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2013 Election Year Party Policies- Labor
- Thread starter Rosy
- Start date
lamb22 said:
Your on fire today sheepy baz :hihi
its surprising when wayne gave 5 million of us a grand to buy school shoes the headline didnt scream
"Government Usurps Ordinary Australians"
It really is a joke, except that more than half of us regurgitate it like a ventrilliquists dumby
lamb22 said:
tigergollywog said:
Yep it was certainly all about finding your money. :hihi
More like the public backlash made them get the spin doctors out again.
How come then it's so easy to "lose" your money but so "difficult' to claim it back. It would be so much easier for any financial institution to send out a letter to the account holder. Nah, that could get lost in the post or the address wouldn't be known.
Just another backflip
$5 billion for school shoes? That's a lot of shoes. Was it means tested? I hope so.
willo said:Yep it was certainly all about finding your money. :hihi
More like the public backlash made them get the spin doctors out again.
How come then it's so easy to "lose" your money but so "difficult' to claim it back. It would be so much easier for any financial institution to send out a letter to the account holder. Nah, that could get lost in the post or the address wouldn't be known.
Just another backflip
$5 billion for school shoes? That's a lot of shoes. Was it means tested? I hope so.
Standard operating procedure. Misreprepresent or misunderstand government policy. When the deception or mistake is uncovered claim the original policy has been changed and claim a backflip.
Without an impartial or competent media fact checking, the mugs wont know any different, eh Willo?
lamb22 said:
Or too incompetent to explain the legislation to the masses in hope nobody will notice.
Too right, do a backflip and assure everyone it wasn't a cashgrab they only had their best interests at heart. ;D
Some people still believe in fairies and leprechauns too Lambsy
Yeah, I'm a cynic along with millions of others. But that's fine.
rosy23 said:
Nice work on the surplus Rosy. We can trust you to manage your economy ... you and the other 13 regular folks in australia. Might be liquid gold down south but its liquid mould up North. Its like living in the amazon at the moment, without the sloths and pirhanas (that'd be a good nickname for robin nahas).
Ages since we've had rain down here. Hopefully all the fires should be out now and the fire danger drastically reduced. Been a very scary, dry summer.
I'm not sure about managing our economy. Our situation is solely on the back of good wool, sheep and lamb prices. Something is obviously going well in our economy. Neither the MOTH nor myself do any paid outside work now. A few years ago we did and we still had to extend our overdraft. Now we're not using our overdraft, don't owe a cent to anyone and don't want for anything. We certainly don't have an extravagant lifestyle, or a high income, but we can comfortably and happily live the lifestyle we choose. Life's good.
I'm not sure about managing our economy. Our situation is solely on the back of good wool, sheep and lamb prices. Something is obviously going well in our economy. Neither the MOTH nor myself do any paid outside work now. A few years ago we did and we still had to extend our overdraft. Now we're not using our overdraft, don't owe a cent to anyone and don't want for anything. We certainly don't have an extravagant lifestyle, or a high income, but we can comfortably and happily live the lifestyle we choose. Life's good.
tigergollywog said:
That isn't what a surplus is. A surplus is at accounting time having revenue exceeding expenditure, which is possible to do whilst servicing debt. Having to take out further debt to cover the gap between expenditure and revenue is when you aren't running a surplus.
rosy23 said:Ages since we've had rain down here. Hopefully all the fires should be out now and the fire danger drastically reduced. Been a very scary, dry summer.
I'm not sure about managing our economy. Our situation is solely on the back of good wool, sheep and lamb prices. Something is obviously going well in our economy. Neither the MOTH nor myself do any paid outside work now. A few years ago we did and we still had to extend our overdraft. Now we're not using our overdraft, don't owe a cent to anyone and don't want for anything. We certainly don't have an extravagant lifestyle, or a high income, but we can comfortably and happily live the lifestyle we choose. Life's good.
If the Tigers can win a flag in the next few years, youlle have reached some kind of nirvana. :clap
Continuation of an interesting series in The Age on Labor. First Aly's plea for vision, now a plea for a return to democracy within the party to resolves it's identity issues. Both make sense and are complementary.
Labor must get to the heart of the rot, and it's not all about Obeid
Andrew West
Many in the political class - politicians, aides, consultants, even many journalists - have decided the crisis facing the Labor Party in NSW can be explained away in one man, or at least one family: the Obeids.
Labor is wallowing around, sometimes below, a 30 per cent primary vote supposedly because of the bad news out of the Independent Commission Against Corruption. The former Labor MP and patriarch Eddie Obeid was apparently so omnipotent he leant on ministers for alleged favours worth an estimated $75 million and felled unco-operative party leaders at will.
So the answer seems simple. Expel Obeid from the party, declare your disgust at, and distance from, him. ''I've never met Eddie Obeid and I never want to,'' the federal minister Greg Combet told the ABC at the weekend. It was a truthful, curt response. End of conversation. Sorry, too easy.
"Labor can change and be that party again. Or it can be the party of Eddie Obeid." Photo: Michele Mossop
Edward Moses Obeid and his disgraced former colleague Ian Macdonald are not the cause of Labor's crisis. They are the symptoms.
On this page last week, Waleed Aly wrote persuasively about Labor's loss of that unfashionable but vital commodity: ideology. But that was only chapter one in the explanation of the party's malaise. Chapter two is about Labor's crisis of character and ethics.
In an ethical and democratic party, people such as Obeid and Macdonald would have never achieved office, let alone power. If both men had been compelled to seek support among a mass membership, and compete on a level playing field with those who did not have, in Obeid's case, wealth or, in Macdonald's, the blind support of some decent union leaders who should have known better, they would have fallen at the first hurdle.
Labor's version of the Old Testament prophet, the former education minister Rodney Cavalier, has been crying in the wilderness for almost 20 years about the democratic deficit inside his party. After every election debacle, those with a vested interest in keeping power - even if it is power amid a smoking ruin - insist that ''we in the party have to stop talking about ourselves''. Their tactic is to deflect.
But as Cavalier argues, the structure and processes of the Labor Party are everything because they determine everything. Who will decide the policy? Who will choose the candidates? Who will represent those policies in the electorate? Who will decide the leader who explains those policies to voters?
Only by being a truly democratic organisation, where every member's vote is equal and all MPs - from leader down to backbencher - are required to face a regular ballot of all party members to keep their endorsements, can Labor can restore its ethical base. Only through such a transparent process will Labor again attract people of strong character.
One of the party's most serious deficiencies is that its MPs are arguably the most coddled in Australian politics. Many will invoke stories of widowed mothers and hard-scrabble childhoods. But the truth is, from the moment they joined Young Labor and pledged fealty to one of the personality cliques - for they cannot be called ideological factions - they were set. The well-paid job in the minister's office or the union followed, then the seat in Parliament.
Now Labor is facing defeat federally and can no longer dispense patronage in NSW, and with many unions financially squeezed, Cavalier is considering opening a book on who among the ambitious Labor youngsters will be the first to defect to the Liberals. Being of Presbyterian stock, there is no money involved in Cavalier's ''book''.
From the late 1990s, few state Labor MPs faced party members in ballots for their jobs. But many, such as Macdonald, became vulnerable to, if not reliant on, the Obeids of this world.
The former NSW planning minister Frank Sartor told ICAC about how Obeid was trying to coax him into Parliament from the lord mayoralty of Sydney. Obeid thought Sartor could be an ally, even an acolyte. When Sartor joked that he wouldn't mind a million-dollar nest-egg in his bereft superannuation, Obeid allegedly told him, ''I think I can help you with that.''
Sartor knew when to back off - and no doubt remembered why he had spent all those years as an independent alderman fighting Labor's machine.
A party that attracts people of strong character, who are prepared to run in impossible preselections, to lose but run again; to contest unwinnable seats, to fall and rise again; and to lose elections because of principle and policy, rather than because of self-made scandal, as in the 2011 NSW election, will ultimately prevail. Labor can change and be that party again. Or it can be the party of Eddie Obeid.
Andrew West is the presenter of the Religion & Ethics Report on ABC Radio National. Disclosure: Between 1985 and 1997 he was a member of the Labor Party.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/labor-must-get-to-the-heart-of-the-rot-and-its-not-all-about-obeid-20130228-2f956.html#ixzz2MFXWIEVZ
Labor must get to the heart of the rot, and it's not all about Obeid
Andrew West
Many in the political class - politicians, aides, consultants, even many journalists - have decided the crisis facing the Labor Party in NSW can be explained away in one man, or at least one family: the Obeids.
Labor is wallowing around, sometimes below, a 30 per cent primary vote supposedly because of the bad news out of the Independent Commission Against Corruption. The former Labor MP and patriarch Eddie Obeid was apparently so omnipotent he leant on ministers for alleged favours worth an estimated $75 million and felled unco-operative party leaders at will.
So the answer seems simple. Expel Obeid from the party, declare your disgust at, and distance from, him. ''I've never met Eddie Obeid and I never want to,'' the federal minister Greg Combet told the ABC at the weekend. It was a truthful, curt response. End of conversation. Sorry, too easy.
"Labor can change and be that party again. Or it can be the party of Eddie Obeid." Photo: Michele Mossop
Edward Moses Obeid and his disgraced former colleague Ian Macdonald are not the cause of Labor's crisis. They are the symptoms.
On this page last week, Waleed Aly wrote persuasively about Labor's loss of that unfashionable but vital commodity: ideology. But that was only chapter one in the explanation of the party's malaise. Chapter two is about Labor's crisis of character and ethics.
In an ethical and democratic party, people such as Obeid and Macdonald would have never achieved office, let alone power. If both men had been compelled to seek support among a mass membership, and compete on a level playing field with those who did not have, in Obeid's case, wealth or, in Macdonald's, the blind support of some decent union leaders who should have known better, they would have fallen at the first hurdle.
Labor's version of the Old Testament prophet, the former education minister Rodney Cavalier, has been crying in the wilderness for almost 20 years about the democratic deficit inside his party. After every election debacle, those with a vested interest in keeping power - even if it is power amid a smoking ruin - insist that ''we in the party have to stop talking about ourselves''. Their tactic is to deflect.
But as Cavalier argues, the structure and processes of the Labor Party are everything because they determine everything. Who will decide the policy? Who will choose the candidates? Who will represent those policies in the electorate? Who will decide the leader who explains those policies to voters?
Only by being a truly democratic organisation, where every member's vote is equal and all MPs - from leader down to backbencher - are required to face a regular ballot of all party members to keep their endorsements, can Labor can restore its ethical base. Only through such a transparent process will Labor again attract people of strong character.
One of the party's most serious deficiencies is that its MPs are arguably the most coddled in Australian politics. Many will invoke stories of widowed mothers and hard-scrabble childhoods. But the truth is, from the moment they joined Young Labor and pledged fealty to one of the personality cliques - for they cannot be called ideological factions - they were set. The well-paid job in the minister's office or the union followed, then the seat in Parliament.
Now Labor is facing defeat federally and can no longer dispense patronage in NSW, and with many unions financially squeezed, Cavalier is considering opening a book on who among the ambitious Labor youngsters will be the first to defect to the Liberals. Being of Presbyterian stock, there is no money involved in Cavalier's ''book''.
From the late 1990s, few state Labor MPs faced party members in ballots for their jobs. But many, such as Macdonald, became vulnerable to, if not reliant on, the Obeids of this world.
The former NSW planning minister Frank Sartor told ICAC about how Obeid was trying to coax him into Parliament from the lord mayoralty of Sydney. Obeid thought Sartor could be an ally, even an acolyte. When Sartor joked that he wouldn't mind a million-dollar nest-egg in his bereft superannuation, Obeid allegedly told him, ''I think I can help you with that.''
Sartor knew when to back off - and no doubt remembered why he had spent all those years as an independent alderman fighting Labor's machine.
A party that attracts people of strong character, who are prepared to run in impossible preselections, to lose but run again; to contest unwinnable seats, to fall and rise again; and to lose elections because of principle and policy, rather than because of self-made scandal, as in the 2011 NSW election, will ultimately prevail. Labor can change and be that party again. Or it can be the party of Eddie Obeid.
Andrew West is the presenter of the Religion & Ethics Report on ABC Radio National. Disclosure: Between 1985 and 1997 he was a member of the Labor Party.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/labor-must-get-to-the-heart-of-the-rot-and-its-not-all-about-obeid-20130228-2f956.html#ixzz2MFXWIEVZ
Azza said:
good article, like it and agree. Except the canonisation of Sartor. A dodgy planning minister IMO who pandered to the big boys.
More poor policy and incompetence:
Carbon price cash to leave budget hole
The government has conceded it will revise revenue projections from its carbon scheme after a key vote to shore up the struggling European carbon market failed, triggering a price crash that will affect Australia.
The federal budget assumes a $29 carbon price in 2015-16, which is the same year Australia's carbon trading scheme links to the European carbon market. The European carbon price fell as low as $3.20 on Tuesday.
EU parliamentarians have rejected a short-term fix to an oversupply of carbon permits. Photo: Paul Jones
The price of carbon in the European emissions trading market - the world-leading scheme that will link with the Australian scheme in 2015 - collapsed after EU parliamentarians voted 334-315 to reject a short-term fix to an oversupply of carbon permits available to polluting industries.
Advertisement The defeat triggered a 40 per cent crash in the carbon price to about $3.20 a tonne on Tuesday, rebounding to around $4 by the close of trading. By comparison, Australia's carbon price is fixed at $23 a tonne, and will rise over the next two years.
If it survives, the Australian scheme will allow companies to buy international permits to cover half their emissions in two years.
Labor's carbon price mechanism is ''bad policy design'' and could leave a budget hole as big as $6 billion, according to former Reserve Bank board member Warwick McKibbin.
Professor McKibbin, a chairman of public policy in applied macroeconomics at the Australian National University, said the problem was not Treasury's forecast but the government's policy.
''I think it's shown to be fairly unrealistic and this will have serious implications, both for the policy in Australia and the revenue for the budget,'' Professor McKibbin told ABC's 7.30 program on Wednesday night.
''It's just bad policy design. It's not Treasury's forecasts that are wrong, it's the policy the government has put together based on those forecasts.
''Switching to a carbon trading mechanism using permits from an unstable market was just really strange policy.''
Professor McKibbin said Labor's budget black hole could be as large as $6 billion because of its overly optimistic projections.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance lead analyst Konrad Hanschmidt said the low European price could lead to Australian companies having a lower carbon bill.
Mr Hanschmidt said it would be extremely tough to convince the European Parliament to change its mind.
''If it does not happen, we could see prices move towards €1 a tonne over the next few months,'' he said.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said Treasury would model the carbon price in ''the usual way'' in coming weeks and provide revised forecasts for 2015-16 and a revised revenue forecast in the May budget.
Treasury modelling had projected the price at $29 a tonne in 2015-16.
But modelling for the government's Climate Change Authority indicated it expected the Australian carbon price to fall to $10.72 a tonne in 2015. It would create a multibillion-dollar hole in the government's revenue forecasts.
The Coalition, which has promised to repeal the carbon price laws if elected in September, said Australia's carbon price was now 5½ times higher than Europe. Coalition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt said 2011 Treasury modelling forecast Australia's carbon price would rise to $37 a tonne in 2020.
''Either the government's modelling is correct and we will be even more out of line with the rest of the world, or, if it is not, the ALP's carbon tax will face a multibillion-dollar black hole and the deficit will only get worse,'' he said.
Mr Combet said the defeated motion was just one of several being considered to support the European trading scheme.
''The carbon market in Europe is just one of the markets that has been affected very seriously by the global financial crisis, and by the financial crisis in Europe specifically, and so the low prices are a response to those influences,'' he said.
Mr Combet said a reduced carbon price would affect both expenditure and revenue, as it would reduce the amount of carbon price compensation it paid through free permits.
The slump in the European carbon price continues its slide since the global financial crisis, which reduced industrial activity and with it demand for emissions permits. The price reached $28 a tonne in 2008.
Mr Combet said the crash in Europe should not be seen as undermining global action on climate change. He said emissions trading was widely recognised as the most effective way to cut emissions.
Greens leader Christine Milne said she was disappointed with the European decision, but the vote did not alter that many nations were introducing emissions trading. China is introducing seven pilot carbon trading schemes.
Australian Industry Group chief Innes Willox called on the government to abolish immediately the fixed carbon tax and move to emissions trading, linking to the low European price.
The Climate Institute's Erwin Jackson said the European decision emphasised the need for other climate policies to insure against volatility in carbon markets so investment in low-carbon technology continued and emissions were cut.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/carbon-price-cash-to-leave-budget-hole-20130417-2i0ml.html#ixzz2QmQ1joUc
Carbon price cash to leave budget hole
The government has conceded it will revise revenue projections from its carbon scheme after a key vote to shore up the struggling European carbon market failed, triggering a price crash that will affect Australia.
The federal budget assumes a $29 carbon price in 2015-16, which is the same year Australia's carbon trading scheme links to the European carbon market. The European carbon price fell as low as $3.20 on Tuesday.
EU parliamentarians have rejected a short-term fix to an oversupply of carbon permits. Photo: Paul Jones
The price of carbon in the European emissions trading market - the world-leading scheme that will link with the Australian scheme in 2015 - collapsed after EU parliamentarians voted 334-315 to reject a short-term fix to an oversupply of carbon permits available to polluting industries.
Advertisement The defeat triggered a 40 per cent crash in the carbon price to about $3.20 a tonne on Tuesday, rebounding to around $4 by the close of trading. By comparison, Australia's carbon price is fixed at $23 a tonne, and will rise over the next two years.
If it survives, the Australian scheme will allow companies to buy international permits to cover half their emissions in two years.
Labor's carbon price mechanism is ''bad policy design'' and could leave a budget hole as big as $6 billion, according to former Reserve Bank board member Warwick McKibbin.
Professor McKibbin, a chairman of public policy in applied macroeconomics at the Australian National University, said the problem was not Treasury's forecast but the government's policy.
''I think it's shown to be fairly unrealistic and this will have serious implications, both for the policy in Australia and the revenue for the budget,'' Professor McKibbin told ABC's 7.30 program on Wednesday night.
''It's just bad policy design. It's not Treasury's forecasts that are wrong, it's the policy the government has put together based on those forecasts.
''Switching to a carbon trading mechanism using permits from an unstable market was just really strange policy.''
Professor McKibbin said Labor's budget black hole could be as large as $6 billion because of its overly optimistic projections.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance lead analyst Konrad Hanschmidt said the low European price could lead to Australian companies having a lower carbon bill.
Mr Hanschmidt said it would be extremely tough to convince the European Parliament to change its mind.
''If it does not happen, we could see prices move towards €1 a tonne over the next few months,'' he said.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said Treasury would model the carbon price in ''the usual way'' in coming weeks and provide revised forecasts for 2015-16 and a revised revenue forecast in the May budget.
Treasury modelling had projected the price at $29 a tonne in 2015-16.
But modelling for the government's Climate Change Authority indicated it expected the Australian carbon price to fall to $10.72 a tonne in 2015. It would create a multibillion-dollar hole in the government's revenue forecasts.
The Coalition, which has promised to repeal the carbon price laws if elected in September, said Australia's carbon price was now 5½ times higher than Europe. Coalition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt said 2011 Treasury modelling forecast Australia's carbon price would rise to $37 a tonne in 2020.
''Either the government's modelling is correct and we will be even more out of line with the rest of the world, or, if it is not, the ALP's carbon tax will face a multibillion-dollar black hole and the deficit will only get worse,'' he said.
Mr Combet said the defeated motion was just one of several being considered to support the European trading scheme.
''The carbon market in Europe is just one of the markets that has been affected very seriously by the global financial crisis, and by the financial crisis in Europe specifically, and so the low prices are a response to those influences,'' he said.
Mr Combet said a reduced carbon price would affect both expenditure and revenue, as it would reduce the amount of carbon price compensation it paid through free permits.
The slump in the European carbon price continues its slide since the global financial crisis, which reduced industrial activity and with it demand for emissions permits. The price reached $28 a tonne in 2008.
Mr Combet said the crash in Europe should not be seen as undermining global action on climate change. He said emissions trading was widely recognised as the most effective way to cut emissions.
Greens leader Christine Milne said she was disappointed with the European decision, but the vote did not alter that many nations were introducing emissions trading. China is introducing seven pilot carbon trading schemes.
Australian Industry Group chief Innes Willox called on the government to abolish immediately the fixed carbon tax and move to emissions trading, linking to the low European price.
The Climate Institute's Erwin Jackson said the European decision emphasised the need for other climate policies to insure against volatility in carbon markets so investment in low-carbon technology continued and emissions were cut.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/carbon-price-cash-to-leave-budget-hole-20130417-2i0ml.html#ixzz2QmQ1joUc
Couldn't agree more Livers. The poor policy and incompetence of obscenely wealthy and greedy conservatives on bank boards that presided over the worst practices ever seen and almost bankrupted multiple sovereign nations continues to cripple international finances. I happily line up behind you and your campaign to make the conservative elite accountable for their gross misconduct.
tigergollywog said:
Looks like it's just us then TGW. Guess we might need a drum and a couple of mega-phones and maybe some cardboard cutouts or a TV show to make it look like there's more of us, seems to work for Bolt and the poor middle class white men so downtrodden and forgotten by modern politics.
