There will be those who, on seeing the ugly face of aspirational selfishness as personified by the Sciberras family in The Age this morning, will seek to mock them for their apparent narrow-mindedness. Read more »
There will be those who, on seeing the ugly face of aspirational selfishness as personified by the Sciberras family in The Age this morning, will seek to mock them for their apparent narrow-mindedness. Read more »
...Is that they are seldom 'libertarian' enough. We read once screed after another from angry Hayekians contending that taxation is theft. The welfare state, the public broadcaster, virtually all publically owned and funded assets are an affront to 'liberty', evidence of a society heading down the road to surfdom. Read more »
I don't get it. It's like they're pretending they're in government. As in 'if we were in we'd do this'. But the way Nelson is bleating on about it it's all about 'we're going to do X, Y, Z'.
Yep - more wanking about fucking performance pay for teachers. Sigh, and so it goes.
Nelson is now astoudingly being hypocritical about aged carer lump sum payments - wailing about how it's not included as a right in future budgets.
Read more »
In the face of the latest post-budget concern by the commentariat that there will be a wages break out under Labor’s Industrial Relations regime, the Government is at pains to assure us that wages will only increase by improvements in productivity.
Productivity increases for wage increases have been a feature of Australian IR since the days of Hawke’s Wages Accord. While productivity is certainly an important factor in wage remuneration, it cannot logically be the only determinant. For example, a worker employed in the public sector would have to be twice as productive to earn the same relative amount once the cost of living has doubled. Read more »
Those who think the government has an economic policy will struggle to find one in this Budget. Indeed anyone who thinks there was an economic problem to apply it to will have trouble finding that too. Despite all the talk of the ‘cancer’ of inflation, Swan’s expectation that inflation will fall back to 3% next year is even more benign than the RBA which expects it to happen a year later. Read more »
This was me earlier in Crikey today.
After the column miles of faux-gravitas written about the budget, trust the WA political scene to change the national tone and take us to a new low in Australian politics. Read more »
Battling Bob has gone the right way in establishing himself as a credible independent candidate by saying 'no thanks' to the bruvvers at the CFMEU. Seems he took my sage advice.
Bob said: Read more »
It was obvious that the Budget Reply by the Leader of the Opposition, Brendan Nelson, was going to be something else when, before proceedings formally began, the cameras sprang the Coalition acknowledging a rent-a-crowd in had positioned in the public gallery.
Nelson's speech was different to the Federal Treasurer's 13 April budget speech on many levels.
The first was that, unlike Wayne Swan's speech, Nelson's monologue was heard out in polite silence by those on the other side. Read more »
Apparently trick one for a wannabe populist right-wing politician these days is to try to sell a petrol tax cut to morons. We had Steve "Bong Costume" Fielding run it before the last election. We've seen John McCain and Hillary Clinton both trying to turn around their flagging political fortunes by calling for one over there. Read more »
It’s the only way to describe what the ALP has done to the Coalition with the politics of the budget.
This became fairly obvious when Turnbull turned up repeatedly on the telly last night saying “it’s a bad budget because if you add up the cuts to the Howard programs, and subtract the increases in spending for the Labor programs, then you take into account the growth in tax receipts, then you look at etc etc” - by which time I was yawning and I’m a political junky and an economist - Joe Public has no chance regardless of how true any of it might be. Read more »
Blogotariat is a platform to enhance the role of blog commentary and its growing influence on Mainstream Media and the political process – the great contest of ideas essential to a civil society. If you wish to contribute editorially or add your blog please use the Contact menu to send some info.
