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.
Tony Abbott is apparently travelling around in a caravan somewhere.....in a witness protection programme- avoiding crossing the border into QLD .....
.....anyone know where our Treasurer is?......or know what Joe Hockey is doing atm?
excerpts from: http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=7308
What was going on with respect to the deregulation of labour markets and the retrenchment of the Welfare State in the face of persistent unemployment was being mirrored in the approaches governments were taking to financial markets. The lack of oversight of the latter has been the fundamental reason we are now enduring the worst crisis for 80 years.
Given the costs of unemployment are so large and irretrievable, one would think that at the very least direct macroeconomic intervention should have been a priority in these years – that is, direct job creation.
With the current crisis, it should be clear to everyone that the neo-liberal construction of unemployment is (and always was) patently false – just an ideological gimmick to transfer power away from workers to ensure a greater share of national income was available for capital.
The crisis should make it obvious that unemployment arises when there are too few jobs being created (net) relative to the available labour force. There should be no mystery about that now for anyone.
If governments had have had a Job Guarantee in place there would be hardly any discernible rise in official unemployment and the costs of the crisis would have been significantly reduced. Yes there would have been some skills-based structural underemployment (high skills workers taking Job Guarantee jobs) and some obvious loss of income.
But overall these losses would have been attenuated and some of the other costs would have been mostly negated. Of significance, which shows you how ideologically-blinded our policy makers have become – their budget deficits would not have risen by nearly as much as they have.
Just say it to yourself – every day we are throwing $A147 million down the drain because of our neo-liberal policy obsessions. No one in their right mind could justify that. It is the ultimate con of the mainstream economics profession.
The following graph shows the comparison for Australia (that is, just graphs the data in the Table above).
Australia: Daily GDP losses $A millions for different unemployment benchmarks
Conclusion
Even under conservative assumptions, the economic and social costs of sustained high unemployment are extremely high. The inability of unemployed individuals and their families to function in the market economy gives rise to many forms of social dysfunction, in addition to output loss.
The apparent failure of neo-liberal supply side policies to reduce unemployment prior to the crisis is now highlighted during the crisis. There is now an urgent need to address the large pools of unemployment in world economies.
The daily income losses alone are enormous and overwhelm other inefficiencies notwithstanding the productivity heterogeneity that exists across the workforce.
There is no financial reason why the government should not deal with this problem directly by introducing a Job Guarantee. If the Government had the political will, it could readily overcome the problem of persistently high unemployment.
As history and BIG images are "in", I give you some Qld Alp driving history:
2007
A Queensland Labor MP has been stood down as a parliamentary secretary and told he will never be transport minister after details of his bad driving record were revealed.
Michael Choi was stood down as parliamentary secretary to the transport minister after Premier Anna Bligh was alerted to his long list of driving offences.
2007
Karen Struthers, the ALP parliamentary secretary to the state's health minister and MP for Algester, was arrested on Friday night after blowing 0.16 in a breath test while driving a government car.
2004
Queensland State ALP MP Gary Fenlon Member for Greenslopes — now the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Transport Trade Employment and IR was involved in a serious road smash on that State’s Sunshine Coast in 2004. Premier Anna Bligh said Mr Fenlon had accumulated several speeding fines over the past few years. His 2004 incident resulted from driving “without due care and attention” when he veered into a woman at a petrol station leaving her with life-injuries.
However the ALP parliamentarians are clear winners (and not just in Queensland) when it comes to criminal convictions, the child sex convictions are particularly disturbing
Imagine it is 2015 Jan. 12th, it's easy if you concentrate.
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