Where in the world has ABBOTT's DIRECT ACTION PLAN worked?

Can you list the evidence that his laughable plan will work and cost less and meet our obligations?

Mr Hockey told Insiders that the Government has already broken its own promises on changes to superannuation, and the Coalition is proposing a responsible course of action.

"If we don't take those decisions now, Australians are going to pay a far higher price in lower wages and higher unemployment into the future," he said.

Mr Hockey also told Insiders that Australia's overseas borrowing underscores the need for budget improvement.

He said Australia brings in $40-50 billion a year from overseas.

"The challenge for Australia is this: we are a net importer of capital and we rely on money coming from the rest of the world every year to fund our lifestyles," he said.

"Our banks borrow 20 to 30 per cent of their money from overseas.

"And when the federal government is in the market place borrowing money and competition with the banks, and up to 86 per cent of that money that the federal government borrows comes from overseas, we make ourselves more vulnerable and not less vulnerable to international market volatility.

"That's why we've got to get to surplus and do it fast."

http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/latest/17238164/hockey-tells-states-to-make-case-for-gst-overhaul/


.. the fiscal Labor imcompetents have to go 

labor have done their job .. time for a change

the following RBA graph is pretty indicative of what our country goes through as far as Budget deficits

and what happens when Libs take over the purse strings and fiscally balance the sheets again

http://www.rba.gov.au/chart-pack/government.html

when the Libs have the country back on the right fiscal path again ... and can leave labor 40 bill surplus to play with and 'look good' with then .. lets vote labor back in

but not this coming election ... please   

the RBA graph explains it all

the graph shows it all .. right back to the keating era

Prior to that .....how many surpluses did the respective parties deliver .....going back say 60 or 70 years?

that's a bit like looking a few years back on a hore's form for an upcoming race   

i mean seriosuly AFL .. we've got a Treasurer who doesn't even know if he will have a surplus or not

swan said in parliament that the deficit years were over .. the surplus years were with us

and his NEXT budget blew from 7bill in the hole to 12 bil in the hole .. to a ridiculous 19.4 bill

they've had a good five years .. time to hand over the purse strings of the country i reckon

in five years .. with the country back in the black and business prospering ... labor can have another shot

I'm still waiting for someone to post the GREAT MULTI-GENERATIONAL POLICY'S the LIBERAL PARTY have introduced in their history????????

It was either deliberate.....in order to send us into a recession .......... or they are totally incompetent?

The liberals wont build any infrastructure if by chance they happened to get in, the nation will be years behind. Nothing wrong with borrowing money to build the country now when rates are at hysterically low levels....

Nothing wrong with borrowing money to build the country

... but there has to be a plan to pay the borrowings back

if you consistently spend more than your revenue ... it is a total disaster

get the fiscally hopeless Labor out NOW 

... and in 5 years the Libs can leave them a 50 billion gratuity ... with business prospering and revenue higher than expenditure

... and labor can spend it again 

because they like to spend other people's money 


... but if you mean why is it NOT good to have expenditure greater than your revenue can ever be .. then

when people defend labor by saying but we're in better shape than Europe or the USA ... you have to question why they would want to go down the torturous path of Europe and the USA 

... if we are doing better than them then lets stay that way ... not just join in the madness

but i guess the real question why .. should be

why did our Treasurer tell our parliament that the deficit years are behind us

why did he do that ?   what did he not understand about one plus one

Posted by kevin :on the DRUM website..

20 May 2013 2:44:05pm

'Retail power prices, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, rose 72 per cent in the five years to June 2012 (before the carbon tax was introduced last July).

Retail costs of gas and other household fuels rose by 45 per cent in the same period.

Abbott cannot guarantee a fall in power prices in a carbon tax-free electricity market.'

Abbott can and will guarantee anything he wants to because he knows the msm will ensure his never ending list of lies won't come back to bite him, just like the msm won't properly address the FACTS of the carbon price issue as the facts blow Abbott's stupid position and endless lies out of the water.

Facts:

The carbon price increased the average electricity price by 9% or $3.30 in NSW. Other states and territories had smaller increases, some as low as $1.10 per week on average.

The government are compensating 90% of Australians and average compensation is $10.10. Most Australians are financially BETTER off with carbon pricing than without it and this is before you look at its effect on CO2 emissions.

In NSW, the state government put their own 9% increase on electricity at the same time but they offer no compensation with all of this increase going into their coffers. The only Australians who pay more for electricity because of the carbon price are the highest paid 10% who receive no compensation.

Facts:

In the first 9 months since the carbon price was implemented,

CO2 emission have reduced by more than 10%, to 2002-2003 levels including, a reduction of 14% in brow (dirtiest) coal power generation, a 28 % increase in renewable power generation and an overall reduction of 2.4% in power generation despite continued economic growth, disproving the stupid claims by some that these reductions are due to a drop of in business activity.

The carbon price is working very well and most Australians are financially better off with the carbon price in place. Why would anyone want to get rid of it? Is the environment suddenly unimportant?

Scrapping the carbon price is as stupid as Abbott's new IR legislations taking us back to AWA's with a new name.

They claim they need to reform IR legislation to increase productivity but productivity fell consistently even with work choices and is rising under the Gillard government.

Abbott is prepared to break a working system to further the ideology of his masters.

... you might be a bit behind the concept womble

what they want is to pay the massive $4 a tonne that Europe has priced in ... not the ridiculous $23 a tonne

... yes the $23 a tonne that our incompetent treasurer factored in to his abysmal budget 

>>>

The Australian Industry Group has already come out publicly stating it believes the carbon price should stay, but move immediately to international trading.

Tony Shepherd, the chairman of the Business Council of Australia, has been strident in his criticism of the current fixed $23 carbon price

ask the man that runs the department that does them Thebas

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/5/21/australian-news/parkinson-backs-budget-forecasts

AAP, with a staff reporter

Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson has backed his department's budget forecasts, saying the government had no influence on the numbers, which were best professional estimates.

"Treasury does not provide the government with a range of numbers," Dr Parkinson said.

"Treasury provides its best professional estimate to the government and it is up to the government of the day to do what is wishes with those forecasts."

He said Treasury's economic and revenue forecasts included in the budget were likely to change by the September election.

Treasury is legally required to release its Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook (PEFO) during the election campaign in August.

The federal opposition has said it will hold off releasing costings for a major part of election policies until after the PEFO, because it doesn't trust the government's numbers.

Dr Parkinson he said the numbers were always subject to revision.

"Had we issued PEFO on the 14th of May, we would have had the same numbers in PEFO as we had in the budget," he said.

"That doesn't mean that when we get to August it will have the same numbers as the budget because we will have national accounts, global developments, we have labour market and CPI and so on."

"We will have to take all of that into account."

no question he oversold the surplus until he saw the light - in saying that, more conformation yesterday - this time from Treasury and the Parliamentary Budget Office that we are in a structural deficit that started to be set up by Howard and Costello

everyone was cheering at the time they were getting the tax cuts, now we're starting to have to pay for them

there's a massive dose of reality about to be served - if we want the government to do stuff we need to pay for it

it has to be asked – which particular brand of Christianity does this bloke subscribe to?

The sadistic Jesuit brand I would say ... in fact I reckon he only quit the priesthood when he found out that priests weren't allowed to belt kids any more. So he became Prime Minister instead, so he could belt all Australians.

And now you've got this bizarre situation in which 58% of Australians are gleefully lining up outside Father Abbott's office waiting to get the strap.

Treasury does the numbers Shiraz - do you think if Abbott gets in Treasury are all sacked and replaced??? That's not how it works, the same people doing the numbers for Labor will be the ones doing the numbers for Abbott

In saying they got the numbers wrong for Costello as well, just they under estimated the size of the surpluses because of the rivers of gold flowing in instead

spot on AFL

Kevin called them on it last night as well


KEVIN RUDD: Well I won't comment on what Mr Ferguson has said, but what I will say is this: as Mr Abbott approaches this election, he's essentially doing so on the basis of three arguments to the Australian people, and you've just pointed to one of them. On the asylum seekers question, let's just put his proposal in a nutshell. He says he will stop the boats and he will send them back to Indonesia. That is an absolute lie. He knows that. Everyone who knows this area of policy well knows that. It's more of a slogan than a substantive policy position and the Indonesian Government made that clear through their ambassador in the course of the last week or so.

The second premise, by the way, for Mr Abbott's election campaign is that he says that this country has a debt and deficit crisis. That also is a lie because we've got three credit ratings agencies around the world who say that Australia, almost uniquely, has a triple A credit rating. It doesn't stack up.

And his third premise - and I just need to put this into its context - Mr Abbott is now saying after 20 years in Parliament, 19 years as one of the most extreme right-wing conservative leaders or politicians that the Liberal Party has thrown up, in his 20th year he's suddenly become a policy moderate. Well you can wear pale blue ties to assuage people up to some point, but a leopard never changes its spots.

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2013/s3776544.htm

ALL THESE WERE OPPOSED BY THE LIBERAL PARTY.

Our wealth has only grown since the carbon tax
By Stephen Koukoulas
The Drum

What wrecking ball?

Carbon pricing has had almost no impact on the macroeconomy and inflation remains very low.

Despite the dire warnings about the carbon tax, Australia's economy is still growing, creating jobs and registering a quite stunning

lift in wealth, writes Stephen Koukoulas.

The carbon price has been a dud. A dud that has supposedly been fuelling an inflation blowout and is wrecking the economy.

News on Wednesday that the annual inflation rate has been a miserly 2.4 per cent in the 12 months since the carbon price was

introduced puts paid, once and for all, to the claims that it was going to be an oppressive addition to cost of living pressures.

Furthermore, since the price on carbon came into effect, more than half a trillion dollars has been added to the combined value of

housing and stocks listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. That is $500,000,000,000.00, or the equivalent of $22,000 for every

man, woman and child, all of which has accrued in just over a year.

And this half a trillion dollar does not include dividends, in the case of stocks, or actual and imputed rent on dwellings. Dividend

payments on stocks over that time are around an additional $65 billion or so.

This has been a period of stunning wealth creation in Australia, and more notable given many of the high-profile predictions that the

introduction of a price on carbon would have on the economy.

Indeed, most of the high-profile doomsayers were in the leadership group of the Liberal and National Parties.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was forecasting that the carbon price would "act as a wrecking ball across the economy" or be an

"absolutely catastrophic", and would "wipe out jobs big time" with towns like Whyalla "wiped off the map" because of it. Not only

that, but it would create "ghost towns" and "discourage investment" in mining.

Shadow treasurer Joe Hockey was similarly alarmist, suggesting, "It's going to rip the heart and soul out of small business and

families."

The half a trillion dollar lift in the stock market and house prices reflects a 23 per cent lift in the ASX since 1 July 2012 which

had added approximately $275 billion to the value of stocks, while a 5.1 per cent rise in house prices has added approximately $235

billion to the value of housing over the same timeframe.

This is hardly the stuff of an economic wrecking ball or outcomes that are ripping the heart out of businesses and families. On the

contrary, it is a stunning boost.

Mr Abbott also noted that "every time you buy an apple, buy a banana, you pay under Julia Gillard's carbon tax". The recently released

inflation data shows fruit prices rose 0.2 per cent in the year to the June quarter 2013, which means that the price of a kilo of

apples or bananas has risen by around 1 cent over the past year.

In terms of the jobs results, total employment has risen by 160,400 since the carbon price commenced, which again stands in contrast

to the claims from the fear mongers.

Mr Abbott noted that "the truth about this carbon tax is that it's bad for business, it's bad for jobs".

The bottom line of all of this is that the economy is still growing, creating jobs and registering a quite stunning lift in wealth in

the period since carbon was priced.

Also important is the recent policy decision of the government to move to an emissions trading scheme a year earlier than scheduled.

Treasurer Bowen has estimated that this will cut the inflation rate by 0.5 per cent in 2014-15.

Carbon pricing has had almost no impact on the macroeconomy and inflation remains very low. If it were a "wrecking ball", none of

these outcomes would have been recorded.

And it is also worth noting that because of carbon pricing, emissions are falling and renewable energy generation is growing, which is

exactly what the policy was meant to do!

It is a near perfect policy for a substantial problem.

Which begs the question: Why change it?

Stephen Koukoulas is a Research Fellow at Per Capita, a progressive think tank. View his full profile here.