Abbott/Liberal Govt Watch

[heater31]

This government is up to their eyeballs in corruption. Nobbling the NBN on behalf of Rupert, hindering renewable investment on behalf of Gina, billions of taxpayer money shuffled into detention centre contracts, Cash tip off on AFP raid of AWU, Parakeelia & Paladin rorts, GBR Foundation rort, Dutton au pairs saga - the list goes on and on...

Probably the worst and most corrupt government in Australian history.

And if the otherside get in the arse will fall out of the housing and construction sector and we're ****** again.....

[Q.]

This government is up to their eyeballs in corruption. Nobbling the NBN on behalf of Rupert, hindering renewable investment on behalf of Gina, billions of taxpayer money shuffled into detention centre contracts, Cash tip off on AFP raid of AWU, Parakeelia & Paladin rorts, GBR Foundation rort, Dutton au pairs saga - the list goes on and on...

Probably the worst and most corrupt government in Australian history.

And if the otherside get in the arse will fall out of the housing and construction sector and we're ****** again.....

The dip in chain volume measures coincided with the GFC. Are you expecting another GFC?

[Booney]

This government is up to their eyeballs in corruption. Nobbling the NBN on behalf of Rupert, hindering renewable investment on behalf of Gina, billions of taxpayer money shuffled into detention centre contracts, Cash tip off on AFP raid of AWU, Parakeelia & Paladin rorts, GBR Foundation rort, Dutton au pairs saga - the list goes on and on...

Probably the worst and most corrupt government in Australian history.

Absolutely. I can't say I've ever felt such disdain for politicians in this country.

Will be interesting to see how the Australian public, at large, respond to the ineptitude this government has presided over.

From the infighting and instability to the matters you not above this government, in my opinion, could spell a lengthy term in opposition for the LNP, very lengthy if the ALP stand up.

Probably would be the same in our state political scene if Marshall wasn't seen as being as soft as he is.

[heater31]

This government is up to their eyeballs in corruption. Nobbling the NBN on behalf of Rupert, hindering renewable investment on behalf of Gina, billions of taxpayer money shuffled into detention centre contracts, Cash tip off on AFP raid of AWU, Parakeelia & Paladin rorts, GBR Foundation rort, Dutton au pairs saga - the list goes on and on...

Probably the worst and most corrupt government in Australian history.

And if the otherside get in the arse will fall out of the housing and construction sector and we're ****** again.....

The dip in chain volume measures coincided with the GFC. Are you expecting another GFC?

Given the greed by 4 banking institutions the housing sector is already suffering, potentially 32,000 tradies and suppliers could have no work and cause Australia to have it's GFC 10 years after the rest of the world.....

[Psyber]

One party majority may become a thing of the past with the growth of centrist independents. I look forward to the idea actually, as it may encourage less total opposition to each other and more cooperation and compromise between the Libs and the ALP...

[Q.]

This government is up to their eyeballs in corruption. Nobbling the NBN on behalf of Rupert, hindering renewable investment on behalf of Gina, billions of taxpayer money shuffled into detention centre contracts, Cash tip off on AFP raid of AWU, Parakeelia & Paladin rorts, GBR Foundation rort, Dutton au pairs saga - the list goes on and on...

Probably the worst and most corrupt government in Australian history.

And if the otherside get in the arse will fall out of the housing and construction sector and we're ****** again.....

The dip in chain volume measures coincided with the GFC. Are you expecting another GFC?

Given the greed by 4 banking institutions the housing sector is already suffering, potentially 32,000 tradies and suppliers could have no work and cause Australia to have it's GFC 10 years after the rest of the world.....

Agree with you there - interest rates need to keep going down.

[Psyber]

Jeez how much lower can they get Base bank interest on deposits is about 0.5% and the best non fixed term boost I can negotiate only brings it up to about 2.5%. I'm thinking of putting most of my cash deposits into real estate and shares.

And Loans? Through most of my working life since from 1969 housing loan rates have been from 7.5% up to 17%, but now an expensive loan is one over 5% and under 4% is commonly on offer...

[tigerpie]

The NBN has been a massive cockup.
Just like having a one-way expressway the state Lnp came up with.
Half done patch up job.
Short sighted penny pinching f**kwits of the highest order!

[Armchair expert]

I have NBN and I still lag

[Q.]

Imagine the MSM fury if it was Labor funneling half a billion of our money without tender to dodgy letterbox shell firms to bastardise refugees

[Booney]

Snout > trough.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann's flights for a family holiday to Singapore were paid for by a travel company controlled by Liberal Party Treasurer Andrew Burnes within weeks of that company winning a $1 billion contract from Cormann's department.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal ... 50ym5.html

[tigerpie]

Snout > trough.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann's flights for a family holiday to Singapore were paid for by a travel company controlled by Liberal Party Treasurer Andrew Burnes within weeks of that company winning a $1 billion contract from Cormann's department.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal ... 50ym5.html

I didn't realise nearly 3 grand didn't come out of my account? Far cough!
These greedy grubs have zero integrity.
Its more like what advantage can I get from my lofty position.

The forthcoming election will be the greatest landslide in our history.

[DOC]

Are you telling me that when booking flights or tickets or hotel rooms that you don't call the CEO? Who else could you call?

[mighty_tiger_79]

Are you telling me that when booking flights or tickets or hotel rooms that you don't call the CEO? Who else could you call?

Spot on, Joyce and Branson are must calls when booking flights.

[bulldogproud]

courtesy of Crikey...

This morning’s ABC radio news had two stories that caught my attention. The first was the entirely predictable news that the Mathias Cormann “Helloworld” tickets scandal had already expanded. US ambassador Joe Hockey apparently instructed embassy staff to meet with the Helloworld CEO, who’s a personal friend, when Helloworld was seeking a government tender. The second is that Melbourne has been judged the “heroin capital of Australia“, after an analysis of sewer outflows.

Smack running out of a sewer. What better picture could one summon up of Australian governance and political culture than that? As the $400 million dollar Paladin contract sloshes around, with its beach shack registered office, and its shonky personnel, as two thousand deaths of benefits claimants after receiving barrages of Centrelink debt robocalls wait to be investigated, as it turns out that Freedom Boy Tim Wilson plugged a relative’s financial business into a parliamentary consultancy process, as the memory of another $400 million going to the industry-dominated Great Barrier Reef foundation resurfaces, the $30 million handed over to FOX for women’s sports, with no documentation, no reporting and no outcomes, the six hundred thousand given to Bjorn Lomborg’s organisation to produce a single book … after all that, Mathias Cormann must be hoping that $2700 in free air tickets that he “didn’t notice” would barely get noticed by the public.

In fact, that may well be the final straw for many. Four hundred million dollars is such a gobsmackingly large amount to be given around, that it can barely be comprehended. But many thousands of Australians, looking at the cost of a family holiday, and deciding “not this year”, and wondering how many more holidays they’ll get, may well identify that as the real deal-breaker: they save, while Mathias Cormann rings up the CEO to book, who amazingly forgets to take his credit card details at the time.

There is now something more than anger attached to this government. There’s a sort of disgust around. Disgust with them, at the sheer volume of waste, shonk and grift, disgust with ourselves for having let it go for so long, for being the mugs who let it happen. It is once again of the paradox of Australian self-conception. We’ve imagined ourselves to be relatively uncorrupt and competently governed for so long, that a keener sense that government had entirely collapsed into cronyism, clientelism and dirty tricks was lacking. The capacity for trust in Australia is being rotted from the top down. It’s rational to think of a Coalition government the way Italians tend to think of their government, something that has absolutely nothing to do with representation at all: simply a self-contained predatory element, feeding off the body social.

This is part of the intent of right-wing parties of course, to increase cynicism and distrust of government altogether, and enrich themselves at the same time. All the same, they may well have overshot the mark in the last year or so. Am I alone in feeling sick to my stomach, literally nauseous, at reading the national news these days, wondering what the next story of corrupt, corrosive, destructive rorts is going to be? Is disgust now a live political factor? I think it might be. We now have a fundamental asymmetry in Australian politics. One major political party, Labor, capable of government; one minor, the Greens, with some internal strife, but no accusations of rorting. And on the other side something that is neither a Coalition, nor parties at all. It’s simply a random, rhizomatic piss cloud of sleaze, grift, incompetence, reactionary obsessiveness, glued together by nothing other than hatred not merely of the left, but of good government itself, and an eye for the skim off the top.

The disgust is something more than political contestation or the belief that the political right, in our era, is a sham. It’s a real pain that this has happened to our country. There was, as I’ve noted before, until about a decade ago, some sort of implicit agreement about limits, some sense of being pointed forward, whatever political differences there might have been about what form progress would take. The effect of living in such a continental Rortopolis is to make you feel like a mug for doing anything other than making millions from transfers of state money for no product. Why bother? While you’re putting your energy into art, science, honest commerce, the very fact that you thereby entrust other people with governance is taken by them as a chance to shonk it.

Does Labor have the energy, wit or will to make this an issue, and to genuinely reform Australian governance? I hope so, but I don’t get the vibe. Some of the people Shorten has been close to behind the scenes do not inspire confidence that Labor will avoid the worst. And Chris Bowen is an academic manqué. Plibersek is nothing much at all. Only Penny Wong seems to actually take the fight to the government, seems to actually want it, want power. I don’t doubt they’ll govern better, if they can actually find the energy to win. But for the moment, let us rejoice, it’s all just smack floating down the sewer.

[bulldogproud]

Snout > trough.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann's flights for a family holiday to Singapore were paid for by a travel company controlled by Liberal Party Treasurer Andrew Burnes within weeks of that company winning a $1 billion contract from Cormann's department.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal ... 50ym5.html

Minister Cormann said that he did not notice it being there because he has so many transactions on his Parliamentary Visa Card. What the heck is a family holiday or ANY personal expenses doing on the Parliamentary card?????? This has been enough on its own to bring down a minister before.

[DOC]

Oops. Joe Hockey is a million dollar shareholder in Helloworld.

[harric]

Oops. Joe Hockey is a million dollar shareholder in Helloworld.

Lol, ya don't say. I am truly shocked. First you can't trust a potato, now honest Joe???

Perhaps the world is actually flat after all.

Oh and you bunch of peasants just remember the age of entitlement is over.

[mighty_tiger_79]

Now there's drama over the subs!

[Brodlach]

Julie Bishop will not recontest her seat at the upcoming election