Yes, Murcock rags is a bit of a twat, but we really need to the hammer LAborT at the next election.

Teflon Turnbull's poll numbers holding up pretty well in spite of so much corruption in his party, don't ya think....?

Another Day another protest group

pretty much the same people

Sand in your vagina?

.

Edited by Murdoch Rags Ltd: 21/2/2016 07:52:05 PM

fantastic to see people march for freedom

Edited by lukerobinho: 21/2/2016 09:20:06 PM

Such intellectual cannon fodder......

My only surprise is that this has happened so quickly.

The budget becomes more and more crucial.

No chance of an early election/double dissolution now methinks.

They're pushing the senate voting reforms through to make it an option. I think it'll depend greatly on their internal polling of the marginal seats.

I like micro parties getting seats though haha.

-PB

Yes, but given this morning's poll (and assuming the trend continues) I think it is much less likely.

In a double dissolution the senate quota required halves. They may end up worse off!

I thought he had a longer honeymoon period than expected.
Its ironic about Turnbull trumpeting tax restructuring, when Shorten has proposed policies that would lead to greater change so far
Turnbull will have to hope he can maintain at least 50-50 in the polls, historically they continue to travel south.
Double Dissolution is out the window - internal polling will decide when he calls an election

I must admit I didn't expect Turnbull to be so ham-fisted with things like the GST debate.

Also, Shorten still has very low favourability ratings, and I thought they'd be dogging him more.

But they've been very good in terms of seizing the initiative with issues like negative gearing, whereas the govt is floundering and being forced to try and respond, rather than driving the debate.

Yes I think the double dissolution with the voting reforms might do the job of ridding them of the majority of the cross benchers but there's a massive risk that Xenophon will get a pretty big allocation from SA in the senate as well as Labor and Greens making significant gains so they still won't have control.

Overall, the suggested changes seem reasonable to me. Whilst I like a diversity of views in the Senate, its tough to argue that these micro-parties should be there on democratic terms.

It would be better to have bipartisan support on this issue. If the ALP is against the bill, they really should put up an alternative, or at least state the specific problem they have with it.

The other interesting change is that now the party logo will be displayed next to the party name. Clearly this is to stop the confusion with David Leyonhjelm getting voted in because people thought he was the Liberal Party candidate instead of the Liberal Democratic Party candidate.

I can't see the issue with these voting reforms. A party with 0.5% of the vote should not get the same representation as one with 25%. Labor if they want to look like a reasonable party and not simply singing from Abbott's songbook of 'No' should be backing these changes.

On the chances of a double dissolution...the Greens will pick up a swag more seats with the lower quota and as said before the X Team in SA will surely make inroads with potentially two or even three of the state's senate seats.

The government as it is don't appear to have any policies beyond "innovation"? The ads are basically a copy and paste of the Hollowmen's Futureproofing campaign, so while I applaud the positive outlook compared to the last PM's regime I feel it is simply a nice sounding announceable rather than anything substantial.

Tunbull is tied in knots trying to bring together the broadchurch called the Liberal Party, his beliefs conflict with his promises to the fringes of the party and it is now on display for the public to see. Turnbull has an ace up his sleeve though...if the polls drop further he can assume emergency control like Rudd did on his return and simply say I know what the public want, let me run free. Turnbull unleased would win in a landslide by winning the centre comfortably by combining his economic conservatism with his social liberalism.

Labor have done more than Libs on policy, since Turnbull arrived.
If anything, Turnbull is singing from Abbott's songbook in opposition. So, if anything, Turnbull is as gutless as Abbott.

Tony Abbott has said he would have won the election

February 27, 20169:23am

TONY Abbott has launched a defensive of his prime ministership, saying he would have won the federal election with budget cuts and lower taxes.

“The poll-measured unpopularity of the Abbott government was not due to any shirking of responsibility but to our determination to do our duty by getting our own spending under control,” Mr Abbott said in a forthcoming essay obtained by The Australian.

Abbott said that if the test as Prime Minister was to ­“always be ahead in the polls, as well as to win elections” then “tough-but-necessary decisions will rarely be taken”.

The former prime minister has also issued a warning for Malcolm Turnbull saying his successor’s biggest challenge will be to retain popularity once he has a credible narrative of his own, something he has failed to do after five months in office.

The essay is to be published in the March issue of Quadrant and made available to The Weekend Australian.

http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/tony-abbott-has-said-he-would-have-won-the-election/news-story/3ca3e003886dc8d7b712341f1fbe217c

They keep talking up a July election.

-PB

Negative gearing is getting a bit of air time. Shorten is all about affordability. However, houses becoming cheaper means a shit load of people will lose money. Turnbull seems to be about not shaking things up too much or screwing investors.

The other question I have is the housing shortage a lot of places have. Lets face it, whether the house is 500k or 400k, it still won't help a lot of people get a home loan. So if you screw over mum and dad investors to make houses cheaper (and there's no guarantee it will lower prices), who is going to buy the houses to rent out? They've tightened the laws on overseas investment. So essentially, mum and dad investors get screwed out of buying new properties and a lot of renters can't afford them, so how does it make sense?

The other thing annoying me at the moment is talk of tax cuts. For once can we please have a PM who doesn't bullshit us into thinking we're going to save money. Fact is we're never going to so these people need to cut the crap when it comes to tax cuts.

Being straight forward and up front (and to a degree realistic) in politics will get you nowhere unfortunately.

-PB

The fact that they plan to grandfather it, it won't have that huge an impact. We need a gradual easing of prices and this will help a little.

I'm not sure what you mean by grandfather it? Who is this in reference to?

If you cut off an incentive to invest, you might make things worse in terms of people trying to find rentals. On the Gold Coast, the rental demand is insane.

Anyone already negatively gearing an old house will still be allowed to. If negative gearing is such a great incentive to invest, then restricting it to the area of housing that increases availability seems sensible.

The Negative Gearing policy isn't there to have an immediate impact on housing prices. It is a medium-long term measure to fill in a hole in the budget. We are one of the only countries in the world that lets you use negative gearing to offset your overall income.

In other countries there is a cap, or you can only use negative gearing to offset income from the asset itself, and no more.

It is a massive distortion on the economy, and it is extremely sensible policy to get rid of it.

My mistake on the Teflon Turnbull label
Essential Research now also has it at 50-50 two party preferred
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2016/03/01/essential-research-50-50-7/
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/files/2016/03/Essential-Report_160301.pdf

The Wilfully Ignorant Party is utterly incompetent at economic management
("repeat the lie often enough and eventually the (wilfully ignorant) populous will believe you" )

Bunch of frauds

I am critical of both sides on this. There was never a clearly publicised cost/benefit analysis. I think if the ALP stayed in govt, there would have been cost blow outs, but of a different nature. But at least we would have had a top-notch NBN to show for it.

The Libs present themselves as the "responsible" party, but this shows that both parties are equally capable of poor planning.

I really think there should be an independent infrastructure body that decides which projects get priority based on greatest societal benefit. The govt should just be responsible for deciding the level of funds available.

NBN should of been left up to the private sector from the get go, seriously the only government programme that has met it KPIs ultimately is Operation sovereign borders all other government programmes have eventually shown to have turned to shit in terms of their KPIs