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.
@finderskeepers2015 wrote:
@debra9275 wrote:wonder why he's wearing sunglasses in that one?
Hangover!
LOL
If they were taken "at the SAME time" one wouldn't have his head up and the other one looking downwards!
lol
i did not mean simultaneously
the images were taken during the
same period of time - same occasion
etc by different photographers.
i thought that would have been obvious!!!! 
Now put your comic pictures away children and consider our odoriferous times through the eyes of Alan Kohler, and via the so easy to do C&P, (which I have read)
To sum up: interest rates and the minimum wage are roughly double the global average, electricity costs about 50 per cent more here, and the price of gas is getting on for triple the global average. And while wages growth here is the weakest itโs been since the 1990s, the average wage level remains 70 per cent above the global mean.
Business confidence has slumped and it is generally agreed that the biggest problem in the Australian economy right now is the failure of businesses to invest.
When he was invited on Friday by National Party MP, Kevin Hogan, to flag his major concern about the economy, RBA governor Glenn Stevens said: โWe have a significant lack of confidence -- I think more in the business community than among households -- to expand, invest, hire and innovate.โ
He went on to explain that thereโs not much the RBA can do about that: โwe do not suddenly spark animal spirits with lower rates and, for that matter, we do not kill them with higher rates either.โ
In the days leading up to Glenn Stevensโ appearance before the House of Reps Economics Committee in Hurstville on Friday, first Ian Narev of Commonwealth Bank and then David Thodey of Telstra complained about political instability.
They were undoubtedly representing every businessperson in the country in shaking a fist in the general direction of Canberra and telling the politicians to get their act together.
According Shane Oliver of AMP, of the listed companies that have reported their half yearly results so far, 76 per cent have increased profit this year -- the most since 2007 -- and 60 per cent have beat expectations, the most since 2005.
So in Australia at the moment itโs profits up, animal spirits down.
Although the recent Canberra circus is undoubtedly a factor, for most business people the real problem is the cost of doing business in Australia.
In a globalised world, and open economy, you donโt have to look much further than wage levels that are 70 per cent above the global mean to discover why businesses arenโt feeling that great and are not investing.
But it runs deeper than that: the fundamental problem is that Australia has had a 15-year reform drought.
The last significant economic reform in Australia was the introduction of a consumption tax in 2000, and even that was about the worst possible GST that could be invented -- applying to less than half the goods and services and with zero flexibility.
All other attempts at enduring economic reform have either failed or been reversed later: climate change policies, industrial relations reform, attempts at tax reform through the mining tax, asset sales to boost public infrastructure -- nothing has lasted.
Whatโs more, the governmentโs budget is stuck in a structural deficit with very little collective will to do something about it, merely to use it for point scoring.
Neither economic nor budgetary reform now seems possible in Australia, and until that changes, it is hard to see any improvement in business confidence.
Certainly, as Glenn Stevens said on Friday, another rate cut wonโt do it.
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