https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/an...

Straight from a murdoch right-leaning newspaper.  Although as usual, when something is contrary, a certain coalition supporter will go into denial mode or pretend it doesn't exist.

Ahahahaha 54:46 to Labor and deluded, desperate Lib supporters try to breathe into life a Leadershit involving Labor. hahahahahahahah

Clearly, both Turdfull and Morriscum are for the high jump sometime this year but lib fanbois comfort themselves with the delusion that Shorten will be replaced.

Are the planets aligning for Mal and the good guys to overthrow the Lefties on the Dark Side ?



Finally, a foundation the Coalition can build on
NIKI SAVVA Opinion columnist Canberra The Australian 12:00AM May 18, 2017


Will Mal and Pauline save Australia from the destructive Socialists ?


If we can believe the polls, and we should because they all seem to be saying the same thing, voters paused, tuned in to the budget and generally liked what they saw. They gave all the major measures a big tick.

That big tick did not translate into a bounce for the government. It was never going to, although Malcolm Turnbull’s personal ratings have improved, with the gap widening between him and Bill Shorten as preferred prime minister. No wonder, given Shorten’s increasingly shrill responses, branding anyone on $87,002 a millionaire.

Turnbull’s enemies keep hopin’, wishin’ and prayin’ the other gap, the one showing the government would lose an election held now, will trigger a move against him. It isn’t happening for three reasons, as previously canvassed: there is no viable alternative; the people who matter on the left and right — whatever qualms they may have about the philosophical bent of some measures including education funding or internal bank staffing regulations — still believe a turnaround is possible; most of them accept another political assassination of a prime minister would be like the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones. Survivors would see out their years in opposition or retirement.

Although disappointed by the stubbornness of the polls, Turnbull’s Praetorian Guard has not broken ranks, knowing only a long, sustained period of governing and delivery will improve the government’s standing, which is why the fantasists do everything they can to create the impression of incompetence, disunity or dysfunction.

Turnbull’s task, and that of his ministers, is to ignore provocations and stay focused. They know voters are crankier than ever, more cynical, more frustrated and much less forgiving.

Scott Morrison got the mes­sage face-to-face at a public forum on the NSW central coast on Monday night when, to their relief, colleagues saw the Treasurer’s mojo finally kick in.

There is no doubt Morrison’s performance has improved. A few months ago, the grumbles of colleagues led to speculation he was on the way out of the Treasury portfolio. Backbenchers can find a million reasons to whinge about their treasurers, sometimes with good reason, and in Morrison’s case occasionally there were good reasons.

They have receded. Apart from a dig at the ABC’s Barrie Cassidy on Sunday, Morrison has maintained his equilibrium and perspective. He has handled the post-budget sell with confidence and assurance. It is a highly taxing (pardon the pun) time for any treasurer. The sheer volume of work in budget preparation and subsequent selling is staggering. Morrison de-stresses by cooking — curries, mostly — going to church, to the footy, or spending time with his wife and kids. Before speaking at an event in Melbourne on Friday night, his companions were puzzled at the level of attention he paid to his phone. He was watching his beloved Sharks slay the Dragons.

Morrison, like most of his colleagues, is unfazed by the absence of a sugar hit from the budget or the booing and hissing of delcons cross-dressing as policy purists. Even though they know the banks will do what they always do and slug their customers, just because they can, the government remains more than satisfied with the reaction to the “levy”.

It is being painted as a revenge tax or an arrogance tax. It’s more accurately described as an “up yours” tax. The banks should not underestimate the level of exasperation of Coalition MPs, including very conservative ones, about their behaviour, which includes but goes beyond their shabby treatment of customers.

They feel the banks have turned up on the wrong side of battles, whenever they have bothered to turn up. Not only do the banks refuse to pass on the full value of interest rate cuts, MPs accuse the banks of sitting back while the government defended them in the face of demands for a royal commission, copping all the flak for it, only to see the banks appoint a former Labor premier to spruik for them.

Then when the government was slugging it out with Labor over its planned company tax cuts, the banks stayed in a neutral corner. To add insult to injury, after the election they announced they would no longer be making political donations.

Conservative MPs were angered when the banks, along with other corporations, came out in support of same-sex marriage. Moderate MPs were irate because the banks had waited until after the government’s policy to hold a plebiscite was voted down before declaring.

They were infuriated when the banks flaunted their reluctance to provide any money for coalmining in Queensland, which they interpreted as sucking up to the left on climate change. Resources Minister Matt Canavan urged Westpac (which he now calls by its original name, the Bank of New South Wales) to tell demonstrators to bugger off. Instead that’s pretty much what the government has said to the banks, and MPs feel pretty good about it.

This is too good to miss so it continues overleaf

Nikki Savva? bwahahahahaha! Oh hope hope Lib fanbois, hope!

The Budget has been shot already, nothing at all for the Libs to build on!

Youth unemployment is way up: parents are going to be lining up with baseball bats in 2019!

LW and Mr Smith are bleating and pleading for mercy and my adoring STATUS SYMBOL TROLL MM is following me around like a lost puppy. Good boy pat pat.

Labor is certainly positioning to the hard left on a range of issues, which could just be its undoing - like negative gearing & $3,000 caps on tax advice.  Weird stuff. But the Senate vote will go to smaller groups like Australian Conservatives etc, just to keep a foot on the neck of the leftie Liberals.

Now calm down Lefties on the DARK SIDE it isn't all bad it is worse.

Oh and there is my new STATUS SYMBOL TROLL MM following me around like a lost puppy and showing why he is largely ignored.

And is Malcolm's moon rising or what ? while Mal strikes a chord Bull twangs a dischord.


Malcolm hits a budget chord
Mungo Maccallum - Political Corrections | 18th May 2017 10:19 AM


Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in Rockhampton to talk about infrastructure spending including the proposed Rookwood Weir.
Chris Ison ROK271016cpm1

Well, perhaps not completely; it will take more than one agile budget to loose Malcolm Turnbull from his self-imposed bondage. He remains chained hand and foot to the right over climate change and same sex marriage, and he cannot remove himself from the Nationals' pork barrel of provincial perks in the name of infrastructure.

But his tax-and-spendathon has made the initial effort to stagger back towards the sensible centre of modern politics, in which reformist zeal must be tempered with the occasional gesture towards fairness - if it costs too much to give serious relief to the masses, at least they can gain satisfaction that a few of the fat cats will cop a hit as well.

Thus the bank levy - or tax, or cash grab, or whatever you want to call it. It is true that this is lazy economics: it is hard to justify an impost that singles out a particular section of a particular industry at any time, and to claim it is designed specifically to fund a pet cause, however worthy, is the purest sophistry. Consolidated revenue doesn't make choices, the government does. Turnbull and Scott Morrison will decide who gets what spending, so hanging the NDIS on the bank tax is plainly dishonest.

And of course the same applies with the Medicare levy. Once again, the NDIS is offered as the carrot, the tax increase the unavoidable stick. Fake budgeting. However, raising the Medicare levy, which in fact means an overall tax increase, is sensible policy, and, crucially it is fair.

It is not a flat-rate, across-the-board, slug like the GST for example; it is part of the progressive system of income tax by which the rich pay more and the poor pay less - and none at all if they are really poor. Bill Shorten's insistence that it should only apply to the top two income brackets is opportunism, pure and simple. It is far preferable to raise progressive taxes, as the budget is trying to do, than raise the GST, which is presumably the alternative.

But this does not mean, as Turnbull's latest slogan is trumpeting, that the budget is a model of fairness. The usual Liberal victims - the young, the unemployed (the random drug testing is gratuitous sadism), the university students, the foreign workers, the recipients of overseas aid - all get the usual caning.

This, presumably, is to placate the hardliners in the party room, and perhaps to take some of the heat off screams of the better funded and organised critics - the banks, the Catholics, and recalcitrant state premiers from both sides of politics. These, according to Tony Abbott and his still hopeful insurgents, are the Liberal Party's base - disturbing them, let alone rousing them to rebellion, is political suicide.

And certainly they will be annoyed; they have been the entitled ones for so long they have all but forgotten that their privileges are not a right, but a gift of compliant governments. Which is why Turnbull and Morrison are so eager to join Shorten's rejection of the commentariat's verdict that the budget was Labor-lite. If this was the case it would be a disaster: why should any rational voter embrace wishy-washy, half way house, prescription if the real thing was available?

Shorten's budget reply hammered this point - rather than praising Turnbull for appropriating the fringes of his own policies, he lambasted the government for not following him the whole way down his social democratic road. He, like Turnbull, is keen to emphasise irreconcilable differences rather than the common aims of 21st century government.

Which is not to deny that much of what he said made sense. If there was ever a need for a deficit levy on the rich, then it is hardly logical to repeal it as the deficit has increased tenfold, and still looks likely to drag on for another four years at least.

The much vaunted housing affordability package is a cruel hoax; the superannuation switch will only drive up house prices now while leaving more retirees on the government payroll later. And while it is worth noting that Morrison has finally dangled his little toe over the dangerous waters of negative gearing, the result is flaccid to the point of impotence.

Mal's moon is rising continues overleaf

The Budget is already shot. There will be no return to surplus any time soon under the Libs.