To be fair, when you're awake for 20-24 hours at a time and running off 4 hours aleep a day it can be quiet easy to lose track of the days ;)

As the post-election Labor whining and navel-gazing gets an early start...

It is going to be fun bringing these front pages back up when Murdoch & the Australian public inevitably turn against Terrible Tony

It's the way the Senate is supposed to work, the Senate is not there for the glorification of the two main parties, but is a house of review..,,granted we'd rather not have some of the more dingbat parties getting elected , but if they get the votes they're in, democracy at its finest....and it holds the other two accountable for a change.

We saw Gillard do it with a minority government, now it just may be Terrible Tony's chance.

Edited by Joffa: 1/9/2013 02:39:40 PM

Just flying a kite to see if it catches on, it will be a subtle reminder for all those who are blindly going to vote for him

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says conflict in Syria is just 'baddies vs. baddies'
AFP
AFP
SEPTEMBER 01, 2013 12:29PM

OPPOSITION LEADER Tony Abbott has came under fire after describing the conflict in Syria as "baddies versus baddies", renewing criticism of his diplomatic credentials.

Tony Abbott, currently on track to win Australia's September 7 elections over centre-left Labor incumbent Kevin Rudd, described the conflict in Syria as a civil war "between two pretty unsavoury sides".

"It is not goodies versus baddies, it is baddies versus baddies and that is why it is very important that we don't make a very difficult situation worse," Abbott told ABC television Sunday morning.

The remarks came as the nation prepares to assume the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council, and Abbott's political opponents seized upon them as evidence he was not ready for the international stage.

"Can you imagine him at the G20? 'Barack, it's baddies versus baddies'," said Labor Senator Penny Wong.

"I've yet to see a leader of a federal political party wanting to to be PM who would be this embarrassing when it comes to foreign policy."

The Labor campaign said it "speaks volumes about Mr Abbott's foreign policy capacity" and "summed up in a sentence why he is not fit to represent Australia in any international forum".

"Having Mr Abbott represent Australia at the G20, the White House or the United Nations is akin to sending Milli Vanilli to perform at the Royal Albert Hall," a campaign release said, referring to the 80s rap/pop group.

Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat and foreign minister who championed Australia gaining a place on the security council, questioned Abbott's ability to handle complex international crises last week, describing him as "an exceptionally aggressive and negative politician".

"I really do question, having known Mr Abbott for a long, long time, if he really has the temperament for that sort of thing," he said.

"You've got to sit back, think calmly, reflect and then work through what the best decision is. And temperament, judgement and experience are quite important.

"He doesn't have a background in this field."

Opinion polls have consistently put Abbott ahead of Rudd but both sides are predicting a close finish heading into the final week of the campaign.

Rudd is due to rally the party faithful at Labor's major campaign event later Sunday.

http://m.heraldsun.com.au/news/special-features/opposition-leader-tony-abbott-says-conflict-in-syria-is-just-baddies-vs-baddies/story-fnho52jj-1226708473985

He'll probably decide on a double dissolution.

Labor strategy was abysmal in this campaign. Needed to campaign almost like an opposition does, small target, no big cuts, that FBT decision was abysmally stupid, there was no chance in hell the right wing media were going to let them get away with that, even though its a massive tax rort that only really benefits upper middle class professionals, that defence change from NSW to Queensland had no real point.

If they called the election immediately and campaigned tightly it would've been a much closer election right now.

Ok. :lol:

Edited by Joffa: 1/9/2013 03:29:11 PM

Well done Tony, reading the situation spot on. No good side in the Syria conflict.

Tony Abbott " There are going to be changes after the election that people aren't going to like."

Sky News Sunday, September 01, 2013




Edited by Joffa: 2/9/2013 05:51:57 PM

:lol:

And does anyone think these changes are going to be for rich people? Or even higher middle classes? Or big companies?

Bogans voting against self interest will rue the day they voted in this numpty.

Coalition's full costings will not be released until final days of campaign

Tony Abbott admits policy costings and savings will not be released until after the political advertising blackout

Gabrielle Chan, political correspondent
theguardian.com, Sunday 1 September 2013 11.52 AEST

Tony Abbott has admitted his full policy costings and savings will not be released until after the political advertising blackout, ensuring Labor cannot use attack ads targeting the policies in the final days of the campaign.

As the election campaign enters its final week, Abbott said the full costings would be released after the final policy initiatives were announced up to "the middle of the week". The advertising blackout takes effect on Wednesday night.

Abbott was speaking ahead of the Labor party's official campaign launch on Sunday. Later in the week, Kevin Rudd makes his final set piece pitch to voters on Thursday at the National Press Club in Canberra and could have the Coalition's full costings at that time.

But Abbott insisted there was no surprises for voters in his final costings.

"I don't believe the additional savings to be announced later this week will impact on ordinary Australians and I want to give people this absolute assurance, no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no changes to pensions and no changes to the GST," Abbott said.

Abbott also conceded that the Coalition's Indonesian boat buyback scheme may not purchase a single boat with the $20m fund he committed as a measure to stop asylum seekers arriving in Australia.

In the wake of criticism from Indonesia regarding the Coalition's $20m boat buyback scheme, Abbott softened his stance on the policy, saying it was simply a way of interrupting people smuggler operations.

Asked by the ABC whether it was possible that a Coalition government would "never buy a single boat", Abbott said "it is possible".

"A fund, $20m, would be available to our people on the ground in consultation and co-operation with the Indonesians to try to ensure the local villagers were working with us rather than with the people smugglers.

"We may not buy boats back but if we did have the opportunity to pay someone a couple of thousand dollars to stop a boat from being launched, when if that boat arrived in Australia it would cost us some $12m per boat to deal with people, that would be a shrewd investment."

Over the weekend, Abbott also came under pressure over his comments that the Muslim womens head dress, the burqa, was "a very confronting attire".

Abbott made the comments while he was defending a Liberal candidate's comments on the issue.

Ray King, Liberal candidate contesting the treasurer, Chris Bowen's seat of McMahon in western Sydney, had suggested women should stop wearing the burqa, which allows Muslim women to cover their head and face.

"Frankly, it's not the sort of attire that I would like to see widespread in our streets," Abbott said on Saturday.

Keysar Trad, a spokesman for the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, was critical of using the burqa issue in any political debate.

"The election should not be a debate about the burqa," he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

"Anyone who uses women's dress as an issue in politics is just showing his bankruptcy of policies."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/01/coalition-costings-final-days-election

Emerging from the black hole, a monumental Abbott sucker punch

What if the opposition leader, having attacked the Labor deficits with such zeal, is about to emulate them?

theguardian.com, Sunday 1 September 2013 16.20 AEST

Labor is clinging to the hope that Tony Abbott has a $70bn costings black hole that will scare the bejeezus out of voters even if the Coalition leader succeeds in keeping its bleak contents hidden from the electorate until the bitter end.

But here’s a sobering thought for the ALP: what if a black hole is not what the Coalition leader is hiding? What if Abbott’s reluctance to lay out his full costings, and a year-by-year breakdown of spending and saving, is because it will show he won’t return the budget to surplus, or start to pay down debt any faster than Labor intends to. What if it’s because the Coalition budget might fall even further into deficit in the early years before the new company tax levy and some of the already announced spending cuts start to kick in, precisely because Abbott isn’t intending big cuts to frontline services.

It would expose the utter cynicism of the Coalition’s “budget emergency”, “we’re drowning in debt” attack of the past three years. But it would also leave Labor’s election attack looking pretty hollow.

Labor refuses to let go of its belief that the black hole is out there. It has built its campaign so determinedly on the allegation that the Coalition is hiding secret cuts to health and education that it has spent far less time talking about the actual cuts Abbott has already laid out in the open for all to see – including to the schoolkids bonus and low-income superannuation and tax breaks for small business.

Rudd still wasn’t letting go of the $70bn scare in his launch on Sunday, referring again to the “$70bn of massive cuts that risk throwing the entire economy into recession because we are living through fragile global economic times”, and advising voters that “if you don’t understand how Mr Abbott’s $70bn of cuts will affect your job, your school, your hospital, then don’t vote for him”.

But just Sunday morning on ABC’s Insiders, Abbott had said again that what he had under wraps was “relatively modest savings” (confirming in the process that it would be late in the final week that voters would finally see his costings).

“I don't think anyone is going to think at the end of this week, ‘My God there is this massive fiscal squeeze coming.’ If anything, what they will think is there has been a massive scare campaign, a massive campaign of exaggerations and even lies from the Labor party,” Abbott said.

It wasn’t so much Abbott’s costings black hole, but Labor’s political black hole that was on display in Brisbane on Sunday.

As Anthony Albanese and Rudd tried to rev up the dispirited troops by listing Labor’s record of achievement in government, it was difficult not to think how little political credit they’d got for any of it, and how much Labor’s own leadership turmoil was to blame.

As Hawke and Keating, the older and greyer Labor prime ministers of the past once again came in to a Labor campaign launch to a heroes’ welcome, the absence of the more recent red-headed leader was all the more noticeable.

As Rudd made one last big pitch to the blue-collar vote – the apprentices, the Tafe students, the battlers who switch when Australia changes government – it was interesting to remember that Abbott hadn’t really made them big promises on anything, other than ending the chaos and infighting of the other side.

And as Rudd ploughed through detailed promises on instant tax write-offs and Tafe funding deals it was hard not to wonder whether an electorate exhausted with politics would be able to absorb any of it in the campaign’s final days.

If Abbott is telling the truth (and so close to actually revealing the information why wouldn’t he be?) it amounts to a monumental political sucker punch.

Having eroded Labor’s ability to claim credit for its economic management with constant claims that the budget deficit represents a crisis and the stimulus spending during the financial crisis was not needed, it would be the ultimate irony if the Coalition’s own fiscal policy turned out to be not that scary, but really pretty much more of the same.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/01/black-hole-abbott-sucker-punch

But but but he said he will stop the boats ... And and and stop the boats :lol:

So it is real? I had to check it it wasn't a shop as I'm out of town. Even the papers in Russia aren't that obviously biased and jingoistic.

Yes it's real.

Here's another interesting viewpoint on what will happen under Abbott:

Latika Bourke @latikambourke 30 May: Liberal MP Dennis Jensen just told me Coalition will need to impose 'austerity measures' in their first budget if they win Govt.

I like this version better

Australia, you don't know how good you've got it

While other countries fell into the global recession, Australia maintained strong economic growth, low government debt and a triple-A credit rating. With this record, you might expect the federal election to be focused on how to convert the strength of today's economy into resilience for the future. But instead the political spotlight has fallen on the perceived problem of government debt, with alarming proposals to bring austerity ''down under''.

For an American, Australia's anxiety about deficit and debt is a little amusing. Australia's budget deficit is less than half that of the US and its net debt is less than an eighth of the country's gross domestic product.

Most countries would envy Australia's economy. During the global recession, Kevin Rudd's government implemented one of the strongest Keynesian stimulus packages in the world. That package was delivered early, with cash grants that could be spent quickly followed by longer-term investments that buoyed confidence and activity over time. In many other countries, stimulus was too small and arrived too late, after jobs and confidence were already lost.

In Australia the stimulus helped avoid a recession and saved up to 200,000 jobs. And new research shows that stimulus may have also actually reduced government debt over time. Evidence from the crisis suggests that, when the economy is weak, the long-run tax revenue benefits of keeping businesses afloat and people in work can be greater than the short-run expenditure on stimulus measures. That means that a well-targeted fiscal stimulus might actually reduce public debt in the long run.

Advertisement
Australia may have successfully dodged the global crisis, but some politicians seem to have missed the lessons it taught the rest of the world. In this election, the conservative side of politics has foreshadowed substantial cuts to the government budget. This would be a grave mistake, especially now.

Recent experience around the world suggests that austerity can have devastating consequences, and especially so for fragile economies. Government cuts have helped push Britain, Spain and Greece's economies deeper into recession and led to widespread public misery.

The youth unemployment rate in Spain is above 50 per cent and the figure for Greece is above 60 per cent. Their tragic experience should be a warning to the world. But even seemingly healthy Germany was pushed into a recession from which it is just now emerging - but it is an economy that is still weaker than it was before taking the "dose" of austerity.

Proponents of austerity ignore the fact that national debt is only one side of a country's balance sheet. We have to look at assets - investments - as well as liabilities. Cutting back on high-return investments just to reduce the deficit is misguided. If we are concerned with long-run prosperity, then focusing on debt alone is particularly foolish because the higher growth resulting from these public investments will generate more tax revenue and help to improve the long-term fiscal position.

Proposals for substantial budget cuts seem particularly misplaced at this time given that Australia's economy is confronting new global challenges. Commodity prices are softening and growth is slowing in many key export markets. Australia is already facing declining mining investment. The slowdown in economic growth is not the result of flaws in government policy, but of an adverse external environment. It would be a crime to compound these problems with domestic policy mistakes.

Sharp cuts to public spending over the next few years will exacerbate these challenges. Withdrawing government spending as the economy weakens risks tipping Australia into recession and increasing unemployment.

Assuming standard multipliers, cutting public spending by $70 billion from an economy the size of Australia's over a four-year period could reduce GDP growth by around 2 per cent and cost up to 90,000 jobs.

Instead of focusing mindlessly on cuts, Australia should instead seize the opportunity afforded by low global interest rates to make prudent public investments in education, infrastructure and technology that will deliver a high rate of return, stimulate private investment and allow businesses to flourish.

I was in Australia during the last federal election and noticed then that the tone of the economic debate was both far too pessimistic about the current economy and far too complacent about the risks in the future. Three years later, the obsession with public debt continues to be a distraction from the more fundamental question of how to establish sustainable long-run growth.

Rather than look through the rear-view mirror at public debt, this election should look forward to the challenge of maintaining Australia's economic success for the future.

Joseph Stiglitz is a professor of economics at Columbia University and a recipient of the Nobel Prize in economics.



Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/australia-you-dont-know-how-good-youve-got-it-20130901-2sytb.html#ixzz2de4zWmGc

Edited by Joffa: 1/9/2013 11:00:58 PM

But but boats!? and gays!? AUSTRALIA ROOONED by JULIAR CARBON TAX.

Stocking up on lube to reduce the impending butthurt boys?

Planning a business venture in Thailand where there's very little pretence of honest politics.

Who cares about the worst economic climate in years!

There should be 5% unemployment, minimal inflation, no carbon tax, and budget surpluses for no apparent reason. Oh yeah no more boat people either!

Least they're honest.

Honest about their dishonesty :D

could be worse

could be dishonest about their dishonesty like KRUDD & ALP

I reckon the idiot is the journo who used the word "loose" instead of "lose" in that article :lol:

FWIW I got a pamphlet (a message from Clive) from the Palmer United Party and I was very impressed. It basically just highlighted around 5-10 issues that the Palmer Party wanted to tackle, and the simple figures to accompany the plans. It also had a stab at how Rudd & Abbott refused to talk actual policies and were just throwing smoke and mirrors in peoples faces.

The thing I don't like about Rudd is he keeps on harping on about "we need this for more infrastructure and blah blah blah" - what exactly are the people getting by voting for Rudd? And even Abbott is the same. Clive's message laid it out in figures that most people would understand - pensioners would get $x more per week, this would happen here, etc etc. I'm yet to see the big parties just spell shit out, without the whole mind games thing, yet TBH

Edited by pv4: 2/9/2013 08:13:24 AM

Could be worse, Vietnam just passed a law banning people from posting political commentary on social media.

Can you please supply the source you got that from Joffa or that rule does not apply to you