Anidav posted:

Dear News Ltd Wizard. Please use your dark magic on Newman.

Anidav posted:

Looks like News Ltd has a wizard who can trigger leadership spills.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Press Release posted:

‘Disability Peaks Forced to Close Doors on People with Disability’ said Matthew Wright, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations and spokesperson for the disability peaks

Ten peak organisations run by people with disability will be left with no choice but to either close their doors or reduce services, with seven organisations subject to drastic funding cuts by outgoing Minister for Social Services, Kevin Andrews.

Together the disability peak bodies represent over 90% of Australians with disability and 83% of the identified disability groups in Australia. The organisations have over 200,000 supporters, including 140 organisations, consumer groups, service providers and carer associations.

“Organisations with over 200 combined years of expertise will be forced to shut their doors in three months time - leaving people who are blind, deaf, hearing impaired, people with intellectual disability, people with brain injury, people with autism and people with physical disabilities with no voice and no specialist representation”, said spokesperson Mr Matthew Wright.

“This expertise cannot be replicated. Once it’s lost, it’s lost. Our organisations have actively engaged in the Government’s workforce agenda, however this decision leaves our 200,000 constituents with a disability and their 140 supportive organisations out in the cold.

We believe that this decision, which reflects a misunderstanding of people with disability, will have significant ramifications on the ability of the Government to successfully implement reform for people with disability, including changes to income support and real efforts to increase economic participation. Without specific representation, people with disability will be vulnerable to adverse outcomes in these areas and more.

This morning we requested an urgent meeting with incoming Minister Scott Morrison to discuss the decision beforethe voice of people with disability is irreversibly impacted”, said Mr Wright.

Consumer organisations that have been defunded or not funded to represent the specialist voice of people with disability under Department of Social Services contracts include:

Australian Federation of Disability Organisations
Autism Aspergers Advocacy Australia
Blind Citizens Australia
Brain Injury Australia
Deaf Australia
Deafness Forum of Australia
Down Syndrome Australia
National Council on Intellectual Disability
Physical Disability Australia
Short Statured People of Australia

quote:

Census Australia @ABSCensus · Dec 5
Believe it or not, no one reported their occupation as Secret Agent in the last Census #007 #Spectre

Census Australia @ABSCensus · Dec 12
What happened to the man who stole an Advent Calendar? He got 25 days! Census data reveals there are 12,434 Prison Officers in Aus.

Census Australia @ABSCensus · Dec 17
Why did Santa put a chimney on Tinder? He wanted it to be swept right! There are 4,173 Cleaners (NEC), including Chimney Sweeps, in Aus.

Census Australia @ABSCensus · 3h 3 hours ago
Why were Santa’s helpers in hiding this year? Their naked elfies were leaked. Census data reveals there are 9,547 Photographers in Aus.

drunkill posted:

Best governmental twitter account:
https://twitter.com/ABSCensus

quote:

Census Australia @ABSCensus · Dec 17
Why did Santa put a chimney on Tinder? He wanted it to be swept right! There are 4,173 Cleaners (NEC), including Chimney Sweeps, in Aus.

hooman posted:

thesaturdaypaper posted:

The budget, with its raft of grossly regressive savings measures, can be seen as just one part of a long and concerted effort to redistribute income upwards.
IMF assessment

That effort began more than a decade ago when John Howard and Hockey’s predecessor, Peter Costello, ran the most profligate government in Australian history.

Profligate is not our word. It was the word used by the International Monetary Fund in a major report it released early last year, that examined 200 years of government financial records across 55 major economies, identifying periods of government prudence and profligacy in spending.

Overall, Australia was judged very favourably. For most of the country’s history, governments of both persuasions had been prudent economic managers. The IMF identified only four periods of profligacy. The two biggest were during the Howard–Costello years. They were in 2003 and then between 2005 and 2007, and they accompanied the mining boom.

On its face, the IMF assessment might seem harsh. After all, before they were voted out in 2007, Howard and Costello had delivered six budget surpluses in a row.

But they also seriously undermined the structural integrity of the budget by making big spending commitments and giving huge tax cuts, on the basis of a flood of revenue that would inevitably dry up.

“You can sum it up in four words,” says Chris Richardson of Deloitte Access Economics. “Temporary boom, permanent promises.”

For a period money roared in to the economy, as a result of what was happening in China and elsewhere. According to Richardson, this enormous boom made the government of Howard and Costello look better than it was.

“Subsequently we’ve heard the sucking sound as the money’s gone back down the gurgler, which has made Rudd, Gillard and Swan look worse than they were,” he said. “And it’s now making Abbott and Hockey look worse than they are.”
‘They spent the lot’

To be fair to Howard and Costello, they were encouraged by the bureaucrats in Treasury, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and even the Reserve Bank to think this boom was different, and that the money would continue to roll in for decades to come.

“That was a failing. We’ve never had a permanent boom before,” says Richardson. “Anyway, they spent the lot. On tax cuts, baby bonuses, and so on.”

John Hewson, former Liberal leader, economist and now professor with the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University, underlines the point: “The tax cuts Howard and Costello gave are now costing [the budget] about $30 billion a year, and the deficit’s $40 billion.”

Without those cuts and the $9 billion Hockey gave – unasked for and against the will of treasury – to the Reserve Bank, says Hewson, “the deficit problem wouldn’t exist”.

And that’s without including some $40 billion in tax concessions for superannuation, which accrue overwhelmingly to the wealthiest 20 per cent of taxpayers.

“You can easily add it up to show that the deficit that exists today is a fake number,” says Hewson. “They’ve basically imposed it on themselves.”

More correctly, they imposed it on the less well-off.

Matt Grudnoff, the senior economist at The Australia Institute, calculates that over the seven years from 2005-06 to 2011-12, the federal government lost $169 billion in revenue as a result of the income tax cuts alone.

“Of the $169 billion in tax cuts, 42 per cent of them, or $71 billion, went to the top 10 per cent of income earners,” he wrote in his paper “Tax cuts that broke the budget”. “The top 10 per cent got more in tax cuts than the bottom 80 per cent.”

On Grudnoff’s figuring, this year’s budget would have been fatter by almost $40 billion had the cuts not been given.
Rudd followed suit

The Howard–Costello government delivered five rounds of income tax cuts, and had promised more during the 2007 election campaign. The incoming Rudd Labor government, having committed to match the Coalition’s promised cuts, delivered them.

So Labor cannot escape all blame for the current state of the budget. But it is largely guilty of just proceeding to do what the Howard government would have done, by hacking into revenue. Its spending, contrary to the consistent assertions of conservatives over recent years, was not the issue.

That has been made abundantly clear by various analyses of the structural decline of the budget.

Having detailed two of these reports last year – by the treasury department and the independent Parliamentary Budget Office –The Sydney Morning Herald’s economics editor Ross Gittins apportioned the relative culpability of the two parties thus:

“They say it’s only when the tide goes out you discover who’s been swimming naked. It’s the same when you calculate the ‘structural’ budget balance. And we’ve just learnt that though Wayne Swan’s cossie has slipped revealingly, Peter Costello was completely starkers.”

Not surprisingly, Swan endorses these analyses: “It’s the revenue, stupid,” he says. “It was a revenue story throughout.”

Wayne loving Swan posted:

Swan endorses these analyses: “It’s the revenue, stupid,” he says. “It was a revenue story throughout.”

Gorilla Salad posted:

Also, the Australian voter recoiling from the Abbott government:

Fruity Gordo posted:

Because one of the responsibilities of government is not to be more wise and practical than the electorate.

Quantum Mechanic posted:

Says treasurer who took absolutely no action on structural revenue that wasn't twisted out of him by the Greens

Quantum Mechanic posted:

Says treasurer who took absolutely no action on structural revenue that wasn't twisted out of him by the Greens

Anidav posted:

Wayne was still an economic genius compared to Hockey or Costello. But this thread will probably disprove my positive opinion of him very soon.

Gough Suppressant posted:

It's not exactly a big hurdle you've put up for him to drunkenly shuffle over.

Anidav posted:

And yet the media hated him the most

Jumpingmanjim posted:

drunkill posted:

What the gently caress is this? Fuckin' Queensland..

drunkill posted:

What the gently caress is this? Fuckin' Queensland..

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Apparently it was preferable to people just pissing on the street.

Comstar posted:

WTF is this from?

clusterfuck posted:

Didn't Rudd promise to keep the tax cuts?

Senor Tron posted:

Given that they were facing electoral doom anyway Labor should have just gone whole hog on trying to undo Howard era cuts, they couldn't really have done much worse than they did and it would have been really hard for Abbott to undo their changes while also talking about a need to balance the budget.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Fruity Gordo posted:

Here's a bit of Christmas cheer! Ralphie and his little mate Zane got refused bail for their Lakemba adventure and will be spending a lonely Christmas in the slammer.

Fruity Gordo posted:

Here's a bit of Christmas cheer! Ralphie and his little mate Zane got refused bail for their Lakemba adventure and will be spending a lonely Christmas in the slammer.

Turks posted:

Labor seriously need to get their poo poo together and stop following the Liberal party like a lost puppy. It's shocking that the best they can do at the moment is 'slightly less lovely than the worst government in living memory'. I haven't followed Auspol (or politics in general) for over a year now, and would like to know how the thread felt generally about Gillard. I feel like she had a good thing going (other than the ongoing human rights violation that is Australias refugee policy), but a feeling is all it is.