Summary: THE FOCUS GROUP Stop offending Joe Hockey Where’s 18C When It’s Really Important? learns that Joe Hockey is “offended” by wind turbines. (In response, some farmer with wind turbines on his land challenges him (bizarrely) to a bull fight. Fairfax reports that $22,000 a year to the LNP gets you “VIP” meetings with the treasurer, Joe Hockey; Hockey’s office announces it’s “offensive” and in the hands of his lawyers… Oh, hell, The Guardian has a list: indigenous self-governance, not enough centralised governance in Afghanistan, Bob Ellis, speaking in generalities about the pressures of parenting, helping Greece and the IMF, “class warfare” by ALP, sexist LNP menu, union remarks about Peta Credlin, saying we’d reopen Manus Island without talking with PNG first. Some Budget Emergency Jeremy Has Things To Say That Are Probably Obvious: if you’re the wealthy class & you want to cut services for the poor, what do you do? You exaggerate how well things are going & give your mates tax cuts (Costello). Then, you exaggerate how badly things are going, say that we all have to bear the pain and cut from the poor. Then when the books look good - another lot of tax cuts for the rich. Rinse, repeat. How is this not transparent? PM Abbott tells Sydney Institute that the cuts will enable personal income tax cuts in 4-5 years (audio on Insiders) The Australian reports that Abbott has “cemented” a $4bn company tax cut in the budget as a “flagship pledge”, because THAT’S WHAT THE LIBERALS ACTUALLY STAND FOR. ABC fact-check of Bowen’s claim that Hockey’s “doubled the deficit”, which confirms that yes he has. Peter “remember the other week when my mates and I gave ourselves $8m out of the Future Fund” Costello tells Daily Telegraph readers (and the ABC gives it lead story placement) that the “deficit levy will die” because it “has no economic benefit” and was not recommended by the CoA (neglecting to mention that’s bc the CoA’s terms of reference quite deliberately did not include raising revenue) Got the impression from the News Corp papers that ordinary Australians hate the idea of raising revenue with a tax? Actually many support it - as long as they’re not from the business lobby. BCA says it’s “too harsh”, meaning it can’t be all bad. How insane we look from overseas - Bloomberg reports “Australia Considers Cuts to Rein in Second-Smallest Debt”, quoting an NZ analyist sufficiently out of the Oz media bubble to point this out: “The Commission is being used by the new Australian government as a vehicle to allow for the slaughtering of a few sacred cows, and to give the Treasurer the cover he needs to put through some difficult and unpopular decisions,” Sean Keane, an Auckland-based analyst at Triple T Consulting and the former head of Asia-Pacific rates trading at Credit Suisse Group AG, wrote in a note yesterday. “The fiscal impact of government activity on the Australian economy is likely to be more contractionary than expected for the next couple of years, further reducing the need for the RBA to move interest rates higher.” More commentary: Greg Jericho describes “The Commission of Audit in a nutshell: ideology over evidence”. Andrew Elder calls it The Commission of Magical Thinking. Even the Courier Mail publishes an opinion piece noting that “Joe Hockey is using to sell the need for austerity is built on falsehood” The Guardian suddenly realises what the Liberals mean when they say their regime is “open for business” And Paul Sheehan tries very hard to ignore the Costello tax cuts and Hockey’s spending and Rupert’s ripoff, and blame the “deficit” all on stimulus spending Time to pay, ordinary Australians NewStart to be blocked fr
