NuclearSpy posted:

Page 1 shameless plugs!

AusPol Wiki - A wiki that attempts to educate as well as opinionate. I try to archive anything I come across in here and elsewhere online for later reference. Includes such favourites as:
• Tony's Mandate - The massively long (and depressing) list of news articles about the Abbott Government
• The Tony Abbott Files - A page that I have started to revisit to keep track of all the 'Abbottisms' that are now beginning to pop up
• How evil is Campbell Newman? - The man that inspired the archiving in the first place, Queensland Premier Campbell Newman and his trail of destruction
100+ days in Government - A categorised version of Tony's Mandate which works better as a shareable link

South Australian Young Greens Social Group - A Facebook group that (forums user) Kim Jong Ill and myself have set up which helps keep Adelgoons (and non-goons) up to date with events etc. I highly encourage lurkers from Adelaide to sign up!

Baron Von Face posted:

I was informed last week I'll be retrenched on June 30. This budget and the general 'gently caress poor people' sentiment is really messing with my zen/hope-for-the-future thing.

Keep posting peeps, knowing I'm not the only person who thinks we've jumped in a hand basket to hell is pretty comforting

Julia Trillard posted:

Summary of the Commission of Audit findings:
• gently caress you

Yeah Bro posted:

I hope I live to see Tony Abbott & his cabinet executed for crimes against humanity.

Haters Objector posted:

________________________/
"I feel like I've had a baby"

Sir Rabia Tirnova posted:

Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.

Justice the founder of my fabric mov'd:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.

Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.

Such characters in colour dim I mark'd
Over a portal's lofty arch inscrib'd:
Whereat I thus: Master, these words import.

Cassa posted:

Since when are the Liberals naturally charismatic?

Ettin posted:

Since I knew it would annoy someone

Murodese posted:

This has hands down been the most stupid loving thing I can imagine and I just rolled into lava 4 times in the same place in Dark Souls 2, so it is PRETTY GODDAMNED STUPID.

Cassa posted:

Your mother plays FATAL.

Cassa posted:

Since when are the Liberals naturally charismatic?

Abbott's smug sense of self-assuredness falls apart everytime he has to go slightly off the script.

Otherwise genius from the true D&D.

Cassa posted:

Your mother plays FATAL.

Cassa posted:

Your mother plays FATAL.

adamantium|wang posted:

adamantium|wang posted:

adamantium|wang posted:

quote:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/01/coalition-braces-backlash-audit-potential-victims

Coalition braces for angry backlash from potential cutback victims

Pensioners, students, low-income families, disabled people, the sick and public servants face 'sudden policy shocks'


Lenore Taylor, political editor
theguardian.com, Thursday 1 May 2014 18.55 AEST

Joe Hockey Joe Hockey says the audit report is 'not the budget'. Photograph: Alan Porritt/AAP

The Coalition is bracing for a significant political backlash as it refuses to rule out most of the highly contentious recommendations in the Commission of Audit report despite the fears being raised among pensioners, students, low-income families, disabled people, the sick and public servants.

And the head of the commission, Business Council of Australia president Tony Shepherd, has questioned the rationale for the government’s plan to impose an immediate tax hike for higher income earners to “share” the budget pain – saying there was not really a short-term “budget emergency” but rather a serious longer term structural problem with the nation’s finances.

Shepherd said the audit commission had deliberately avoided big immediate spending cuts that could hurt consumer and business confidence and “sudden policy shocks” that would make it harder to convince the community of the need for fundamental change.

The government has all but confirmed it is considering a temporary tax increase for higher earners, despite deep concerns in its own ranks and the fact that a tax increase would constitute a clear broken promise.

“There is a need for an immediate special effort … to strengthen our starting position as we move to reduce the deficit ... so the decisions we are considering is how to make sure the immediate special effort is spread fairly across the whole community,” the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, said.

Shepherd said the government was “saying they need to act now to get out of deficit quickly and to get the money to invest in infrastructure to speed the economic recovery.

“It’s a political judgment really, and I agree with the need for infrastructure spending, but economically you have to be careful you don’t hit confidence.”

A longer term way to spread the budget “pain” to the wealthy would be to wind back some of the $30bn in superannuation concession paid each year. The commission said that as a tax measure this was beyond its brief to look at government spending, but added “many superannuation tax concessions disproportionately benefit higher income earners, when compared to taxation at marginal tax rates under the progressive income tax system” and suggested they be examined by the government’s tax review.

The treasurer, Joe Hockey, insisted the report was “not the budget” and not all of the commission’s recommended cuts would be adopted, and many would be referred off to other government reviews of taxation and federal-state relations. But he refused to rule out any recommendations other than the suggestion that the government reconsider its long term goal for increasing defence spending and the recommendation to include the full value of the family home in the means test for the aged pension. In an interview on the ABC’s 7.30, Cormann would not rule out the commission’s recommendation that high income earners should be forced to take out private health insurance for basic medical services – a step that would effectively end Australia’s system of universal health care.

Meanwhile, the public service union warned the commission was under-estimating its calculation that its recommendations for abolishing and merging government agencies would cost 15,000 jobs, saying the real figure would be closer to 25,000.

Disability groups reacted angrily to the call for a slower roll out of the national disability insurance scheme and the Australian Council of Social Service said the report’s recommendations threatened Australia’s social safety net and failed the “fairness test”.

“It is fair and reasonable to expect that governments to ensure that when any of us get sick we can get treatment; that when we lose our job, there’s a safety net to see us through the tough times; and that all children get a chance to a decent education,” ACOSS chief Cassandra Goldie said.

“These reasonable expectations are under challenge by proposals to create a two-tiered system in health and education that will result in decent services for those who can afford to pay and a second rate system for those who can’t. For this reason we reject the proposal of a GP co-payment that will severely impact people on the lowest incomes and those with chronic illness. It would lead to reduced visits to doctors and greater pressure on the hospital system.”

The Labor party and the Greens seized on the report to accuse the government of hitting the poor and cutting services for working families.

The Greens say the commission’s terms of reference were “rigged” to get the recommendations the government wanted, that it was a report “by business, for business”. The Greens have called Shepherd before a Senate inquiry Friday morning to “explain himself”.

And Clive Palmer said his Palmer United Party would not support any of the suggested changes to the aged pension.

Hockey said it was “kind of ridiculous” for the government to be required to keep every election promise when it had inherited a budget which Labor had falsely promised would return to surplus.

“All this talk about broken promises, of course we will endeavour to keep our promises … but please, this idea that everything we said is going to be held against us ... given what has moved on us is kind of ridiculous,” he said.

And he said the report proved that there was an urgent task to repair the budget and avoid deficits and increasing national debt into the next decade.

He said the Coalition had "inherited a mess", with $123bn in projected deficits over four years.

"The challenge now is to get on with the job of fixing the mess, and we will," he said.

"...The fact is that unless structural reform is undertaken Australians will have a lesser quality of life in the future than they have today,’’ he said.

“I have no doubt that there'll be many issues that are highly contentious and somewhat difficult for various stakeholders and some in the community to accept. But there is an overwhelming challenge here and that is to ensure that the budget is structurally fit for the future.”

quote:

Commission of Audit: a recipe for a poorer, nastier and more brutish Australia
The prescriptions advocated by the Audit are stock-standard 1980s-era neoliberalism: privatise government assets, abolish government agencies, charge citizens more

Ben Eltham
theguardian.com, Thursday 1 May 2014 16.06 AEST


We always knew the Commission of Audit would produce a small government, low spending, neoliberal report.

Why? Because that’s what the government set it up to do.

The Commission of Audit was announced as a supposedly independent body. But the people doing the auditing are mostly rusted-on, hardline conservatives. Tony Shepherd, a former chairman of Transfield, is also the former boss of big business lobby group, the Business Council of Australia. Peter Boxall is a former chief of staff to Peter Costello. Howard government minister Amanda Vanstone is there too. This is a political body, set up to do a very political job.

The giveaway is there in black and white, in the Audit’s terms of reference. These give it “a broad remit to examine the scope for efficiency and productivity improvements across all areas of Commonwealth expenditure, and to make recommendations to achieve savings sufficient to deliver a surplus of 1% of GDP prior to 2023-24.” Top of the list: to “ensure taxpayers are receiving value-for-money from each dollar spent” and “eliminate wasteful spending.”

Framing an exercise like this as delivering value for money and cutting waste ensures that the debate is all about government spending. There is no acknowledgement that the real cause of the current deficit is a shortfall in revenues, not a blow-out in expenditures. Nor is there any mention of the fact that the Commonwealth’s spending is low by OECD standards, and in fact is broadly consistent with spending levels in the later years of the Howard government.

The Audit ignores all this. “We have spent beyond our means for too long,” it complains, bemoaning the “sixth consecutive budget deficit.”

It’s as though that minor event known as the global financial crisis never happened. This is truly the “autistic” economics that a group of French university students protested about in June 2000.

The prescriptions advocated by the Audit are stock-standard 1980s-era neoliberalism. Privatise government assets. Cut red tape. Abolish or amalgamate government agencies. Charge citizens more for government services, like visits to the doctor. Slash government benefits, especially for the most vulnerable. Make students pay more for their education. Reduce foreign aid. Abolish national protections, like a national minimum wage. Halt Commonwealth support for the homeless.

This is a recipe for a poorer, nastier and more brutish Australia. If implemented, it would mark the beginning of the end of the Australian fair go.

By far the most radical proposal is to junk a century of federal-state relations and return huge swathes of the Commonwealth’s functions to the states. This is cloud cuckoo stuff. The states are struggling to fund the services and functions they currently provide. It is absurd to believe a tiny state like Tasmania can provide the kind of advanced public services that all citizens demand. Australians should not be condemned to lower standards of living and poorer public services just because they live in a small state.

The idea to give the states a 10% income tax tells you all you need to know. Despite a mania for reducing complexity, the Commission of Audit wants to cut federal tax rates, only to increase them again with an extra income tax for the states. At the same time as it complains about duplication, the Audit wants to take single, federal programs and devolve them to eight separate states and territories. Go figure.

We don’t need to ask ourselves what Australia would look like if this radical plan were implemented. Just look across the Pacific. The United States has a small federal government as a share of GDP, and devolves many public services to its states. It has a vestigial or non-existent social safety net. It has low taxes and many social services are privatised. In other words, it is exactly the sort of country the Commission of Audit would like to see Australia become.

How is the small government, market-is-best ideology working for the US? America has endemic intergenerational poverty, massive inequality, crumbling infrastructure and lower life expectancy that Australia. America’s public finances are much worse than Australia’s, with huge deficits and a growing public debt. Its economy has grown much more slowly than Australia’s over the past decade; its middle classes have actually shrunk since the mid-1970s.

You’d have to be a certain sort of person to want this future for Australia. You’d have to be driven by ideology, not evidence. You’d have to have internalised a certain type of economic theory that tells you that markets are always better, and that governments are always worse. You’d have no fear of cuts to government benefits or services, because your large personal fortune ensures you can always pay the best for everything.

Needless to say, no one who worked on this Audit was a homeless person, a worker on minimum wage, or someone with a permanent disability. Instead, an unrepresentative and partisan group has used shoddy arithmetic and junk economics in an attempt to destroy a century of Australian social welfare.

quote:

Philosophical blueprint takes us back to 1901
Laura Tingle
Political editor


Tony Shepherd has observed that in looking for guidance on how to overhaul government spending, his National Commission of Audit had gone back to the Constitution.

He could have equally said the commission wants to take us back to 1901 and the original envisioning of how the federation would work.

That is not necessarily a bad thing, just a very different world to the one we now know. It is a world where the federal government was little more than a post box and the states were the primary collectors of income taxation and the primary deliverer of services like health and education.

But in the context of 2014, it is a world which – if the Coalition chooses to travel there – offers the spectre of an almost certain new divide and contest in Australian politics between the federalist Coalition and an almost certainly centralist Labor Party, not to mention the rise of a more hotly contested intra-state political competition.

Hell, in an echo of the 1907 Harvester Judgment that established much of Australia’s subsequent political discourse, there is even a recommendation on a process for cutting the minimum wage.

We already know there is much in the commission of audit’s report that will never, ever be implemented. The government has already told us so.

But when you read the report, it is obvious how much the “vibe of the thing” has influenced the public utterances of the Prime Minister, Treasurer and cabinet ministers about where they want to take public policy during their tenure in office.

Major speeches by Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey, Health Minister Peter Dutton, as well as two offshore speeches by Education Minister Christopher Pyne and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop all read from the commission’s song sheet.

So you should read the commission’s report as the philosophical blueprint of the government, albeit with assumptions that many of its recommendations may ultimately be implemented in spirit rather than in the detail.

If the Prime Minister is serious about pursuing the commission’s federalist vision, the sheer complexity of the task could consume the government for much of its time in office, even though it has already signalled it will have a white paper process to consider federalism questions later this year.

The commission’s proposals to undo the current system of “fiscal equalisation” – in which wealthier states support states doing it tougher – may have some superficial appeal to donor states, particularly Western Australia. But just imagine the nightmare of trying to get an agreement from all the states on rewriting the whole system.

That is even before we get to questions of a double layered income tax structure in which the federal government collects its own income tax, then an income tax surcharge (different for each state) for the next level of government.

In the meantime, the questions raised by the report are the ones about the medium-term outlook for the budget and, of course, what it tells us about what will be in the budget.

The striking thing about the commission’s projections is just how slowly it predicts a fall in government spending, despite all its proposals for radical change. Consider this: the first Howard budget knocked spending as a percentage of GDP down by 1 percentage point in a year.

The audit’s projections foreshadow a 2 percentage point fall occurring over 10 years – and half of this is predicted to occur in the next two to three years as a result of decisions already taken by the former government. And that is despite estimating its savings proposals could improve the budget bottom line by $60 billion to $70 billion a year.

It is despite recommending, in the medium term, increases in the pension age, comprehensive new pension means tests, forcing young unemployed people to move after 12 months, and renegotiating hospital funding. The commission says the federal budget can get back to balance in 2018-19 and surplus by 2019-20 under its proposals. However, that surplus is based on revenue figures way above what itself advocates.

It has the budget going into the black, with revenue hitting 25 per cent of GDP – even though it argues the cap should be 24 per cent.

More dangerously for the Coalition, it also does not seek to start giving back “bracket creep” and maintaining revenue at a capped rate until 2019-20.

The government has already been throwing out burley in the form of promises of personal tax cuts in four years to appease voters outraged by the proposed short-term “debt tax”.

The spectre of either side of politics being able to resist the urge to give tax cuts for more than five years seems unlikely at best. If so, that means a surplus remains a long way off.

In the next fortnight, considerable energy will be exerted on speculating which measures will be taken up in the budget. And there is plenty of radical change to government spending in the report that is likely to find its way into the budget: from shunting high to middle income earners out of Medicare to much speculated changes to the age pension, Medicare co-payments and abolition of family tax benefits.

There is the political embarrassment for Abbott of yet another rebuff on his paid parental leave scheme (which the commission politely makes clear is a dud), and a recommendation to get rid of the controversial election campaign funding of $16 million to the Cadbury factory in Tasmania.

The upside, presumably, is that some of the recommendations are so “out there” the government will be able to let them run for the next week or so, in the hope voters will be relieved they are not in the budget.

But after the debacle of increased taxes, voters might not be in any mood for that message.