Federal Coalition Government 2013-?
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Nev Cottrell (35)
If fact doesn't it say you compare someone to Hitler, not in my case I mentioned technology developed at the time.
boyo
Mark Ella (57)
Brumby Runner
David Wilson (68)
Unfortunately, I've also had to spend a few hours in Emergency on a couple of occasions recently, and there have been many broken bones (mainly foorball injuries I think), and people who are obviously very sick. The service can be a bit slow but it is tremendously valuable for those who need attention but cannot get it otherwise for one reason or another. In my case it was mainly due to the time of night and other services were not available.
redstragic
Alan Cameron (40)
The QLD health minister announced a campaign to get people with minor issues to go to the GP. He says about 36% of people could go to a gp rather than the A&E. We only went to the A&E at night when the GP was not open during the sick years. I wonder what the real % is of people going to the A&E rather than the open gp down the road.
Ruggo
Mark Ella (57)
The decision on delaying the increase in Super until 2021 is just plain horrible. It contradicts any argument that we can't afford our aging population and runs directly to the heart of the problem. How can the government bind itself to this miserable paid parental leave policy it want's yet sacrifice remedies to deal with the aging populations of the future?
It is madness.
It is madness.
Gnostic
Mark Ella (57)
@ Ruggo - more insidious is the move to allow the treasurer to change Super without reference to parliament.
Some may remember my rant about super being a rort some years ago. The basis of my rant then was the fact that with the stroke of a pen retirement and hence all planning can be changed by the Politicians at whim. I predicted a long time ago that the retirement age would be raised to 70 and progressively after that to 75. There is no choice with the aging population and the majority of people not having enough super to self fund. Consider the reducing number of people in full time work and those under-employed, and with youth unemployment nearing record highs this will have long term effects.
Some may remember my rant about super being a rort some years ago. The basis of my rant then was the fact that with the stroke of a pen retirement and hence all planning can be changed by the Politicians at whim. I predicted a long time ago that the retirement age would be raised to 70 and progressively after that to 75. There is no choice with the aging population and the majority of people not having enough super to self fund. Consider the reducing number of people in full time work and those under-employed, and with youth unemployment nearing record highs this will have long term effects.
boyo
Mark Ella (57)
No "Minister for Science" - that says a lot.
Chief scientist calls for a plan to make Australia strong through science
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/chief-scientist-calls-for-a-plan-to-make-australia-strong-through-science-20140902-10bb8s.html#ixzz3CDO9lL2D
From the comments:-
UBER01
Location
Date and time
September 02, 2014, 1:48PM
Chief scientist calls for a plan to make Australia strong through science
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/chief-scientist-calls-for-a-plan-to-make-australia-strong-through-science-20140902-10bb8s.html#ixzz3CDO9lL2D
From the comments:-
Thankyou, a timely article when knowledge facts are ridiculed and denigrated in favour of empty rhetoric and lies spouted by Politicians.
Commenter
UBER01
Location
Date and time
September 02, 2014, 1:48PM
- Commenter
Agreed UBER01, hopefully this helps trigger a return to a newfound respect for evidence and science, and an appreciation for the important role that science has played in the development of our modern society.
Sadly I strongly suspect that I'll be disappointed, as the current Federal government have demonstrated a pattern of ignoring evidence and experts when they conflict with their ideology.
Honey Badger
Location
Sydney
Date and time
September 02, 2014, 5:15PM - Commenter
In 1990 Bob Hawke said this: "Australia must reduce its reliance on imported technology and borrowed research. We must become a leader in the production and export of ideas."
Could you imagine for a second any Abbott minister saying anything like this? The Abbott government and some commercial media have done much damage to the standing of science in Australia.
PS: There's only one Honey Badger and he's playing rugby in Japan.
Sceptical of sceptics
Location
Date and time
September 03, 2014, 1:01AM
Brumby Runner
David Wilson (68)
The Mining Tax has been repealed saving the budget around $50b over 10 years according to Joe Hockey. Intuitively, any revenue source being repealed would be a cost, not a saving to the budget, but Joe informs us that savings will come by deferring increases in the superannuation guarantee. But I've also seen that the superannuation guarantee is actually paid for by the individual as it forms part of their salary package. Can't see how there could be a budget saving unless the government has plans to freeze public service wages at their present level for the ten year period mentioned. Is this the secret agenda?
I think this is the "save Gina and Twiggy some money and fuck low income earners" agenda. It's no secret.
Pfitzy
George Gregan (70)
TBH, I can't imagine many Labor numpties with half the nous or charisma of Bob.
The new bloke, Shorten, he seemed to be the goods until his budget response. When he started wanging on about Joe and Tony being irresponsible cretins, he had me. Then he started wanging on about how Labor had done so much awesome stuff in the past, and lost me.
Opposition is so fucking easy, you'd wonder why anyone wants to get voted in.
Brumby Runner
David Wilson (68)
I accept what you say, but there is an opinion piece in today's Canberra Times which forecasts that wages will now increase over the period because the planned extra super guarantee has been deferred. Apparently, even the Henry Tax Review said that increasing the guarantee to 12% would raise the retirees' post-work living standard but at the expense of the pre-retirement standard of living. It seems that economists, at least, identify an inverse correlation between the level of pay rises and the increase in the guarantee.
Neverthless, I am still at a loss as to how the deferral of the guarantee increases will result in a gain to the budget, and a very hefty one at that.
Ruggo
Mark Ella (57)
Remember this massive debt and how it will burden our children's, children's, children and we were doing an injustice to inter generational equity. Now consider how this super decision will burden inter generational equity. When a conservative politician talks of inter generational equity, you can just smell the shit coming off their breath.
It still amazes me that this bloke left school at 14, yet our current PM went to Oxford.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-03/keating-superannuation-betrayal/5717070This isn't their first superannuation betrayal
By Paul Keating
Posted about an hour agoWed 3 Sep 2014, 4:48pm
The Liberal party has always opposed universal superannuation, and as it revealed yesterday through its deal with the Palmer United Party, it still does, writes Paul Keating in this public statement.
Mandatory superannuation contributions at 9.5 per cent spread over a 35 year working life for someone on $100,000 to $150,000 per annum will provide an income after retirement of roughly 50 per cent of pre-retirement income.
This is way below the 70 per cent of pre-retirement income replacement a Superannuation Guarantee at 12 per cent would provide. And 70 per cent is the level adjudged by income specialists and welfare groups as the appropriate level of disposable income needed in retirement.
Under the current law, the changes introduced by the former Labor government would see the 12 per cent rate begin on 1 July 2019.
The government's decision yesterday, with the connivance of the Palmer United Party, jams compulsory superannuation contributions at 9.5 per cent till July 2021 - effectively wiping out any prospect of the SG ever moving beyond 9.5 per cent without a change of government.
Yesterday's decision represents nothing other than the wilful sabotage of the nation's universal savings scheme. And sabotage for reasons only of prejudice.
The Government's connivance with PUP to spike superannuation at 9.5 per cent has little to do with the budget balance this year, or in the early out years, and everything to do with cheap ideology.
The Liberal party has always opposed universal superannuation and as it revealed yesterday, it still does.
This decision ranks with that of the former Howard government's 1996 decision to abandon the Keating government's 15 per cent Superannuation Guarantee, designed particularly to lift the 1940s baby boom generation to more adequate levels of accumulation in their remaining years before retirement.
The cost of yesterday's decision will not only adversely affect the baby boom generation but more substantially, their children - the so-called Generations X and Y.
The Howard/Costello decision in 1996 cost the average Australian worker roughly $250,000 in accumulation over their working life. The cost of yesterday's decision will be in the region of a further $100,000.
The Prime Minister and Mr Palmer trotted out the tawdry argument that working people are better off with more cash in their hand today than savings for tomorrow. They omit to say that superannuation savings represent deferred consumption, not lost consumption. But more than that, that their superannuation contributions become compound savings - where the earnings on their accumulations are in tax terms permitted to earn further. That is, earnings on the earnings - compound earnings which, over a lifetime, grow exponentially to support a person in retirement.
If Tony Abbott's argument about the value of cash today had substance, there would be no savings. No savings in savings banks and no savings in superannuation. For, if the Prime Minister's claim were to be true in logic, it would need to be true absolutely. That is, the notion that people are better off spending and disposing of all their income than saving any part of it.
This week, Australia's pool of superannuation savings topped $1.87 trillion - larger than the market capitalisation of the Australian Stock Exchange. That vast pool of savings, which has revolutionised our capital markets and dramatically lowered the cost of Australian capital, exists, in the main, because of compulsory superannuation.
You don't expect conservative governments to believe in much but, at least, you expect them to believe in thrift. This Government does not even believe in thrift.
The Treasurer talks of ending the age of entitlement. I gave substance to that notion 30 years ago, when I first asked Australians to provide for their own retirement - to move beyond reliance on the age pension as the default anti-destitution measure.
Yesterday's decision puts the pension back at centre stage, as retirees find that their superannuation accumulation is not large enough to live from without pension supplementation.
Yesterday's decision is an appalling one - by a government lacking any genuine or conscientious concern for the nation's workforce.
Paul Keating was the prime minister of Australia from 1991 to 1996. View his full profile here.
It still amazes me that this bloke left school at 14, yet our current PM went to Oxford.
Thanks mate. A good read. Sadly true.
Gnostic
Mark Ella (57)
As ineloquent and garbled, jumping from idea to idea, as he was for long stretches of that interview, he stated a few irrefutable truths that those involved with the major parties just don't get, especially in Australia with the compulsory and preferential system falsely supporting them.
Those truths are:-
- The majority of the populous have lost faith in the system and hold it in contempt, and that was before the ICAC in NSW and lets not forget the Slipper/Thompson etc farces at Federal level.
- Even if an "outsider" manages to get into parliament they are rapidly isolated and dealt with by the major parties, so that come the next election they don't get another run as the voters see how ineffectual they are, so take the short term gains for local issues and accept the best major party bribes. So the status quo is maintained and the public trust and faith dribbles ever lower.
- The inequities in our society grow wider and wider, when in the same month the CBA is successfully sued for their fee structures and posts yet another record profit, all a few years after being propped up by the tax payer, those who don't benefit (and quite a few who do) are seeing that the system doesn't seek to address these inequities.
- Australia is so stable in my view for a number of reasons, culturally we have never really liked those who put themselves forward too much, so revolutionary thinking doesn't gain a lot of traction. Second on this line of thought is the proliferation of home ownership/mortgages. A strange thought on the surface you might think, but I would direct you to the writings of Adam Smith and "The Wealth of Nations" and to paraphrase and bastardise that tome Smith wrote that a population that feels it has assets to lose will maintain the system, as opposed to the lower class revolts seen throughout Europe in the 17-19 centuries.
All that aside, for the last two elections I haven't voted, I got marked off and left, simply because ethically I could not support either major party and by voting I legitimised the system that would see one of them take power, even if I voted for some obscure independent.
To those who say I therefore do not have a right to comment, I would say, the right to decline any of the candidates is just as valid a choice as voting for them, indeed I find it far more valid than voting for a local member I find less contemptible than his opponent, and then bitching that they follow Coalition/Labour policies which we have known to be shit since the early years of Howard and late years of Keating.
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