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.
Joeโs fair go and his new class war
In a speech last night, Joe Hockey said unpopular Budget is fair and that everyone who opposes it is engaging in class war.Bob Ellis comments.
IMAGINE, IF YOU WILL, a 27-year-old woman in a country town who loses her job as a waitress on a Friday and finds she is pregnant the following Monday.
Under Joe Hockeyโs new rules, she will get no money for six months, and must fend for herself until the baby is born and, after it is born, will get no Paid Parental Leave either, because she has no job.
What is happening to her is "fair" Joe Hockey says and complaining about her is
"... the class war rhetoric of the 1970s."
Some of us would think it was unfair โ and if thereโs a class war on, heโs declared it.
Joe would argue that the woman can, in her ninth month, move to another town and work for the dole, away from her family and their support system, and give birth in the workplace, but some of us would find this unfair also.
Joe would argue this is an โisolated caseโ, probably no more than twenty women will be in this position in the next two years โ but the trouble is, 10 million women will have heard of it and will vote his Government out because of it.
This inability to join the dots characterises Joe.
He may be the most incompetent politician in our history. He is certainly the most incompetent Treasurer.
He imagines $7 is no great sacrifice to an old woman in a nursing home with a chronically treatable condition who must go to the doctor twice a week, spending $20 on two visits and four bus fares. He imagines she too is an isolated case and 10 million women will not hear of her.
But of course they will. And they will not find her treatment by him "fair".
The Budget is now a quicksand sucking to their doom every rural MP in the nation. Manufacturing jobs are vanishing apace and Joe wonโt subsidise them and the women fired from them wonโt get PPL โ not a cent of it.
Joe is proud of this.
Women once โentitledโ to have a subsidised baby wonโt, if they lose their job, and are not yet 30, get any pregnancy money at all. And if their husband has lost his job too, at the Holden factory Joe invited to go away, for instance, or the fruit-canning factory that last year moved offshore, well, they now have the โage of opportunityโ to look forward to, and a mortgage to pay with relativesโ money till they have to sell up and start to sleep in a car outside a gambling casino, hoping to beg enough to bet inside on their โage of opportunityโ, roulette.
Joe thinks his Budget has not been sold well. Heโs right about that.
No-one in the nation cares about the surplus anymore โ apart from maybe thirty economists โ and everyone is scared **bleep**less of losing their job and not getting another, ever, because the oldies are now working until theyโre seventy. And those that have a job are worried about those that havenโt. Everyone has an unemployed relative, or a disabled one. And Joe didnโt realise they would care.
It is hard not to think him actually crazy. Heโs certainly fanatical.
Is there some lesson from his Maronite upbringing that emphasised self-help and God not answering the prayers of the lazy?
Does he imagine the millions his wife brings home can remain a secret? Has he joined the dots? I donโt think he has.
Itโs unlikely Palmer will even talk to them unless Joe is removed. Itโs unlikely, after what theyโd said about him, theyโll get anything through except the ending of the carbon tax, which worsens the bottom line.
Itโs probable Joe has done for them. And he still thinks he can turn opinion round. Win back the 1.5 million votes theyโve lost in eight months.
Heโs actually as crazy as that.
@debra9275 wrote:I disagree with that monman because this current govt. have not reigned in their own spending in any way.
the ALP were in govt at a time when the world was going through a financial crisis, they stimulated our economy, & we got through it OK. the housing market did not collapse here as it did in other countries, Our bank accounts were guarranted to be safe. they were extenuating circumstances for any govt that was in power at that time and most govts in the western world were in deficit.
We all know that we are reaching the time when the largest group of Australians, the baby boomers, are retiring & If our current tax/welfare ratio stragey is unsustainable why didn't they just raise GST to 121/2% instead of taking money from those who can least afford it??. the pensioners, young unemployed, disabled, sick etc.
I suspect that they will raise the GST as well anyway, but will make it a state govt responsibility, so in the end, they will be double dipping
I'm not an economist, so i don't kniw why we pay higher interest, though it's not 50% more than others,
all I know is that we're selling off our valuable commodities for a mere pittance, so something is really wrong
Debra, what's really wrong is the conservatives are attempting to change our society, where everything and everyone is up for sale. Have a read of the links, I have also included a link to the Australian Institutes reply to the farcical commission of audit it also gives an honest account of australias economy. some would like us to think that a nations economy is the same a household budget but more and more Australians are realising that is complete and utter rubbish, although some are still pushing the line.
http://www.tai.org.au/content/auditing-auditors-peoples-commission-audit
