them. 

Fourteen of the 19 Cabinet ministers studied Law or Business at university, and 10 went to what are now Group of Eight universities.  If a combined law degree goes up by 50% (which is at the lower end of predictions) then under these changes it would have taken 23 years to repay the HECS debt had they gone onto average earnings.  Joe Hockey and Christopher Pyne would only have repaid their debts a couple of years ago.

RECKLESS

These reforms are reckless.  The worst aspect doesn’t stem from the Kemp-Norton report; but from lobbying by the Group of Eight.  Even the Commission of Audit recommended a 12 month period of debate about fee deregulation.

Simon Marginson, one of Australia’s leading higher education scholars, has written that no government anywhere in the world has introduced a full-blown capitalist market in higher education, despite three decades of talk, because they realise the public good component of education would be destroyed.  And that’s because they have thought about it.  This Government hasn’t thought about it.

continues......on the link at top of post

[cherry*135]

Hockey crafts our first decadal budget

...A remarkably high proportion of the measures in the budget involve fiddling with indexation: suspending it for a few years, introducing it where to do so would favour the budget, changing its basis where that's what would favour the budget. You don't get this budget unless you get its preoccupation with indexation.

Why indexation? I can imagine why. The new treasurer arrives and the Treasury boffins sit him down to explain the budgetary facts of life. They start by showing him the medium-term projection, which shows that, on unchanged policies, we won't be back to surplus even after 10 years.

There's worse. You must understand, minister, that returning to a healthy rate of economic growth won't reduce the deficit. Your plan to increase productivity would be great for the economy, minister, but will do little to help the budget balance.

Really? Why? Because higher productivity soon translates into higher real wages. That's great for tax collections, particularly income tax. Trouble is, it also pushes up the spending side of the budget.
Directly or indirectly, almost all spending programs are linked to wages.

Wages are by far the greatest component of operating costs throughout the public sector - federal and state, education, health, even non-government welfare organisations.

To top it off, we index pensions to wages.

Suddenly, someone gets a bright idea. I know, we'll cut the Gordian knot by shifting from indexing to wages to indexing to prices. With one bound, Joe broke free. Even the huge cuts in overseas aid can be seen as a switch from indexing to gross domestic income to indexing to prices.

The thing about the indexation solution is that the initial savings are small, but they compound with each year that passes. So provided you're still in power, you clean up down the track.

Take the resumed indexing of fuel excise: a huge political stink over a tiny tax rise, but once that's past the revenue grows inexorably without anyone noticing.

As well, this budget creates scope for big future savings, such as discretionary increases in user charges. With universities' fees off the leash, there's huge scope for further cuts in federal funding, including pushing research costs on to students.

And anyone who thinks the maturation of the new Medical Research Future Fund won't prompt the feds to cut other grants for medical research is terribly trusting. (Whoever came up with that ruse deserves the Public Service Medal.)

One small weakness in the 10-year projection approach (about which the Treasury secretary has warned): it's just a mechanical projection, and assumes we'll go for 33 years without a severe recession.

http://www.rossgittins.com/2014/06/hockey-crafts-our-first-decadal-budget.html

[cherry*135]

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@freakiness wrote:

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@am*3 wrote:

There are C&P in this thread from economics editor and university economics lecturer,  they slam the Budget.. not citizen journalists.

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Poor Monman has been criticising people for posting links and aticles from independent souces and citizen journalists. I want to know what he has against citizen journalists when they, as you have rightly pointed out, are as qualified and might even have been the teachers of some of those, as he put it, "good journalists".

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Yes, I meant my post to be directed in reply to his comments (rather that reply to the previous post which was yours).

Selective reading on his behalf I think.

I don't think anyone here has ever posted an article/ link from The Daily Telegraph. I hope monman is charging through all the other pollie threads with articles quoted from that newspaper, telling them what rubbish articles they are.

[freakiness]

And look what we have here. Adam Creighton, the good journalist, writes for an opinion site, uses twitter and blogs too. 

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/author.asp?id=4978

[boris1gary]

  maybe prince poncy pyne had read the results of the poll when the photo was taken, less than 1%.. 
  http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/03/essential-poll-shows-voters-hardening-against-coalition...

Essential poll shows voters hardening against Coalition's budget measures

More than 40% of Coalition voters would like to see some proposals thrown out by the Senate, it says

Almost half the electorate would support opposition parties blocking the budget and forcing the nation back to the polls and more than 60% back the blocking of the most controversial budget measures, underlining the government’s continuing failure to sell its unpopular budget.

Even 41% of Liberal/National party voters would like to see some budget measures thrown out by the Senate, according to a new poll by Essential Research.

The Coalition’s overall position had weakened – the poll showed Labor in an election-winning position with 53% of the two-party-preferred vote compared with the Coalition’s 47%. And Tony Abbott is seen as the best leader of the Liberal party by only 18%, compared with Malcolm Turnbull, preferred by 31%.

Any other mooted future Liberal leaders trail a long way behind – the treasurer, Joe Hockey, is preferred by 6%, Julie Bishop by 1% and Christopher Pyne by less than 1% of respondents.

[boris1gary]

worth it just for the clip.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/hockeys-thatcherite-solution-wrong-vis...

Hockey’s Thatcherite solution wrong vision for 21st Century Australia

Joe Hockey would find a better solution to Australia's economic problems by looking at the Japan of today, rather than the England of thirty years ago, writes Andrew Warrilow.

WITH HIS LAYING WASTE of troubled industries, predicted cuts to fiscal spending and all the talk of ending ‘entitlement’, the new Abbott-Hockey era is starting to feel more like Margaret Thatcher’s Britain of the early 1980s rather than Australia in the 21st Century.

Holden could be our northern shipyards andSPC Ardmona our coal mines. Can we soon expect a return to legwarmers, cut-off gloves and mohawks? Is a new series of The Young Oneson the way?

Whatever the case, at least in Government, it’s back to the future with a vengeance.

Joe Hockey’s admiration for the Iron Lady is no secret; he recently finished reading her bio and has peppered many a speech with her quotes, but are 1980s solutions appropriate for the economic challenges of today?

[monman12]

Oh gosh  another C&P from that  "independent" outlet. " Independent of ?

The author  commenting upon Hockey:  "WITH HIS LAYING WASTE of troubled industries" mentions "Holden could be our northern shipyards". The same author Andrew Warrilow who a year ago wrote:

"Where Australians are constrained is by their over-inflated currency, high wages and small market/small production runs/low economies of scale. So competition with overseas producers is not a fair fight - just like between a harpoon and a whale."

The unions do  help  when it comes to "laying waste",  ask the now Toyota nonworkers  what they thought  of the AMWU and its injunction preventing them having a vote on their possible future.

Thatcherism  might well be admired by Hockey,  perhaps because she survived in the bear-pit of English politics, took on the union jackals, and never wailed  "poor me".

In truth: our debt growth faster than Europe’s

  What Labor left behind. Source: TheAustralian

AUSTRALIA is addicted to public spending. Since the global ­financial crisis the government’s debt burden has nearly tripled whereas in Britain and Spain, which endured a full-blown economic disaster, it merely doubled.

Unless the Senate passes the Coalition’s budget it will continue to rise. Real public spending is set to grow 16 per cent from 2012 to 2018, says the IMF, faster than 17 other rich countries, including France, the US, Sweden, and New Zealand. Without action Australia faces never-ending public deficits, even with healthy increases in tax revenue of 6 per cent a year.

Australia’s fiscal deterioration is all the more embarrassing in the midst of an unprecedented resources export boom and a historic surge in terms of trade that left households and governments awash with revenue.

Were GFC Mark II to unfurl itself — an ever-present danger given the state of the world’s banks and the as-yet-unknown impact of money printing in the US and Europe — Australia would be far less prepared than it was in 2008.

Sure, the level of federal government debt remains relatively low, but its growth has been world-beating and the outlook is grave thanks to Labor’s populist but unsustainable increases in school and disability spending, which the Coalition has inherited. The IMF, which has no political axe to grind, also noted Australia would have the third-largest increase in net debt as a share of GDP among the group of rich countries.

C&P rocks, I even read mine.

nɥºɾ

[freakiness]

Shame you can't answer the questions asked of you.

[boris1gary]

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@freakiness wrote:

Shame you can't answer the questions asked of you.

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expert?womanlol:

http://theaimn.com/who-are-the-real-whingers/

Who are the real whingers?

The salary sacrificing and car lease companies had a huge dummy spit when the government had the temerity to ask that people justify their car business usage claims.  We can’t ask people to tell the truth…this tax dodge is an entitlement I tell you!

When the richest 16,000 superannuants were asked to pay a small amount of tax on anything they earned above $100,000 pa it was class warfare!  They had worked hard to avoid paying tax on that money and were entitled to reap the rewards of having good accountants.  The superannuation companies backed their cries saying “it would be too hard to administer”.  When I suggested to Joe Hockey’s adviser that it could be administered by the ATO through a simple tax return he said “that is not my area of expertise”.

Ask Gina to pay tax and she moves to Singapore.  Ask her to pay a decent wage and she imports slave labour.  Ask her to give you your inheritance and you may end up in court.

This government is built on propaganda – slogans, ridiculous analogies, fear and lies.  Call me a whinger if you like, but it seems to me the real whingers are the ones who can pay for lobby groups.