Yeah nah. Who gets to decide what is substantiated or not?

The answer to a concentrated media landscape is to reset the structure to encourage more news sources.

The answer is not to start legislating to reduce media freedom.

I don't subscribe to govt legislating what the media can and can't say, beyond libel and defamation.

Absolute rubbish, you obviously dont look at the website. I visit it every hour, its full of left wing, anti government, anti Abbott, anti Turnbull drivel every day.

Isn't news.com.au the website that talks about someone's hair, dress, a cop rescues a dog out of a tree type stories?

And the romanticism of criminals?

Seriously shit news site

Very much yes lol.

-PB

As I posted earlier it's full of clickbait and hardly any political stories make it to the front page. Rusty's just grasping for anything he can.

Edited by mcjules: 12/5/2016 03:23:40 PM

Media freedom shouldn't allow lying.
They should be penalised by a media watchdog, so the small man doesn't have to fork out thousands in legal fees to bring a case
If we had a media watchdog, Murdoch would go out of business (& the Wilfully Ignorant Party wouldn't get away with all their lies)

Because that appeals to Gen Y/Millennials.

If you want the opposite, you read newspapers (like old people).

EDIT: Also it's full of mindless shit for a dumbed down apathetic audience lol.

-PB

Edited by paulbagzFC: 12/5/2016 03:20:24 PM

Why should politicians, who often lie themselves, be allowed to legislate against the media for telling porkies? It's up to the public to sift through the rubbish and figure out fact from fiction. I have to say though the left are biggest bullshitters of all. Look at the Labor ads for example, spreading lies that rich people are getting a $1700 tax cute while poor people get nothing. Not at all true. Poor people get tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars every year, while rich people pay tens of thousands of dollars in tax. Lies, lies and more damned lieS!

Why should politicians, who often lie themselves, be allowed to legislate against the media for telling porkies? It's up to the public to sift through the rubbish and figure out fact from fiction.

rusty, we don't agree on much mate, but this portion of what you have posted I agree with 100%:

False equivalence (which doesn't justify politicians lying either)

I can't believe that you are unable to imagine the potentially disastrous issues associated with having a govt body deciding on whether a newspaper says something false or not.

We already have defamation and libel laws. Beyond that, you just create far too much risk of a government exploiting this power.

The answer to media lies is to counter with facts. The market of ideas should be expanded. Shutting down media voices is poor policy.

We're being sold the trickle-down economics con

Kelly O'Dwyer's considered response on Q&A to questions about the rich v poor divide neatly illustrates what this election, in economic terms, is really all about, writes Michael Bradley.

The fault line in this election has already been exposed, by an unlikely person called Duncan Storrar.

Duncan, an audience member on Q&A, says he has a disability and low education, and is a minimum wage earner. He lives in public housing, has two young children and works as an itinerant truck driver. The media has of course since revealed that he is not in fact the Messiah, but his job was already done.


Duncan asked the panel why the income tax cuts in the budget will only go to rich people who won't notice them, when a small cut would change the lives of people in his position. After failing to get a straight answer from Assistant Treasurer Kelly O'Dwyer, Duncan tried again:

"Low-income earners lose more money, because every penny we pay in tax, is ... that's money we don't have to spend at the bottom end. People who make $80,000 a year, don't know who they are, well, they don't even notice it, love. We notice that sort of stuff."

Only in Australia do you get to call a cabinet minister "love", to her face. O'Dwyer's considered response to the conundrum which Duncan was expressing neatly illustrates what this election, in economic terms, is really all about.

O'Dwyer said this:

We want to grow the economy, we want to create more jobs. We want to give people an incentive to work, to invest in their businesses and to employ people and create better lives for themselves. That is what our plan is all about...
We have got a company tax cut for small businesses with a turnover of between $2 million and $10 million. Now, you might say, "Well, that's terrible," but it's not, because what it does is it creates more jobs. It will mean that those businesses can reinvest and employ more people.
Later in the debate, she added:

I have sat down with small business, because I'm the Small Business Minister and I've talked to them. One of the cafe owners I spoke to the other day has got a turnover of just over $2 million.
As a result of our change, our tax cut on the first of July this year, he will have access to the instant asset write-off, which means he can invest in his business, a $6,000 toaster, which means he can get more customers through his business on a Saturday...
He's going to derive more revenue and he's told me that he is going to put more people on. This is the result of the changes we are making. It will affect people's lives in a very positive way.

O'Dwyer was stating in simple language the theory of supply-side, or "trickle-down", economics. It is the central economic foundation of the great neo-liberal experiment which has dominated Western economies since Ronald Reagan took office in 1981.

The idea is easy to grasp: If the government provides incentives to businesses and their owners to work harder and invest more, by reducing the tax they pay on their earnings, then they will naturally and inevitably use the extra money to produce a higher level of economic growth, which will create more and higher-paying jobs, in a virtuous circle which ends up benefiting absolutely everyone - even the poor.

O'Dwyer's cafe owner exemplifies this cycle: The government is giving him a tax cut; he will use the extra money to buy expensive equipment which will make his business more efficient and productive, enabling him to serve more customers, for which he will need to hire more staff. It follows, as night follows day, that eventually Duncan is going to get more work delivering bread to the cafe to feed the $6,000 toaster (which apparently can churn out 1,000 slices an hour). What's not to love in that equation of economic turbo-charging?

Well, let's test the theory with an another small business owner - me. I run a business that turns over between $2 million and $10 million a year, so we will be getting the exciting tax cut O'Dwyer is offering. Will we use it to create jobs?

No, we won't, and it isn't because we're greedy lawyers. It's because we're being sold a cheap con.

For starters, O'Dwyer was talking rubbish to Duncan. She conflated the income tax cut (which will reduce the tax rate for businesses with revenue below $10 million to 27.5 per cent) with the budget's expansion of the accelerated depreciation concession which allows small businesses to immediately deduct the full cost of capital expenditure on items costing up to $20,000, instead of depreciating it over a number of years. Thus the $6,000 toaster; it has nothing to do with the tax cut.

Secondly, the accelerated depreciation is a timing benefit only; you may pay less tax in the first year, but over time your tax bill will be no different. The potential benefit isn't less tax; it's the extra revenue and profit you hope will flow from buying more equipment, which you hope to afford by getting the upfront deduction.

It's not a bad thing for small businesses, but the Howard government's Review of Business Taxation failed to find a compelling case that accelerated depreciation actually benefits the economy through higher business investment.

As for the actual tax cut - OK, our business will pay 2.5 per cent less in tax on its profits next year. What will the shareholders in that business do with the extra money? We'll save it, so that we can give it to the ATO to cover the corresponding increase in our personal income tax bills.

The ultimate owners of companies are people, and they pay income tax on their dividend earnings. If the company is paying less tax, then the franking credit on the dividends is reduced, so the amount the individual shareholders have to pay to make up the difference goes up by the same amount. The net effect is zero. The resulting economic growth is also zero.

It's true that two types of companies and shareholders will derive a net benefit from a company tax cut. First, companies that reinvest the extra profit rather than distribute it as a dividend will get a benefit. However, most small businesses distribute all their profits as dividends because their owners rely on that as their personal income. Secondly, there are the shareholders who don't pay income tax in Australia, either because they live overseas or because they use Panama-style tax "minimisation" structures. As Duncan would say, rich people.

That's all just a long way of saying that the small business tax bonanza the Government is selling is largely illusory. In the bigger picture, 45 years of trickle-down experiments, promising that the rivers of money which have flowed to corporations and the rich will turn into "jobs and growth" for all, have delivered one clear outcome: a massive and sustained increase in income and wealth inequality.

Wealth is now concentrated at the top to a greater extent than ever. Further, the International Monetary Fund found in a study last year that, as more money is pushed towards high income earners, economic growth actually slows down. The facts unarguably demonstrate that the theory of trickle-down economics is, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz describes it, "absolutely wrong".

It's this simple - if you give money to the rich, it makes them richer. The small part of that wealth which they choose to apply to discretionary spending adds vastly less to the economy than what it loses from the ever-increasing concentration of wealth. To put it another way: how much jobs and growth is created by one rich person paying another rich person $30 million for their harbourside house?

It seems strange that we're being sold the benefits of an entirely discredited theory by a party and Prime Minister who claim to be the experts at this economics stuff.

Duncan asked: "Why don't I get it?" The answer, Duncan, is that you're not supposed to. It's a private joke.

Michael Bradley is the managing partner of Sydney law firm Marque Lawyers, and he writes a weekly column for The Drum. He tweets at @marquelawyers.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-12/bradley-why-are-we-being-sold-the-trickle-down-economics-con/7406844

As for the actual tax cut - OK, our business will pay 2.5 per cent less in tax on its profits next year. What will the shareholders in that business do with the extra money? We'll save it, so that we can give it to the ATO to cover the corresponding increase in our personal income tax bills.

The ultimate owners of companies are people, and they pay income tax on their dividend earnings. If the company is paying less tax, then the franking credit on the dividends is reduced, so the amount the individual shareholders have to pay to make up the difference goes up by the same amount. The net effect is zero. The resulting economic growth is also zero.

xxxxxxxx

That's all just a long way of saying that the small business tax bonanza the Government is selling is largely illusory. In the bigger picture, 45 years of trickle-down experiments, promising that the rivers of money which have flowed to corporations and the rich will turn into "jobs and growth" for all, have delivered one clear outcome: a massive and sustained increase in income and wealth inequality.

this simple - if you give money to the rich, it makes them richer.

You obviously dont visit the website very much. There's a lot of tripe on there and there is also a lot of political tripe - most of it slanted against the Liberal party.

Clearly you must visit it a lot, definitely explains alot about you :lol:

-PB

Clearly you must visit it a lot, definitely explains alot about you :lol:
-PB

No doubt some men are still stuck in old conservative ways of thinking and see women as a mere accessory rather than a resource. But this is a vast minority of men who think and act like this, and shouldn't be generalised for all men or masculinity implicated with the problem nor does it require a gender revolution to resolve. It will phase out with time, demonising and trying the shame all men is not going to expedite fairness and equality.

Farken bang on.

-PB

I'm not sure how this ended up in the politics thread...

Media freedom shouldn't allow lying.
They should be penalised by a media watchdog, so the small man doesn't have to fork out thousands in legal fees to bring a case
If we had a media watchdog, Murdoch would go out of business (& the Wilfully Ignorant Party wouldn't get away with all their lies)

Have you actually seen how many defamation cases fairfax has faced in the last few years ?

Left wing policy is populism at its core

Millionaires are baddies
Take money off rich people and give it to poor people
Everyone is equal
Right wing are big meanies
Bottomless pit of money to splash on welfare
Evil corporations are naughty baddies

Obviously the bread and butter of liberal party ideology, economic growth, deficit /surplus, stable national finances, etc is probably a bit too complicated for the average punter to understand.

Galaxy: 54-46 to federal Coalition in Queensland, leads in marginal NSW seats

The Courier-Mail today brings the Coalition one of its most encouraging poll results in a while, crediting them with leads on federal voting intention in Queensland of 54-46 on two-party preferred, and 46% to 33% on the primary vote. This compares with 57.0-43.0 at the 2013 election, and primary votes of Coalition 45.7% and Labor 29.8%. The only seats a uniform swing of 3% would net for Labor would be the Rockhampton region seat of Capricornia (margin 0.8%), which Labor has only lost three times since 1961, and the northern Brisbane seat of Petrie (0.5%). The poll was conducted Tuesday and Wednesday evening from a sample of 1176.
Also from Galaxy, the Daily Telegraph has electorate-level polling showing the Liberals leading 54-46 in Lindsay and by unspecified amounts in Gilmore and Reid, with 50-50 results from Banks and Dobell and a 51-49 lead for Labor in Macarthur, the scene of last night’s leaders forum. More precise figures on that will be available at some point, hopefully soon. The polls were automated phone surveys of around 500 respondents per electorate.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2016/05/14/galaxy-54-46-federal-coalition-queensland/

No doubt some men are still stuck in old conservative ways of thinking .