Why won’t Bill Shorten admit we’re running out of money?

[nero_bolt]

Given the Pin Up Boy -- Bull Shorten is devoid of any constructive policy to GROW the Australian economy , he is seen here for what he is ---an ALP Leadership Fraud.

Like so many ALP leaders he avoids like the plague to make constructive policy suggestions to the people of Australia -- he is incapable along with his party of being constructive in any way.

Andrew Bolt –, Thursday, December, 04, 2014, (8:10am)

Time to get cracking. We need to scramble if we don’t want to get a whole lot poorer fast:

Outgoing Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson has issued an urgent call for corporate and personal tax cuts, warning that our tax system is stuck in the 1950s and that Australians’ standard of living will collapse without reform…

“ ... (U)nless we tackle structural reform, including fixing our fundamental budget problem, we will not be able to guarantee rising income and living standards for Australians."…

High corporate and personal tax rates are the key priorities for reform, he said, as inflation pulls the average wage earner into Australia’s second-highest tax bracket over the next decade and corporate tax rates fall globally.

Just to say that our tax rates are too high is to get that sinking feeling. How on earth can that argument be successfully run when the culture and the political opportunists are all against it?

Dr Parkinson acknowledged the difficulty in winning the “hearts and minds” of Australians in arguing for corporate tax cuts, but said that work done by Treasury showed “about half of all the benefit of a corporate income tax cut flow back relatively seamlessly towards employees ...

Good luck with that argument. It simply cannot be won unless Labor acknowledges the truth of it and fights to save Australia, rather than to destroy Tony Abbott.

Attack the Abbott Government all you like - and I have - but Labor is the true barrier to saving this country from the crash to come. If you doubt it, then listen again to Bill Shorten last night refusing to admit the plain truth that we are spending more than we now afford on health and welfare.

It would very much help the Abbott Government’s case to drop its paid parental leave scheme. That would not just avoid yet another humiliating Senate battle but would demonstrate that, yes indeed, the money truly is gone. It would then deny Labor the cheap comeback it’s exploited for a year, the one Shorten trotted out yet again last night:

You’ve said what would you do? ... Well here’s some options where Tony Abbott doesn’t even have to go to an election on. He could do these tomorrow. Dump his paid parental leave scheme, which is billions of dollars ...

Why does the Government keep offering Labor this free kick?

Just get the topic every time to Labor’s dangerous irresponsibility - both in office and now. A little scrutiny is enough to have Shorten struggling for more than three words:

BILL SHORTEN: Yes, the concepts you’re asking are about sufficiently important. I just can’t give you a three-word slogan… you go for growth ... we’ve got to go for growth.... you go for growth… The only way this country will get ahead is by inclusive growth.... you can have inclusive growth ...

Which party - other than the Greens - doesn’t want growth? LABOR  The aim is shared. It’s wishing the means that’s the problem

[nero_bolt]

The Opposition Leader had a shocker on 7.30. Repeatedly asked whether he would at least admit that the nation was so short of cash now that spending on health and education had to be cut, Shorten just blathered and blathered until the hot air could float a Zeppelin. An example:

LEIGH SALES: But under a Shorten government, you are also going to have to make some difficult decisions around spending in portfolios like Health and Education because we’ve heard people like Martin Parkinson say the current levels of spending are just not sustainable. So, do you agree with me that you’re going to have to make some tough decisions around that stuff?

BILL SHORTEN: What I agree is that for Australia to have a bright future, then we’ve got to go for growth. And the way you go for growth is you spend money on skills and training and higher education. You make sure that you have a system where the infrastructure is being built and it’s working.

LEIGH SALES: That’s not enough to fix the hole.

BILL SHORTEN: Well, but, let’s talk about the future because that’s - I think Australians are sick of **bleep**-for-tat and sound bites. You want me to be straight upfront with you and I’m happy to be. This government is a petty government. They go for changes which injure people. They change what they say before the election to what they do afterwards. I’m interested in going for the high ground. The high ground equation is pretty straightforward. Skills and education, better infrastructure. It also involves, I believe, having a more equal society.

LEIGH SALES: Mr Shorten, all of that is required, of course, but also, Martin Parkinson, other credible economists are saying to us that the budget has in-built problems, that we spend so much on health and education that we currently, with the way the economy is, cannot make the money that’s going to cover that. So how are you actually going to cover that spending if you don’t intend to cut it?

BILL SHORTEN: Leigh, you’re right, but if you don’t know where you’re going - and what I’m spelling out is our direction for the future. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road’ll get you there. And the problem with the current debate in Australia is that the Abbott Government is making things worse. Ever since the Budget, they’ve killed confidence. Under this government we’ve seen unemployment rise. We’ve got youth unemployment at a 13-year high. We’ve got - unemployment has risen generally. There’s a real problem here. The number of people participating in the economy has shrunk.

LEIGH SALES: But you’re telling us what the all the problems are, but not giving us any idea of how you would actually address them. You seem to be trying to convey that we can fix the economy without pain.

BILL SHORTEN: No, that’s not what I’m saying. What I am endeavouring to say and I’ll try and say it more concisely - I appreciate that you want that. It’s about the future. You know, Tony Abbott said at the G20 he’s not worried about the far distant future of 16 years. I think that’s not the right - Tony Abbott said the wrong thing there. It’s all about the future. I’m interested in policies. And this is how you build growth. If you’ve got growth, if you’re creating national wealth, then a lot of pressure comes off the budget. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to build the infrastructure of the future, you’ve got to have the skills and training of the future ...

Unbelievable how destructive is the economic illiterate

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/andrewbolt/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/bill_shorten_ju...

[debra9275]

the libs need to stop spending so much money and blaming labor for it

[lurker172602]

The Opposition Leader had a shocker on 7.30.

That would have been on that terrible left biased ABC would it?

[gleee58]

The Libs can stop the blame since they have dismantled every measure taken to improve revenue and productivity.

It's rather arrogant of them to be demanding policy answers from Labor after they refused to provide any themselves while in opposition.  But then again arrogance is what they do best.

[nero_bolt]

http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/bill-shorten-declines-to-reveal-policy-plat...

Bill Shorten declines to reveal policy platform on ABC's 7.30

Bill Shorten agrees the community wants to hear his party's policy platform, but declined an opportunity to reveal it.

In an interview with Leigh Sales on ABC's 7.30 program on Wednesday night, the opposition leader said the current government was in a budget black hole and did not have a plan for growth, but he did not articulate what his alternative was.

Asked to discuss his policy platform, Mr Shorten told Sales: "I'm not going to talk in three-word slogans", but later he said one solution for the country's economic challenges was to "go for growth", replicating the slogan of Liberal Prime Minister John Howard in 2007. A 3 word slogan from Bill Shorten

When told the jury was "still out" on who he was and what he stood for, Mr Shorten responded; "If there was an election next Saturday then you might be right, but there isn't."

Bill Shorten  was unable to say how Labor would address budget problems that had been acknowledged by Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson or redress tax shortfalls such as that created by a slump in iron ore production.

[debra9275]

I missed the 7.30 report last night, however it's nothing new not to disclose policies. Look at the abbott govt, for example, they got voted in refusing to reveal any policies except for " stop the boats" and " end carbon tax"

Boy, didn't voters get a shock a few months later when their real agenda was revealed, & now they are paying for it in the polls for being so dishonest and deceptive

[icyfroth]

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@waterlilycat wrote:

Bill Shorten on 7.30 last night proved what all his colleguess call him is true, "Showbag Shorten" all show and nothing inside. It was excruciating to watch him trying to hold his temper.

Exposed and empty, I wonder what he'll do to try to rectify this outing of his empty rhetoric. He is putting himself up as the next PM of Australia???  I wonder.

---

I can't see him as ever being the PM. I think he's just keeping the seat warm for another candidate within the party.

[debra9275]

Quite possibly

[alexander*beetle]

It's a bit rich demanding policies from the opposition when Abbott didn't release his till hours before the last election. Leigh didn't even let him finish his answers and just kept repeating the question over and over. He is not the PM and is under no obligation to release policies or tell the govt how to fix their problems. I also don't think he's prime minister material but I thought she was trying to look tough without being fair. 

The other thing to consider is we are so used to the govt ministers being argumentative and arrogant and I suspect that when rational people try to put across their views they come across as weak, when that is not always the case. 

Rumour has it that she demanded that there be a few weeks between her and Sarah Ferguson before she was due to return from maternity leave so it wouldn't be so obvious that she was nowhere as competent as Sarah. Just something I heard.