The largest drop in quarterly employment figures in 13 years, 36600 jobs lost in retail sector alone, what the hell is this government doing?

the gst will be the first test of abbott ... will he 'do a gillard' and backflip on his promise to the nation ... or stand by his word 

he is under pressure from wa and act to call a meeting on the gst

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/09/20/pm-abbott-rejects-call-gst-changes

---

Liberal Premier Colin Barnett says GST revenues flowing to the states and territories from the consumption tax aren't growing fast enough to fund basic services like health and education.

He acknowledges Mr Abbott made a promise during the recent federal election not to lift the 10 per cent GST or broaden its base to include food and health services before the next poll.

ACT Labor Chief Minister Katy Gallagher supported the WA leader's call for a debate on the GST.

Treasurer Joe Hockey said there would be "no change to the GST, full-stop, end of story".

---

the carbon tax trick & lie also has to go under abbott's promise to the nation

Gillard took control of a hung parliament after promising the nation she would not introduce the tax ... she lied

Abbott won an election mandate from the nation ... on the back of repealing the pointless-for-the-environment trick money grab ...

gonna be an interesting few months leading up to summer

There's no such thing as a mandate, Thebas.

An election gives a party a certain number of seats in the lower house and a certain number of seats in the Senate. And the Senate changeover happens mid-term, so as to stagger the result a bit to avoid one party getting too much power at any given time. The Senate was never meant to be rubber stamp. It's a house of review. That's how our constitution works.

Quite simply, if you don't have the numbers in both houses, you don't have a mandate to scratch your balls. You have to negotiate your legislation through the Senate somehow. That's a skill. And that's what made the Gillard governemt one of the best we've ever had.

notice the new policy of not announcing boat arrivals - much like eliminating the climate change authority, if people don't report on it obviously it doesn't happen

the ultimate mandate was there for an ETS in 2007 - both parties campaigned promising one - it's coming from 1 July next year, 7 years late imo

China going with an ETS form 2016, currently trialing various models

The world will leave us behind if we dump it

Gotta go, have a great day

There is a large typhoon heading to China.

Why stop the boats, when you can stop the reporting of boats? Who will update the travelling billboard now

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison's office has clamped down on information about asylum-seekers issued by his department and border protection agencies.

Previously, the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service has issued statements whenever an asylum-seeker boat arrived and the Immigration Department provided collated figures each month, which they made publicly available.

But inquiries to both the department and border protection service on boat arrivals are now being directed to the minister's office. Mr Morrison's spokesman is declining to provide any information.

During the election campaign, Mr Morrison flagged the possibility that boat arrivals would no longer be reported if the Coalition won government. He said at the time this would be an "operational matter" for the three-star head of the Coalition's new Operation Sovereign Borders taskforce.

Mr Morrison's spokesman reaffirmed on Friday that it would be up to the newly appointed military head of Operation Sovereign Borders, Lieutenant-General Angus Campbell.

It is unclear whether General Campbell has yet issued a directive. As of Friday afternoon, sources on Christmas Island – to which asylum-seekers on intercepted boats are initially taken – were saying there had been no boats in recent days.


What happened to freedom of the press(except Murdoch)
morrison is a freak

disgrace

AN asylum boat has arrived at Christmas Island, the eighth since the election and the first since the Coalition stopped the practice of announcing boat arrivals as they occur.

The boat currently at Flying Fish Cove was escorted to the Australian territory by the HMAS Maitland this afternoon. It is believed there are about 30 people onboard, but a spokesman for Immigration Minister Scott Morrison declined to confirm the number onboard or discuss the boat’s arrival.




thats one way to fix it..dont tell anyone...

Doubt. A dd election coming soon. watch this space.

Agree Joel - if Abbott has the guts to do it.  Labor and the Greens will stay strong on pricing pollution. The new senate is looking very interesting and we could end up with a combination of Labor / Green and PUP having enough votes to block legislation

Clive wants the carbon tax refunded - what will he get???

Election might be 12 months away

Rundle mythbusts Abbott’s victory

Guy Rundle | Sep 10, 2013
crikey.com.a u

It was a landslide! Tony Abbott has a mandate! The result was a repudiation of Labor’s dysfunction! Wrong, wrong and wrong. Crikey takes you through why Abbott’s victory is not what you think.

Part one — busting myths about the election result

1. “Labor’s lowest primary vote for a century!” Well, yes, but no. The point is that every Labor primary vote is going to be low from now on. The knowledge/culture/policy producer class has broken away and is voting for the Greens. Barring truly weird events, Labor ain’t coming back. That’s minimum of 7% — and as much as 12% — down from the mid-40s votes the ALP hitherto enjoyed.

That happened to the non-Labor forces of course in the 1920s, when the Country Party broke away. Out of that, we got the preferential system, and as a trade-off to Labor, compulsory voting. But the alliance with the Country Party didn’t turn United Australia Party/Liberal voters to Labor. Many of Labor’s voters won’t accept any sort of alliance with the Greens. Good luck working out that one.

2. “It was a landslide.” No, it wasn’t – 88 to 57 seats, give or take, isn’t a landslide. It’s a zero-sum game, so when five seats change hands, a 10-seat gap opens up between the two parties. Fewer than 50 seats and you can talk landslides. Mind you, getting 18 or so seats back to regain power at the end of a first term is a big ask and hasn’t been done since, oh that’s right, 1998, when Kim Beazley won a majority of the overall vote two years after Labor had been reduced to 49 seats. Despite a 5.5% swing to Labor and a 51%-49% two-party preferred margin in Labor’s favour, the Coalition held 80 seats to Labor’s 67. The next decade of our history was built on this manifest absurdity.

3. “It was a total repudiation of the Labor Party.” Wrong again. The two-party preferred vote was 53.5% to 46.5%, a serious enough margin in Australian politics. But the effect of two-party preferred in a single-member system is to amplify the gap. The previous vote was more or less 50:50. This result is the equivalent of one Labor two-party preferred voter in 16 changing his vote. That’s being made out as if it were on the level of say the ANC’s 63% vote in South Africa 1994, or Ramos-Horta’s 70% vote in East Timor’s first election. Those are expressions of a substantial public will — 53.5-46.5 ain’t.

4. “Labor will need to totally recondition itself to be electable and this will take a decade.” Labor needs to recondition itself for all sorts of reasons — and Australian politics may be in for a more comprehensive transformation — but let’s not awfulise this. Quite aside from the 1996-98 result, there’s the passage from 1975 — 44.3% to 1980 — 49.6%, and then victory in 1983. The telescoped relationship between the two-party preferred vote and seats won gives an entirely false impression of just how far there is to come back from. Whether that happening without a reconstruction of Labor would be a triumph or a tragedy is another question.

5. “Tony Abbott has a mandate, therefore Labor and the Greens should vote up his new legislation.” Where did this come from? Abbott has a mandate to govern, and therefore to introduce proposed legislation to Parliament. The 46.5% who wanted someone else elected their people to oppose it. The idea that a mandate abolishes opposition is totalitarian by definition.

6. “Australian democracy is the best in the world.” Yeah, a lower house that does not fairly represent the party vote, a compulsory voting/exhaustive preferential system/matched funding system that makes it easy for multimillionaires to get a seat and murder for anyone else, a Senate where the balance of power is held by five people with 4% primary vote between them, where the sheer size of the ballot paper sends the donkey vote skyrocketing towards a quota, where Tasmanians have five times the representation of New South Wales, two elections in 20 years with a majority vote not gaining government, and a prime minister-governor-general relationship that still hasn’t been clarified since it brought us to the brink of government collapse — and where blatant falsehoods in a near monopoly media is subject to no immediate sanction. Yeah, nothing needs to be looked at here, finest in the world. Nothing can possibly go wrong …

* Watch out for more mythbusting from our roaming reporter Guy Rundle in the coming days.

As the MSM rammed down our throats for 3 years that Abbott was the best OPPOSITION LEADER EVER because he opposed everything and it was his job to disrupt the Gov't at every opportunity, and it would be rewarded at the polls.

And so it has come to pass.

As Abbott said many times in his own defence that it was his job to oppose in opposition

So cop some of your own medicine back.  imo

i see ... and without taking sides then as abbott was a negative opposition leader ... tho the coalition didn't block or oppose any more ligislation than what labor did with Howard ... but ...

what a country we have become ....   

maybe we deserve our politicians 

Bring on 2020.

Oh ... and by the way.

Did I mention that this is a BAD government.

And of course this coming gift to Rupert, that will open it up to the sort of competition that costs Joe Public more.

In whose interests?

It does appear the Coalition’s FTTN model, with its more limited capacity, is more favourable to the business interests of Foxtel, particularly when one considers the interaction between the NBN and the operation of Australia’s HFC network.

Coalition policy in relation to the HFC network is unclear, stating:

    Subject to an equitable re-negotiation of these provisions satisfactory to NBN Co and the government, our goal would be to remove any contractual impediments to the use of existing HFC networks for broadband and voice. A key consideration in such negotiations will be ensuring open access to networks and scope for enhanced competition in the relevant areas.

This position essentially means the ultimate structure of the HFC network will depend very much upon what Telstra agrees to in a new negotiation. That is, the Coalition appears to have committed to giving Telstra another stab at negotiating an outcome that could allow it to maintain wholesale control of the HFC network.

Turnbull has been clear that, in the interests of avoiding Labor’s “government monopoly” model and promoting competition in the provision of wholesale broadband services in those high-density urban areas in which the market can support it, Telstra would be allowed to offer wholesale broadband bundled with Foxtel services over its HFC network.

This determination to support market competition in the provision of wholesale broadband in metropolitan markets is the crux of the ideological difference between Labor and the Coalition as expressed in their approaches to broadband.

Turnbull’s appeal to the ideology of market competition sounds entirely reasonable and is in the best tradition of Liberal party economics. It is, of course, completely antithetical to the market design of Labor’s NBN, which has always been about restructuring the telecommunications market in Australia and providing equal services to regional and rural Australia by achieving structural separation of Telstra.

Turnbull has acknowledged that, for his desired outcome of wholesale competition in urban markets to work, the HFC network would have to be operated on a genuinely wholesale basis – that is, structural separation of the HFC network would have to be maintained under the Coalition plan.


The rub

The problem – and here we come to the element that has largely been ignored since Sheehan’s piece kicked off the current debate on the weekend – is that the Coalition’s policy guarantees no such thing.

In a discussion with Business Spectator’s Alan Kohler on August 1, Turnbull acknowledged that:

    [o]ne possibility is that [the HFC network] is operated by Telstra as a wholesale asset, so then you would have a qualification to the structural separation objective …

To put this another way, Turnbull is admitting the possibility that the Coalition’s renegotiation with Telstra could end up allowing Telstra to be both the wholesale provider of broadband over HFC in urban areas where the HFC network currently exists and a retail provider of broadband and pay TV services over that same network.

Such a move would essentially reinstate Telstra as a vertically integrated wholesale provider of infrastructure (to compete with the NBN) and retail service provider in those markets. By providing an alternative wholesale service in only the most profitable markets, this move would almost certainly reduce the financial returns to NBN Co, raising costs that would have to be passed on to retail customers across the national network, or – more likely – result in higher prices outside the metropolitan markets.

At the same time, it will allow Telstra to, in effect, “offer” a lower wholesale access price to its own asset – Foxtel – in those profitable markets than either it, or presumably NBN Co, would make available to other retail customers.

While Turnbull admitted he was personally “uncomfortable with that” possibility, the fact remains: the Coalition policy is that, ultimately, the operation of the HFC network will be subject to a new negotiation with Telstra that could leave Telstra to operate the HFC network as a wholesale asset to its own and Foxtel’s advantage.

This outcome would be much more favourable to Telstra’s Foxtel partner, News Corp, than the current deal between Telstra and the Labor Government to decommission both the Telstra and Optus HFC networks and migrate users onto the NBN.

Neither Murdoch’s tweet on Monday, questioning Labor’s plan to finance the NBN, nor Foxtel’s statement this week insisting it’s in favour of fast broadband for Australia, have acknowledged these issues, choosing instead to focus on the benefit of “fast broadband networks” to Foxtel’s recent forays into mobile and on demand services.

It’s a nice attempt at misdirection, and one that leaves consumers and voters in the dark as to the real implications of the competing broadband policies for Murdoch’s business interests in Australia.

News Corp has repeatedly defended its right, as a privately-owned media company, to use its newspapers to campaign for particular policies or political parties. It also has a strong record of calling for transparency and accountability in political debate.

But in its arguments against the NBN, it would seem News Corp Australia’s campaign is less than wholly transparent in representing its own interests.

Thebas - Labor has campaigned on an ETS / price on carbon since 2007 (as did the Liberals at that election). The "carbon tax" was the result of the hung parliament, if Julia had won in her own right we would have gone straight to an ETS - possibly with a fixed price on the way in as that's what business was asking for (i.e. exactly what we got)

I'd be perfectly happy to have a double dissolution election on if climate change is real and if an ETS is a better approach than direct action

Bring it on

p.s. global cooling and a return to bigger panties would be a bad thing

and the two most disgraceful deceivers ever to hold public office .. imo   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xOXhD6euwo

we dont need to change behaviour at all

the world has made terrific advancements on the back of coal

the effect of human emmissions and co2 cannot be correctly assessed .. the ipcc have proven this

the rubbish computer modelling that the ipcc have been trotting out is based on failed programming

as the results they suggest would happen (global warming)... did not

the statement that co2 is a greenhouse gas is absolutely CORRECT tho (which is why i cannot understand how 3% of scientists think it untrue)

yes co2 IS a greenhouse gas ... but whether the warming effects of human induced co2 will be EVEN noticeable to the planet has NOT been proven ... fact

... the world temperatures for the past 12 years actually DISPROVE IT .. this is NASA satellite data and ocean recordings (NOT surface thermometers placed in strange places around the world) ...

but i do not go along with THIS ... warming disprovement ... being a sign of anything more than ... we don;t know

thus the fallacy of the analogies the ipcc use is this

"if you might have cancer of the leg ... then chopping of your arm will cure the cancer"


and ... we have the technology to change the power grid of the world ... nuclear

modern usage is safe ... japan was the oldest technology in existence (beta stuff) and was due to be upgraded (but their country ran out of money) before the recent disaster

... a country RUNNING OUT of money is therefore PROVEN to be MORE dangerous than any current technology which is available ... econimists should consider that !

so nucelar plant rod temperature safety advancements are NO longer an issue

the next issue of 'safety' would be that we dont TRUST the proliferation of nuclear advancement because we dont trust anybody to just use it for the 'power grid'

that argument falls flat because the countries the USA say we should not trust ... ALREADY HAVE nuclear capability

... so that leaves the only conclusion to be reached as to why we ... WILL continue to BURN coal .. is because it is the cheapest cleanest fuel the planet has

AND

if the powers that be can get their MONEY CON through the minds of the innocent .. then there is a sh!t load of money for them to make by having the global populace feel GUILTY ... for NO proven reason .. and to continue to burn coal 9which is what they really want)

.. this is NOT party political ... this is not Labor vs Liberal ... this is not the devisive i am right you are wrong ... this is not i am caring environmentalist vs you are a capatilist industrialist pig

... and the Libs will embrace the ETS also (wait & see) .. because malcom T is owned by the biggest corporate investment banking group in the world .. and he owes them plenty ... and i mean plenty (have a look at who bailed him out with the HIH FIA debacle in Australia which could have brought this country fiscally to its knees like when the GFC came later) ... he is in it up to his eyeballs

.... bottom line is ... "they" will get their way ... money rules ... and the populace of the world will be money stripped (again)

and the environemnt will remain the same (or get worse)

whew ... or  ...

They pull a liberal voting cab driver out of their scum bag arsenal who is probably married to the Liberal voting Make-Artist and run it as the most important thing to feature from the debate.

Ch 9 scum are running it as well.

They put the Indonesian robust repudiation of the Liberal Party turn the boats back policy and how it is an attack on their Sovereignty....... on page 5 of their rags. 

The media in this country are a disgrace and they will not hold Abbott and the Libs to account because they put him there and to do so would admit their bad judgement.