Missed the joke sorry.

Might have been too meta for some.

-PB

Budget 2015: The Coalition's reprise of Kevin Rudd Keynesianism

by The Australian Financial Review

Call it have-a-go government. The Coalition is too badly damaged to wait for prudent management of the national finances to encourage business to spend, so it is jumping in and kick-starting things for itself.

Joe Hockey is splurging $5.5 billion on small-business tax cuts, and instant tax deductibility on small-business spending of up to $20,000 for the next two years. Like Kevin Rudd's failed Pink Batts and school halls, it is a pseudo-Keynesian attempt to create demand out of nothing, a sugar hit from a Coalition government that was elected because it was supposed to know better. If nothing else, the tax break will create a new $19,999 retail price point for boxes of tools or kitchenware, though most economists doubt they will create many other measurable effects in the economy.

The government is also offering a $4.5 billion childcare scheme, also billed as a productivity-lifting boost to numbers of working women.The subsidy would clearly have merit for many individual families, though the last serious study of the subject by the Productivity Commission found that the extra workforce participation created by such spending was minuscule.

But they are political gold. The two schemes take the money that would have been going to an unpopular cause – the $10 billion that Tony Abbott's paid parental leave scheme would eventually have cost – and give it to much more popular ones. They provide the political ammunition that Coalition backbenchers have been starved of for a year. And in the heartlands, which they are desperate to reach, it was on target. Budget coverage in the big city tabloids saluted the optimism and imagination of the policies, and of using hardworking Australian tradies to haul the economy out of trouble. Indeed, Treasurer Joe Hockey's overall fiscal game plan now is to hope that GDP growth, underpinned by benign interest costs, petrol and power prices, will shrink the relative size of the deficit by itself – with the tax break as a final nudge for small businesses to begin that spending and growth.



Causes problems later

But the scheme is pulling forward future demand to be spent now, in the hope that it takes on its own momentum and just keeps going. That frequently either does not happen, or causes problems later. And it seems even more optimistic when through an entire rate cutting cycle since 2010, business confidence and investment has stayed stubbornly low and the formation of small businesses has been slow for a decade.

Rather than trying to steer growth like this, the government would have been better off improving business conditions overall by cutting taxes further and deregulating more. But that would get less political credit than a flashy intervention like cash for tradies, and increasingly it is the political winnings have become the game in budget policies.

While many are arguing that this budget at least does no harm, that's not really true. It is harking back to the discredited fiscal activism of the Rudd years. The lesson of modern economics is that fiscal policy should focus on a medium-term goal of generating budget balance, or a modest surplus, over the course of the economic cycle. It is the Reserve Bank's setting of rates and the floating dollar that are supposed to manage the economy's ups and downs, not runaway spending by Canberra.

Now the government has taken its eye off that medium-term fiscal framework. The claimed path back to surplus relies on growth simply continuing as it has despite the rising number of problems. It also ironically relies heavily on bracket creep producing stealthy tax increases on the middle-income earners that the small business tax breaks are also aimed at.

But right now it is political believability rather than economic credibility that the government is searching for, and these policies have so far given them a rare win. The bill will come later.

http://www.afr.com/opinion/editorials/budget-2015-the-coalitions-reprise-of-kevin-rudd-keynesianism-20150514-gh1ovf

Bill Shorten spends it up in budget reply as the Coalition's paid parental leave plan hangs in tatters

The Labor leader didn’t even try to offset the significant cost of new measures and before he even started speaking, one of the government’s flagship policies was unravelling

Lenore Taylor Political editor

Thursday 14 May 2015 20.45 AEST Last modified on Thursday 14 May 2015 21.08 AEST

Who’d have thought Tony Abbott would be under fire for the stinginess of his paid parental leave scheme when for so long he was attacked for its profligacy, and that this attack would be the big threat to his plan to use a giveaway budget to reset the political debate.

The Coalition wanted to use its softer 2015 budget to get traction for the “Labor are wreckers with no savings alternatives” line, which tanked last year because most of the savings in question were also rejected by the voters and the crossbench in the Senate.

The finance minister, Matthias Cormann, tried to revive this attack ahead of Bill Shorten’s budget speech in reply, demanding the Labor leader explain how he would cut $52bn in spending – the Coalition’s calculation of the cost of the savings Labor has blocked and the policies it has promised to reinstate.

Shorten, unsurprisingly, did not oblige. More surprisingly, he did not even try – announcing significant new spending without any new offsetting savings, other than restating Labor’s commitment to a multinational tax avoidance crackdown and a modest cut to superannuation tax concessions.

His message was pitched in a similar fashion to the government’s budget – all about having a plan to create the jobs of the future that would replace the mining boom – but the policy details were scant. Its main aim was rhetorical – to remind everyone watching the televised speech about last year’s unfairness and insisting that its “meanness of spirit” lives on.

But that rhetoric had been bolstered by Labor’s attack on the paid parental leave cuts, which pried back open the “unfairness” theme. As the hours ticked down to Shorten’s speech, the government’s policy started to quite spectacularly unravel.

Ministers had referred to the idea of employees receiving both an employer-funded scheme and a government-funded scheme as “double-dipping” and described it as a “rort” and a “fraud”, but then the assistant treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, said he and his wife had “double-dipped” themselves, and the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, appeared to have done the same.

The prime minister tried to change tack and say the saving was justified because its major beneficiaries were (apparently undeserving) public servants, but then had to backpedal when asked about the generous scheme offered by the Australian federal police (also public servants). And then the social services minister, Scott Morrison, tried to say it was targeting only a “Labor/union deal” but appeared lost for words when asked why the Coalition had voted for it five years ago and not mentioned any concerns in the interim.

The government still has almost $10bn dollars in small business and childcare funding to flick the switch to economic and political optimism and achieve the political breathing space it is seeking, not to mention lots of other smaller goodies to give away.

But Labor’s attack on paid parental leave shows how quickly the debate can be diverted back to last year’s devastatingly damaging themes.

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2015/may/14/bill-shorten-spends-it-up-in-budget-reply-as-the-coalitions-paid-parental-leave-plan-hangs-in-tatters

anyone who doesnt see all the politicians for the crooks they are is an idiot living in a dreamland

you deserve your servitude

He needs to, winter is coming!

Shorten actually sounds dare I say it, Prime Ministerial with his budget reply.

thats an alpaca

Talking about deficits is completely useless of course but I feel on top of that, the whole talk about government debt has lost it's power. It's time the opposition talk in economic indicators that actually matter:
1. Lower unemployment - fail
2. Infrastructure spend in areas that increase productive capacity - fail
3. Keep inflation in check - success
4. Measures to help reduce private sector debt - fail
etc

#stopthedogs

-PB

I had to share this photo of big, bad Barnaby

It was such a do-nothing budget. If they carried on with all the policies from last year they'd lose the election but they still have to reach surplus in the tried and tested conservative method of cutting other people's funding. If they were really determined to reach surplus or just balance the books (this is aimed at Labor too) then they should implement higher taxes on higher earners, but these people have definite in presence in Canberra and the media and this would immediately fire up the handbrakes of humanity in society to fire up and react to bullshit rhetoric.

Inb4 socialist, bleeding heart, etc

I wouldn't be surprised at all if there's an early election coming. This is an election year budget, but also:

- Both the Liberals and Labor have begun preselecting candidates already, which suggests that the Canberra insiders see an election soon as a real possibility
- The Senate is becoming unworkable for the Coalition
- Abbott is gaining in the polls and he's the kind of politician who'll take a gamble like this

It would be logical for the Coalition to push through reform in the Senate with the support of Labor or the Greens (locking out the minor parties for future elections) and then immediately call a Double Dissolution.

I may be wrong, but it would all make a lot of sense...

I just love the fact that we're hitching our hopes to the Indian gravy train.

-PB

I'm not sure what to think. If the general public only hears 'small-business' then that's great for Tone. If people get confused because confidence and investment is so poor that a government defibrillator is needed at a time when things are apparently supposed to be picking up then it could see a little dip. Also depends if the Parental Leave changes are seen as taking public servants off needless benefits, or attacking hard working nurses and police officers. Looks like Swanny the second.

You watch the Abbott government's ratings in the polls go up after their revolutionary budget

Hopefully he's more about common sense and less about simply opposing everything for the sake of it.

Di Natale is a good choice as their new leader, even if I think Scott Ludlam is ace :lol:

Milne has resigned from the Greens. Don't let the door hit you on the way out c*nt.

I know that it's a given for any sort of forecast but I did laugh at the second caveat on that poster

rusty will be back, he can't resist this thread

inb4 jimmies rustled.

-PB

Politics seems to be a mud-slinging contest with the parties best intentions in mind and not the peoples.

Abbott all over the road

 David Tyler 3 May 2015, 8:30pm  213  2
 New AustraliansPolitics


The only constant with the Abbott Government is it's inconsistency, writes David Tyler.he only thing you can rely on with the Abbott Government is it's inconsistency, writes David Tyler.

Say what you like about Tony Abbott but he's a bugger to follow.

Harder than eating red beans with a pitchfork. He's always been a lair, but now he hoons, fishtails and careers all over the tarmac in his own death-wish demolition derby. Has he finally crashed and burnt on his mission to save "The Bali Nine Pair" Chan and Sukumaran from Indonesian justice?

Shopped by Federal Police who have yet to explain why, the youngsters fell victim to operational "information sharing". Conflicted from the outset, clumsy, confused, the Abbott Government had little chance of intercession later, despite our hope and media hype.

Abbott’s threat to cancel aid, however, served only to harden Indonesia’s intransigence. Now the PM could help himself by answering a few basic questions. Why did we set up a drug bust with a nation with a death penalty? Did we need a favour in return? Is he happy with his negotiation style?

The PM can be abrasive. European leaders should turn back refugee boats; follow his lead, he lectures, leaving Julie Bishop to suggest lamely that her boss was merely offering his experiences for others to consider, adding injury to insult. She went on to contradict him, further shredding his credibility as a strong leader.

Sent in to the rescue no doubt, Katie Hopkins of Murdoch’s Sun, who has called refugees ‘cockroaches’ rose to the occasion, if somewhat lowering the Tone.


'Australians are like British people but with balls of steel, can-do brains, tiny hearts and whacking great gunships.'

European leaders are bemused. Yet they can’t help but laugh at the presumption and self-delusion of our Walter Mitty would-be strong man. They see him flip-flop. One minute, we are all washed up; down the debt and deficit gurgler, he wags his finger. Next, he's spending up big like a drunken sailor out on the town but with someone else’s money. Ours.

Funds are so low we must scrap Federal literacy support for school kids; but suddenly Abbott stumps up $100 million we don't have, to build a memorial to John Monash, which, frankly, neither of us needs — in France. Gallic gratitude to "our boys" aside, the French hardly need another war museum — even, as promised, one just pulsing with interactive, hands-on stuff to help the mindless to reflect.

Let homeless war veterans sleep on the streets. Let battered wives be forced to stay at home with their tormentors. We can’t spare funds for more refuges. Forget John Monash, the Villers-Bretonneux museum is effectively a monument to an inept Australian PM, desperate to boost his image; to hitch his wagon to a star. If his wagon were not a sky rocket without a stick.

One moment, Abbott's toe to toe with Widodo; next, he's wimped out, settling for a lame, ambassadorial recall for two weeks — a "go stand in the naughty corner" which Indonesia is already laughing off. Being a hypocrite doesn't help. The PM can go off like a frog in a sock about Indonesian injustice all he likes, but he's connived with Dutton to achieve a Vietnamese refugee turn-back behind our backs.

The Abbott government has allowed asylum seekers of all ages to be raped and one even to be murdered. He's also earned the censure of both the UN for indefinite detention and children in detention. Censure, too from the rest of the world for announcing we are not to be lectured on human rights. Small wonder Widodo thinks he's a joke-O. With thousands of Australian-bound UNHCR registered asylum seekers marooned in Indonesia at a stroke of the pen by Australia’s 2014 Sovereign Borders law, moreover, Joko Widodo may well have the last laugh.

No wonder Peta Credlin went missing in action. Or was just run off the road. His formerly inseparable Amazonian chief of staff just vanished after Rupert Murdoch told Abbott to drop her. Silence prevails. Secrecy is in this government's DNA, intertwined with dirty tricks, slipperiness and its fondness for lies.

Pity. Peta Credlin is a lot easier to look at than her boss. Smarter, too. You can tell she's been sidelined, sadly, by the PM's increasingly ill-advised stunts since Rupert's call; the erratic trajectory of Captain Chaos' ship, snaking this way and that before burning out on re-entry and falling back to earth with a thud. Come back, Peta, your boss is the loaded dog without your leash; your house-training.

Stop squandering money on such luxuries as running the country, employing people and looking after citizens, advise the Abbott Government’s tanks of neo-con artists. Let them buy their own bloody aspirin and paracetamol! Labor will take the blame for all of this for at least the next millennium, while professional shakedown merchants scab the rest from the poor and needy.

Well, not quite all. The elderly need to be helped to empty their pockets, fork over their savings and anything else of value. Otherwise, it's "intergenerational theft". Time for another tank of thinkers to rattle the can it carries for our neo-con LNP.

Pensioners who can’t be put to work at Mitre 10 are to be hit up for their spare change and any coin that may have fallen down the back of the sofa before being forced to give their homes to finance companies. The "Australia Institute" – an oxymoron which bills itself as "a progressive think tank" – will then talk up reverse mortgages, (perverse?) until the elderly cave in completely and hock the family home in terror because they have been conned into thinking they must fund their own meagre pensions.

Yet now, suddenly, miraculously, Abbott can afford more troops for his war-gasm in Iraq; funds to give to arborists and others quick enough to stick their hands out for Greg Hunt's phony "carbon abatement" scheme handout; a quarter of a billion on nannies; a special fence to keep himself safe in Canberra. The list goes on. The man's a virtual magic pudding mix-master; a genius when it comes to putting the con in neo-con or looking after his own ends.

Yet tragically, there seems to have been little cash splashed where it mattered in his latest, dreadful, debacle with the Indonesians, where events prove the Abbott Government has truly run up its own moral debt and deficit disaster, having burned all diplomatic and political capital pursuing moronic three word slogans, enacting laws repudiating all international obligations.

No. Having inflicted calculated cruelty on those to whom we should extend compassion, there has quickly come the point, when the rest of the world will cheerfully tell us to go to hell — however much we beg their mercy.

You can follow David Tyler on Twitter @urbanwronski.

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/abbott-all-over-the-road,7662

200k for gardening.

Geeeeez.

-PB

Realistically Anzac day has become our rememberance day. Soldiers from all wars are honored on the day

It's funny you say that. My grandfather was a digger and he believed the complete opposite, he didn't want his sons and grandsons put through what he suffered.

Myths should be left to the centaurs and Demi gods. We don't need those in power misrepresenting the truth to send more gullible young men to their deaths.

The sense of entitlement in this country seems to be that the rich should cough up to paper over the poor financial decisions made by those in power.....

-PB

Why question it now? Perhaps to learn from the mistakes of history.
Futile though as you people never learn.