;) what the punter don't know won't hurt them....!!!!!!


(see what i did there....;) )

Definitely Labor. The Libs have decided they're opposing it. Smart move.

Pragmatism wins the day.

nothing would keep you happy.............

the only thing i see here is two pathetic scumbags who leech off others

Not true.

Minimum terms on MP's, enforced fact checking (and subsequent censure on false information intentionally floated) on information blurted by all sides of politics and full transparency on election funding would probably make me happy.

Politicians would still be scum, but at least they would be accountable.

Very good.

Also, see this: http://whois.domaintools.com/billshorten.com.au

Edited by wamackie: 30/5/2013 02:52:09 PM

sorry didn't get that????

The AWU originally registered bill shortens website.

Scandal of the century.

i see....well nothing new there everyman and his dog knows labor are in bed with the unions......

I say maximum terms for MPs is a better idea - serve your two full terms and GTFO.

Yah, that's what I meant. My bad with the words and stuff.

Democracy has already been sold. At least by one side. Abbott had a private meeting with Murdoch, the very next day he came out with his 'demolish the NBN' policy.

lol....how melodramatic

:lol: wow... just :lol:

It's what happened. :roll:

It pains me that people are so blatantly ignorant of the connections between a handful of the most powerful and rich people in this country and their support of the Liberal party, and the clear connection between the Liberal policies (no carbon tax, no nbn, money for rich women to have children, privatisation of ABC and SBS) and what those powerful and rich people need to become more rich and more powerful.

This.

Selling off Government owned assets to private interests.

Australian politics isn't as bad as American politics and their blatant bribe system under the veil of "lobbying" but we definitely have financial interests steering our governance.

-PB

It doesn't matter where in the world you are, a "democratic" election process will be funded by people trying to protect their commercial interests. Capitalism at its finest.

If Clive Palmer became prime minister, I would move to another country.

No need to worry over debt you never hear about

Date
June 1, 2013

It's funny that people who like to worry about the supposedly humongous size of our ''debt and deficits'' have focused on one debt when they could have picked another one four times bigger.

They carry on about the federal ''net public debt'', which is expected to have reached $162 billion - equivalent to 10.6 per cent of gross domestic product - by the end of this month. It's now expected to peak at $192 billion - 11.4 per cent of GDP - in June 2015, before it starts falling.

But that's chicken feed compared with our ''net foreign debt'', which reached $760 billion - 51 per cent of GDP - in December.

Whereas the net public debt is the net amount owed by the federal government to people who hold its bonds (whether they're Australians or foreigners), the net foreign debt is the net amount Australian governments, companies and households owe to foreigners.

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One reason for the lack of trumpeted concern about the foreign debt is you can't score any party-political points with it. In dollar terms, at least, it's just kept growing under Liberal and Labor governments.

A better reason is there isn't a lot to worry about. Throughout the history of white settlement, Australia has always been a net importer of foreign capital because our scope for economic development has always been greater than we could finance with just our own saving.

And, as Treasury points out in this year's budget papers, there's now even less reason to worry than there used to be.

The net foreign debt is the partial consequence of a deficit that rarely rates a mention these days, the deficit on the current account of our balance of payments. (The balance of payments records all the transactions between Australians and the rest of the world.)

The current account deficit is usually thought of as the sum of our trade deficit (exports minus imports) and our ''net income deficit'' (our payments of interest and dividends to foreigners minus their payments of interest and dividends to us).

But it can also be thought of as the extent to which we have called on the savings of foreigners to fund that part of the nation's investment spending (on new homes, business equipment and structures, and public infrastructure) the nation has been unable to fund with our own saving (by households, companies and governments).

Actually, borrowing foreigners' savings is only one way to make up the saving deficiency. The other way is to attract foreign ''equity'' investment (ownership) in Australian businesses.

In December, when our net borrowing from foreigners totalled $760 billion, the net value of foreigners' equity investment in Australia was $110 billion, taking our total net foreign liabilities to $870 billion.

Our net foreign liabilities represent the accumulation of all our past current account deficits (and we've run such a deficit almost every year for at least the past 200).

Treasury makes the point that just because we don't save enough to finance all our annual new investment doesn't mean we don't save much. We save a higher proportion of national income (GDP) than many developed countries, and we've been saving a lot more since the early noughties.

Though governments are saving less, it's well known that households are saving a lot more. And companies are saving more by retaining a higher proportion of their after-tax profits. So national saving has risen to about 25 per cent of GDP.

Some of this rise has been offset by an increase in national investment spending, driven by the mining construction boom, which has taken national investment spending up to about 28 per cent of GDP.

Even so we've still reduced the gap between national investment and national saving to about 3 percentage points of GDP, which compares with an average of 6 percentage points in the years leading up to the global financial crisis. Treasury says this smaller gap (that is, smaller current account deficit) is likely to continue for at least the next two years.

Before the financial crisis, the dominant form of net capital inflow was ''portfolio debt'', Treasury says. This debt was held largely by our banks, but their foreign borrowing was really to meet the borrowing needs of their household and business customers.

Since the crisis, however, the household sector has ceased to be a net borrower and reverted to its more accustomed position as a net lender to other sectors of the economy.

The corporate sector (excluding the banks) is still a net borrower, but the mining companies in particular have funded a lot of their investment in new mining construction from retained earnings rather than borrowings.

Since the miners are largely foreign-owned, however, this use of retained earnings shows up in the balance of payments as an inflow of foreign equity.

This implies we've become less dependent on foreign borrowing to finance the current account deficit.

As part of this, our banks have been net repayers of their total foreign liabilities since mid-2010.

(The counterpart of this is that they've been getting a lot higher proportion of their funding from Australian household depositors, particularly through term deposits.)

One lesson from the financial crisis is that severe dislocations in foreign funding markets can impede the ability of even the most creditworthy borrowers (our banks, for instance) to obtain funds, even if only for a short time.

This helps explain our banks' subsequent move back to reliance on household deposits (made more possible by our households' changed saving behaviour, of course) and also their move to reduce their exposure to ''rollover risk'' (having trouble replacing a maturing debt with a new debt) by lengthening the average term of their foreign borrowers.

These days, 63 per cent of our foreign debt is more than a year from maturity, including almost a third with more than five years to run.

Finally, some people worry that, when we borrow in foreign currencies, a fall in our dollar would automatically increase the Australian-dollar amount of our debt. But Treasury points out, these days, almost two-thirds of our net foreign debt has been borrowed in Australian dollars.



Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/business/no-need-to-worry-over-debt-you-never-hear-about-20130531-2nhg9.html#ixzz2UxIYN1ei

His reported tax cuts would inevitably be to higher income earners and the economy would inevitably stall.

Considering he and Reinhart want to be able to pay people $2 a day to work for their mines, in all likelyhood, yes. Their tax regime would likely resemble the 1980's 'trickle down' bullshit that gives millionaires and billionaires tax cuts while slamming low and middle income people.

if they were elected we'd be well on our way to becoming a second world country.

Oh look Tony Abott talking more bullshit, shock horror. I wonder how long it is until he blames a natural disaster on the carbon tax.

depends if he cut welfare and got all the bludgers and people rorting the system......sad that so many people who are not really in need expect to be supported by taxpayers........

if you check the figures on the explosion of welfare under this pathetic pack of clowns it's laughable

Can you link to the figures, please?

Trumbull calls Abbott "disingenuous"

http://www.skynews.com.au/national/article.aspx?id=876714

Opposition leader Tony Abbott says the prime minister should offer Ford workers an apology, because her policies have impacted on their jobs.

Mr Abbott has told a New South Wales Liberal State Council meeting on the Central Coast the carbon tax has increased the price of a locally made car by $400

His attack came hours before Julia Gillard met workers from the company's Geelong factory yesterday afternoon and announced an extra $15million to help them find new jobs when operations close down.

Ford announced last month it will stop making cars in Australia, costing 510 jobs at Geelong and 650 at Broadmeadows.

Meanwhile, Liberal frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull says it would be disingenuous to blame Ford's closure on the carbon tax, although he says it certainly adds to the expense of Australian manufacturing.

Should be surprised that he's blaming the closures on the carbon tax, but I'm really not.

Well I guess the good news is that when Abbott takes power and rescinds the carbon pricing (which will be an ETS shortly anyway), the cost of manufacturing will magically plummet and Ford can keep those 1200 people in Geelong and Broadmeadows employed... Right?

your a smart young fella Matt search for them yourself.......