Abbott/Liberal Govt Watch

[redandblack]

I agree with that, S.

[Q.]

Its interesting that the ALP are very keen to return the budget to surplus ASAP, clearly we need to pay down our debt, but at the same time I don't see a problem with having some level of debt if its being used to create infrastructure and is within the capacity to be repaid promptly. I am pretty sure Chifley had to borrow in order to set up the Snowy Scheme and that was a pivotal moment of our history in terms of actually boosting our economy as a result.

The MSM, and naturally the public, are obsessed with the notion of needing to be in surplus.

[redden whites]

While I was initially sceptical about how significant the human contribution to global warming was, my discussions with staff at the Uni of Adelaide's Environment Institute, and reading the references supplied by John Tibby, has convinced me it is a significant additional factor on top of the current peak in the Milankovich Cycles.

It's now "a significant additional factor" eh Psyber welcome to 2011, glad you made it.

[Q.]

Given that PM Abbott is all but a done deal, here are the policies we have to look forward to:



* Free trade: As Katharine Murphy explained last week (she was embedded with Tone in the Top End) Abbott reckons he will cool talks on a China free trade agreement because of doubts over ”to what extent China is a market economy”. That might worry ASEAN, with whom we have a free trade agreement, which comprises such rolled-gold free enterprise systems as Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam, or oil sheikdoms of the Gulf States, with whom we’re negotiating an FTA. Instead, he’ll pursue one with Japan — a country forced to slash interest rates to zero to prop up flagging demand in a sick economy that has been in structural decline for decades.

* Climate change: To reach the bipartisan political goal of reducing carbon emissions by 5% by 2020, Abbott has signed a “blood oath” to confiscate carbon property rights and will junk the ETS as “the first instruction to the public service”, and the Coalition has threatened the renewables industry with yanking any government investment out of new energy projects. Instead, an Abbott government would plant an unspecified number of trees — perhaps “20 million” — and pay farmers $8-20 a tonne to bury carbon (a figure farmers themselves say is too little to justify doing it and which independent experts say is inadequate by a factor of four). Abbott will get the Department of Climate Change to produce a white paper on the issue before sacking all of its employees at a cost of tens of millions of dollars in redundancy payments. Labor says Abbott’s related “claw back” of carbon tax compensation would strip those earning below $80,000 a year of $300 in tax cuts, with 3.5 million pensioners missing out on a similar amount. Abbott responds by saying he’s committed to tax cuts, but hasn’t provided any detail.

* Asylum seekers: Abbott will apparently send boat people to Nauru or maybe get the Navy to tow illegal vessels to the edge of Indonesian waters. The “proposal” is a “win/win — offshore processing plus protections”. There’s been no costing of reopening Nauru, except by the government ($1 billion-plus); Immigration says Nauru won’t deter anyone and the Navy says towing boats doesn’t work.

* Defence: The Coalition would either adhere to the recommendations of the Defence White Paper to spend $16 billion on 100 F-35s (Abbott) or “re-do” the white paper to hunt for savings (Senator David Johnston), a marked departure from John Howard’s post-1996 ring-fencing of defence spending cuts.

* Coal seam gas: Farmers, according to Abbott, once had the “right to say no”. But last week on Alan Jones he pulled a 180: “Now my position is if there is the possibility of picking up billions of dollars we’d be silly not to take it … now an adult government does not lock the gate so to speak [to investment].”

* National Broadband Network: Malcolm Turnbull, charged by Abbott with “demolishing with the NBN” will have to untangle what he admits is “a very complex Gordian knot of [Telstra] contracts and legislation and regulation that will be very hard to unpick”. The issue of Telstra’s $11 billion in government compensation remains unresolved.

* Food security: To guard against floods and improve food security, Abbott says he’ll build an unknown number of dams at an unknown cost, to overcome the Greens’ and the government’s “dam phobia”. “I know that there are problems with many dam sites but I fail to see that there are no potential dam sites anywhere in Australia where the economic and social benefits outweigh any environmental costs,” he (sort of) explained.

* Foreign aid: Depending on who you talk to, on foreign aid there is either a bipartisan plan to increase funding to 0.5% of Gross National Income by 2015-16 (Julie Bishop) or to retain the status quo of 0.33% (Teresa Gambaro). The matter appears to be regularly argued, and leaked from, within shadow Cabinet.

* Costings: Then there’s Joe Hockey’s oft-derided $50 billion (or $60 billion or $70 billion) in total savings, which as Bernard Keane has previously pointed out, would actually only improve the fiscal balance by $11 billion over four years — a figure that is now 16 months out of date. A return to Howard-era tax cuts and some payment increases have been floated with only the fuzziest of plans to pay for them. Hockey used his budget reply speech this year to promise the Coalition would “grease the wheels” of structural change by using the mining boom to fund middle class welfare and tax cuts so voters don’t get upset so by the high inflation and interest rates generated by a booming resources sector.


LINK

[Psyber]

While I was initially sceptical about how significant the human contribution to global warming was, my discussions with staff at the Uni of Adelaide's Environment Institute, and reading the references supplied by John Tibby, has convinced me it is a significant additional factor on top of the current peak in the Milankovich Cycles.

It's now "a significant additional factor" eh Psyber welcome to 2011, glad you made it.

It is more a matter of rigorously establishing scientific fact than being up to date with current fashionable faith old friend..
I acknowledged my acceptance of this as a fact on the thread where Fish and I had been debating the subject, about 5 months ago.
Until then my sticking point was the issue of how directly comparable the figures from current flask air sampling from Vostok was with those from older Ice Core samples.

My statement was posted just after I met Professor Mike Young, Chairman of the Environment Institute at the Adelaide University.
He said he didn't know the answer to my concern about the comparability of the two different sampling methods, and referred me to John Tibby.
John send me articles that did establish how they could be compared, and satisfied my demand for rigour.

[Jimmy_041]

Got to stop being intelligent and start going with the herd Psyber
I have no doubts we contribute to the climate problem, I only question to what extent
I also question what difference Australia's proposed carbon tax will make when we hardly rate on the list of the world's polluters

Maybe it will be like the new SA desal plant and by the time we get really going, the cycle will take care of itself and all of our efforts will become redundant for another 21,000 years

[best on hill]

Given that PM Abbott is all but a done deal, here are the policies we have to look forward to:



* Free trade: As Katharine Murphy explained last week (she was embedded with Tone in the Top End) Abbott reckons he will cool talks on a China free trade agreement because of doubts over ”to what extent China is a market economy”. That might worry ASEAN, with whom we have a free trade agreement, which comprises such rolled-gold free enterprise systems as Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam, or oil sheikdoms of the Gulf States, with whom we’re negotiating an FTA. Instead, he’ll pursue one with Japan — a country forced to slash interest rates to zero to prop up flagging demand in a sick economy that has been in structural decline for decades.

* Climate change: To reach the bipartisan political goal of reducing carbon emissions by 5% by 2020, Abbott has signed a “blood oath” to confiscate carbon property rights and will junk the ETS as “the first instruction to the public service”, and the Coalition has threatened the renewables industry with yanking any government investment out of new energy projects. Instead, an Abbott government would plant an unspecified number of trees — perhaps “20 million” — and pay farmers $8-20 a tonne to bury carbon (a figure farmers themselves say is too little to justify doing it and which independent experts say is inadequate by a factor of four). Abbott will get the Department of Climate Change to produce a white paper on the issue before sacking all of its employees at a cost of tens of millions of dollars in redundancy payments. Labor says Abbott’s related “claw back” of carbon tax compensation would strip those earning below $80,000 a year of $300 in tax cuts, with 3.5 million pensioners missing out on a similar amount. Abbott responds by saying he’s committed to tax cuts, but hasn’t provided any detail.

* Asylum seekers: Abbott will apparently send boat people to Nauru or maybe get the Navy to tow illegal vessels to the edge of Indonesian waters. The “proposal” is a “win/win — offshore processing plus protections”. There’s been no costing of reopening Nauru, except by the government ($1 billion-plus); Immigration says Nauru won’t deter anyone and the Navy says towing boats doesn’t work.

* Defence: The Coalition would either adhere to the recommendations of the Defence White Paper to spend $16 billion on 100 F-35s (Abbott) or “re-do” the white paper to hunt for savings (Senator David Johnston), a marked departure from John Howard’s post-1996 ring-fencing of defence spending cuts.

* Coal seam gas: Farmers, according to Abbott, once had the “right to say no”. But last week on Alan Jones he pulled a 180: “Now my position is if there is the possibility of picking up billions of dollars we’d be silly not to take it … now an adult government does not lock the gate so to speak [to investment].”

* National Broadband Network: Malcolm Turnbull, charged by Abbott with “demolishing with the NBN” will have to untangle what he admits is “a very complex Gordian knot of [Telstra] contracts and legislation and regulation that will be very hard to unpick”. The issue of Telstra’s $11 billion in government compensation remains unresolved.

* Food security: To guard against floods and improve food security, Abbott says he’ll build an unknown number of dams at an unknown cost, to overcome the Greens’ and the government’s “dam phobia”. “I know that there are problems with many dam sites but I fail to see that there are no potential dam sites anywhere in Australia where the economic and social benefits outweigh any environmental costs,” he (sort of) explained.

* Foreign aid: Depending on who you talk to, on foreign aid there is either a bipartisan plan to increase funding to 0.5% of Gross National Income by 2015-16 (Julie Bishop) or to retain the status quo of 0.33% (Teresa Gambaro). The matter appears to be regularly argued, and leaked from, within shadow Cabinet.

* Costings: Then there’s Joe Hockey’s oft-derided $50 billion (or $60 billion or $70 billion) in total savings, which as Bernard Keane has previously pointed out, would actually only improve the fiscal balance by $11 billion over four years — a figure that is now 16 months out of date. A return to Howard-era tax cuts and some payment increases have been floated with only the fuzziest of plans to pay for them. Hockey used his budget reply speech this year to promise the Coalition would “grease the wheels” of structural change by using the mining boom to fund middle class welfare and tax cuts so voters don’t get upset so by the high inflation and interest rates generated by a booming resources sector.


LINK

what about IR reforms Q? i bet there high on the agenda

[fish]

Abbott could force two elections over pokie fight

TONY Abbott's forecast roll-back of poker machine laws is strengthening the chances of voters heading towards two elections in quick succession.

But it also is increasing the likelihood that Prime Minister Julia Gillard will be able to complete a full term in office with the support of cross bench MPs.

[Sojourner]

But it also is increasing the likelihood that Prime Minister Julia Gillard will be able to complete a full term in office with the support of cross bench MPs.

[Leaping Lindner]

Abbott could force two elections over pokie fight

TONY Abbott's forecast roll-back of poker machine laws is strengthening the chances of voters heading towards two elections in quick succession.

But it also is increasing the likelihood that Prime Minister Julia Gillard will be able to complete a full term in office with the support of cross bench MPs.

It was pretty funny when Abbott went to WA during the week and made his big announcement of fighting pokie reform and a Perth journo said "Why are you doing this here? We don't have pokies in WA and our clubs are doing fine." Another "s*** happens" moment for Ton.

[fish]

I have no doubts we contribute to the climate problem, I only question to what extent. Maybe it will be like the new SA desal plant and by the time we get really going, the cycle will take care of itself and all of our efforts will become redundant for another 21,000 years

Jimmy_041 if you think climate change will miraculously stop as part of some natural cycle you have seriously misunderstood or ignored the science.

The science says that continued unabated emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere will see continued increases in temperature and the worst effects of climate change as I've listed here.

Putting your head in the sand and hoping the problem will fix itself is simply illogical and irresponsible.

[Jimmy_041]

Its called the Milankovitch cycle
Just because it doesn't fit the hysteria, doesn't mean it is untrue
My point remains - the top 10 polluters account for 70% of the problem
What are they doing about it?
To say we are a major polluter because our ratio per head is high is just using statistics to distort the truth
Any reduction in our emissions will make SFA difference unless the main polluters do something about their problem
Go fly around China and see what their skies are like

[Gozu]

Its called the Milankovitch cycle
Just because it doesn't fit the hysteria, doesn't mean it is untrue
My point remains - the top 10 polluters account for 70% of the problem
What are they doing about it?
To say we are a major polluter because our ratio per head is high is just using statistics to distort the truth
Any reduction in our emissions will make SFA difference unless the main polluters do something about their problem
Go fly around China and see what their skies are like

Great argument. So because the guy over there isn't putting his rubbish in the bin we should just throw ours on the ground too?

[redandblack]

Its called the Milankovitch cycle
Just because it doesn't fit the hysteria, doesn't mean it is untrue
My point remains - the top 10 polluters account for 70% of the problem
What are they doing about it?
To say we are a major polluter because our ratio per head is high is just using statistics to distort the truth
Any reduction in our emissions will make SFA difference unless the main polluters do something about their problem
Go fly around China and see what their skies are like

I've flown around China and action certainly needs to be taken there.

And everywhere.

I also see the Conservative British PM supports action.

Oh, and so does Mr Abbott, who has the same targets. (Unless he's lying).

[Jimmy_041]

Its called the Milankovitch cycle
Just because it doesn't fit the hysteria, doesn't mean it is untrue
My point remains - the top 10 polluters account for 70% of the problem
What are they doing about it?
To say we are a major polluter because our ratio per head is high is just using statistics to distort the truth
Any reduction in our emissions will make SFA difference unless the main polluters do something about their problem
Go fly around China and see what their skies are like

Great argument. So because the guy over there isn't putting his rubbish in the bin we should just throw ours on the ground too?

Quite happy to take action but it will certainly make no difference unless the US and China plus the other 8 countries do something
In the meantime, we make our industry less competitive and China wealthier
As I have said once before, reducing our emissions by 10% equals around 3-4 days of China's emissions

[redden whites]

While I was initially sceptical about how significant the human contribution to global warming was, my discussions with staff at the Uni of Adelaide's Environment Institute, and reading the references supplied by John Tibby, has convinced me it is a significant additional factor on top of the current peak in the Milankovich Cycles.

It's now "a significant additional factor" eh Psyber welcome to 2011, glad you made it.

It is more a matter of rigorously establishing scientific fact than being up to date with current fashionable faith old friend..

Ahh, now I understand. Everyone else is incapable of researching for themselves or having an educated opinion and joins the mob whilst you are a far superior being. Another classic Psyber post

[Jimmy_041]

Its called the Milankovitch cycle
Just because it doesn't fit the hysteria, doesn't mean it is untrue
My point remains - the top 10 polluters account for 70% of the problem
What are they doing about it?
To say we are a major polluter because our ratio per head is high is just using statistics to distort the truth
Any reduction in our emissions will make SFA difference unless the main polluters do something about their problem
Go fly around China and see what their skies are like

Great argument. So because the guy over there isn't putting his rubbish in the bin we should just throw ours on the ground too?

So, you have 2 kgs of rubbish per week which, because you have a job (developed nation), you get charged $25 per week to have collected
Your neighbour has 3,000 kgs per week but because he's only part time employed (developing nation) not only doesn't he get charged for collection, he doesn't even bother to put out his bins. He just dumps it everywhere. But because he's only part time employed, the council don't bother to fine him.

After a few years, your 2kgs per week will make SFA difference to the mess created by your neighbour, but hey, at least you feel good that you've done something.

I am not saying we shouldn't do anything - but our contribution makes little difference unless the top 10 polluters start to clean up their mess

[Sky Pilot]

Its called the Milankovitch cycle
Just because it doesn't fit the hysteria, doesn't mean it is untrue
My point remains - the top 10 polluters account for 70% of the problem
What are they doing about it?
To say we are a major polluter because our ratio per head is high is just using statistics to distort the truth
Any reduction in our emissions will make SFA difference unless the main polluters do something about their problem
Go fly around China and see what their skies are like

Great argument. So because the guy over there isn't putting his rubbish in the bin we should just throw ours on the ground too?

Yeah because he's throwing out a 44-gallon drum full every second and we are tossing out a used toothpick on alternate Thursdays.

[Psyber]

Ahh, now I understand. Everyone else is incapable of researching for themselves or having an educated opinion and joins the mob whilst you are a far superior being. Another classic Psyber post

Not at all..
My view is that we are all capable of doing our own reading, and of asking questions of people who may be able to point us to data that will help rational decision making.
I regard simply joining the mob without doing the reading as sheer laziness, and trying to push others to do so as a form of bullying and political proselytising that needs to be resisted.

[fish]

Ahh, now I understand. Everyone else is incapable of researching for themselves or having an educated opinion and joins the mob whilst you are a far superior being. Another classic Psyber post

Not at all..
My view is that we are all capable of doing our own reading, and of asking questions of people who may be able to point us to data that will help rational decision making.
I regard simply joining the mob without doing the reading as sheer laziness, and trying to push others to do so as a form of bullying and political proselytising that needs to be resisted.

Psyber I assume you are referring to people such as Sky Pilot and "straight talker" who, as shown in this post, appear to swallow and regurgitate denialist rubbish from who knows where.

Sky Pilot mentioned something about Fox News and we know "straight talker" gets his climate change "info" from sites such as Minnesotans for Global Warming.

Neither poster was able to substantiate their claims when asked - a classic example of joining the mob and laziness you posted about!