Not to worry. Won't take Labor long to rip the tits off that particular cat.

Not only is the 'gimme' mindset prevalent in the past few generations, but in the socialist ruling class.

Apparently it is an absolute scandal to consider leaving a world diminished by Climate Change to the detriment of our grandchildren, and their grandchildren, without leeching more taxes from the Australian public to justify the professionally outraged.

However, it appears to be perfectly acceptable to live beyond the means of the taxpayer and expect our grandchildren and their grandchildren to pick up the debt in order to fund the excesses of those in the corridors of power.

I see Scott ( vlad the impaler) Morrison has just axed the marriage councilling scheme, such a shame, it would of come in handy for pinky and his girlfriend

Oh, I know..
But, the US of A, "The Leader of the Free World", leads the way, doesn't it?
Look how it handles its debt - and that debt didn't come from the tree-hugging socialists in its ranks, either.

Whereas this thread is about Australia, and the massive swing from a positive amount of $billions in the kitty when Rudd took the helm, to the $hundreds of billions in debt when he took his taxpayer funded 'retirement' six years later.

But apparently that is perfectly acceptable, whilst trying to get the debt back under control is an absolute disgrace to the professional outraged when they aren't getting their taxpayer funded subsidies.

Quite a few of us waiting for your answer, Hempy.

Waiting... waiting...

Me me me , let me answer this simple one,
G l o b a l f i a n a n c I a l c r i s i s. Do I get a gold star!!!!

I quite agree with you mtow maybe a better communicated mining tax would of been a solution, poor old porky pearls might of been a bit unhappy though.

Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes... The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
(to borrow from Ghostbusters) :}
Is that the answer you were seeking? I realise I probably should have referenced the European economic meltdown and the fall of communism.

If we're ignoring the politics we could also ask Howard-era Libs the same question, because there were plenty of middle class welfare handouts from that government, and nor were the Queensland LNP afraid to spend up big on stuff they liked. Both sides variously give out big wads of cash and/or tax breaks to their perceived target audience. One side call it welfare and the other call it incentives, but it amounts to the same thing in the end. Abbott's PPL is nothing more than yuppie welfare, and as of tonight (standing by for tomorrow's Press Club address :E) he's still sticking with it.

Meanwhile, in the other alternate universe of Rabid-Tory-land...
People earning too little to buy anything other than necessities, too poor to get health care, too uncertain where their next buck is coming from to do anything except live hand to mouth... etc etc :zzz:

We saw glimpses of this in Hockey's frantic pre-Christmas 'don't forget to spend, people! It's not really as bad as we made out, honest' speech, no doubt after some prodding from his retail mates in big business. Because the bulk of retail and leisure spending is on middle of the road stuff. Even so-called premium companies like Louis Vuitton make the bulk of their profit selling cheap goods like sunglasses and t-shirts to aspiring wannabes. Gina and the Packers can only buy so much stuff.

However, so far in Australia it hasn't got to either scenario, because governments that look like straying down those paths get voted out. Bligh's Labor spent like drunken sailors, and they got voted out. Gillard/Rudd's government got voted out. If those governments had been returned by the electorate then yes, I'd agree that your scenario of bankruptcy were feasible. Maybe that's what's happened in Greece et al. Nor (from my very limited knowledge) do the Greeks seem too fond of paying taxes. For the most part Australians cough up at least a portion of what they owe to the ATO, albeit begrudgingly and creatively.

It hasn't happened here, and I don't see it happening. Australians (correctly, IMO) get disgusted when they see a government spending too much, and they took that disgust to both the state and federal ballot boxes. However, they also get disgusted when they perceive cuts as being unreasonable (which is admittedly subjective), and targeting the bottom end of town in favour of the top.

Likewise, when Howard's government went more big business than the general population supported, they got voted out. If the Queensland LNP get hoofed, then it will be because the majority of voters didn't like the way they were going. They won with the biggest majority in Australian electoral history and managed to squander every seat within three years. As Richo said on the Sky coverage; the assumption that a government will automatically get two terms is gone. Anastacia's Facebook page comments make interesting reading; there are a lot of posts that can be summed up as 'Congrats. Don't cock it up'. Of course Abbott doesn't believe there's any relevance to online debate, so I guess he doesn't read his.

If the ALP get over the line and start spending like their predecessors, I don't think we need a clairvoyant to predict what will happen. They're very much on notice, and it will be interesting to see if they can figure that out. There are a few yellow-bin pollies back from the grave, and hopefully they won't fall back to their old ways. If they do... guess we'll be having the reverse debate in 2018.

The problem is, once they start borrowing and spending, the damage is done.

Voting them out after one or two terms wont make it any easier to repay the debt, but someone has to do it. Guess who that might be?

Not really what is happening though, is it Worrals?


What is actually happening is that any LNP government, actually in power, that tries to rectify an abysmal situation that requires belt tightening and harsh fiscal control gets voted out because of the multitude of vacuous promises made by the ALP opposition who have no responsibility or power to do anything anyway but keep promising people that their hand-outs will continue, regardless. And please keep on having children you can't afford and whilst we are at it, lets allow a whole bunch of totally unqualified people in to Australia, despite their illegal method of arrival and questionable refugee status. Who cares? we will fund them and their extended families adinfinitum, after all, what we are really good at is spending other peoples money.

Neither side of politics, according to this guy. :8
https://theconversation.com/profiles/mark-mcgovern-168
I don't know what his politics are (if any) but given that he lectures at QUT I very much doubt he's a rusted on Leftie. The University For the Real World reportedly has a shoot on sight policy wrt lefties :}, though presumably there are a few exceptions.
https://theconversation.com/uncoveri...nds-debt-36218
One of the problems with economic arguments is that both sides have a massive arsenal of economists and they all crawl out of the woodwork towards their keyboards/media interviews whenever an election is called. I'm not an economist and I doubt that many other people here are either. Nor is economics a science, even when it's applied by apolitical professionals.
Would that be the 457 visa scheme? There are a lot more foreign tradie subcontractors wandering around my workplace than refugees, and their English is just as poor. Of course they'll get shoved in a shipping container and sent back home once they've done the job :} (or half done it :ugh:) and in rabid-Toryland that's a great outcome. Doesn't do much for the local unemployement rate though, or long term local growth. Nor does it win over voters.

Yeah, cos Tone will save you with his PPL! Breed away and have faith that low interest rates, interest free repayments on luxury goods and credit card refinancing will never die. It's not just the bludging ferals who are still spending beyond their means and putting today ahead of tomorrow. Not by a long shot; the upwardly mobile Sunday barbie brigade (many of whom vote Liberal, or at least outwardly 'hate' the Labor party and their bogan union mates) are just as bad.

People voted for the Howard government even though they went to the polls touting a 10% GST, and they continued to vote for them in subsequent elections. People will vote for pain if they trust the party that's implementing it and they believe that party has integrity. The Qld LNP failed to convince their massive new support base that they were trustworthy, and went out of their way to antagonise, irritate and betray everyone who had voted for them, including many of their own supporters. The biggest vitriol sprays I've heard today came from LNP people, and they're not spitting at Labor. They're spitting at their own, just as lefties did when Bligh and Co got necked. It's remarkably parallel.

I didn't watch Insiders this morning (my sock draw was in urgent need of re-arranging), but if this (below) is true, I wish I had.

No Worrals, as you well know, I'm not talking about 457 visa holders, as you know, a 457 visa is not easily come by if the rules are followed, there has been abuse but that is pretty much stopped now, (guess under which government most of the abuse took place, no clues!).


I'm talking about economic migrants from the Middle East who have large extended families but no useful qualifications and had they had a genuine reason to become refugees they would have come direct, complete with papers, and not risked their lives and tens of thousands of dollars to arrive on a leaky boat, sans papers. But you knew that, didn't you Worrals? :)

This gets brought up over and over again.

I can't confirm or deny the existence of these supposed economic migrants, but realistically, how much would they really costing the country? I haven't seen anything concrete - only hearsay, "my wife's friend works at Centrelink and contributed to an article in Ackerman's blog"-type gossip which is designed to rile up the neo-cons and bring in ad revenue, ultimately.

How much are they claiming, really?

It doesn't just "add up over time". Our deficit is measured in billions and shutting the door in the face of "Middle-Eastern migrants" because, let's face it, their culture makes you feel a bit uncomfortable, is going to do sweet-FA to treat the cause of that problem.

Welfare payments are not even our largest expense, and Centrelink payments of the kind that economic migrants allegedly abuse are not the largest portion of welfare expenditure - the aged pension is, by a long shot.

Can we stop pretending so-called economic migrants are the cause of the country's woes? All-in-all it's a drop in the ocean compared to say, the revenue the government doesn't generate because our tax system needs reform, but for some reason that doesn't garner nearly as much fervour in this thread :zzz:

No, I don't know that. It conflicts with what I'm seeing in the field, i.e. more foreign tradies with limited English, working for sub-sub-sub contractors and disappearing like Boojums on a weekly basis once they've cocked everything up royally. :suspect::suspect:
I'm also seeing a growing number of ethnic looking people in basic jobs, such as catering and cleaning. They seem to stick around longer than a week and some of them are re-appearing in (relatively) posher positions. IMO that's a good thing, and a big part of what built (and continues to build) Australia. :ok:

As for the bludging reffos, I'm sure they're around but they're not working, so I don't see them at work. Same with the third generation inbred ferals in the satellite hamlets around SEQ. Dunno what we do with them, but any policy wrt starving them out invariably impacts on genuine refugees/out of work people. This is where public policy on unemployment stops being red or blue and gets very grey :suspect:.

Not everyone who is out of work wants to be on the dole. Not by a very long shot. Queensland's job market has become very dire and getting laid off is terrifying, even for relatively well qualified, can do people. The government flooding the market with ex Qld public servants didn't help that at all; God help you if you are out of work and qualified in a vaguely government field such as admin or training; there are fifty ex public servants with lots of qualifications standing in the same queue. There is also less unskilled work around; ten years ago anyone with a pulse could get work in Brisbane as a cleaner, security guard or doing traffic control. Today, there are waiting lists and many applicants per job, even for crappy stuff.

From what I hear many of the truly dodgy economic migrants (or 'students', doing a Bachelor of Fruit Picking :suspect:) are working strictly cash cleaning, labouring, picking or in ethnic F&B. In a way, they're probably doing better than out of work locals.

If you want to hunt down illegal immigrants I'll not argue with you. Trust me, you know I mean that. :E Guess who outs them? That's right, the Australian Public Service; the very same 'hated' government employees who are being cut in the name of efficiency by the current federal government.

Of course they were also cut to ribbons (more quietly) by the Rudd/Gillard government and the Howard government (even more quietly) before that, because as rh200 pointed out earlier 'everyone' hates public servants. It always amuses me when people who espouse reductions in public service spending use the same forum to express their concerns about enforcement issues such as illegal immigrants, visa scams and centrelink rorts. For all the claims of efficiency by both sides of politics, the end result is always less about cutting BS agencies and more about cutting frontline workers in enforcement; they're not as good at grovelling. All the public hears is 'efficiency'. They never ask what services are actually getting cut, and what's not getting investigated/prosecuted in the name of efficiency.

Anyone like to predict what the reaction of us rusted-on Right Wingers will be here and on similar sites this afternoon after Tony Abbott's make or break speech? My prediction, for what it's worth, will be: "I'm totally underwhelmed, Tony. Too little, too late, and what you said was not what I was hoping for."

I can't tell you how much I hope I have to eat a massive dose of crow.

Is it a side effect of the modern era? 24 hour news, mixed with the advent of social media, mixed with politicians no longer being able to make a decision? Since the Rudd government it seems to have changed. I'm sure many americans would say similar things about Obama. No party seems to have a theory of government anymore. They have an idea, do some internal polling, a few focus groups and then discard it with the rest of the ideas that went through the same process.

If you don't have an idea or a theory on how you should govern your nothing more than s sports team that the rusted on faithful will support but everyone else will have left you behind. These times just give more ammunition to borderline anarchists a-holes (like myself) that you should always aim for the smallest amount of government we can. A hamstrung, slow moving government is one we can all love.

Chuboy - My main beef about the illegal boat arrivals is not so much their presence or what they take out of the system but if you, (and better still, SHY, Milne, Rintoul etc.), were to go to the UNHCR camps in the Sudan, Kenya, Somalia, Pakistan etc. you would see REAL refugees who are fleeing for their life and not the fat and happy bunch that used to regularly show up on boats going to Christmas Island who not only didn't qualify but who gained entry by default and then delayed the arrival of the genuine refugees, some of whom have been in the camps for a number of years. These illegals do breed like rabbits and will, if current evidence is anything to go by, generate a serious security problem:
No, their culture makes me feel very uncomfortable, not just 'a bit', but that is something your generation and your children will experience and have to endure or cure. Old goats like myself have long retired, moved to the sticks and will, in all probability, have shuffled off before the situation becomes critical.

Worrals:
Agreed, somehow the complete wastes of space seem to survive at the expense of the valuable employees.

Maybe. I think pollies across the English speaking world currently spend far too much time worrying about what the media thinks of them, and far too little time considering what the electorate thinks of them. They seem to forget that the media doesn't vote them in or out of power, the electorate does.

Adding to the problem is the increasing disconnect between the mainstream media's opinion and the public's opinion; they are becoming two very different things.

A minor rant
 

I don't know if the ABC are aware that not everyone thinks Greste was treated badly, but for them, the ABC, to spend the whole of the ABC24 11:00am news this morning interviewing every known member of his family is absolute garbage. Good job we don't have to pay a licence fee here, because I for one would not be paying it to support a bunch of w*nkers.

Hey ABC, there was an election in Queensland over the weekend. Just in case you hadn't noticed.