longweekend58 wrote on Aug 4^th, 2010 at 1:06pm:


I don't know if you saw this Longy but I wouldn't really be holding Abbott up as a financial manager.

Tony Abbott is offering Australia a faith-based economics policy -

because there's such a lack of vital detail that it requires deep belief in Abbott and his team.

And that's hard, because none of the Coalition economics team has even one day's experience managing a national economy.

Together with national defence, managing the economy is one of the two great responsibilities that fall uniquely to the federal government.

Abbott chants a sacred daily mantra: "End the waste, pay back the debt, stop the big new taxes and stop the boats."

Yet when he was asked yesterday when he would return the budget to surplus, he had no answer. Pressed by a reporter - "You don't know when the country will be back in surplus under a Coalition government?" - he dodged.

Abbott told a news conference in Brisbane that he couldn't nominate a time because, "I don't know what I will inherit" from Labor.

Two problems. First, it's unconvincing. If he wins and discovers Labor has lied about the public accounts, he need only say so and he would be held blameless.

Second, his answer is very odd because on the same day, Joe Hockey told reporters in another part of Queensland: "It's the Coalition that will deliver a surplus in three years' time, a real surplus."

In fact, it's point one in Abbott's "Action Contract" with the Australian people: "Restore the budget surplus within three years".

So is Abbott abandoning his Action Contract? Or does he not know his own policy? Is "pay back the debt" not really a policy, just a slogan?

The relentless media attention on the Labor Party's woes has allowed the Opposition Leader to come within three weeks of winning power just skating on economic policy.

Abbott promises to "end the waste''. OK, but what policy framework would he impose? Where will the discipline come from?

The government has committed itself to a limit of 2 per cent annual growth in real spending as it restores the budget.

The opposition has not committed to match this, nor has it proposed any other fiscal rule. So "ending the waste" is just a slogan, too.

What about the third economic leg of the Abbott mantra, "stop the big new taxes?"

Abbott has promised to dump the government's proposed mining tax, projected to raise $10.5 billion in its first two years. But he is also promising a new tax on larger companies, a 1.5 per cent levy, raising $6.1 billion in the first two years, to help pay for his paid parental leave scheme. Isn't that a big new tax?

Ah, says Abbott, but it's only temporary: "Once the budget position has been restored, we will reduce the levy and eventually abolish it," says the Liberal policy published yesterday.

OK, and when will the budget position be restored? This takes us back to Abbott's first answer. If he won't say, we can't know.

Or if his Action Contract is really Liberal policy, it will be in 2013. Which is exactly when the corporate levy kicks in.

So in this case, the levy will be redundant even as it kicks in. Not only a big new tax, but an unnecessary one, according to the Liberals' own policy.

So Abbott is either renouncing his Action Contract, or he is proposing an unnecessary new $6.1 billion tax.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/surplus-blunder-reveals-coalitions-econom...

Sprintcyclist wrote on Aug 4^th, 2010 at 12:43pm:

NBN is a great investment, comparable to the Snowy Mountain Scheme in importance and scale. The whole ski industry in NSW is a by product of the SMS, the spin offs and by products of the NBN will be staggeringly vast.

And the NBN is not a regular outgoing or revenue item, its cancellation would not help the Budget bottom line by a dollar.

Sprint doesn't care about the NBN him and Abbott still rely on carrier pidgion.

Darwin wrote on Aug 4^th, 2010 at 2:30pm:


Your idiotic posts make skippy look rational and reserved. you are close to being totally wrong in every post. you are as dumb as a bag of hammers!

Verge wrote on Aug 4^th, 2010 at 2:37pm:


This GST furphy is typical of the desperate labor supporters on here. neither abbot or Gillard have even mentioned the GST and the possibility of raising it. it is nothing more than a desperate smear by a group of supporters unwilling to accept that labor are on the nose and could possibly lose this election.

longweekend58 wrote on Aug 4^th, 2010 at 2:39pm:


Bah! GST is federal legislation and the Libs could amend it the day Parliament first sits unless Mr X opposed it and who knows how that media tart would vote. Can’t you Libs put forward some decent arguments?

Darwin wrote on Aug 4^th, 2010 at 2:41pm:


A) what was the distance for this already admitted 'stunt'
B) was does 'fastest' have to necessarily be an advantage? so that  dopes like you can download more pirate movies twice as fast? FTTH wil give 24Mbs (not 100 as promised) and the average ADLS2+ speed is 12Mbs. So forty billion dollars to double the speed? and it wil be here by well.... 2020?? and howards braodband of national ADSL2+ woudl have been here already.
C) 50 years??? 50 years ago none of our current comms infrastruture was even indevelopment. I doubt very much that 2060 will see us ussing comms built in 2010. anyone who belives that is 12 years old.