Category: Australia

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Tanning Little Johnny’s Hide

Howard hunts for porkCoalition apologists are oft want to lambast Labor for over-spending. Yet why the Coalition runs a surplus with our tax money is questionable, when it would be better off either spent on bettering services and infrastructure or returned to us.

Lindsay Tanner is demonstrating already that Labor is committed to reducing wasteful expenditures and trimming sleazy Howard pork. Of particular note are much needed funding slashes to the virulent, profligate government propaganda machine, tax deductability of cronies’ political donations and curtailment of organisational perks.

LINDSAY TANNER MP

SHADOW MINISTER FOR FINANCE

LABOR’S $3 BILLION SAVINGS PLAN

Federal Labor today announced a massive savings plan to cut out $3 billion of Howard Government waste.

These $3 billion in savings across the 4 years of the federal budget will put downward pressure on inflation and interest rates.

Labor’s savings plan includes:

· Saving $394 million by scrapping the Howard Government’s extreme work laws;

· Cutting $350 million worth of Howard Government political advertising; and

· A $395 million cut in the use of consultants in the Commonwealth public service.

A Rudd Labor Government will use its $3 billion savings plan to cut wasteful spending and increase investment in productivity drivers like education, skills and infrastructure.

Complacency and lack of discipline by the Howard Government has allowed unnecessary spending to flourish. Splurges of taxpayers dollars on political advertising and high cost consultants are proof of that fact.

If introduced today, Labor’s savings would save $3 billion over the Budget estimates period. Labor will continue to pursue savings options, and make further savings announcements prior to the election.

This sensible and disciplined savings plan will put downward pressure on inflation and interest rates. Labor’s savings include and build on the $1 billion of savings announced in November 2006

2 March 2007

SUMMARY OF LABOR’S SAVINGS

Figures in $million 2006-07 2007-08 2008-09 2009-10 Total
Limit FTB (B) to those who earn under $250,000 7.5 7.5 7.5 22.5
Withdraw Australia’s contribution to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development 88.0 88.0
Remove tax deductibility for political donations 9.5 11.6 21.1
Remove surplus funding due to WorkChoices 53.5 138.2 141.7 61.4 394.8
Fold Invest Australia functions into Austrade 23.5 23.5 23.5 70.5
Reverse 2006 Budget measure for on-line electronic authentication 4.0 12.6 9.1 25.7
Abandon Medibank Private sale and associated sale costs 12.0 12.0
Reverse increase in MP’s printing allowance 2.0 5.0 5.0 5.0 17.0
Require industry to fund the Financial Literacy Foundation 5.3 5.4 10.7
Streamline government advertising and eliminate political propaganda 50.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 350.0
Abolish Prime Minister’s Community Business Partnership 2.0 4.3 6.3
Use centralised telephone services and websites to advise on aged care availability and save uncommitted Carelink funds 13.7 13.7
Require industry not taxpayers to fund the Do Not Call Register 4.0 10.1 7.6 6.2 27.9
Partially reverse 2006-07 Budget decision giving extra running costs to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 4.5 8.5 8.9 9.4 31.3
Reverse 2006-07 budget decisions to increase Australian Securities and Investment Commission funding 19.3 36.7 36.8 37.0 129.8
Defer Access Card for further examination 145.0 157.0 302.0
Abolish Carrick Institute awards and reduce Institute funding 5.4 10.7 10.7 10.7 37.5
Absorb the cost of the Future Fund advisory unit 0.4 0.7 0.7 0.7 2.5
Reduce spending on non-Defence related recruitment agencies 7.0 15.8 15.8 15.8 54.4
Reduce spending on consultants 56.5 112.9 112.9 112.9 395.2
Reduce spending on political opinion polls/market research 7.5 15.0 15.0 15.0 52.5
Reverse December 2006 decision to create Digital Australia and increase ACMA funding 2.9 7.0 5.9 6.2 22.0
Remove funding to employers to promote WorkChoices under the Employer Advisor Program 12.5 12.5
Remove December 2006 funding increase for the PM’s Nuclear Energy Taskforce 3.9 3.9
Improve purchasing and administration arrangements of Commonwealth air travel 6.0 15.0 15.0 15.0 52.5
Reduce funding for the National Capital Authority 1.0 3.5 3.5 3.5 11.5
Reduce duplication in tax administration by abolishing the Inspector-General of Taxation 2.2 2.2 2.2 6.6
Extend Centrelink compliance campaign – ‘Keeping the system fair’ 51.8 53.4 55.0 160.2
Redirect 2006-07 budget measure to increase Australian Taxation Office funding to compliance activity to produce larger compliance dividend 7.0 62.1 175.7 235.7 480.5
Re-introduce the voluntary Student Supplement Scheme saving money in youth allowance and AUSTUDY 34.7 31.3 28.1 94.1
Reverse December 2006 decision for National Training Centre for Aerial Skiing 2.5 2.5
Close Nauru and Manus Island detention centres 10.0 27.0 27.0 27.0 91.0
Total # 275.4 943.1 994.8 789.4 3001.2
# Labor’s November savings announcement included $125 million arising from the proposed withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq. Following questioning in estimates, no clarity was given of the Government’s actual funding in the forward estimates. Although the Government has no exit strategy from Iraq, it has not provided forward estimates of the cost of troop deployment beyond 30 June 2007. Labor will withdraw Australian combat troops from Iraq, but it is difficult to estimate the savings from the withdrawal of troops because of the lack of transparency relating to these costs in the forward estimates, as well as the fact that the precise timing of the withdrawal will be subject to the stage that the combat troop rotation has reached and negotiations with the United States and Iraqi Governments on a staged withdrawal. Therefore the savings from the withdrawal of combat troops cannot be included in this savings package.

My goodness, what will the aerial skiers say?

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Little Johnny’s Fluffy Interest Rates Canard

Howard Lies on Interest RatesAdulators of our prime monster often pontificate about the proud, supposedly unequalled record of the object of their worship in keeping interest rates under control. Yet as it can easily be demonstrated, they are indulging in pompous magical thinking.

For example, from this 2006 7.30 Report:

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: In the same interview Ian Macfarlane tested that bold claim about record high interest rates, whose rates were higher John Howard in 1982 as Treasurer or Paul Keating in 1989?

IAN MACFARLANE, FORMER RESERVE BANK GOVERNOR: The bill rate was higher in ’82 and it was higher I have to say in ’85 than ’89.

MAXINE McKEW: Perceptions are interesting, aren’t they?

Kim Beasley said last November of Johnny’s more recent deceptive record:

John Howard promised in the 2004 election to “keep interest rates at record lows”, but they have risen three times since then, and seven consecutive times in all. He has betrayed the families who put him in office, and is completely out of touch with the pain his rate rises inflict on Middle Australia. Mr Howard is so out of touch, he urged the Reserve Bank to raise rates and told us it is the interest rate rise we have to have.

Globally, despite the Prime Monster touting a supposedly healthy, booming economy, Whorestralia has very high interest rates:

According to the OECD, only Turkey, Iceland, Mexico and New Zealand have higher interest rates than Australia.

Depending on the April 24 CPI figures, it is on the cards that there will be at least one more interest rate rise this year. Little Johnny will be praying he won’t have to explain away prior to this year’s crucial federal election the fifth interest rates hike since he promised at the last election to keep interest rates low.

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Wowsers at Work

“All your children are poor unfortunate victims of lies you believe. A plague upon your ignorance that keeps the young from the truth they deserve.” – Frank Zappa 1968

Censorship is badMewling net nanny Helen Coonan has been pushing the ill-considered, atrociously framed draft Communications Legislation Amendment (Content Services) Bill 2006, recently leaked gleefully by staunch defenders of free speech and Oz democracy, Crikey.

All commercial content was proposed to be classified by the blackshirt bookburners at the OLFC– and contravenors punished retrospectively. Howard and his dunderbrained prigs are apparently willing to threaten and sacrifice the profitability of a vast number of thriving net industries perhaps in case Kevvie’s mob goes the whole hog and usurps the intellectually challenged fundo vote as well as the middle of the road religious folks.

Peter Black cogently points out several major problems with the proposed legislation.

MudslingersStill, one might regard this libtrog piece of wowserism as a flailing last ditch attempt to jerk public interest back to good old safe rightard family values and away from the embarrassing “Who’s Helped the Most Crooks and Who Has the Most Crooks” sacrificial chess game which little Johnny looks to be losing by a resignation or two at present.

The silly bill has been withdrawn and we will have to wait in shuddering anticipation of a possible reemergent succubus. Meanwhile, we’ll ponder once more horror writer Stephen King’s immortal advice:

“What I tell kids is don’t get mad, get even. Run, don’t walk, to the first library you can find and read what they’re trying to keep out of your eyes. Read what they’re trying to keep out of your brains. Because that’s exactly what you need to know.”

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A Fair Day’s Pay

Vanstone Tombstone(Disclaimer: Any resemblance to any person live or dead is probably deliberate.)

Let’s face it, we moved north because, despite the excruciating lack of Culture with a capital C, it was cheaper to live in the sunshine without those crippling heating bills and astronomical inner city rents. Jim was offered a better job and the kids loved going to the beach more often than once a year when we stayed with grandma at Bondi.

Pretty soon we put a deposit on an attractive house and land package at Bribie Island and settled into coastal suburban mortaged bliss. Then one day our average aussie lifestyle lost the plot. As we careened into the unknown, we had no idea that things would get so out of hand.

I’d always been a dreamer, and my friends, who I could count on one hand, thought I was weird … she’s the odd one who reads books and mutters to herself, I heard them saying.

So I didn’t tell them about my dreams, which unlike theirs, about which they chattered drearily, weren’t about new washing machines, trendy clothes and toffee nose private schools for the kids.

When Jim brusquely informed me he would be working weekends from now on, I asked him how the hell he’d bargained away his time with the children.

‘It was go for an individual AWA or retrenchment. They didn’t so much as say it but everyone knew what they meant. If I don’t cop it sweet, I’ll lose my job for sure. But the pay is better’. He winced and glanced at me hopefully.

The company needed that production line running full tilt all weekend or its economic viability would be threatened by overseas competitors – like China, India, Taiwan, Indonesia, Korea and all the other sweatshop nations. I couldn’t understand it, those mind-bogglingly expensive TV ads the government ran for months on good old Aunty ABC said it was against the law for employers to sack their workers for objecting to AWAs so I belaboured Jim till my jaw hurt.

What the hell was he thinking? To help pay the mortgage, I worked three days a week part-time while Billy and Megan were at the local state school. So why did we want any more money? I nearly hit the roof when I worked out after tax we’d end up with only $10 more a week under the new weekend work arrangements.

And I’d be lumbered with parental duties seven days a week.

Jim wouldn’t change his mind. I reckon he’d lost that ability years ago after he was offered and accepted a supervisory role on the factory floor. Yet this was the guy who’d gone out on strike a couple of years before to protect all the shift workers’ holiday pay.

After a few months, our marriage teetered, wobbled and then fell off the brink. Jim took to going to the pub after work. Some drink to remember, some drink to obliterate.

Jim was the latter. I had to do something. I took to the internet and found other mums, wrote long nasty diatribes on blogs, newsgroups, chatrooms and guestbooks to vent my fury. The kids would come home from school and find me tapping away, tapping away. I wrote letters to the editor, the federal member, the state member, senators, the ombudsman, anyone I thought might annoy the unfeeling ghouls I felt were responsible for my family’s predicament.

One evening when he finally reeled in, Jim told me about his affair with the slim blonde in the next workshop. I remembered what my mum had said. Don’t have kids unless you can support them yourself, without a man.’ I’d made my bed and would have to lie in it, with all four tons of bullshit.

So after the kids were in bed, there I’d be, writing stories about my life, imaginary lives, escapist tales of passion and adventure, with slim brunettes, redheads AND blondes, swept off their tiny feet by handsome mysterious rich men. A chance meeting with a woman who had a publisher mate turned up trumps. When my first book was accepted, I celebrated alone. After my fifth book won a major prize, people started to take notice of me, the pissed off single suburban mum from Bribie Island.

Billy and Megan were installed in a ‘good’ private school while I revelled in sumptous book tours arranged and paid for by my publishers.

With my do-it-yourself personal success guide I hit the mother lode and was presented with a top Queensland Rotary award for my contribution to Australian small business by none other than the Prime Minister’s wife.

I’m not surprised she ignored me afterwards. In my caustic speech I thanked her little Johnny and his frantic feudalisations for my success.

As I chuckled with snide, self-congratulatory glee at my hard won awards and comforts, I felt a rough hand shake my shoulder.

Amanda‘Wake up Amanda, wake up!’

‘Jim, Jim …. I’m making enough for all of us now,’ I mumbled, then froze.

Heavens to betsy, it was Costello.

‘Get on the floor and present your speech supporting the IR bill before the Speaker notices your daydreaming! The opposition are already sniggering,’ he hissed. He looked like death warmed up after a week in a septic trench, all slime and pudge.

‘Huh …guh… ughh’, I spluttered. Cunningly I feigned correction of a few stray stiff tendrils bristling out of the steel net that was my perm, or rather, I should say, my wig. My habits of late catching up with me, I was too over-enthusiastic in my cover-up … and horrors, it fell off! Was this the real dream?

‘The members will resume their seats!’ the speaker snarled at the left bench who it now seemed, were guffawing helplessly at none other than me. This was better than Fraser dropping his dacks.

Why had things gone so wrong?

‘The Pacific solution has been an outstanding success …. ‘

‘Wrong speech, you silly fat cow’, a backbencher cackled. I girded up my considerable, intimidating loins and lambasted onwards.

‘Urr, while Labor pretends to be the party of the workers, the unemployed and the poor, it’s time for a reality check.’ Yes, that was the speech. The poor, desperate sods on the left were already settling back into their crosswords.

‘But you can look at the real things that affect real people. Can they afford their mortgage? Can their kids get a job? Now we don’t believe in sound economic management just to please some ideologies or to please academics or commentators, we believe in it because of the real difference it makes to real people.’

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Little Johnny’s List O’ Lies

This list is courtesy of beloved net identity, pusssycat, who in turn purrrloined it from a site now oddly defunct.

JOHN HOWARD LIE:

“I can promise you that we will follow policies which will, over a period of time, bring down the foreign debt . . . our first priority in Government economically will be to tackle the current account deficit.”
John Howard, Doorstop interview, Debt Truck Launch, 20 September 1995

The Truth:
Foreign debt was $361 billion at the end of September 2003, an increase of 90 per cent on the September 1995 level. The current account deficit was $11.9 billion at the end of September 2003, an increase of 112.5 per cent on the September 1995 level.
Australian Bureau of Statistics, ABS@, Time Series Spreadsheets (Balance of Payments and Investment Position, Australia 5302.0, Reserve Bank of Australia (H) Bulletin, Current Account)

And now:

Current account deficit soars to over $15b. Australia’s current account deficit has widened by 20 per cent in the December quarter. The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show the current account deficit has climbed to just over $15 billion. Imports of plant, transport equipment and machinery contributed heavily to the rise.

There was also a big surge in imports of consumer goods.

The ABS says the deficit on goods and services will detract 1.3 percentage points from GDP in the fourth-quarter.

Australia’s net foreign debt now stands at $521 billion.

JOHN HOWARD LIE:

Labor MP question to the Prime Minister: “Prime Minister, was the government contacted by the major Australian producer of ethanol or by any representative
of his company or the Industry Association before its decision to impose fuel excise on ethanol?”

John Howard: “Speaking for myself, I did not personally have any discussions, from recollection, with any of them.”
John Howard, Question Time, 17 September 2002

The Truth:
John Howard had met on 1 August the head of Manildra Group [Dick Honan], which makes 87 per cent of our ethanol, and they discussed how to help the Australian ethanol industry.
Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Official Record of Meeting, 1 August 2002

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