http://theshovel.com.au/2013/08/14/liberal-strategists-frantically-trying-to-remember-how-to-stop-tony-abbott-talking/

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

-PB

:lol: He's made it 24 hours without putting his foot in his mouth. New PB.

So what's the solution, keeping in mind that slashing spending (austerity) doesn't work, and neither does lowering taxes, and neither does raising taxes?

well that's a broad statement....you can increase personal, company,FBT stamp duties,ETC by stimulation business.......get the 2 million businesses that are hurting at the moment and get them back to where they were 4 years ago and tax revenues will jump for sure....more people PERMANENTLY employed, prior to the GFC i had 38 people on the books and was turning over
$6 million........now we have just reduced AGAIN...from 18 down to 14...really hard decisions to make but completely necessary.....we are down on turnover to $2.4 million......so it's easy to see where the tax revenue is failing......

To stimulate businesses thus increasing revenue without raising the percentage of tax taken, doesn't that cost money?

Won't that make the budget deficit worse (at least until the economy strengthens)?

Isn't that exactly what the government has been doing during the period of economic downturn globally?



If you're going to keep referring to your own business, perhaps you should state what it is that it does and how exactly the government's actions have hindered your ability to generate revenue.

You know that could just be a flow-on effect from the fact that Australia has an insanely high cost of living and therefore can't afford things like they used to pre-GFC.

If you cut taxes then you're either going to increase deficit (which you're bashing labor for), slash spending (which will kill the economy), or you could do what Rudd did and hand out rebates to stimulate the businesses (but you bashed him for doing that as well).

So pick your poison, what have you been full of shit about?

This.

Hey we could always ramp up taxes on mining and fuck things further :lol:

Funny to see how much people are struggling yet the "big" issue has been asylum seekers. Who cares where they go as long as its cheap. You know, we could bring them in, train them and then tax them. That tax could be used to create infrastructure for them (and others) which stimulates the project delivery and construction industry.

They've made Asylum seekers a major issue because there are so many simple solutions. Families struggling with cost of living is much harder for them to address. Tony Abbott actually said in an interview the other day that people "Weren't telling him that the cost of living is a major issue" this election and I found myself screaming "WELL THEN YOU'RE NOT FUCKING LISTENING YOU TWAT!" at the television.

A major issue we've made into a bloody expensive one. It amuses me how on one hand they can claim to be addressing the cost of living yet blow our tax $$$ on sending asylum seekers away as expensively as possible. Might as well send them on holiday in the south of France. At least its not Nauru though. Nauru cannot sustain a population and thus resources would have to be imported at a huge cost to the tax payer.

We could always scale back welfare. It's so bloody easy to get money these days. Then again, we can't take money away from dead-shits can we? It suprises me that the issue of dependency on the government and the amount of money they throw around is not seen as a more important issue.

Youth unemployment not as bad as it seems

Australia's youth may think they're having a rough trot with unemployment but, like so many things, it's all relative.

The unemployment rate for Australia's youth - defined as those from 15 to 19 years of age - was 14.2 per cent at last measure in July.

On average over the past year it was 16.3 per cent, which is significant because the figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics aren't seasonally adjusted and July is a seasonally low month for the youth unemployment rate.

But even the higher figure is not out of the ordinary.

The figures go back as far as 1978 and since that time the youth unemployment rate has averaged 18.1 per cent.

It's been creeping down a bit - to 15.3 per cent on average over the past decade, from 19.0 per cent in the decade before that and 10.1 per cent in the 10 years before that.

The all-time high of 27.4 per cent was reached in February 1993, when the previous year's school and university leavers hit the labour market looking for jobs that, due to the recession, weren't there.

That narrowly beat the 26.9 per cent peak of January 1984, the result of the previous recession, as the class of 1983 hit the dole queue.

Not that all the jobless were fresh out of school or uni.

Many were still enrolled, a long-running feature of the youth unemployment figures.

At present, more than six out of every 10 of youth unemployed are full-time secondary or tertiary students.

But, even leaving full-time students out of the calculation, the jobless rate for youth is still 13.9 per cent.

Any way you look at it, the youth unemployment rate is high.

But that number shouldn't be compared with the often-cited euro zone version of "youth unemployment", which covers 15 to 24-year-olds and stands at 23.9 per cent in the countries using the currency.

The Australian equivalent is much lower at 11.0 per cent.

But the Australian youth unemployment rates are high compared with unemployment rates for older Australians.

For Australians 20 years or more of age the jobless rate is only 4.7 per cent, and for over-55s it's 3.5 per cent.

But there's a flip-side to all this.

Older workers, when they do find themselves unemployed, take a lot longer to find a job.

In July the time spent job-hunting was just under 22 weeks for jobless youth, but nearly 41 months for older age groups, the bureau's figures show.

And, while over-55s have an enviably low jobless rate, they spend an average of 59 weeks - well over a year - unemployed.

In other words, although teenagers are nearly four times as likely to be unemployed, the over-55s spend three times as long trying to find a job.

Something for the youngsters to look forward to.

http://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/youth-unemployment-not-bad-seems-082605155.html?

The more you take away in welfare from people who don't deserve it, you're also going to end up taking things away from people who do deserve it and slip through the cracks unfortunately. I've seen it happen multiple times.

One way to address tax revenues would be to tax company profits (looking at you, banks) more aggressively as well as force them to tie their interest rates to the reserve bank's rate movements to tackle cost of living for families.

Asylum seeker policy ads fine to run during election campaign, Auditor-General rules

Posted 15 August 2013, 17:30 AEST
By Anna Morozow

The Auditor-General has found the Federal Government is within its rights to continue advertising its asylum seeker policy during the election campaign.


The Government has taken out ads warning asylum seekers not to come to Australia by boat.

The Auditor-General has found the Federal Government is within its rights to continue advertising its asylum seeker policy during the election campaign.

http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/2013-08-15/asylum-seeker-policy-ads-fine-to-run-during-election-campaign-auditorgeneral-rules/1176750?

Thats true. Something I would consider worth trying would be temporary welfare for people capable of working and yearly assessments of disability.

I don't care how they do it, politicians gets paid to create policies not me and it's up to them to make their policies run efficiently to get the country the best bang for its buck.

The horse shit that people get centrelink payments for popping out kids is a joke. If you can't afford kids don't have them. The state should not have to support the progenies of idiots.

That's more or less what they do now. Though they could be tighter on it with regard to actually finding work. Also they should be assessing disability monthly.

How do you differentiate between people intentionally having children whether they can afford it or not, and those who have a child accidentally or come across hard times and need assistance?

The thing is, welfare is a massive grey area and a political graveyard.

Five things to know about Tony Abbott

Australia goes to the polls on September 7. Here are five facts about Tony Abbott, the opposition leader.

By Jonathan Pearlman, Sydney10:16PM BST 11 Aug 2013

1. Australia's Putin
A surf lifesaver and fitness fanatic, Australian opposition leader Tony Abbott has regularly appeared in skimpy red bathing costumes – or budgie smugglers – and tight-fitting lycra cycling gear. Shortly after becoming opposition leader, he completed an ironman triathlon – a 3.8 kilometre swim, 180 kilometre bike ride and 42 kilometre run – in just under 14 hours.

2. Women problems
As a university student Abbott was accused of physically threatening a woman and was charged with groping another (the case was dismissed), as health minister he swore at the female shadow minister on television, and as opposition leader he once addressed "the housewives of Australia ... as they do the ironing".

3. Lost son
In a real-life drama that unfolded in the Australian media, Abbott, who is married with three daughters, was reunited with a 27-year-old "lost son" – born to his school girlfriend – only to find out via DNA testing that it was not his child.#

4. Nickname
"Mad Monk", a reference to his training as a Catholic priest before becoming a journalist and then a politician.

5. Number of Twitter followers
162,957

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/10236593/Five-things-to-know-about-Tony-Abbott.html

Well they're doing a shite job of it.




Yeh big problems. If I trawl my fb though I could pick out some gems who should be sterilised. The easy way is to cut it off all together. Why is this issue the states problem anyway?



I completely agree, but we're the ones who cough up because no politician has the stones to tackle it.

RIP journalism

Tony Abbott's climate plan has $4bn funding gap, new modelling shows

Devastating analysis shows Coalition will have to stump up extra cash – or break pledge to cut emissions by 5% by 2020

Lenore Taylor, political editor
theguardian.com, Thursday 15 August 2013 04.02 AEST

Tony Abbott will have to find at least another $4bn for his climate policy or else break his pledge to cut emissions by 5% by 2020 and instead allow them to increase by 9%, according to new modelling suggesting the Coalition's Direct Action plan cannot work.

The Coalition insists it will provide no more than the money it has allocated to buy emission reductions from polluters who voluntarily apply to its emissions reduction fund – $2.5bn over the next four years – and, according to figures in the original 2009 policy document, almost $5bn by 2020.

But a devastating analysis by the Climate Institute, based on modelling from Sinclair Knight Merz/MMA and Monash University's Centre of Policy Studies, found at least $4.07bn more would be required to meet the target.

Summary of TCI Modelling
   
Metric Labor Coalition
2020 emissions    % change on 2000    -5%    9%
Emissions gap: 2013-2020    Mt C02-e    0    265.7
Domestic abatement to 2020    Mt C02-e    287    204
International abatement to 2020    Mt C02-e    184    -
Total national emissions to 2050    Gt C02-e    15.3    27.7
Additional government expenditure to meet -5% 2020 target    billions real 2012 $    -    $4.07 billion
Additional government expenditure to meet -25% 2020 target    billions real 2012 $    -    $14.91 billion
GNP per person: change in 2020    real 2012 $    6884    7183
GNP per person: change in 2020    % change    8.80%    9.20%
Employment: change to 2020    million persons    1201.7    1229.5
Employment: change to 2050    % change    10.70%    11.00%
Renewable energy generation: 2020    % electricity generation (TWhs)    24%    22%
Without the extra money, the modelling shows, the Coalition would have no hope of meeting the international pledge of a minimum 5% emissions reduction by 2020, agreed by both the main parties, and would instead preside over an increase in Australia's emissions of 9%.

This would be equivalent to doubling the number of cars on Australian roads, the analysis says.

On Wednesday Abbott refused to address the modelling's findings, saying: "I simply don't accept the report."

He added: "Greg Hunt [the Coalition climate spokesman] is confident, as I am, that we can purchase sufficient emissions from the funding envelope we have provided."

And Abbott said buying emission reductions on the international market would amount to Australia "shirking our environmental duty".

"If we are fair dinkum ... we have to do it here in Australia."

Abbott has repeatedly attacked Labor's carbon price plan – including during Sunday night's leaders debate – because it would allow Australia to buy a proportion of its emission reductions overseas, which means while emissions would be significantly lower domestically than if nothing was done, they would still be higher in 2020 than they were in 2000.

"This tax is all economic pain for no environmental gain," Abbott told parliament in a speech on the carbon pricing bills.

He added: "It won't even reduce emissions ... What we are supposed to be doing, if we are to reduce our emissions by 5% on 2000 figures by 2020 is getting it down to 530m tonnes. That's what we're supposed to be doing.

"But the government's own figures don't say that we are reducing our emissions by 5%. The government's own figures say that we are in fact increasing our own domestic emissions from 578m tonnes to 621m tonnes.

"Now, what's the point? What is the point of all the pain of this carbon tax if our emissions are actually going to increase?"
Embarrassingly for Abbott, the modelling shows that with its current capped amount of money his own policy would in fact result in 40% less domestic emission reduction than Labor's.

Under Labor, domestic emissions would fall by 287m tonnes of carbon dioxide (with 184m tonnes bought offshore by the big polluters). Under Direct Action domestic emissions would fall by 204m tonnes, the modelling shows.

The only way the Coalition could meet the 2020 target without massive new spending would be to copy Labor's policy and buy permits overseas. That would reduce the cost from $4bn to $190m.

But Abbott has insisted the Coalition will not buy offshore permits, saying the European Union trading scheme is "riddled with scamming" and offshore purchases amount to "a massive transfer of wealth from this country to carbon traders overseas".

Another huge problem for the Coalition policy is that cutting emissions further than 5% would be prohibitively expensive – exactly the charge levelled by former Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull when he explained in 2011 that continuing to use a big government taxpayer-funded scheme to reduce emissions in the long term would "become a very expensive charge on the budget in the years ahead".

According to the modelling even while spending $88bn dollars from 2014 to 2050 on Direct Action-type policies emissions would rise by around 45%.

It found that even if the Coalition left the renewable energy target unchanged when it reviewed the policy in 2015, the abolition of a whole economy carbon price would reduce the proportion of renewable energy used in Australia from 24% to 22%.


And while Labor's scheme would reduce Australia's reliance on coal-fired power over time, under the Coalition's plan it would increase.

Under Labor coal-fired power would account for 61% of electricity generation in 2020, 53% in 2030 and 31% in 2050, assuming carbon capture and storage was viable. Under the Coalition plan, which makes it voluntary for polluters to reduce emissions, coal-fired power would be 64% of our electricity in 2020, 66% in 2030 and 69% in 2030.


Pointing to an analysis by the International Monetary Fund that failure to price emissions effectively subsidises polluters, the analysis calculates the Coalition's policy represents an effective subsidy of $50bn for polluting industries by 2020.

Under both the Coalition's and Labor's climate plans, the economy and employment would continue to grow. But both economic and employment growth would be slightly stronger under the Coalition.

According to the Climate Institute's Erwin Jackson, this is not a fair comparison.

"The economy and jobs grow strongly under both scenarios. Directly comparing the growth numbers isn't fair because the Labor policy is achieving Australia's target, whereas the Coalition policy isn't."

Gross national product per person would increase 8.8% under Labor by 2020 and 9.2% under the Coalition.

The Climate Institute says it is worried that a program based on annual budget outlays is always susceptible to budget cuts – especially since the Coalition has said it will review and possibly revise Direct Action in 2015.

The Coalition had said it would provide capped funding of $300m in 2014-15, $500m in 2015-16 , $750m in 2016-17, $1bn in 2017-18 and $1.2bn in 2018-19 and and 2019-20, and the analysis assumes this will be the case. But Coalition climate spokesman Hunt has recently only been talking about the commitments in the first three years. If long-term funding is lower than promised, the Coalition emissions reductions would obviously fall short by even more.

The modelling is broadly consistent with several previous analyses, including by Ernst & Young, Allens and the Treasury.

Given the huge uncertainties raised about how much it would cost and what it would achieve, the Climate Institute is calling on the Coalition to keep Labor's emissions trading scheme at least until it gets new independent analysis to prove it can work.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/14/funding-gap-abbott-climate-plan

"The Guardian is obviously Labor biased" - Batfink.

To go with the 12,000 redundancies.

Gaffe after gaffe after gaffe.....

If only we had a fair and balanced media to highlight these issues.

but we do.. umm .....

Tony Abbott 'may keep tobacco tax rise'

Citing a 'budget emergency', opposition leader says Coalition would be reluctant to reject even disliked savings measures

Gabrielle Chan, political correspondent
theguardian.com, Thursday 15 August 2013 13.35 AEST

The Coalition has signalled it may keep Labor's savings measure of a 50% increase in the tobacco tax, owing to what Tony Abbott described as a "budget emergency".

Abbott said he would be reluctant to reject tobacco savings measures announced by the Treasurer, Chris Bowen, just over a fortnight ago, even though the opposition has been highly critical of them.

"Given there is a budget emergency, we are going to be very reluctant to reject measures, even measures such as [the tobacco excise], that we don't like," Abbott said.

The tobacco tax rise, a 50% increase over four years, raises the price of an average pack of cigarettes by a dollar in the first year and by up to $5.25 by the end of 2016. It will push the price of a packet of cigarettes to more than $20 in 2016 and is expected to raise $4bn.

The excise change was part of $17.2bn worth of savings measures announced by the government before the election campaign, which also included changes to the fringe benefits tax rules on company cars and a 0.05% levy on bank deposits to cover bank bailouts.

The Coalition remains opposed to the latter measures.

When the tobacco tax rise was announced, Abbott said the measure showed Labor "always looks to increase taxes on the Australian people".

"The government is promoting this as some kind of health measure," Mr Abbott told reporters two weeks ago. "Wrong, it is a revenue measure, it's just another tax.

"All of these, whether it is a bank deposit tax, whether it is an increase in cigarette tax, it's all a hit on you the people."

Abbott's "budget emergency" comments while he was in Launceston, where he announced plans to set up a Tasmanian major projects approval agency and to spend $400m to upgrade the Midland highway, $38m to expand Hobart airport and $24m to build a centre for Antarctic and Southern Ocean research.

The prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was campaigning in Darwin, where he visited the Robertson barracks before heading to Western Australia.

Abbott again refused to say when the Coalition would outline its costings but said more would be announced "in coming days".


http://www.theguardian.com/world/australia-news-blog/2013/aug/15/tony-abbott-tobacco-tax-rise

On GST, forever is too long a time

Tony Abbott has ruled out ever changing GST. Both sides do so when it suits, and it's a stupid game

This year’s “rule in, rule out” election issue has been the GST.

The Liberal party has pledged to conduct a taxation review if it gets elected. It is sensibly considering including the goods and services tax. But in the past week, Tony Abbott and Chris Pyne have made it clear that regardless of the findings of that review, they won’t ever change the GST.

It’s no real shock the GST is playing such a key role. It has found its way into every election since 1993.

Back in 2007, the Treasurer, Peter Costello, announced that the prospect of a Kevin Rudd victory would mean “wall-to-wall ALP governments” and said: “Mr Rudd may well say he doesn’t want to [raise the GST], but the risk is that he will be put under pressure by the state premiers, the state Labor machines and they will demand that he agrees to an increase. If he agrees to an increase, the GST rate can be increased.”

So both sides rule out raising the GST when it suits.

And it is a stupid game.

This is a perfect case of good politics leading to bad policy. No political party should ever have to rule out anything forever.

And the GST does deserve to be examined, because the days of revenue flowing from company tax are gone. In 2006-07 company tax revenue reached a high of 5.3% of GDP; last year it was just 4.3%. That’s around $15bn less revenue.

The other problem is in the past decade the government has become more dependent on income tax. In 2006-07 income tax accounted for 45% of total tax revenue; by 2015-16 it is projected to account for 50% of all tax collected.

The problem with this is that income tax is obviously linked to employment and the state of the economy. If employment falls then income tax revenue also falls. So when the economy hits a downturn the drop in revenue hits the government harder than it would if it was less dependent on income tax.

The GST was brought in to counter this. Prior to the GST, sales taxes took up less than 10% of total revenue (and income tax back then was around 55-58% of all tax). Since 2001 the importance of GST revenue has declined somewhat as our spending habits have shifted. For example, we spend more of our incomes on education and health now, and neither of these are covered by the GST.

As a result the importance of the GST has fallen from around 16% of all tax, to an expected 14% by 2016-17.

The Treasury calculates that the exemptions to the GST on things such as fresh food, education, health, financial supplies and childcare services cost the government $19.8bn in 2012-13.

So should governments rush to grab this money?

Well the problem is removing these exemptions would have consequences for equality. Getting rid of a number of the areas exempted – most crucially food – would hit those on lower incomes hardest.

The most recent Household Expenditure Survey released by the ABS allows us to examine how households spend their money.

The poorest 20% of households spend around 11% of their income on GST-exempt food. By contrast the richest 20% spend only 6.7%.

So including GST on food would inherently make the tax more regressive. But if we look at education expenses we see the opposite situation:

Here we find, not surprisingly, that the richest 20% spend a lot more of their income on school fees than do the poorest households.

With medical expenses however, the picture is less clear:

Here we find the poorest spend the most of their income on such fees, but it is worth remembering, as we noted last week, that household income is also linked to age, and thus many of those on the lowest income include retirees who actually have above average wealth.

If we combine these three GST-exempted categories plus childcare expenses, we end up with a much less regressive picture:

Now it remains the case that those with the lowest incomes will be hurt the most and those with the highest will be hurt the least.

This is clearly the biggest stumbling block for any political party. To counter this, income tax would need to be made more progressive, and there would probably have to be an increase in welfare payments.

The problem with overcoming a regressive tax with welfare payments is, however, as we have seen with Newstart, that it is very easy for governments to keep welfare payments set while the costs of consumption increase. And thus the system becomes more regressive over time anyway.

Changing the GST is not the no-brainer some would suggest – the impact it has on people depends on their income and also their age.

But to not be able to even examine it with an open mind is lunacy. And our political system would be much improved if the mere mention of GST didn’t have both sides running scared.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2013/aug/15/gst-forever-too-long

so he will never ever change the gst?

I think The Guardian is paying closer attention to the Australian Election than The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Show combined.

And the entire Australian Press Corp

caption this:

the british media are obliviously labour biased;)

Kevin Rudd testing Customs' new Bullshit Detecting dogs.