Federal Election

[Tigeritis™©®]

That's  a better quote. 

now I don't think anyone could promise that they wouldn't change any legislation. He's only being honest when asked a specific question.
In relation to the $900 dollars. Yes I used it and I would have been stupid to give it back. It's my money in the first place better with me then down the toilet within another failed scheme.  I didn't buy a plasma tv with that money. I used it to pay some bills. 

I'm not saying that all their ideas are bad. As I said in earlier posts it's more the implementation than the idea ( except pink batts I knew was a dud from the beginning & no I didn't get them ).
I think when you look at the mistakes you can't deny that they are below par in many areas.
Even the ALP have conceeded that mistakes have been made. So true to form they cut the main face ie. Rudd and stick a woman at the top to distract us from the mistakes. And we have to then listen to the spin.

You Dan are in denial. You sound alot like all the Wallace supporters on this site when the tigers were going  nowhere in a hurry they all bagged you out for your critisism of him. They just couldn't see how bad he was and some of our duds. Well look closely at these last 3 years and check closely the performance and the wastage of taxpayer money. Some ideas are good but failure after failure to deliver. The ALP have conceeded their mistakes but you won't.
It's like all those posters that still think Thompson and Hislop will be Richmond champs one day. It's ridiculous.

[Francois Jackson]

now i knew we will agree at some point about something mainly Hislop, Thomspon and the tanned one.

Yes i agree Labour party has made mistakes but they have done good as well. All parties make mistakes including the Liberals.

I will never vote for a party that cant give a 100% guarantee work choices would never re enter the work force again. That declaration is equivalent to a thing i use to whipe my a-rse every day when i take a dump.

Adding to that i dont like Abbott i think he is a effin snake of the highest order. A effin racist like his predecessor who couldnt land a job in the ICC. That was up there with the day he lost power. Seeing him lose that job brought one of the biggest smiles on my face.

Costello on the other hand was probably the best thing your party has produced in the last 30 years. 

“But let's, I mean, Work Choices, it's dead, it's buried, it's cremated now and forever. But obviously I can't give an absolute guarantee about every single aspect of workplace relations legislation"

Tony Abbott,  2010

[the_boy_jake]

See Johnny H bashing the stimulus package.

Is there one internationally renowned economist who agrees with the Liberal party line. Two of the more recent Nobel prize winners have praised the Keynesian stimulus packages, Stiglitz last week singled out Australia's as on of the best in the world.

Abbott, Johnny H and friends up to their usual tricks of spreading fear.

[FNM]

See Johnny H bashing the stimulus package.

Is there one internationally renowned economist who agrees with the Liberal party line. Two of the more recent Nobel prize winners have praised the Keynesian stimulus packages, Stiglitz last week singled out Australia's as on of the best in the world.

Abbott, Johnny H and friends up to their usual tricks of spreading fear.

You just have to ask the question "what would you have done instead if you had been in office".

[Penelope]

See Johnny H bashing the stimulus package.

Is there one internationally renowned economist who agrees with the Liberal party line. Two of the more recent Nobel prize winners have praised the Keynesian stimulus packages, Stiglitz last week singled out Australia's as on of the best in the world.

Abbott, Johnny H and friends up to their usual tricks of spreading fear.

While a former leader and prime minister in Mal Fraser has said that the libs are not ready to govern the country.

[mightytiges]

"The Unelected Prime Minister"

This makes me laugh.

Under the Westminster System we do not vote for a prime minister. We vote for a person to represent our electorate and the party that holds the most seats governs the country. The members of that party elect the party leader who is then the prime minister.

6 of the previous 26 Prime ministers of Australia took the position of prime minister without standing the previous election as part leader.

Considering The liberal party have the history of blocking supply to effect the removal of the then prime minister, i find it amusing that they want to push this spin against Gillard, but concerning that so many blindly accept and repeat the tripe as if it actually means something.

Is there no irony in Abbot, who challenged and won from the existing party leader, that position, condemning Gillard for doing the same?

The Libs have had 4 leaders in only the past 3 years. We didn't hear any cries of 'unelected leader' on each occasion.

Yep al it's amazing how many people don't understand the Westminster system. All we vote for is for a local candidate to the House of Reps based on preferential voting and 6 Senators per state (12 in total spread over two elections, 2 per territory) based on proportional voting (a quota system). The latter voting system is the reason why small parties and independents can win Senate seats. Once the voting is counted it's up to those in the Parliament to form a majority in the lower house to then be asked by the Governor General to form government. Each party decides who is their respectively leader; not the public. If we want to vote to determine the PM explicitly then the constitution will have to be changed. Good luck with that given Australia's history with referendums.

[the_boy_jake]

Yep al it's amazing how many people don't understand the Westminster system. All we vote for is for a local candidate to the House of Reps based on preferential voting and 6 Senators per state (12 in total spread over two elections, 2 per territory) based on proportional voting (a quota system).

I think there is a serious case to make that the Westminster system needs to evolve.

1) I don't know what my local member stands for and in any case since they need to follow the party line (presumably set by the leader and senior ministers/advisers) it really doesn't matter.
2) The media focus on the leader's stance on every issue. You can blame the media, but they are a business and all it really shows is that the public interest is in what the leaders have to say above all else.

I think we should have a presidential system. The US system works far better than ours IMHO. For one thing the debate is less dichotomous and more nuanced as it is not all that uncommon to have Democrats of a conservative disposition and Republicans of a progressive one.

[mightytiges]

See Johnny H bashing the stimulus package.

Is there one internationally renowned economist who agrees with the Liberal party line. Two of the more recent Nobel prize winners have praised the Keynesian stimulus packages, Stiglitz last week singled out Australia's as on of the best in the world.

Abbott, Johnny H and friends up to their usual tricks of spreading fear.

Standard Liberal party election tactics since 1945. They haven't changed tactics since "Reds under the beds". The majority of public are hopefully more sophisticated though these days.

I'm no economist but from what I remember Keynesian economics works fine in a low inflation or deflationary environment (GFC obviously was a severe case of the latter) as what you're doing in layman's terms is via stimulus packages you're borrowing more inflation to reduce unemployment. It fails though when you have high inflation and high unemployment such as was the case during the 1970s. As with most models as long as you understand the assumptions the model is based on and work within them then you're fine. It's when you get someone who thinks you can use a model carte blanche that things can go horribly wrong.

What also helps is our deregulated economy all thanks to Hawke/Keating. The Australian economy has been reborn since 1983 after the trainwreck left by Howard as treasurer. Thank goodness Costello had the reigns of the treasury when Howard was PM. The dumbest thing the Libs ever did was stick with Howard to the bitter end when he had run his race and losing Costello for good rather than changing leaders and bringing in new blood.

As for copying ideas from the US - the Libs get most of theirs from the US Republican party and the Conservative party in the UK. Liberal industrial relations ideology that resulted in Workchoices was initially promoted based on late 1990s/early 2000s unemployment levels being lower in America than Australia. The Libs quickly left out mentioning the USA as IR nirvana as soon as the American economy went sour under Bush and unemployment shot up over there.

Australia is in so much better shape than most developed countries it's not funny and our debt is one of lowest. People forget numbers are relative when we have a trillion dollar economy. IMO the ALP's problems have come from very poor campaigning failing to promote the overall success of the stimulus plan which the Libs opposed. I think Labor hoped for Gillard to ride in on the newbie honeymoon period and for Abbott to be his past usual loose cannon self and implode with foot in mouth statements. However, he's been stage managed well by the Liberal party machine under little pressure from Labor in the first two weeks of the campaign. Now that Labor has changed tact and gone more on the offensive attacking the details of Abbott's policies, little cracks have started to appear such as Coalition MPs revolting over his paid parental leave plan and his flip-flopping over the past couple of days. Interesting to see any change in the polls on Monday. This election is only close because both leaders are pretty uninspiring campaigners. IMO a sign of a lack of diversity in backgrounds and life experiences of modern pollies. Most come from the same Arts/Law uni politics conveyor belt .

[mightytiges]

Yep al it's amazing how many people don't understand the Westminster system. All we vote for is for a local candidate to the House of Reps based on preferential voting and 6 Senators per state (12 in total spread over two elections, 2 per territory) based on proportional voting (a quota system).

I think there is a serious case to make that the Westminster system needs to evolve.

1) I don't know what my local member stands for and in any case since they need to follow the party line (presumably set by the leader and senior ministers/advisers) it really doesn't matter.
2) The media focus on the leader's stance on every issue. You can blame the media, but they are a business and all it really shows is that the public interest is in what the leaders have to say above all else.

I think we should have a presidential system. The US system works far better than ours IMHO. For one thing the debate is less dichotomous and more nuanced as it is not all that uncommon to have Democrats of a conservative disposition and Republicans of a progressive one.

After 8 years of GW  I think I'll stick with our Westminster system  . I like the fact that executive power is split between PM and GG (in practice PM has more executive power than the constitution suggests), ministers are MPs rather than appointments and the PM and ministers are MPs. But that's just a personal opinion.

What I would do is have fixed 4-year elections and make all senate seats open each election rather than this half-half. 6-8 years without having to face the people is far too long. I'd also put a limit on the proportional system that you need to achieve at least 10% of the public vote to gain a quota. It's ridiculous that one person can get just 2% of the vote and yet gain a senate seat and abuse their balance of power holding the nation to ransom. I'm also a republican so I'd make the GG "president" but with the same role.

[Penelope]

The one thing we could take from the yanks is non compulsory voting. It would take out a large portion of the idiot factor

[mightytiges]

The one thing we could take from the yanks is non compulsory voting. It would take out a large portion of the idiot factor

Sarah Palin? 

[Tigeritis™©®]

If labor is so perfect then why did the power brokers at the ALP ask Rudd to step down so Julia could get the top job?

Rudd didn't think he was that bad, he told us so in his long winded "Im proud of" speech.

You all think the sun shines from the ALP behind.
As I've stated before you are all in denial.
The ALP have all agreed that they are useless....errr not all of them just Rudd.

I agree with some of the ideas but implementation is almost always wrong.
Just as the state Labour government in Victoria couldn't organise a bake sale without spending millions on an organising commitee for the bake sale. And then they would spend millions having the bake sale and then they will spend millions forming a commitee to see how they can clean up the mess of the bake sale and then they would spend millions cleaning up the mess of the bake sale. When critisised they will say "it was the bake sale we had to have!". Correct but don't spend Billions to do it.

If I had a choice between Rudd or Gillard Id choose Rudd.
If I had a choice between Abbott or Costello Id choose Costello.

If I have to choose between Labor or Liberal then I must look at the Performance history of both and Liberal wins every time.  

[the_boy_jake]

If labor is so perfect then why did the power brokers at the ALP ask Rudd to step down so Julia could get the top job?

Unfortunately, that is the question that Labor is struggling to answer and the one that might cost them this election. Gillard seems to be struggling to get her point across and the 'real Julia' spiel was just rubbish.

[Tigeritis™©®]

Daniel you ask the same questions but don't listen to the answers.

I think some of the ideas that the ALP have had are good but it's the implementation that s questionable.

I will answer again for you.

1) the $900 stimulus was necessary. It helped stimulate spending. I took it and gladly paid some bills. But the MISTAKE was giving it to people overseas and apparently some dead people also.
2) B.E.R. ( Julias baby). Great idea but bad implementation. Millions wasted on what schools don't really need.
3) ETS. ( kevins Baby) this was Kevins deep conviction. So convinced of it's importance he decided to implement it in..... 2010.....um.....ah..mid 2011...um.. I mean 2013. Now julia thinks cash for clunkers is a good to implement for carbon reduction. The US brought it in to stimulate the motor industry. The amount of carbon reduction per dollar spent is extrodinarly high.
4) the insulation scheme (pink batts). Bad idea, stupid idea, no idea. Millions of dollars wasted, no accreditation, millions of dollars to fix, People lost businesses, people lost jobs, houses burning. People dead!  Should be kicked out of government just because if this one stuff up!!!
5) super clinics. Promised 35 delivered 3 in 3 years at this rate they should be able to finish by 2022. Problem is the doctors don't like it.
6)Tech schools are a good Idea but only implementation is the problem.

So here is your answer again for you.

In conclusion this government like labor governments federal and state have a history of mistakes and money wastage. As bad as mykey is in Victoria 1.3 billion dollars wasted and counting.  A hospital could have been built instead.  But as bad as that is there is only one government has contributed to 4 deaths and for this alone should be ousted!!!!!!!

[the_boy_jake]

1) the $900 stimulus was necessary. It helped stimulate spending.

Does it not worry you that a good % of the Liberal party disagree with that?