Diary of our stinking Govt.

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.Woman Happy

 

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.

 

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Well, it has to be one or the other.

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not sure i want to live to be that old  Smiley Indifferent

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Abbott in hot water again - another Captain's call.  

 

Tony Abbott's soldier pay rise risks dispute with Defence secretary Dennis Richardson

 

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has risked a dispute with his most experienced official, Dennis Richardson, by undermining decades of work to build a rational and independent system for setting soldier pay.

 

Mr Abbott on Wednesday caved in to political pressure to grant military personnel a special pay rise, in contrast with extreme austerity measures being imposed upon the civilian defence officials they work alongside.

 

The policy backflip may quieten servicemen and Jacqui Lambie, the outspoken Tasmanian senator, and quell a revolt among Mr Abbott's own backbench.

 

A spokesman for Mr Abbott said his decision "was made after consultation with MPs from electorates with a large proportion of defence personnel and families".

 

But he appears to have used misleading figures to support a claim that the civilian bureaucrats had received higher wage increases than their uniformed counterparts over the past six years. And he has blind-sided senior officials who are already scrambling to keep up with some frantic policymaking from Mr Abbott and his closest cabinet supporters.

 

"It's clearly decision-making on the run. It's another captain's call," said Paul Barratt, the former secretary of defence. "It departs from the policy that all these things are decided by the Defence Force Remuneration Tribunal, at arm's length."

 

Mr Abbott's rationale for personally intervening to increase the government's base salary offer clashes with the logic laid out last week by his famously straight-talking Defence Department secretary, Mr Richardson.

 

Mr Abbott said through a spokesman that "the decision reflects the unique and crucial service of Defence Force personnel".

 

But Mr Richardson explained to a Senate committee that the "unique nature of military service" was already built in to a series of special benefits including tax-free treatment and a $150 daily allowance while serving overseas.

 

Mr Richardson said the base salary was calibrated to ensure equity and sound relations between personnel employed in the Australian Defence Force and the Australian Public Service, who frequently report to each other and work side by side.

 

"From where I sit, for what that is worth, the greater the differential you have, between base salaries in the ADF and base salaries in the Defence APS, the greater are the difficulties we are going to run into in terms of an integrated workforce," said Mr Richardson, who holds a civilian rank which is equivalent to the four-star chairman of the Australian Defence Forces, Mark Binskin, who works in the adjacent office at Defence headquarters in Canberra.

 

"The Defence leadership, both ADF and APS, have worked very hard over the years to develop a sense of being together and a sense of working together," he said. "We are still on that journey."

 

Close observers have told Fairfax that this latest policy surprise puts at risk decades of painstaking effort to build an equitable, rational and durable defence remuneration system.

 

Read more

 

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbotts-soldier-pay-rise-risks-...

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another day, another bucket of hot water  Smiley Very Happy

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Smiley

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A3: "Ross Gittins who labelled the stalled Budget measures as FAILS shortly after the 2014 Budget was released. And he was spot on.

 

"spot on" You mean these excerpts from a Gittins article May 13 2014?

 

"This budget isn't as bad as Labor will claim and the Liberal heartland will privately think.

It's undoubtedly the toughest budget since John Howard's post-election budget in 1996, but it's hardly austerity economics.

I give Joe Hockey's first budgetary exam a distinction on management of the macro economy, a credit on micro-economic reform and a fail on fairness.

Although Hockey has laboured hard to ensure few sections of the community escape unscathed, the truth is most of us have been let off lightly."

"Spot on" kudosR up.jpg

 

A3: " I like Ross Gittins best.".

Of course you do, he is only slightly "pink"   The chart is old, (sorry A3)  but old dog/new tricks  etc.

http://www.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Media/images/Bias-columnists850-098dbcbd-521d-4f6b-9081-ecaa9fcb1f56.jpg

 

 

 

Myopic Tongues2 Small.jpg

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debra9275 wrote:    "So Joe 's IG report says we'll live till 100 in the future, that's more believable than the 140years of age he stated a few months ago"   "Scaled it down somewhat. Big news, not."
I see research is still considered unnecessary, or inconvenient?
Facts (sorry)
"Outlining the need for changes to Australia’s health system, the Treasurer said, “There's great news on the horizon for Australia. The fact we are living longer is great news. It's kind of remarkable that somewhere in the world today, it's highly probable that a child is being born that is going to live to 150. That's a long time."
Facts, inconvenient truths (for some) !
Myopic Tongues2 Small.jpg
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May 13

 

I give Joe Hockey's first budgetary exam a distinction on management of the macro economy, a credit on micro-economic reform and a fail on fairness

 

 

I have already posted these in this thread before.

 

 

May 19,  2014

The more of the budget's fine print I get through, the less impressed I am. It's not a budget so much as a flick-pass.

 

The budget was a giant attempt to get back to surplus solely by cutting spending and not increasing taxes. It failed. Not so much because of the temporary deficit levy or the resumption of indexing the fuel excise, but because the cumulative $80 billion saving from short-changing the states on schools and hospitals - almost a quarter of the total saving - will have to be covered by increased state taxation.

 

http://www.rossgittins.com/2014/05/less-to-budget-than-meets-eye.html

 

 

 

Feb 2015

 

If Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey fail to keep their jobs, and the more so if their successors fail to pull the government out of its dive, the 2014 budget will go down as the most fateful budget in Australia's history, worse even than Artie Fadden's original horror budget of 1951.
 
Should Abbott's prime ministership or his first-term government come to an early end, all the denizens of the House with the Flag on Top will conclude it was the budget wot dunnit.
 
And they'd be right. Whatever Abbott's other failings, it was the unpopularity of his first budget – one over which he kept tight control – that started the slide in popularity that has continued to now.
 
The point is that perceptions about what caused the 2014 budget to be such a government-wrecker are forming as we speak. Those perceptions will affect the attitudes of a generation of politicians and econocrats towards the politics of budgeting and economic reform.
 
It doesn't take long for such perceptions to set like concrete. Once they have, they become impervious to contrary evidence. So it's important the popular wisdom about why the budget went over so badly with the electorate – and, hence, the Senate – be soundly based.
 
One common conclusion is that this budget heralds the end of the era of reform: the punters simply won't cop anything that imposes any kind of cost on them. This is defeatist, an attitude that condemns us to ever worsening debt and a set of economic arrangements that become ever more inappropriate to our ever changing circumstances.
 
Fortunately, it's an unwarranted conclusion. It's actually self-serving: we did nothing wrong except ask our fellow Australians to accept a small amount of sacrifice in the interests of getting the budget back on track, but they rejected us.
 
Rubbish. As everyone knows, Abbott and Hockey did a host of things wrong. Another self-serving line is: there was nothing wrong with the measures we proposed, we just failed to "sell" them effectively.
 
That's half true: Abbott and Hockey have proved to be even worse at explaining and justifying their policies than their Labor predecessors. But to pretend that was the only thing they got wrong is laughable.
 
Yet another excuse – all the blame lies with an unprincipled opposition and a few crazies in the Senate – is also too easy. We've long lived in an era where oppositions play hardball in the Senate.
 
It's rare for governments to have the numbers in the Senate, so an essential skill for governments hoping for a long reign is an ability to negotiate with the minor parties, plus the foresight to ensure any controversial measures bowled up in a budget have built-in wriggle room.
 
What was outstanding about this episode was Abbott's lack of foresight. To get into government I'm going to be utterly ruthless in my treatment of Labor, but once the tables are turned Labor won't do the same to me.
 
I'm going to exaggerate the deficits and debt problem, and boast about our superior ability to fix it, but that doesn't mean I should tread carefully in the promises I make to exempt particular areas of spending from the knife.
 
Anyone who knows anything about "fiscal consolidation" (getting deficits down) knows that pretty much every successful attempt has involved a combination of spending cuts and tax measures. Abbott tried to do it just with spending cuts and came badly unstuck.
 
It was a recipe for being seen as unfair. Our system of means-tested benefits means the spending side of the budget is aimed mainly at the bottom half, whereas our array of special concessions on the revenue side are of most benefit to the top half.
 
I'm confident most pollies will have got the message that tough budgets must be perceived to be reasonably fair. You need at least one big measure the rich really whinge about, such as John Howard's 15 per cent superannuation surcharge.
 
The message for the business lobbies is that even if, as happened this time, you con a naive Coalition government into exempting you from the nasties, it will come unstuck and you'll be left with nothing.
 
The message for econocrats and economists, trained to regard "distributional" considerations as not their department, is that you ignore fairness at your peril. They ought to have learnt by now that anyone lacking their training is utterly incapable of keeping "efficiency" and "equity" in separate boxes.
 
Reform is still possible, provided you haven't sworn not to do it, provided it's seen to be reasonably fair and provided you spend a lot of time explaining why it's needed.
 
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@monman12 wrote:
debra9275 wrote:    "So Joe 's IG report says we'll live till 100 in the future, that's more believable than the 140years of age he stated a few months ago"   "Scaled it down somewhat. Big news, not."
I see research is still considered unnecessary, or inconvenient?
Facts (sorry)
"Outlining the need for changes to Australia’s health system, the Treasurer said, “There's great news on the horizon for Australia. The fact we are living longer is great news. It's kind of remarkable that somewhere in the world today, it's highly probable that a child is being born that is going to live to 150. That's a long time."
Facts, inconvenient truths (for some) !

 

Joe Hockey raises prospect of Australians living until 150 to justify budget cuts

 

 

You forgot to add this bit  from this outdated article you quoted from- The government still plans to introduce a $5 optional co-payment for GP visits.

 

Backflip number ?

 

 Today

Australia's population will live longer and have to work longer as well over the next 40 years, with slower economic growth and a massive spike in the number of people living to 100, the latestIntergenerational Report shows.

 

Not 150 yrs anymore but 100yrs?

 

 

Why should anyone believe these clowns?!!

 

 

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@am*3 wrote:

 

Not 150 yrs anymore but 100yrs?

 

 

Why should anyone believe these clowns?!!

 

 


Because most of the intelligent population understands that the population is aging. That those who worked with the promise of a pension at the end of their working days have been slapped in the face with the truth. They aren't guaranteed that now. Facts are facts. Belittling an opposing political party because of their policies comes at a price. The world has changed. Change with it or sit by the wayside. There is no one to pick you up anymore.

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