australia

January thoughts

annerleylabor , , ,

Qld LNP Government off to lacklustre start

Winston Churchill is reputed to have said “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.”

It seems constitutional experts need to refine a precious gift given to those who believe in freedom of the press, speech and religion and on how those freedoms are interpreted by those who wish to push the envelope.

While we do have the separation of powers, conflict between the judiciary and politicians still clearly exists. David Crisafulli may say “Adult time for adult crime” as much as he likes, but the reality is effective policies need more than a slogan. He has already bungled with omission of the crime of “attempted murder” in his reckonings. Nor is the evidence reassuring that youth crime is coming down. If anything, from daily press and television reports it is increasing.

As we await the belated release of the Mid-Year Financial and Economic review by treasurer David Janetski next week, eminently respected economist Saul Eslake says it will be difficult for him to explain how he is going to lower debt by promising not to sell assets, cut projects, raise taxes and/or reduce public service numbers. New infrastructure minister Brent Mickelberg has already been called out for embellishing Labor’s debt by unprecedently including maintenance costs. Janetzki will need to realise that simply blaming the previous government will not cut the mustard.

Democracy in Queensland has chosen a ‘Newman Mark II’ government whose key personnel are a chip off the old block. Regrettably, they don’t appear to be much of an improvement on the old model.

Federal Coalition still failing on key issues

The usual cry comes to bring on the election. I also cannot wait for the federal election in May. The real issues are cost of living, housing, health and climate change.

As the federal government bends over backwards to alleviate cost- of- living pressures with electricity rebates and tax cuts for all including the real battlers in the lowest tax brackets (those whom the Coalition left out of their tax cut package altogether), the opposition complains of over-spending, this from a government whose 3 leaders gave us 9 deficits in a row. I’ve hardly needed to pay an electricity account in months. I’ve just received my car rego and was pleasantly surprised to see it had a 20% discount.

We all know that Australia has one of the most expensive housing markets in the world and we know the main reason why. Coalition PM John Howard, made capital gains tax changes to cater to his home-owning base. The true acceleration of house prices began in the early 2000s and apart from a brief slowing down during the pandemic, took off again right up until now. No wonder that voters up to the age of 34 have angrily turned their backs on a party that puts power before people. They have had the housing door slammed in their faces.

As for health the Coalition has a long history of trying to undermine Labor’s health reforms. In 1974 Billy Snedden pledged to fight Medibank till it was defeated. In 1984 John Howard said he would “stab it (Medicare) in the guts.” Later he and successive Coalition governments gave up on abolishing it because they finally realised that was a losing tactic in an election.

But once they regained office in 2013, they made subtle attempts to undermine it. Health minister Peter Dutton regarded then by the Australian Doctor magazine poll as the worst health minister in 35 years took the cue from Tony Abbott to introduce a $7 Medicare co-payment to be inflicted on even the poorest Australians (so much for his much-vaunted battlers) before an outcry led him to opt for a $5 cut to doctor rebates a measure met with the full fury of the AMA.

In 2016, after three years in power they had effectively gouged health funding to the tune of $50 billion and were ready to cut back on bulk-billing incentives affecting pathology and imaging. They also continued to freeze the GP rebate much to dismay of the AMA.

When it came to effective climate change action, they opposed any policy that would impact fossil fuel companies the owners of which are their elitist benefactors. Consequently, Australia became an embarrassing laggard in the eyes of the international community. Dutton continues to do that by vowing to scrap 2030 emissions targets, and flying a kite on nuclear energy with all the hidden costs that would land on taxpayers.
Is this really the future which Australians wish to see?

Labor getting on with job; Duttons nuclear fiasco

annerleylabor , , , ,

The ABC’s Laura Tingle has decided what voters are thinking, a rather dubious stance taken by some journalists who assume mind-reading accreditation as well.

We simply don’t know why many vote the way they do, but one notable observation by former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair in his autobiography A Journey, is that often elections are decided by voters who are politically clueless.

It’s obvious that Dutton is going all out to pull off a Trumplike victory by concentrating on cost-of-living and immigration. He is being ably supported by Newscorp and other media apparatchiks. The first is the easiest to work on because many respond easily to being told they’re worse off today than they were yesterday. It is usually the case after all that a dollar today is worth less than it was yesterday. Prices will inevitably rise but people confuse that with inflation which is actually the rate at which they rise. They were rising at over 6 per cent when Labor came to office, and at first nudged up to over 7 per cent before being brought down to the present figure of 2.8 per cent. So, while Tingle argues voters are unsure what Labor stands for, let’s say, inter alia, they are trying, with notable success, to bring down inflation.

In terms of immigration, when they tried to bring down student immigration numbers, Dutton used the Trump and Abbott formulae and opposed it. The Greens, who sometimes live in fairyland, would never support such a move.

Voters don’t like early elections and as Anthony Albanese has said, three years is far too little time to get policies really going. In case Tingle hasn’t noticed, Labor has shown very clearly in which direction it is going: it is fighting against inflation and alleviating cost-of-living.

It has been a while since millions of us have paid an electricity bill. Also worth noting is that interest rates have not risen for over a year.

Duttons costly nuclear ‘plan’

Peter Dutton’s plan for nuclear energy is beset with problems. Not only is he asking Australians to spend billions of dollars in new spending, but he’s asking for taxpayer subsidies to build the industry.

A recent Resolve Political Monitor poll showed renewable energy more popular with 45% of voters backing subsidies for rooftop solar and 34% backing subsidies for home batteries. Only 21% support
subsidies for nuclear power.

In the hope of scoring an election win, Dutton is prepared to defy the basic Liberal Party principle of small government. He seeks to stifle investment in renewables whilst loudly proclaiming they are still part of the energy mix. His nuclear policy is dependent on prolonging the life of coal-fired power even though this source of energy is expected to close down within two decades.

The CSIRO found that nuclear power in this country would be 50 per cent more expensive than renewable energy. Dutton’s claim that his plan would be 44 per cent cheaper than the government’s is dependent on the power grid being 40 per cent smaller than that of the government in 2050. Much of the cost of his nuclear reactors are not counted in his figures because they will only be met after 2050.

It is also important to remember that due to a long-standing moratorium on nuclear power, Australia has no civil nuclear industry. Therefore, we would be starting this nuclear energy scheme from scratch, making it exponentially more expensive than it would have been anyway.