IslamoNazi posted:

NSW Police have said of the firearms registry "can't find any record of Man Monis having a firearms license in NSW"

Anidav posted:

So what the gently caress is going on here then? Do the Federal Police have something they're not sharing with the NSW police?

Anidav posted:

So what the gently caress is going on here then? Do the Federal Police have something they're not sharing with the NSW police?

Cartoon posted:

The guy had NO CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS WHAT SO EVER Being on bail does not mean you are guilty. Being charged does not mean you are guilty. You are, in fact, innocent (and not convicted) until proven guilty.

Murodese posted:

Not correct. He has a criminal conviction for sending those letters to soldiers' families: http://www.cdpp.gov.au/case-reports/man-haron-monis-and-amir-droudis/

Murodese posted:

Those On My Left posted:

At least in Victoria, firearms licences can't be issued unless the Chief Commissioner is satisfied that you're a fit and proper person to hold the licence. So the simple fact that he hadn't been convicted of the sex offences doesn't mean there was no basis for him to have his licence revoked - assuming NSW law works like Vic law.

IslamoNazi posted:

Haha yes. Usyd Liberals think #illridewithyou is a conspiracy to undermine Abbott's electoral prospects



edit: I like the fact that the left control print media the best.

tithin posted:

Question is, how often does the chief commissioner personally review each application?

Does he delegate authority down the trail far enough that he only ever digitally signs it without ever actually reviewing it in the name of being cost effective?

Count Chocula posted:

I knew Marc Maron was disturbed, but I didn't think he'd snap like this.

Fruity Gordo posted:

If you nerds seriously think that it's useless trying to stifle far right organisations spreading their bullshit and hate across social media you're a lot less clever than you think you are. Facebook is an essential tool for groups to organise poo poo like the fascist rally in penrith last week, and if we'd been able to shut down the ADL and Australia First fb groups we'd have seen fewer fash turn out and have taken away a massive platform for them.

CrazyTolradi posted:

More flies with honey than vinegar and all that. Hurling insults at people isn't going to do anything but make them think you're not worth their time. Maybe try using more positive language next time?

CrazyTolradi posted:

More flies with honey than vinegar and all that. Hurling insults at people isn't going to do anything but make them think you're not worth their time. Maybe try using more positive language next time?

You Am I posted:

Huh? I listen to his podcast, what happened?

Count Chocula posted:

It was a lame joke about the hostage-taker's name. Never mind.

Fruity Gordo posted:

I swear to Christ if I need to post the Letter from Birmingham Jail one more time this fortnight I am going to scream. Liberals are intolerable.

Milky Moor posted:

i don't know what that is but it sounds cool. post it again.

quote:

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has taken aim at a raft of Australian budget measures, describing one as potentially unsustainable and another as requiring close monitoring.

It has also urged Australia to shake up superannuation tax concessions and to lift sharply the goods and services tax to cut income tax.

The Paris-based organisation's biennial review of Australia found the balance of risks facing the Australian economy contained more substantial downside than upside.

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"External risks, chiefly from commodity markets, combined with speculative activity in the housing sector and uncertainties in the responsiveness of non-resource sectors, could conspire to generate a period of weak macroeconomic activity," it said.

The Abbott government's decision to restrict access to Newstart for young Australians might not work as intended, it said.

"The proposals will certainly motivate some to seek and take up work or go into further education. However, the precise impact of such reform is difficult to predict. Close monitoring, and adjustment as appropriate, is important."

The report described Australia's fixed-rate, means-tested Newstart benefit as "modest". Two years ago it suggested it should be increased.

The report's lead author, OECD economist Philip Hemmings, told Fairfax Media the Newstart change could have a significant impact on low-income households and had to be watched closely.

The government's proposed cut to pension indexation was likely to be unsustainable over the long term, he said. Australia's aged pension replaced only 60 per cent of half Australia's average wage, which was low by OECD standards.

The government's plan to remove the link between the age pension and wages would cause its value to drift down in relation to average incomes, Mr Hemmings said. At some point it could "cross socially acceptable limits of adequacy".

Australia's tax treatment of superannuation was unusual, the report said.

A Howard government decision to make most superannuation payouts tax free meant sizeable sums of public money were implicitly being spent in a way that largely benefited middle and upper income earners, it said.

The report said Australia's superannuation tax concessions cost about $32 billion, which is about 2 per cent of GDP.

The government's plan for fully paid parental leave is expensive and should face a "careful impact assessment" to check that it stacks up against alternative plans that would funnel more money toward child care.

The success of its government's plan to cut university funding while allowing universities to increase their fees would depend on whether universities competed genuinely on fees. "Monitoring of the reforms will be important to ensure access to higher education is not compromised, particularly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds," the report said.

Australia's goods and services tax is low by international standards, raising only half as much of gross domestic product as the OECD average. As a result, Australia's tax burden falls more on other taxes, including those on labour and business. The report said New Zealand and Israel were good models for Australia, with GST rates of 15 per cent and 18 per cent respectively. To the extent that a boosted GST disproportionately hurt low-income households, the impact could be softened by boosting benefits and carefully designing income tax cuts.

The report backed the Abbott government moves to give the states more control over their hospitals and schools and more direct access to tax. It was critical of Rudd government programs that tied grants to outcomes. Australia's states had good room to lift their own taxes without help from the Commonwealth, it said.

Excessive exemptions meant only 5 per cent of Australian businesses were eligible for state payroll tax. Local government rates were an exceptionally efficient tax but were underused. Other states should emulate the Australian Capital Territory in boosting local government rates while they lowered stamp duties, the report said.

The decision to replace the carbon tax with direct action grants for businesses that cut emissions could work, having the same effects as a carbon tax at the margin, providing difficulties in establishing baseline emissions and checking the achievement of emissions reductions were overcome, it said.

The report suggested establishing a "secondary market" for direct action grants, which would allow the Abbott government to harness market forces in the same way as Labor's emissions trading scheme was going to.

While supporting of the government's plan to spend more on infrastructure, it said the projects approved must be backed with robust and transparent cost-benefit analysis, to ensure economic use of the existing stock and appropriate selection of new infrastructure projects.

IslamoNazi posted:

Haha yes. Usyd Liberals think #illridewithyou is a conspiracy to undermine Abbott's electoral prospects



edit: I like the fact that the left control print media the best.

Endman posted:

As a good friend of mine always says - don't talk to the pubbies.

hooman posted:

Endman sighed as he posted in Auspol.

quote:

Federal budget is not like a household budget

Treasurer Joe Hockey is experiencing difficult times. Deteriorating terms of trade and an uncooperative senate mean that he cannot deliver the surplus when he said he would and he cannot continue to cut government expenditure without risking a recession.

I have some comforting news for Joe Hockey: the importance of the whole deficit/surplus thing has been greatly exaggerated – with a lot of help from Joe himself of course. The focus on deficits and surpluses distracts us from what’s really important in the macro economy.

Hockey and Abbott are very fond of using household analogies when discussing government finances - Hockey again compared Australia’s economy to a household budget in his Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. However, a government that is sovereign with respect to its own fiat currency bears no resemblance at all to a household. Such a government creates the money we all use, either physically on a printing press or, more importantly, electronically in the accounts of financial institutions.

Licence to print money

Everyone understands that governments can create money. Most people also understand that governments don’t just create all the money they need for all the things people want because it would cause inflation. Inflation is the devaluation of money. If you have a really good season for growing apples and there is a glut, the price of apples falls. Similarly, if you have a glut of money, the price of money falls. That’s inflation.

So, here lies the key insight. Inflation is the limiting factor for government expenditure, not taxes or borrowing. A government that can create money doesn’t need your money from taxation or from borrowing in order to spend. There is no limit to how much money a sovereign government can spend, but if government spending plus private spending exceeds the productive capacity of the economy then you get inflation.

The real calculation faced by government should not be about how much money the government has – it has an infinite amount. The calculation should be about the capacity of the economy to absorb government spending without driving inflation.

Seeking a balanced budget and automatically borrowing any deficit spending (as we currently do) is an effective but unsophisticated way of ensuring government spending doesn’t cause runaway inflation. Taxes and government borrowing remove money from the private sector, creating space for government spending (which injects money into the private sector). Remember, the government does not have to borrow or tax in order to finance spending because they can create money.

The slowing Australian economy combined with the dramatic fall in global oil prices mean that inflation is set to fall and unemployment is rising. This is precisely the kind of environment into which the federal government could spend without borrowing (i.e. create money). Times like these represent opportunities for the government to finance productivity improving infrastructure and provide much needed services for nothing. I know it sounds too good to be true but this is the reality of a fiscally sovereign government.

The government could spend more

Can the government just spend as much as it wants on whatever it wants? Of course not, the result would be out-of-control inflation. Can it spend a lot more than it currently is without substantial negative consequences? Absolutely.

The much discussed “quantitative easing” in the US, UK and EU is an example of this kind of spending (though very poorly targeted). The US Federal Reserve has created trillions of dollars out of thin air and used it to buy risky financial assets and government bonds in order to take the risk off the balance sheets of financial institutions and improve their supply of money. The money was created with keystrokes on a computer which simply credit the accounts that these financial institutions hold with the Federal Reserve. There has been no runaway inflationary impact of this “printing” of trillions of dollars.

This reality of fiat currency is very difficult for many people to grasp but it’s not quite the magic pudding that perhaps it appears to be. When a government creates money, it isn’t creating value from nothing. The value lies in the human and capital resources that are underutilised in the economy. The money created by the government is simply the lubricant needed to mobilise these resources.

So, productive government spending is limited by the capacity of the economy to provide the goods and services that the government wants to purchase plus the goods and services the non-government sector wants to purchase. During economic downturns, and especially in recessions, there is spare capacity in the economy which can be employed by government. It’s possible, with this in mind, to quite easily return to the post-war days of genuine full employment even during an economic downturn.

Some basic realities

Until people understand the basic realities of monetary economics we cannot have a meaningful discussion of government finances. Rather than worrying about deficits and surpluses we should be asking whether the economy would benefit from greater or lesser government expenditure or taxation. This calculation balances unemployment, spare capacity, and the need for infrastructure and services against inflation risk. It’s a complex calculation but the underlying principles are pretty straightforward.

Let me just restate for emphasis: the need for balanced federal budgets is a myth. Like many myths, it does have some factual historical origins. Back when currencies were backed by gold it was possible for governments to go broke. Because modern currencies are not backed by anything material, sovereign governments cannot run out of money and can never be insolvent in their own currency. Somehow, mainstream political thinking hasn’t kept up with the dramatic changes in the monetary system that occurred more than 40 years ago.

The first of our politicians to really understand this and to communicate it effectively to the public will have at their disposal the tools to completely reshape our economy for the better. I know politicians can be slow off the mark but 40 years is long enough. It’s time they caught up.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

http://theconversation.com/why-the-federal-budget-is-not-like-a-household-budget-35498