The guy who wants to be treasurer doesn't even know the basic tax rate. Most folks who a casual interest in politics know it kicks in after $18,200 at 15% of wages

Were you?

Are you sure you aren't actually Chris Bowen?

Jones eventually gave the shadow treasurer the answer, before berating his credentials as would-be treasurer.

"This is a serious issue. The man wants to be the treasurer of Australia but he doesn't know the tax thresholds."

Jones persisted with the issue, asking the NSW MP to identify the percentage of tax paid in the next bracket.

Attempting to shut down the line of questioning, Mr Bowen said: "I'm not going to do a pop quiz with you, Alan."

He then incorrectly nominated 15 per cent as his answer.

"We don't pay 15, we pay 19 cents in the dollar," Jones said.

Mr Bowen said he had been referring to the superannuation tax rate, which is 15 per cent.

It doesn't matter if I am credible or not if matters if the guy who wants to be treasurer is credible.

Welcome to the February meeting of the Liberal Party Online Infiltration Unit. Any apologies?

rusty: ricecrackers has been missing for a few weeks

OK, let's go around the table. rusty how is the FourFourTwo forum going?

rusty: Well, it has been harder without ricecrackers. I am on the forum constantly but can't find anyone who agrees with me or seems to buy what I am selling. I did make a complete cockspank out of myself by basically making exactly the same mistake as Chris Bowen when I was in the middle of attacking him but by sticking my head in the sand and saying "lalalalalala" I think I got away with it. If you could find ricecrackers and encourage batfink to help me out more often that would be great.

That's because he would have shares as part of his employment ;)

-PB

I honestly wonder how they came up with that figure for the costs for data retention.

What a waste of money.

-PB

1. Business confidence was lower under the last Labor government
2. Youth unemployment was at a 10 year high under the last Labor government, trending upwards
3. Labor projected unemployment would hit a 12 year high before they were booted out

It's completely moronic to suggest "government talk" is the main catalyst behind the weakening budget and economy when we're staring down the barrel of a trillion dollars of debt and the prospect of never returning to surplus. The government and just about everyone except Labor are simply putting out there the facts and the potential implications if we can continue to bury our heads in the sand and pretend there isn't a problem. It's not like Chris Bowen can come out and say "oh c'mon guys everything is a-OK our economy is doing great!" and the debt and deficit will magically disappear. There are structural problems in the budget that need to be addressed not with nice words and positive affirmations but with action.

Edited by rusty: 18/2/2015 04:48:41 PM

Credit to batfink, he knows when to abandon a sinking ship :lol:

I'm happy to concede I made a cockspank of myself on the basis that Chris Bowen is even more of a cockspank because he's the guy who wants to be Treasurer.

Better not talking about sinking ships otherwise a ship might actually sink. Self fulfilling propheciziations and stuff.

This is like shooting fish in a barrel.

1. Roy Morgan Research’s Business Confidence survey in December 2014 declined by 17.7 points (down 14.4%) from November (to 105.3), the lowest level since August 2011 and well below the four-year average of 118.0. Business confidence has shown considerable volatility over the last 12 months and is currently 31 points (22.7%) below the peak of 136.3 in October 2013 following the election of the new government. These December figures are the result of 756 interviews with all types of businesses across Australia.
http://www.roymorgan.com/Findings/2015/01/20/04/26/6021-business-confidence-slumps-in-december

2. Unemployment has jumped to a 12-year high of 6.4 per cent, despite the loss of only 300 jobs.

Bureau of Statistics figures show the jobless rate surged from June's reading of 6 per cent to 6.4 per cent last month - the worst reading since August 2002.

Young people have been particularly hard-hit, with unemployment for 15-24-year-olds hitting 14.1 per cent - the highest level since October 2001.

The jobless rate for the 15-19-year-old subset jumped even more to 20.4 per cent - the highest since April 1997 - and was 30.1 per cent amongst those looking for full-time work.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-07/unemployment-surges-to-12-year-high-at-64-pc/5654926

1. Your quote refutes your own assertion that business confidence is the lowest it's been in 30 years. Now who's a massive cockspank? :lol:

2. Unemployment will keep growing for some time to come as the economy continues to struggle with the end of the mining boom, the Reserve Bank governor, Glenn Stevens, told MPs on Friday.

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/feb/13/unemployment-will-keep-growing-for-a-little-while-says-rbas-glenn-stevens

Oh looky I can play cut and paste games too.

rusty posting guardian articles :lol:

I knew if I posted something from the Australian you would all turn it into a rant on Rupert Murdoch and his attempts to take over the world

Finger in the air I'd say. Now they want to drop the census which costs about the same figure. Good governments get their priorities straight :roll:

Imagine that, spending $400 million to prevent terrorist atrocities from happening in Australia. Disgraceful.

I don't see why data retention is perceived by some as trampling on their civil rights. Perhaps of all the millions of internet users in Australia they think they are so important that government and ASIO are going to specifically target them and hold high level round table meetings and compile 1,000 page reports on their internet usage. Or possibly they're just weirdos and don't want government knowing all the sick porn fetishes they have.

I don't want the government knowing the porn fetishes I have, because it's none of their fucking business.

Rusty, can you please point to a data retention program ever being successful in preventing terrorist acts anywhere in the world?

I'd like to see if he can do better than the attorney-general's department at answering this! Rusty's lack of understanding of this policy makes me think he might be actually be George Brandis.

But I think it's worth the government knowing your porn fetishes in order to prevent terrorist attacks from occurring and people getting blown apart or their heads hacked off. Faced with the moral dilemma of Notor being able to keep his internet porn sites private from the government round table meetings and preventing terrorist attacks I think I'm more comfortable with the latter.

The government doesn't need my porn fetishes to stop terrorism, because I'm not a terrorist and neither are 99.999% of the Australian population.

The perceived threat doesn't justify the reality of lost liberty and privacy and you may go and kindly fuck yourself :)

Beware governments who spy on their citizens.

Especially those who engage in hyper secrecy themselves.

Brandis refused to release his meeting meta data for one week when he's asking the electorate to give up their entire meta data for 2 years.

Both LNP and ALP today voted together to keep the details of the Chinese FTA secret from the public. Strange that something so lauded by the LNP and rusty as a major achievement for the government and country would be so wrapped up in secrecy.

I think we need to stop using the term 'government' when talking about who will see this data. People will be retaining and checking this data. People just like us, probably people each of us know. People who have no right to your or mine personal information of this nature

We all know what the data will be used for.

90% will be used to prosecute copyright infringement
9% political muck raking
>1% investigation of actual victimising crimes.

Snowden talked about how staff in the department used the data inappropriately (e.g. looking up girls they liked).

You wouldn't be losing any liberty or privacy, that is a perceived threat that has no basis in reality as unless you're planning on committing terrorism the government has no interest in accessing what websites you or the other 99.999% of Australians visit. Are you against Google launching satellites because they might be able to appear into your backyard and thus completely inviolate your rights to backyard privacy and trample all of over your precious civil liberties?

This is just contrived outrage because the government is doing something to combat terrorism which impacts people in the most benign way but any impact no matter how minimal will always be confronted with ridiculous amonunts contrived confected outrage when its a government they don't like. Don't kid yourselves this is political bias and has nothing to do with privacy.

I think both major parties would seek introduce this if in power and the outrage from civil libertarians would be the same regardless.

It was Labor which sought to introduce the Australia Card in the mid 1980s but backed down in the face of widespread protest.

Still can't believe people won't acknowledge the genuine Islamist threat that exists in this nation, like they are actually think there is some magical force-field insulating us from the possibility of an attack. It'll probably take something like a French style massacre for people to snap out of their idyllic stupor and recognise what's actually going on in the world that we are not invulnerable from something terrible happening here. I'd probably listen to the boss of ASIO I suspect here's more interested in preventing terrorist attacks than accessing your website history.

I would rather my liberty and risk the attack, thanks.

I can't believe that idiots like you really can't understand that taking away freedoms because of terrorism is exactly what terrorists set out to achieve.