Right so how is this any different from the GFC when Rudd doled out free money here, there and everywhere? Biggest financial crisis since the depression but that didn't matter apparently.

The media never shut up about it. In fact they still bang on about it.

Worth a read on the state of the media  https://joeljenkins.substack.com/p/we-see-it-all?s=w

The frustrating thing is ppl don't care. 

Some moron said to me the other day the line of 'Liberals know how to manage money'. He couldn't name one policy that increased society's wealth or living standards, and moronically listed labor ones.

In the end, he shrugged his shoulders and said 'well, they're all as bad as each other.

That's what the country is dealing with - people who at the end of the day don't actually have an idea or stance, no matter what they try to pretend. They just piss with the wind.

100%. It's a nailed on 'fact' now that LNP manages the economy better that is amazing. If there's one thing they've managed to do well it's to entrench that in the minds of voters.

One thing is certain. Inflation and interest rates are going up over the next few years. They're saying interest rates could go up 3 times this year alone. Plenty of overcapitalised mortgage holders are going to be in a lot of trouble. 

If Labour gets in they're in for 3 years of grief and will be able to do little about it which feeds perfectly into the LNP narrative. 

If the LNP get in they'll just say it would have been worse under Labour. 



Just on rorts for a sec. How anyone didn't go to jail for paying $30 million  for a block of land worth $3 million at the airport is unbelievable. Just absolutely baffling. Somebody should be in jail.

Some poor single mum is getting robocalled from centrelink for a $200 overpayment and these cunce get away with shit like this.

But mate, a enquiry by themselves, found they had breached none of the guidelines set up by themselves

Crazy that we live in a world which requires a benevolent billionaire to fix society's woes.

What's actually funny about you and tsf is that you're both literally straight out of the leftist playbook.  Choose a conservative value and then take it to the nth degree.  There is no such thing as a free market and there never has been. Governments job is to act in the national interest. whether its economic, social, or defense.

A - so conservative values are a load of baloney 
B - our government has failed monumentally at the things you said they’re responsible for 

so what use are they? 

Its a self-evident fact.  Australians have the highest median wealth in the world. Australia has had a flat and relatively low income gini co-efficient since 2009 (https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/finance/household-income-and-wealth-australia/latest-release) also meaning Labor relied on the false narrative of "rising inequality" in the last election and of course the public saw through Shortens' and Plibersek's divisive lies).  This economic success has been under the coalition, and for 20 of the last 26 years.  Don't tell me you believe it was all down Labor's 6 years in office?

A. No
B.  How so?

Sure you can buy it. Click here

 https://www.amazon.com.au/1984-dystopian-classic-reimagined-Shepard/dp/0141036141/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=1984&qid=1651570245&sr=8-3

They have ran the economy into the ground, our worst ever modern economic managers, they have been beating the war drum for 12 months, but fall asleep from all the drumming and have let the Chinese waltz in...oh and they completely utterly botched the vaccine rollout and had something like 20 times in non-stop run aged care facilities

That's an example from social, economic and defense. I could list a hundred

ha ha what, dig every natural resource, sell your national assets and squander 90% of it?

A grade six could manage that

Awesome handling there. 

1.  Australia has weathered the economic downturn from Covid-19 better than most developed countries: source OECD 2021

2. So you're now against sovereign nations deciding for themselves who they align themselves with militarily and politically even though in this case it is 4 times the distance from our borders as the Ukraine border is from Moscow?

3.  Australia has a very high vaccine rate, and low death numbers

And yet Labor couldn't be trusted to do it by the Australian public for 20 out of 26 years.

Look around you.  Most of what you own and enjoy has happened under the coalition.

Like universitiy education, Medicare, intervening to save national treasures from development…

thanks LNP!

Anyone following this aspen medical scandal 
wtf? The corruption is as bad than Eastern Europe ffs 

It was Labor's Dawkins that brought in HECS in 1988/89.  It was Gillard that created the policy that has led to the $300,000 degree.

My parents remember a time before Medicare ie Medibank They say it was better-they paid their premiums and they got to their doctors within a reasonable time-real surgeons rather than the kids in training clocking up the hours and the botched work in the public hospitals Medicare gives you today, unless you have a benevolent surgeon on hand.

Not sure what "national treasures" you mean?

Borrow $800 billion to prop up economy and leave this fuck off massive debt problem to be kicked down the road and sorted by someone else.

Brilliant. I could've done that.

I'd have more respect for a clown like you if you were a little bit more fair minded. When Rudd did it during the GFC you were against it, when the LNP does it you're not.

You could at least say well the LNP had to do it because of XYZ and so did Rudd. Or say Rudd should never have spent so much money and neither should the LNP.

But you won't because you're the worst type of person to have a debate with. A person that will never concede a single point. 

They gave out $56 billion, that's BILLION, in jobkeeper in many instances to companies that increased their profits and bonuses to their CEOs. Are you OK with that? Can you concede that maybe they overegged the payments just a tad? 

So now you're anti medicare?

HECs is/was fair enough when it started back years ago when it was a nominal amount. My HECS debt was about $12k when I finished. It's becoming a way more serious debt burden now for young people particularly in lower paid degree qualified jobs like engineering, nursing, science, veterinary science, physios etc. 

Not sure why you don't up and move to America where your profits-before-people, trickle-down economic theories and lack of empathy towards your fellow man is more aligned with your principles.

Thanks for posting. Great article.

So let me get this right. You don't see the Solomon Islands signing this pact with China as a foreign policy failure on the part of the LNP?

You don't see this as a kick in the teeth to the Aus government after the billions we gave the Solomon islands over the years, the military help, the federal police we send over there time and time again. That's all ok by you? 

Go on, you can do it (and I know it will be hard), just say 'yeah that was a bit of a balls up by the LNP'. Shit see if you can somehow link it back to something Labour did 15 years ago while you're at it.

Can you do it Enzo? Can you concede one tiny, tiny point and maybe just criticise your own side for once or are you going to say no China can do what ever they want? I mean you probably will because you're OK with Russia flattening a country holus bolus on some made up pretext. What a fucking joke you are.

Oh the anger...LOL.  Its a once in a 100 year pandemic and vastly different from Krudd's spending as this was about getting through lock downs where people could not work.  Under the GFC most Australians were having a laugh about their cash payments- we all more or less worked through it.  Not so with COVID.  The nation literally  shut down and stayed home.  No comparison.

When you talk about a "deficit" what you mean is government deficit. The money didn't disappear its in the economy in private hands  But not in Treasuries cofffers.  Yet.  I'm ok with that.

Medicare should be a safety net, not a free for all.   You think Medicare is some jewell in the crown?  Go and compare the surgical outcomes of public hospitals and those of private surgeons.  You get what you pay for.

HECS was never fair.  Its more of a burden now because Gillard said to the Uni's: charge what you want for as many places as you want.  Leading to expensive degrees, over-supply of graduates, declining standards and lower paid professional degrees like the ones you mention.

Why would I move when I have a government that has aligned with my principles for most of work life.  You're the one who doesn't like that.   You leave.

Biggest financial crisis since the great depression is analogous to the Covid pandemic. Australia was the only OECD country to escape a recession during the GFC but still you can't concede that the policy, although there may have been waste, worked.

As for money getting splashed around my kids and all their mates that worked at Maccas and KFC and Boost juice and all the rest of it were getting payments of $750 a week or $1500 a fortnight when they were locked down. (Laughing their arses off.) And they were only working 10-16 hours a week. What a joke. Billions wasted.

Even now my kids mates are all claiming this $750 covid payment for a positive test despite hardly any of them having it or still going to work. All you need to do is say you had a positive test and you're sweet. No checks, no confirmations, nothing.

 

Oh, unlike you I am not a hypocrite. I'm always consistent. China should never have been allowed in the Solomons.  Like Ukraine into NATO, you know?  Which Russia has objected to for the past decade, after Western powers removed Ukraine's democratically-elected government in 2014.   Maybe we should bomb Honiara?

Medicare should be a free for all. Private health insurance shouldn't exist or if it does then there shouldn't be perverse cross subsidisation and 'incentives' for higher earning people to be forced into it. Why should I pay 4 times the medicare levy/tax amount and then be forced to take out private health insurance instead of being able to be treated at a quality public hospital with quality facilities and doctors? Ridiculous. Raise taxes or the medicare levy and stop forcing people into private health. If it's that good then it should be able to stand on it's own 2 feet.
 
Full fee degrees became a thing when University funding was drastically cut forcing universities to charge higher and higher fees. What a surprise. And as you did remind us 20 of the 26 years the LNP was in government so it was mainly them responsible.

Nahh mate the two are not analogous.  Melbourne shut down for 262 days in the pandemic.  Zero shutdowns during the GFC.  Big difference.  As for the recession during the GFC, Australia was never in danger of a recession.  Our banking system is regulated far beyond the rest of the world.

And we're not in a recession now either.

Think of the payments as a trial for a Universal Basic Income.  I've always against that because of the risk of inflation...wait...I  might be on to something...

Consistent is correct. Consistently unable to concede a point.

Just to be clear do you think that that is an LNP foreign policy failure or not?

Melbourne is not Australia despite what Victorians may believe.

How very trite. We avoided a recession because we were 'never in danger of a recession'. Case closed then. 

Care to explain how other OECD or European countries with highly regulated banking systems went into recessions then? 

You don't get it.  Once you make a service free, then it gets abused by both patients and doctors.  As a public hospital friend of mine said: "Half the time I;m treating the worried well coming in with trivial things, because it costs them nothing". 

All want their sick certificate though.

Who are you going to increase the taxes on?  The 50% of workers that pay nothing and will vote you out?  The 20% that pay around 75% already?  How much more do you want them to pay?  Increasing taxes will never fly.  And very few experienced surgeons will work every day for Medicare rates.  No chance in hell.  So now what-no wants to pay more, and only the trainees work for Medicare rates.

Full fees became a thing because Universities have enormous administrations paid big $$$, huge marketing budgets, and CEO Chancellors on million dollar+ salaries, all drunk on foreign student incomes.