hehehe PP suck it up m8 , the good guys won!! woohoo

gone quiet PP , I wonder why?

want to change behaviour, price it - it's not rocket science ffs

Sounds like Clive is doing deals already signing up Ricky Muir's vote - gives them 39 if they vote with Labor and the Greens, i.e. enough to oppose any legislation they want to deal on

What is said in opposition stays in opposition
By Greg Jericho

Posted Wed 9 Oct 2013, 8:09am AEDT

The things done and said while in opposition have come back to bite the Coalition. Photo: The things done and said while in opposition have come back to bite the Coalition. (AAP: Alan Porritt)

The Abbott Government has spent its first month in office trying to hide from its strong rhetoric on everything from the misuse of entitlements to stopping the boats and paying down debt, writes Greg Jericho.

You can't deny that the Abbott Government has hit the ground running. Their increase in productivity has been quite breathtaking. Usually it takes a few months for a new government to become comedic punch line, but the Abbott Government has been able to achieve this level before Parliament has even sat!

This spring at weddings around the country, the probability of a best man's speech including a joke about claiming travel expenses must be close to 1. As Paula Matthewson has noted, it is a rather similar situation to the first year of the Howard government where seven ministers were sacked for breaches of Howard's "Code of Ministerial Conduct". Tony Abbott, however, won't sack anyone because the ministers involved are far too senior for Abbott to have the gumption, or the authority, to discipline them in any meaningful way. Barnaby Joyce, Julie Bishop and George Brandis are pretty well untouchable.

Moreover, Mr Abbott can hardly sack anyone given he announced on Monday that last week he repaid expenses he had claimed to attend Peter Slipper's wedding (Alanis Morissette can rest easy, finally there was a wedding day that was ironic).

But it all paints a picture that nicely captures this first period of the Abbott Government - one where things done and said while in opposition have come back to bite them.

The favourite surely has been the "stop the boats" line which has changed more to stopping the flow, taking the sugar off the table and going to Indonesia and engaging in what has been very (very) charitably reported by some as a diplomatic success or a "strategic retreat". It involved Mr Abbott pretty much ignoring the issue in his talks with the Indonesian president, despite it once having been so front and centre.

I guess it must have slipped his mind.

What also seems to have slipped his mind is all the numerous times he and now Minister for Immigration (and Border Control, to give him his full absurd title) Scott Morrison trumpeted as loudly and as often as they could about any asylum seeker boat arrival. Now it seems such announcements are "shipping news" for people smugglers that will only encourage more boats.

Given the Liberal Party's election campaign was based on publicising the number of boat arrivals, either Morrison and Abbott are now lying, or they were guilty for the past three years of assisting people smugglers.

Either way it's all pretty laughable, though not as funny as Morrison's latest attempt to say that the Liberal Party never had a policy of towing back the boats. It took about a two-second Google search to find evidence of Scott Morrison and Tony Abbott and other Liberal MPs happily conversing on the subject of "tow-backs" without ever feeling the need to correct the record.

It is beginning to seem that Mr Abbott's comment on Monday with regards to the boat buyback scheme that "there was some misunderstanding of the policies we took to the election" could apply across the board. And as with the boat buyback scheme, the real problem is that everyone understood it all too clearly.

Fortunately the economy hasn't been left out of the strategic retreat. Last week came the news that Joe Hockey was flying off to Washington to meet with credit agencies to convince them to keep our AAA credit rating.

This shouldn't be a problem. After all, in February this year Standard & Poor's said of Australia that it "remains on a sound path in our base-case scenario, with a number of key strengths supporting the 'AAA' rating".

In July, Joe Hockey stressed the importance of the AAA rating, telling reporters that, "it is only the Coalition that's going to preserve the AAA credit rating because only the Coalition is the one that's actually going to deliver a surplus and start to pay down Labor's $300 billion of debt".

But now we discover (to the surprise of no one) that Tony Abbott's desire to be the "infrastructure Prime Minister" will actually require spending money. The AFR reported that Mr Hockey was "'mulling' the idea of separately classifying debt the federal government raises to invest in infrastructure projects from the debt required to finance the budget deficit." And thus Mr Hockey is hoping to explain to the credit agencies that debt raised to build infrastructure is good debt.

Now I would agree with him - borrowing money to build productivity-driving infrastructure is a good thing (and certainly more important than caring about our AAA rating), but unfortunately pre-election Joe Hockey would disagree. Last year to David Oldfield on 2UE he said:


    And the fact is that debt is getting the world into trouble. And this Government is addicted to spending and debt. And the fact that they are not including the National Broadband Network in the bottom line of the Budget, yet they are borrowing money, increasing the debt to fund the National Broadband Network, just illustrates that this is a Government that is not telling the truth about the true state of the balance and they are leaving people bewildered.



I guess wasteful government spending is a bit like the adage about a weed just being a plant you don't like - debt raised for NBN spending off budget is bad, debt raised to build the East-West Link is good.

But Mr Hockey should not be too worried. When Standard & Poor's last examined Australia, it noted of our government debt that it "has risen in recent years, although this mainly reflects deficits used to support the economy during the 2009 global recession. Even with this fiscal stimulus, net general government debt is expected to peak... well below most of its peers".

Expect Joe Hockey to give that line a good workout in his meetings, though he might want to avoid saying it in Parliament lest he have to move a censure motion against himself, similar to one moved in 2009 where he stated:


    The Prime Minister [Kevin Rudd] expects us to believe that he is fiscally prudent, yet so much of what he is spending is going on the nation's credit card.


Oh, well, if in doubt I guess Mr Hockey need only say he had a misunderstanding of the policies he took to the election.

Greg Jericho writes weekly for The Drum. His blog can be found here. View his full profile here.

we'd be all living in caves under 1 world govt if the loonies had their way , of course all the sachs associated bankers would live in the city burning all the emissions they like whilst the poor people live in discomfort on the cave floor to balance it all out

ffs 3 political threads going at once. Abbott WON the election. There is no point in saying what he is doing wrong & heaping other cr@p on him for another 3 years.

If you want to debate economic, social other policies then fine but there is little point trying to score political points against a man who will be our PM for next 3 years.

On climate change and the carbon tax / ETS you either believe in it and think something has to be done or you don't - I do to both

BIG mistake by Abbott not to make changes to politicians entitlements - the stuff going on fails the pub test, mad not to act imo

note - this one is WAY over the top but I can't blame him for not wanting to spend the night in Tamworth!!!

http://www.northerndailyleader.com.au/story/1828922/free-reign-pm-tony-abbott-under-fire-for-tamworth-festival-trip-as-expense-scandal-deepens/

HE SWAGGERED down Peel St like a Nashville star, posing in a cowboy hat, dancing a country-style jig and even embracing a mystery blonde holding a “Free Hugs” sign.

But Prime Minister Tony Abbott has found himself in the eye of an expense scandal storm after it emerged his trip to the 2012 Country Music Festival was anything but “free” for taxpayers.
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The then-Opposition leader claimed $9347 in work expenses for the whirlwind visit – despite not even staying in the city overnight.

It comes as New England MP Barnaby Joyce and a host of other politicians face growing accusations of questionable expense claims.

Rob Taber, who ran against Mr Joyce as an independent at last month’s federal poll, said the sheer sum of Mr Abbott’s expense bill in Tamworth warranted a “thorough investigation”.

“I reckon it’s bloody awful and if Abbott gets away with this, all hell will break loose,” Mr Taber said.

“I really don’t know how you could spend $10,000 in one day in Tamworth.

“We desperately need new guidelines on what constitutes an entertainment expense and what’s government business because we’re heading nowhere at the moment.

“A lot of these politicians are treading a fine line and they damn well know it.”

The parliamentary entitlements register shows taxpayers forked out $8800 for a private return charter flight for Mr Abbott from Sydney to Tamworth on January 25, 2012.

There is no indication on the register of where the other $547 was spent.

Mr Abbott could not be reached for comment on his Tamworth visit but told a press conference yesterday: "I believe that all of my claims have been within entitlement and I think you’ll find that there were quite a few other community events involved in those visits.”

His visit to the city coincided with a concerted push by the Coalition to claim back the seat of New England from long-standing independent Tony Windsor.

Mr Abbott’s whistlestop tour included a visit with Mr Joyce to The Leader offices to meet then-editor John Sommerlad, a stopover at the Riverside campgrounds and a concert by performer Bob Corbett.

He also walked Peel St with country star Adam Harvey and mayor Col Murray, had lunch with local councillors and drew the winner of a local raffle.

Despite criticism over the cost of the visit, Tamworth Festival Stakeholders Group chairman Barry Harley said giving a future prime minister a front row seat to the city’s most iconic event was money well spent.

“I believe any visit from a politician of that standing only serves to reinforce the brand of Tamworth as the country music capital,” Mr Harley said.

“Any increase in knowledge about the event can only benefit the community in future political debate about it.

“I don’t know if it was a valid work expense but I certainly see it as a massive benefit for Tamworth.

“We’ve had a lot of politicians come by over the years but to have a future prime minister present at the festival does a lot for its credibility.”

Former Tamworth state member Peter Draper said while Mr Abbott’s visit was “probably a justifiable expense”, it was important all politicians claimed work expenses judiciously.

“I think any politician should always err on the side of caution,” Mr Draper said.
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“The onus is on the individual but my policy always was if I didn’t feel entirely comfortable with something, then it was wrong.

“Deep down, you know when it’s official business and you know when you’re trying to do it for the sake of your own expenses.”

ummm this thread started before the govt was sworn in so therefore cannot possible be anywhere near accurate

you're all class PP
what a sad life you lead lolololol
relax mate the country is in good hands

result was well known Secong - we could've waited until they sat but that would still be months away if the law didn't stop Abbott from hiding

the situation in the EU would be totally different if the economic situation wasn't it is - they have a genuine budget emergency and that took priority over getting the ETS up and running properly - it will come good

but hey - if you guys are socialists and support a big government "solution" like Direct Action so be it - I won't make you see the light

i see you don't want to comment on the rorts - no surprise

the guidelines talk about the primary purpose of the trip  - take for example the Port Macquarie Iron Man - are you seriously suggesting Abbott spent months preparing to do a couple of speaking engagements after competing for 14 hrs

i agree both sides are guilty of it but that doesn't make it right - the rules need to be changed and Abbott as PM should be driving that change

lol thebas the one eyed are amongst us in betfairland

it wouldn't make him the best Thebas but might rise him up a little from rock bottom worst where he is sitting now

was interesting watching Slipper on Insiders - he is spot on I think - either the charges against him get dropped or everyone gets charged

Hoping Albo wins the leadership contest today - i.e. the one that will decide the winner of the next election

well tipped Phil - I would've rather seen Albo get the gig but not too worry at least we get Tanya as deputy now

One Term Tony in trouble

Well done Bill, Albo will still be needed to pour scorn,laughter and ridicule on the Libs.



IMO this article is fairly accurate.

COMPETENCE, DISCIPLINE, STRATEGY, AND TIMING.

http://andrewelder.blogspot.com. au/
11 October 2013

The government, the press gallery, and the media strategists who work between the two have all failed this week, on all of the above fronts.

In every policy area, the Coalition offered less than Labor at the last election: less money for schools, a lesser telecommunications system, fewer women in Cabinet, less overall. They won with this lesser offering because of the perception of competence: the idea that a Coalition government was more likely to deliver on what it promised, in contrast to a government that delivered less than it promised.

This government lives or dies by its competence. Rorting Travel Allowance is not a hallmark of competence. Traditionally, the fact that Labor MPs have also claimed travel allowance for things they shouldn't have would be enough to dispel this issue.

This government's entire reason for being is completely negated if the case can be made that it is no better than the previous government.

After Brandis and Joyce, and now with Abbott, it would appear that the government is trying to address the competence issue and defuse grubby questions of mere greed. They do this by including in their mea-culpa statement that they've sent reimbursement cheques in the hope that the damage to their reputations might be mitigated. I think it's worth checking that those cheques have arrived at their destination (never mind who guards the guardians, who checks the cheques?

Is there a public service accounts clerk willing to risk becoming one of The Twelve Thousand sacked by this government by admitting the cheque the PM said he sent hasn't arrived?). It is possible that a statement issued by a politician may not check out in every particular, and this applies even to senior members of the Abbott government.

Abbott is using his own behaviour to excuse those who have been rorting the system, or who at least have been careless. This will blunt any discoveries about how bad the previous lot were. It also blunts his ability to build a reputation as a leader who can get people to tap into their better selves, and thereby get more out of them than they might have imagined.

It is true that politicians' work requires them to attend the sorts of events which are social events for the rest of us, and thus attending such events might fairly be regarded as work-related expenses. It is not true, however, that politicians can and must only be judged according to their own lights.

With the decline in full-time employment, fewer of us get employer-funded perks, and rules around their granting are much tighter than those available to politicians. When politicians complain that they are following the guidelines, and that the guidelines are hard to understand and very loose, they think they've answered the question when they've just opened up new ones. Self-employed tradies in western Sydney don't draw on perks like Abbott does.

This goes to the heart of what Liberals regard as Abbott's core strength: his discipline. He gets up early and rides his bike around: so disciplined. He hammers the same messages over and over again: so disciplined. Plundering politicians' allowances and encouraging your team to fill their boots too: very sloppy indeed, most indisciplined, and a better indication of how this government will go than wishful thinking about discipline.

Liberals think this government can impose its supposed discipline onto the country, and indeed the world. President Yudhuyono of Indonesia is no less disciplined than Abbott, and in their meeting it was Yudhuyono who set the terms, not Abbott.

Abbott may have chosen not to lecture China on human rights, but it left him with nowhere to go when Russia's Putin shirtfronted him. He gave Malaysia a big ****-happens and embarrassed us before the Japanese, declaring them to be our third best friend this week.

Australian media commentators who insist otherwise in praising Abbott simply have no basis on which to make their case, no understanding of foreign policy, and no perspective on how previous governments conducted foreign policy.

The Abbott government may not be able to impose its gay marriage agenda even with the force majeure of the Constitution. If Joe Hockey has another economic policy idea beyond the Greiner-era infrastructure bonds thing, it isn't clear what it might be.

This is where we are going to see tetchiness from this government: measures for imposing discipline within a party do not work for that party in imposing discipline beyond it. A government that made no attempt to be persuasive or to challenge prejudices cannot be trusted to do the slow, patient work of shifting public opinion where it needs to.

It will, however, get frustrated at its inability to enforce its will despite having the necessary discipline to get into office. Opponents of this government should be prepared for laughter to be as effective in rebutting this government as concerted fire-with-fire opposition.

The most apparent and direct threat to this new government is in Ian Macfarlane's zeal for fracking. Australia does not have a shortage of gas like the US has. The government is sending mixed messages about the future of coal, it has not progressed nuclear or renewables, and nor has it made a strong public case why we need more gas (and why we should give up farmlands permanently to get a short-term fix of gas). There are at least a dozen rural electorates where an independent could go from a standing start to displacing a member of this government over such an issue, following the Cathy McGowan model (with Sophie Mirabella like a noxious gas in concentrated form).

Fancy a Coalition Agriculture Minister regarding non-coastal Australia as 'darkness', or lamely attempting to displace his rorts onto Australia's wealthiest person; if this government gets into real trouble this guy will only make problems worse. Macfarlane is probably the best minister this government has, but if he became a lightning rod for popular dissatisfaction then this government is in real trouble.

The government and its media advisors think they've built a bond with those who elect them when all they've done is widen the gulf. Laugh all you want at John McTernan, but like most veterans of the Gillard government he has the satisfaction of having been replaced by lesser people.

The usual tactic to deal with initiatives like this is to 'muddy the waters', to create sufficient doubt that any investigation goes nowhere and momentum is lost. George Brandis built his political career by water-muddying a Senate investigation into "children overboard" in 2001. Aside from moments of lucidity around the Asian financial crisis, the GST, and East Timor, Peter Costello and Alexander Downer did little else but water-muddying. That hasn't worked, it won't work now.

In the olden days, when there were investigative journalists in the press gallery, water-muddying just caused people to keep digging until they struck something solid. These days press-gallery journos reach the top of their profession when they're "on the drip"; just when the pollies had cowed the press gallery, journalists from outside Canberra and investigative writers in social media are basically doing the job they are nominally sent there to do.

Then there's the issue that these stories are many years old, and why weren't these stories run earlier? When Tony Abbott claimed allowances for competing in an ironman thing at Coffs Harbour, the local papers ran the story but the press gallery didn't (keep in mind that national media companies have taken over regional outlets expressly to "leverage synergies" like this).

There are two explanations for this. Either the press gallery have only just stumbled upon easily-verifiable facts that have been under their noses for years. Or, even worse, the strategic geniuses that have buggered our media overestimate their cleverness by sitting on stories.

Last Sunday the current editor of The Australian Financial Review, Michael Stutchbury, declared that travel allowance rorts by the then-opposition wasn't important as a story, but now that those same people are in government it has become very important. There seems to be a lot of this about: stung by the idea that they just waved these clowns into office without so much as a journalistic pat-down, let alone the scrutiny as to whether this lot might be less effective than those they eventually replaced, they are digging out the cliche of travel rorts and flinging it about as if to say: see, we dish it out to Both Sides! We're not biased!

So we have:

    a government made up of people who aren't very good at the details when it comes to spending public money, boding ill for its ability to deal with education and defence and the budget and all that government stuff;

    a PR machine for said government whose only tactic, water-muddying, will only make things worse; and

    a mainstream media that loses credibility - and ratings - when it tries to schedule scandals to its timetable.

All we need now is for some old fool who gives only lip-service to the faults and flaws of institutional journalism to declare that the press gallery is the indispensable source of quality journalism on how this country is governed, while commentators from far beyond the press gallery can only be viewed with suspicion and hostility and need more lecturing by the press gallery, rather than much, much less.



Andrew Elder was a member of the Liberal Party of Australia, starting off as a libertarian-punk, then as a moderate seeking to preserve rights and freedoms in a changing world; now he scorns the know-nothing Liberals, doesn't trust the left and disdains the other interest groups that flit around Australian politics, and does so publicly yet obscurely.

now we finally have some dates for parliament to sit

dates for parliament -  the opposition was rudderless & leaderless why the country waited for the Presidential style voting to finish - took a month ffs

and now ... the opposition has a leader ... that 60% of the rank & file DIDN'T WANT  

yeah this'll work for labor - long 3 years for them methinks   


(andrew welder afl ? - ex liberal now pushing the labor barrow - how the last election must have hurt him lol - any pieces from him on the gillard-rudd-shorten-howes travesty years ? is he independent )

lol .. maybe 


but he is just a bitter ex-lib turned labor who is also confused

have a look at this line for confusion ...

This government's entire reason for being is completely negated if the case can be made that it is no better than the previous government.

ah andrew ... this govt's entire reason for being ... is that the country voted them in ... at a recent election

labor's best argument is that the country didn't want the libs ... they just didn't want labor   

Ah, Thebas, Thebas, Thebas

and now ... the opposition has a leader ... that 60% of the rank & file DIDN'T WANT   Laugh

I see you Noalition supporters are determined to continue your negativity even in government.

How about saying "the opposition has a leader that 40% of the rank & file want."
Or more accurately, "the opposition has voted in a leader, but 60% of the rank & file preferred the defeated candidate".

Instead you turn it into a negative.

who's this Geoff Shaw ****

another fine upstanding libturd mp i suppose..

Chrissy Pine pls

labor MPs are listening to the VOTERS WHO ELECTED THEM, Chrissy What is it about representative democracy you don't get
the representative part, but also the democracy part, i assume..toxic ****

agree Phil..disgrace..