@silverfaun wrote:
Shorten is playing the lying game again, re igniting the class war and showing Labor has not changed from the Rudd Gillard years of failure and division.
His reply offered no solution to the problem they left behind, the silvertail socialist lecturing the government on how to run the budget staggers belief.
Shorten completely failed this test. He offered no solutions and accepted no responsibility to help fix the mess left by Labor.
His speech was all politics, and no economics.
Bill Shorten and Chris Bowen left Australia with a projected record $667 billion debt, but aren’t prepared to work with the Australian Government to begin fixing Labor's mess.
Nine months after being rejected by the Australian people, Labor has not changed and Mr Shorten is showing no leadership.
All he did last night was what he does and is used to doing in his union picket line guise, whipping up anger and resentment, advocating hate and envy and perpetuating the welfare mentality Labor is so addicted to.
His comrades call him Showbag but his real moniker should be Cheap Shot Shorten.
Who started what and when ?
Tony Abbott *2010*
Tony Abbott says cutting the dole for young people would entice the jobless back to work / File
- Abbott suggests cutting dole for under 30s
- Union boss says plan is "crass politics"
- Rudd relaxes dole reporting rules
- The Punch: Bludger politics
ONE of Australia's youngest trade union leaders has likened Tony Abbott to Pauline Hanson over the Federal Opposition Leader's suggestion of banning the dole for people under 30.
Mr Abbott flagged an age test for unemployment benefits as a way of enticing young people to move west to fill labour shortages in the resources sector.
But Australian Workers' Union boss Paul Howes - who at 28 is one of the nation's youngest trade union leaders - said people under 30 would not automatically find work in the resources sector.
"This is crass politics at its worst, the type of thing that was typical of Pauline Hanson," he told Sky News.
"It's one of Tony Abbott's Sarah Palin moments."
This type of ultra right-wing politics would work well in the tabloids but do nothing to rectify the skills shortage, Mr Howes said.
"If he genuinely thinks you are going to solve an economically crippling skills shortage by taking punitive measures against welfare recipients, he has clearly never lived in the real world," Mr Howes said.
Has Joe Hockey promised the end of the Australian safety net?19 April 2012
Joe Hockey has called for an “end to the age of entitlement”. He added on Lateline that “we need to compare ourselves with our Asian neighbours where the entitlements programs of the state are far less than they are in Australia”. He says that “the age of unlimited and unfunded entitlement to government services and income support is over”. He compares the 16% of GDP that Australia devotes to social spending with Korea’s figure of “around 10%,” which is actually 7.6% on the latest OECD figures.
It’s important to understand exactly what we buy with that 16% of GDP. When a politician talks vaguely about “middle class welfare” and a culture of entitlement, a lot of voters probably nod sagely and think of their least favourite porky perk for other people, like the baby bonus. The problem is that that isn’t where most of the money goes. Most of our social spending, nearly two thirds of it in fact, goes to health and old age assistance (which consists mainly of the aged pension).
Here’s where our public social spending goes
Hockey could eliminate all social spending other than health and old age assistance and we’d still be at 10.1% of GDP, well above Korea, a country he mentions as a benchmark. In other words, even if we scrapped all help for people with disabilities (the support pension as well as in-kind help), got rid of Newstart, stopped spending anything on helping people find work, and eliminated all housing assistance, we’d still be devoting more than our Asian neighbours to social spending. That leaves health care and old age pensions as the only place left to cut to get down to the sort of levels that Hockey identified. The safety net as we know it would be a thing of the past after cuts of that size.
The next question that arises from Hockey’s speech is whether Korea and Hong Kong are really the right countries to which we should compare ourselves. If we compare Australia to the other OECD advanced economies, it’s clear that our social spending is quite low, lower even than the United States (as a proportion of GDP).
Public social spending as a proportion of GDP in the OECD countries
read more:http://mattcowgill.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/has-joe-hockey-promised-the-end-of-the-australian-safety...
2012 Joe Hockey and his dodgynomics...He considers KOREA to be our benchmark?
KOREA????
see how the plan is so different to the promises made...
LIARS
