Kegslayer posted:

Holy poo poo what is the loving point of this if it's not even properly costed?

Nibbles141 posted:

Libs recent strategy is to leak policy and then gauge public reaction. Most of the recommendations of this audit were already known, hell they stacked the panel to get it. They want to see what they can get away with.

Ettin posted:

Anyone mind if I whip up the May OP?

Haters Objector posted:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/01/immigration-detention-centre-services-should-be-reduced-audit-report?CMP=soc_568

ho lee poo poo

Kegslayer posted:

Here's the May OP.

Ettin posted:

Anyone mind if I whip up the May OP?

quote:

"[C]onsideration should be given to relaxing rules relating to ‘improper discrimination’ that prevent health funds from charging different prices based on a person’s individual characteristics"

Amethyst posted:

Why are monthly threads necessary? It's irritating to update my bookmark every month and it serves no purpose.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

rudatron posted:

You were here for that shitfest weren't you?

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Mad Katter posted:

This is going to be the same thing they have in the USA where anyone with any kind of preexisting condition can't get insurance and they just end up bankrupting their entire family or dying, right?

Mad Katter posted:

This is going to be the same thing they have in the USA where anyone with any kind of preexisting condition can't get insurance and they just end up bankrupting their entire family or dying, right?

Ragingsheep posted:

I think "Obamacare" actually stops insurers from doing this.

quote:

Pre-existing condition exclusions prohibited in all health insurance plans
Prohibit treating acts of domestic violence as a pre-existing condition

Seams posted:

The idea of this thing isn't to implement the ideas immediately or even soon (no doubt they would like this to happen though) but to get this poo poo out there in the public domain, being discussed by Serious People with Gravitas so that by the time they are implemented they don't seem so radical because the ideas have been floating around for a bit and don't sound so scary anymore.

Amethyst posted:

Why are monthly threads necessary? It's irritating to update my bookmark every month and it serves no purpose.

bell jar posted:

We get more lurkers and new posters with this format, and its easier for new people to catch up on

quote:

It’s time for the Australian public to grow up. No more politicians’ baby talk.

Australia is not in the grip of a full-blown fiscal crisis, as the commission of audit’s numbers show.

But after ramping up spending to protect the economy in global financial crisis, our federal politicians are having terrible trouble getting the budget back out of deficit.

That’s not unique to Australia. It’s always hard to put the fiscal bottle back in the cupboard – and that’s part of the reason why using fiscal policy to manage the economy got such a bad name around the world.

Australia’s federal government debt is not dangerously high now, and as the audit shows, it won’t be dangerously high even if we continue as we are for another 10 years.

In fact, even a repeat of the early 1990s recession would leave us with a net debt below the advanced economy’s pre-GFC average.

But if we don’t act now to get the budget back into surplus over the next five to 10 years, it will be harder to get it into surplus in the next in the next 10 years – and the budget and the federal government’s debt could become a potentially serious risk to growth, employment and living standards.

It’s time to act, and the audit report offers the government and, more importantly, the Australian public a well-thought-out and reasonably equitable path back to budget surplus.

If some of its recommendations – like tightened pension and aged-care means tests, co-payments for all Medicare services, mobility tests for long-term unemployed, and radical state tax reform – come as a shock, it is only because politicians have been shielding the public from reality.

Australia is entering a prolonged growth slowdown caused by demographic change and the post-boom decline in global commodity prices. Governments have to manage themselves a lot better, and the public has to get its collective head around that simple fact.

We can argue about the details, but either government spending has to be made sustainable, or taxes have to go up by quite a lot.

Anyone who thinks the answer is to tax the rich is dreaming. There are not enough of them. It is the taxes on middle income Australians that will have to go up. That was the message in the Treasury’s bracket creep projections: to get the budget deficit below 1 per cent of GDP without radical surgery requires taxpayers on average full time earnings to be lifted into the second highest income tax bracket.

Your Country Needs You, as the wartime posters used to say.

The choice for Australian voters is to support sensible reform of government spending and taxation (like a productivity-boosting change in the tax mix between income tax and the GST), phased in gradually so that everyone has time to adjust and minimise the personal cost, or sit, simmering frog-like as the risks of crisis attached to unreformed spending and taxation silently build.

Ettin posted:

Anyone mind if I whip up the May OP?

quote:

Anyone who thinks the answer is to tax the rich is dreaming. There are not enough of them. It is the taxes on middle income Australians that will have to go up. That was the message in the Treasury’s bracket creep projections: to get the budget deficit below 1 per cent of GDP without radical surgery requires taxpayers on average full time earnings to be lifted into the second highest income tax bracket.

quote:

The Commission of Audit has recommended a drastic cut to the minimum wage, and a radical overhaul of the national system.

The minimum wage is now $622.20 a week, which is 56 per cent of average weekly earnings.

But the commission wants to cut the minimum wage to about $488.90 a week, which is 44 per cent of average weekly earnings.

It wants to phase the change in over 10 years.

The commission says the new lower minimum wage should then be used as a “minimum wage benchmark” and states and territories should be able to set their own minimum wages – using the benchmark as a guide – to compete against each other for labour and business.

The proposal attacks the very idea of a national minimum wage.

“Having a single national minimum wage disadvantages workers attempting to gain a job in states like Tasmania and South Australia where wages and the costs of living are generally lower than in other states,” the report says.

“The commission recommends that a different minimum wage apply in each jurisdiction.”

Since there are big differences in economic conditions in each state, the wage rates in each state ought to be able to match conditions, the report argues.

“There are wide differences in wage rates between states. While the minimum wage is around 45 per cent of the Australian Capital Territory average weekly earnings, it is around 65 per cent of average weekly earnings in Tasmania,” it says.

It proposes that the minimum wage in each jurisdiction be equal to the minimum wage benchmark by 2023.

After that, the wage in each state could then increase in line with growth in that jurisdiction’s average weekly earnings.

But one question ought to be asked.

Why has the Commission of Audit touched the minimum wage at all, when it has little to do with government spending?

Well, the commission has allowed itself to do so by nesting it with government payments and assistance for the unemployed, such as Newstart and the Youth Allowance.

It argues that, if minimum wages are lowered, then more people will find work, particularly younger people, and that will mean the cost of government unemployment assistance will fall, therefore reducing government expenditure.

But it has not produced a figure showing how much the government can expect to save from the changes.

The commission has also recommended that, rather than have the Fair Work Commission set the minimum wage, the setting of the minimum wage ought to become an “administrative process”, possibly set by the Department of Employment.

And the commission has also recommended big changes to income support payments.

It argues that, if the level of income support is too close to the minimum wage, then people will lack the incentive to look for work.

It therefore recommends increasing the income test withdrawal rate to 75 per cent for Newstart recipients and other related allowances.

It has also recommended that single people aged 22 to 30 without dependents or special exemptions should have to relocate to higher employment areas if they don’t want to lose access to benefits after a period of 12 months on benefit.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/audit-commission-attacks-idea-of-minimum-wage-20140501-zr2lc.html#ixzz30RdmN8x6

webmeister posted:

Updating your bookmarks is literally two loving clicks how lazy are you

Bompacho posted:

May Auspol: World is Fukt *ROAR OF JETS OVERHEAD*

Amethyst posted:

No it isn't. It is 5 clicks minimum.

Mr Chips posted:

*Sound of non-flyable jets being serviced in hangers*

Ragingsheep posted:

Can't you just use the User Control Panel? Every thread I post into gets automatically bookmarked there.

Amethyst posted:

No it isn't. It is 5 clicks minimum.