Quote:

..............The two leaders have agreed to a question-and-answer session with the public at the Rooty Hill RSL in western Sydney tomorrow after Mr Abbott refused to agree to a formal debate with the Prime Minister on the economy. The forum is being held in the RSL's Waratah Room, which seats just over 350 people and is used for small-scale music concerts. Two hundred undecided voters, chosen by the Galaxy polling company, will be given an hour to question Ms Gillard and Mr Abbott separately on their policies and vision for the country. It will be televised live around the country by Sky News from 6pm (AEST) and hosted by Sky's political editor, David Speers. ..

will it be on free to air tv ??

Why? can't you afford foxtel??


labor voter are you? broke? well vote for Gillard and take in that carbon tax she wants? then you may not even be able to afford your Tv?? Hell you may even be lucky enough to score an interest rate rise,

the banks will raise rates .15% 1 week after the election, then the RBA will raise .25% 2 sittings time.

This people of this country are being bled dry

Well, this way when Gillard loses again, not too many people will see it.

Reminds me of the fox and the hound....


8-)

Sprintcyclist wrote on Aug 10^th, 2010 at 10:44am:

Quote: ..............The two leaders have agreed to a question-and-answer session with the public at the Rooty Hill RSL in western Sydney tomorrow after Mr Abbott refused to agree to a formal debate with the Prime Minister on the economy. The forum is being held in the RSL's Waratah Room, which seats just over 350 people and is used for small-scale music concerts. Two hundred undecided voters, chosen by the Galaxy polling company, will be given an hour to question Ms Gillard and Mr Abbott separately on their policies and vision for the country. It will be televised live around the country by Sky News from 6pm (AEST) and hosted by Sky's political editor, David Speers. .. will it be on free to air tv ??

It should be ... not everyone wants Foxtel. It depends if Sky News has some sort of deal with Channel 9 - they might release it.


Quote:

Why? can't you afford foxtel?? labor voter are you? broke? well vote for Gillard and take in that carbon tax she wants? then you may not even be able to afford your Tv?? Hell you may even be lucky enough to score an interest rate rise,

Stop making such personal comments. I vote Green with my second preference going to labor - and I have Foxtel.

I have never voted labor and I don't have any pay tv.
Nor do I want any.

laborfornever wrote on Aug 10^th, 2010 at 12:55pm:

Why? can't you afford foxtel?? labor voter are you? broke? well vote for Gillard and take in that carbon tax she wants? then you may not even be able to afford your Tv?? Hell you may even be lucky enough to score an interest rate rise, the banks will raise rates .15% 1 week after the election, then the RBA will raise .25% 2 sittings time. This people of this country are being bled dry

You dont read many other posts for you to say that Laborfoever, sprint is more to the right than Tony Abbott, lol :o

skippy. wrote on Aug 10^th, 2010 at 1:10pm:

laborfornever wrote on Aug 10th, 2010 at 12:55pm: Why? can't you afford foxtel?? labor voter are you? broke? well vote for Gillard and take in that carbon tax she wants? then you may not even be able to afford your Tv?? Hell you may even be lucky enough to score an interest rate rise, the banks will raise rates .15% 1 week after the election, then the RBA will raise .25% 2 sittings time. This people of this country are being bled dry You don't read many other posts for you to say that Laborfoever, sprint is more to the right than Tony Abbott, lol :o

Nice pick-up Skip, if this were true.

8-)

I'll let sprint answer that himself, but really, if you have a look at sprints signature its a bit of a give up.

Quote:

..............The two leaders have agreed to a question-and-answer session with the public at the Rooty Hill RSL in western Sydney tomorrow after Mr Abbott refused to agree to a formal debate with the Prime Minister on the economy. The forum is being held in the RSL's Waratah Room, which seats just over 350 people and is used for small-scale music concerts. Two hundred undecided voters, chosen by the Galaxy polling company, will be given an hour to question Ms Gillard and Mr Abbott separately on their policies and vision for the country. It will be televised live around the country by Sky News from 6pm (AEST) and hosted by Sky's political editor, David Speers. ..

I too have no intentions of signing up to pay TV...

That said, IM(not-so)HO: if this pseudo-debate is not televised in full on free-to-air TV, then the risk is high that the nation will not be availed of a fair and balanced assessment of the performance of the 2 wannabe PMs in this debate...

I suppose that it remains to be seen, whether the Sky commentary will be self-servingly biased...

laborfornever wrote on Aug 10^th, 2010 at 12:55pm:

Why? can't you afford foxtel?? labor voter are you? broke? well vote for Gillard and take in that carbon tax she wants? then you may not even be able to afford your Tv?? Hell you may even be lucky enough to score an interest rate rise, the banks will raise rates .15% 1 week after the election, then the RBA will raise .25% 2 sittings time. This people of this country are being bled dry

Personal much? How do you know a) S/he is broke and b) S/he is a labor voter? I am Labor and I have Pay TV internet etc.

James Bluntus wrote on Aug 10^th, 2010 at 2:06pm:

[quote author=laborfornever link=1281401100/0#1 date=1281408925]Why? can't you afford foxtel?? Personal much? How do you know a) S/he is broke and b) S/he is a labor voter? I am Labor and I have Pay TV internet etc.

You said earlier that you are 15 nearly 16 yrs old,  so are Mum and Dad paying for your Pay internet etc.  ?

George wrote on Aug 10^th, 2010 at 4:19pm:

James Bluntus wrote on Aug 10th, 2010 at 2:06pm: [quote author=laborfornever link=1281401100/0#1 date=1281408925]Why? can't you afford foxtel?? Personal much? How do you know a) S/he is broke and b) S/he is a labor voter? I am Labor and I have Pay TV internet etc. You said earlier that you are 15 nearly 16 yrs old,  so are Mum and Dad paying for your Pay internet etc.  ?

LOL, he's got you there James.

;)

laborfornever wrote on Aug 10^th, 2010 at 12:55pm:

Hell you may even be lucky enough to score an interest rate rise, the banks will raise rates .15% 1 week after the election, then the RBA will raise .25% 2 sittings time. This people of this country are being bled dry

Notwithstanding that I regard interest rate tweaking as a ridiculously blunt and inherently regressive economic tool, what is it with you Conservatives and your ignorant and irrational prattle about interest rates!?

Seriously, does somebody...anybody...wanna remind us, in economic terms: what rising official interest rates are a sign of - and conversely, what falling official interest rates are a symptom of!?

Looking forward to your enlightened responses, ta!

Interest is the price of borrowed money, you prat. I am not surprised you post all that dreadful lefty bombast. You don't have even a nodding acquaintance with basic economic ideas.


Now why does the price of something increase? Either because there is less of it or there are more people who want it. Why does the price of something go down? Because there is more of it or there are fewer people who want it.
One way to reduce the available amount of money people can borrow? Let the government borrow it.

WHat else determines the price of borrowed money? Inflation. That's the erosion of a currency's value.

Lend me $100 at 5% interets for a year, at 0% inflation and I will give you $105 this time next year. You earned $5 for letting me use your money.

Lend me $100 at 5% interest when inflation is 10% and I will give you $105 which will only be worth about $95 *(talking in round figures). You would be a fool to do this so you would actually charge 15% interest to get your value back plus your earning. Now I would have to think hard if I can borrow at 15%. If my wages don't go up by at least 10% in a year, I would be paying more of my income to you in interest than if inflation was 0%. In fact, if my wages go up by anything under 10% p.a., its  value diminishes constantly.

If the inflation is hyper fast, like in Zimbabwe or in the Weimar Republic before Hitler, Your weekly pay would be worth only a dozen eggs (if you bae lucky) by the weekend (so you'd switch to a less debauched currency or a less debauched government).

The two leaders have agreed to a question-and-answer session with the public at the Rooty Hill RSL in western Sydney tomorrow after Mr Abbott refused to agree to a formal debate with the Prime Minister on the economy.
=====================================


Why Abbott agree to this;

Rupert Murdoch summons Gillard and Abbott to Rooty Hill

If you live in Western Sydney and think this debate is about you. You're wrong.

You didn't know that the whole fabricated "debate" at Rooty Hill RSL on Wednesday was a Murdoch construct? Why didn't you know that?

Surely it wouldn't be because the ABC has failed to tell you that it is a charade invented by the discredited crooks at News Ltd. The ABC must have been too busy to point out that it is nothing more than a crude and ugly exercise in Murdochracy, that must be it.

The 'Daily Telegraph' is not a newspaper. It looks like one, but it is simply an instrument of Murdoch neo-con propaganda.

Ask your local candidates when they will prohibit old Americans from owning 70% of Australia's news media and controlling close to 100% of the news agenda.

Soren wrote on Aug 10^th, 2010 at 6:01pm:

Interest is the price of borrowed money, you prat. I am not surprised you post all that dreadful lefty bombast. You don't have even a nodding acquaintance with basic economic ideas. Now why does the price of something increase? Either because there is less of it or there are more people who want it. Why does the price of something go down? Because there is more of it or there are fewer people who want it. One way to reduce the available amount of money people can borrow? Let the government borrow it. WHat else determines the price of borrowed money? Inflation. That's the erosion of a currency's value. Lend me $100 at 5% interets for a year, at 0% inflation and I will give you $105 this time next year. You earned $5 for letting me use your money. Lend me $100 at 5% interest when inflation is 10% and I will give you $105 which will only be worth about $95 *(talking in round figures). You would be a fool to do this so you would actually charge 15% interest to get your value back plus your earning. Now I would have to think hard if I can borrow at 15%. If my wages don't go up by at least 10% in a year, I would be paying more of my income to you in interest than if inflation was 0%. In fact, if my wages go up by anything under 10% p.a., its  value diminishes constantly. If the inflation is hyper fast, like in Zimbabwe or in the Weimar Republic before Hitler, Your weekly pay would be worth only a dozen eggs (if you bae lucky) by the weekend (so you'd switch to a less debauched currency or a less debauched government).

Wow, Soren swallows Hockey’s line about govt borrowing putting up the price of money, interest rates.

Maybe 20 years ago that would have been correct, now it is totally wrong. Govt borrows on global money markets, not in local Australian markets, and on the global markets what the govt borrows is 2/3 of a fleabite. Hockey and Soren show their economic illiteracy there!

Swan's balancing act won't add up
May 13, 2010



The budget focus on beating mythical surplus schedules hides an inconvenient truth.

It was a strange budget speech on Tuesday night. It was all about the financial year of 2012-13 - three years away. That year is a happy year, when the budget will balance for the first time in five years and the Australian government will stop running up new debt.

That year there will be a new tax on the mining industry, and the year after there will be an increase in the superannuation guarantee of 0.25 per cent.
Advertisement: Story continues below

All very interesting.

But this budget is about the financial year that starts on July 1. The budget speech is a request for Parliament to appropriate money to various expenditures over the next 12 months. The Treasurer has to explain where all the money is going and where it will come from. And if the government spends more than it raises, it should explain how it will finance the difference.

So you may not have picked it up. For the record, government spending will exceed revenue in the next financial year - a deficit of $40 billion - which will be financed by new debt. In dollar terms, it is the second-highest deficit on record, and in percentage terms about the level we had in the recession of 1983 and the recession of 1992. Except we're not in recession. We are in the middle of the greatest mining boom since the gold rush.

The decision to focus on the budget that comes after the one after this one worked a treat. Watching Kerry O'Brien interview Wayne Swan on The 7.30 Report, I was struck by how he immediately focused on the 2013 outcome. We were out of the present. It was like we had gone forward in a time machine. Swan even made the absurd claim that the government will balance the budget three years ahead of schedule.

What schedule would that be? That would be the schedule in last year's budget, which dumped the schedule of the year before. In 2008, we were going to have surplus as far as the eye could see. In 2009, we were going to have deficit as far as the eye could see. The 2008 forecast was complacent. The 2009 forecast was a counter-reaction. Neither represented reality. You cannot beat something that was never going to occur.

And since the 2008 forecast was out of date after six months and the 2009 forecast went the same way, logic suggests we should be careful talking about outcomes for 2013.

Instead of this absurd claim about beating mythical schedules, the best thing to say would be: "It was unfortunate we were wrong in 2008. But it was fortunate we were wrong in 2009. While we may be wrong again, we're now somewhere in the middle."

So let us forget the distracting discussion of what will not happen in 2012-13 and ask some real questions about what is happening now. Should an economy that successfully avoided the financial contagion that came out of America in 2008, and which is undergoing a mining boom of unprecedented proportions, and after six interest rate rises in a row be running a budget deficit of 3 per cent of GDP?

Let me ask an even easier question: Should such a government be rolling out "stimulus" spending - paying over-inflated prices to build assembly halls in schools that did not ask for them and will have to generate ways to use them?

Should a government, in the middle of a mining boom, need to increase the rate of taxation given that it is already raking in record tax from the mining sector?

It was laughable to hear the Treasurer talking before the budget about how he would not engage in an election-year spendathon. That was because he did the mother of all spendathons last year allocating new spending for that year, and this, and the one after - spending that he has no intention of paring back because the government thinks that school halls in marginal electorates will be electorally useful.

The government allocated $100 billion of new discretionary spending over four years from 2008. Only the Whitlam government compares. But in this strange universe in which future budgets are announced rather than present ones, past events are somehow erased.

And the luckiest break in the past year was the collapse of the Copenhagen climate talks - because Labor's medium-term strategy is to ride the mining boom for all it is worth. Whatever it says in overseas environmental forums, back here it proposes to exploit rising prices for carbon energy and carbon intensive mining for every dollar it can extract. The Treasury forecasts record prices in 2011 and 10 years of boom after that. It estimates Australia's terms of trade will be about 60 per cent higher than the long-term average.

The government's environment policy would have undermined this industry and its tax policy could well do the same. Let us hope it can be saved from itself a second time.

Peter Costello was federal treasurer from 1996 to 2007.

Source: The Age
_________________________
Mooeevin foerweerd three years apparently, sigh~!
Why wont Swan discuss this budget, preferring to discuss one three years ahead of itself?
Was this intentional, or has he had a stroke?

Costello is an idiot. In the GFC chinese demand for our dirt dropped, i.e. no more mining boom.

Yes, the stimulus was needed and still is supporting our economy, esp in construction.

Darwin wrote on Aug 10^th, 2010 at 8:25pm:

Costello is an idiot. In the AFC chines e demand for our dirt dropped, i.e. no more mining boom. Yes, the stimulus was needed and still is supporting our economy, esp in construction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veOOfugldKg&feature=player_embeddedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veOOfugldKg&feature=player_embedded

Darwin wrote on Aug 10^th, 2010 at 8:25pm:

Costello is an idiot. In the GFC chinese demand for our dirt dropped, i.e. no more mining boom. Yes, the stimulus was needed and still is supporting our economy, esp in construction.

Costello knows his stuff, and was the best treasure this country has ever seen.

You know it, I know it, everyone knows it....which is why Labor tried to use his qualified opinion in one of their own campaign commercials, pity for them, Australia are aware they took what he said out of context, this and know what he said has absolutely no bearing on Tony Abbotts capacity to lead a party today.

When all Labor have is a miserable failed Swan come lame duck who cant even make sense of his own budget, preferring to discuss a more futuristic 2013 budget instead of the current one he's mangled.

My god, even their unions are turning their backs on them.

And you think this is encouraging news for Labor?

Think again.

8-)....

Darwin wrote on Aug 10^th, 2010 at 7:48pm:

Soren wrote on Aug 10th, 2010 at 6:01pm: Interest is the price of borrowed money, you prat. I am not surprised you post all that dreadful lefty bombast. You don't have even a nodding acquaintance with basic economic ideas. Now why does the price of something increase? Either because there is less of it or there are more people who want it. Why does the price of something go down? Because there is more of it or there are fewer people who want it. One way to reduce the available amount of money people can borrow? Let the government borrow it. WHat else determines the price of borrowed money? Inflation. That's the erosion of a currency's value. Lend me $100 at 5% interets for a year, at 0% inflation and I will give you $105 this time next year. You earned $5 for letting me use your money. Lend me $100 at 5% interest when inflation is 10% and I will give you $105 which will only be worth about $95 *(talking in round figures). You would be a fool to do this so you would actually charge 15% interest to get your value back plus your earning. Now I would have to think hard if I can borrow at 15%. If my wages don't go up by at least 10% in a year, I would be paying more of my income to you in interest than if inflation was 0%. In fact, if my wages go up by anything under 10% p.a., its  value diminishes constantly. If the inflation is hyper fast, like in Zimbabwe or in the Weimar Republic before Hitler, Your weekly pay would be worth only a dozen eggs (if you bae lucky) by the weekend (so you'd switch to a less debauched currency or a less debauched government). Wow, Soren swallows Hockey’s line about govt borrowing putting up the price of money, interest rates. Maybe 20 years ago that would have been correct, now it is totally wrong. Govt borrows on global money markets, not in local Australian markets, and on the global markets what the govt borrows is 2/3 of a fleabite. Hockey and Soren show their economic illiteracy there!

The current Government debt is similar to someone on average wages ($65K) borrowing somethjing like $56K. That's being in debt to the tune of 86 % of your income. Doesn't sound like a fleabite to me.
Next year, the government debt will exceed goivernment income.  Darwin, what do you think that means?

Darwin wrote on Aug 10^th, 2010 at 8:25pm:

Costello is an idiot. In the GFC chinese demand for our dirt dropped, i.e. no more mining boom. Yes, the stimulus was needed and still is supporting our economy, esp in construction.

Costello explains the problem - Darwin, the greatest treasurer we never had, sums it us as 'costello is an idiot'. I am amazed by the amount of thought that goes into lefty sloganeering and ear-blocking.

mellie wrote on Aug 10^th, 2010 at 8:34pm:

Darwin wrote on Aug 10th, 2010 at 8:25pm: Costello is an idiot. In the GFC chinese demand for our dirt dropped, i.e. no more mining boom. Yes, the stimulus was needed and still is supporting our economy, esp in construction. Costello knows his stuff, and was the best treasure this country has ever seen.You know it, I know it, everyone knows it....which is why Labor tried to use his qualified opinion in one of their own campaign commercials, pity for them, Australia are aware they took what he said out of context, this and know what he said has absolutely no bearing on Tony Abbotts capacity to lead a party today. When all Labor have is a miserable failed Swan come lame duck who cant even make sense of his own budget, preferring to discuss a more futuristic 2013 budget instead of the current one he's mangled. My god, even their unions are turning their backs on them. And you think this is encouraging news for Labor? Think again. 8-)....

Is that your opinion that Costello is Australia greatest ever treasurer ever seen. If he is Australia's greatest Treasurer give us a link were it says so.

Was Costello ever voted the World's best Treasurer by his peers if he was then you can say he is ONE OF AUSTRALIA BEST EVER TREASURER Australia ever seen.

The only Treasurer that I know that was voted by his peers as the worlds greatest treasurer was Keating.

http://www.bookrags.com/biography/paul-john-keating/


Keating, with the reputation as a political killer with a sharp tongue, made his mark as federal treasurer. Labor in office embraced the free markets philosophy it had earlier opposed and, instead of reversing moves to liberalize the financial system, it advanced the process of financial de-regulation that had begun under the Liberal coalition government. By the end of his first year as treasurer Keating had overseen a move to float the Australian dollar and remove virtually all exchange controls and was pushing to allow foreign banks to operate in Australia. The following year the influential magazine Euromoney voted Keating its finance minister of the year at the 1984 annual International Monetary Fund/World Bank meeting in Washington.