ELECTIONS - Labor or Liberal

happytown said:

this may just explain a thing or two,

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...cs10sep10,0,5349018.story?coll=la-home-center



link to the study,

note: sub req'd for article, abstract only appears below:

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nn1979.html



cheers

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No wonder the current government parties in Australia have so many problems between themselves. The Liberal party is the conservative party which this article says are opposites. That is why they confuse us with noncore promises. They are confused themselves trying to decide if they are liberal or conservative.

nioka said:

No wonder the current government parties in Australia have so many problems between themselves. The Liberal party is the conservative party which this article says are opposites. That is why they confuse us with noncore promises. They are confused themselves trying to decide if they are liberal or conservative.

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The politics of it all is also confused by the fact that Rudd is fairly conservative himself. Other than on IR and Iraq I see no other significant differences between Howard and Rudd. I feel that the "Its Time" theme is now one of the major factors as to why the Liberals are trailing so badly in the polls. The current disunity within the Liberal Party could only worsen the situation. Its very interesting how Costello has kept quiet during the past week. So close to an election its madness how they're behaving. From the point of view of a swinging voter, its very off puting.

It would be interesting to see how this threads "old" poll results would shape up if it started from today.... most votes were cast some time ago and of course, you can't revote!

The thread poll's extreme closeness (within 3-4%) appears to be at odds with what all the recent polls out there are saying.....

AJ

nioka said:

The Liberal party is the conservative party which this article says are opposites. That is why they confuse us with noncore promises. They are confused themselves trying to decide if they are liberal or conservative.

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Ifs a flaw with just using left-wing/right-wing to define political parties, IMO.

With an election coming up and possibly a constitutional referendum later re the replubic issue, we should be considering another constitutional change.

This transpired from the worst drought ever thread and a particularly low period in Qld democracy.

People... we need a law for politicans, similar to business law where a nominated percentage of shareholders can force a general meeting and vote on issues.

Qld premier Beattie, sacked his own party members for not jumping to his command on the Traverston dam and arogantly threatened to sack any councils who organised a poll re the redistrubution issue. I know other states and federally we have perodiaclly had the same issues.

I say do unto others as you wish them to do unto you.

We need a mechanism in our constitution to enable us the people to call a vote on issues where politicians inexplicibly go against the wishes of the people, to recind bad laws and/or decisions and/or politicans who highjack the system rather than having to tolerate them and the damage they do for up to three years before we can vote them out.

We need the power to sack politicans like Beattie as brutally as he sacked and threatened to sack his opponents. That would be true democracy

I agree with Whiskers.

numbercruncher said:

I agree with Whiskers.

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Problem with your approach is, that the quality of pollies though bad enough, with increased contraints and restrictions will only make it more difficult to attract better charachters to Parliament.

To improve the quality of parliamentarians and the system, more people need to join their preferred parties at the local levels and be a part of the machine the makes the choices and guides the development of policy. It is in this area that Unions have always been strong and perhaps imposed an imballance on the ALP for example.

When I worked in west Queensland as a youth I remember the Country Party being very active at all levels which gave old Joh for example great power on one hand but he had to be on the ball within that system and make the state work for those behind him. Porbably not a good example because he went badly off the rails at the end. But that is my drift

explod said:

Problem with your approach is, that the quality of pollies though bad enough, with increased contraints and restrictions will only make it more difficult to attract better charachters to Parliament.

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Hi explod

I have no doubt we would see a different type of people entering politics.

I reckon it boils down to the business best practice definition of a good leader, someone who earns the respect of their constituents as opposed to demanding respect a la military, police style.

From my experience good leaders often stay in so called thankless positions in social and sporting organisations without pay when there is open transparent cooperative administration.

Ordinary employees and business execs have those constraints and restrictions now. I'd have thought a more accountable system would only discourage sly, dishonest, manipulative people with hidden adgendas.

theasxgorilla said:

Ifs a flaw with just using left-wing/right-wing to define political parties, IMO.

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IMO its harder these days to distinguish between left wing and right wing parties as many left wing parties have turned towards the political centre and even to the right in many cases (e.g. England and Australia). It seems that everyones trying to please the financial markets these days!

The election is a long drawn out affair and although Labor are well in the lead the Liberal coalition has an ace up its sleeve. IF the polls fail to improve in the next 3 weeks then Howard will agree to hand over to Costello within 18 months, after the election.

noirua said:

The election is a long drawn out affair and although Labor are well in the lead the Liberal coalition has an ace up its sleeve. IF the polls fail to improve in the next 3 weeks then Howard will agree to hand over to Costello within 18 months, after the election.

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Noirua, he has already said he will hand over to Costello at about 18 months. Are you saying you believe he will say 'vote for me but as soon as the election is over I will retire and Costello will be PM'? I'm not sure what you mean???

The way the polls are going, it's going to be a hypothetical situation anyway.

Julia said:

Noirua, he has already said he will hand over to Costello at about 18 months. Are you saying you believe he will say 'vote for me but as soon as the election is over I will retire and Costello will be PM'? I'm not sure what you mean???

The way the polls are going, it's going to be a hypothetical situation anyway.

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I'm not sure it's quite as definite as you say and Howard appears to be sitting waiting for the polls to shift in his favour. Then, as before, he can say, the Australian people have convincingly voted for me and I intend to stay for most of the three years.
If however, he finds the polls fail to move in his favour he would be forced, imho, to name a definite date in less than 18 months time.

its all very compelling at the moment.
the latest polls were disastrous for howard, yet these were taken BEFORE the debate. most people can agree that howard got smashed on sunday night. what will the next poll be like? if its worse, as is probable, will the libs start eating their own, as they did during apec? they've shot off both barrels, they have no-one else to pork barrel. (maybe a $1000 grant to all immigrants with a promise not to put em in gaol)

arminius said:

(maybe a $1000 grant to all immigrants with a promise not to put em in gaol)

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Nah, he'd soon give that $1000 to some Indonesians and give them a boat to sail to Australia so he can try another Tampa and Children overboard angle.

Somehow I think the "amazing bottomless" pork barrel is not quite empty yet... plenty of time for both parties to inject "magic cash" into OzEcon's veins..

Who cares where the MagicCash is going to come from. It's the Promise that counts!



AJ

i don't think the oz economy veins needs any more cash

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22643323-5013407,00.html

AN interest rate hike will be the most certain bet on Melbourne Cup day and Treasurer Peter Costello has only himself to blame. A booming economy used to be a point of pride for an incumbent government and indeed it should still be so.

Trouble is, when the Government is perceived to have run out of ideas and the punters are facing higher mortgage repayments they start to look for someone to blame, even if they still have a job.

In Costello's supposedly politically clever opening ploy in the election campaign, to repeat past policy and simply promise more tax cuts, he was almost daring RBA boss Glenn Stevens to do the unthinkable and raise interest in the middle of an election campaign.

Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd, it must be said, has not come up with much better, but Costello's incumbency means he is by definition damned for his past inaction.

After yesterday's higher than expected inflation number, it won't be a brave call by the RBA board to raise rates.

It would be a brave call not to raise rates.

The simple fact is that the economy is at capacity and Costello's only response is to boost demand more by offering more tax cuts.

There is something a little odd about the sight of Babcock & Brown, a house built in part on mandated Australian superannuation, raising $US800 million ($892 million) for North American infrastructure investments when Australia is running long on infrastructure bottlenecks.

The concept of directed fund managers investing money in specified sectors, as some suggest, of course makes little sense but neither does a government simply creating more demand by throwing money at voters.

If there is a need to clear bottlenecks, train skilled workers and raise education standards, that's something that the elected Government could get on and do.

The difference is that it's the Government's job to make such decisions while it is a fund manager's job to maximise returns in every way that they can be boosted.

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This extract from today's 'Crikey.com' struck a chord with me.

"Christopher Monie writes: Re. "John Howard no longer a fiscal conservative" (yesterday, item 19). I don’t think I know what economic conservatism is, and I don’t think I want to know. What I do know is that it seems a bad way to go. I want a political party to inform me, clearly and precisely, as to what their position is in relation to matters of national significance. I want them to inform me as to how services will be provided, at what level and by whom. I want them to inform me of the cost to the public purse of the provision of those services. Then I want them to inform me at what level they will need to tax me in order to provide those services - and provide a living income support system for those who are not employed. And I want the taxation system to be fair, progressive and as inexpensive to run as possible. Do you get my drift? Have a plan, cost it and pay for it and don’t waste my money? I do not want political parties who say we don’t know what we’re doing but we’ll give back some of the excess that we rip off you. We won’t fix the system because it suits us for you to have no idea of the relationship between services, expenditure and taxation. This appears to be the essence of economic conservatism."

good evening julia,
i think i read somewhere that you are gonig to vote lib. yet every now and then you seem to waver.
now, close your eyes....relax...breathe......vote for those who you know in your heart to be the right choice. let go of your fears...forget your prejudice......ignore the negativity........come over to the light......we await you.......

arminius said:

good evening julia,
i think i read somewhere that you are gonig to vote lib. yet every now and then you seem to waver.
now, close your eyes....relax...breathe......vote for those who you know in your heart to be the right choice. let go of your fears...forget your prejudice......ignore the negativity........come over to the light......we await you.......

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Ah, Arminius, so nice to be wanted!
The difficulty is, however, that I don't want to vote for either of them.
Now, if you were to find me a replacement for Julia Gillard, then I would seriously reconsider. Mm, make that Wayne Swan as well. Kevin Rudd I like.

I had a nasty nightmare a few nights ago. I decided to stand against Kevin Rudd!!!!!! I can't think of anything more bizarre. How disturbed my subconscious must be. Clearly too much exposure to politics recently.

It's rare to hear from a coalition supporter without some diatribe on the evils of unions. Below is an article from the SMH which adds weight to the unions involvement in the Reserve adopting a 2-3% inflation target. Notably, the importance of unions in controlling inflation is endorsed by none other than Malcom Fraser (although he says he thought of it first).



PAUL KEATING made a grand appearance into the election campaign yesterday, describing Peter Costello as the laziest treasurer in 60 years and releasing secret cabinet notes to argue that the unions were the driving force behind the 3 per cent inflation target that the Howard Government claims as its own.

The former prime minister said Mr Costello had inherited an economy recovering strongly from the recession of the early 1990s and had been lucky in its management of the economy.

He said Mr Costello had "been in a hammock for 10 years" and called him "the laziest, most indolent, most unimaginative treasurer in postwar history".

Mr Keating disclosed that in May 1995, during a meeting with the former ACTU secretary Bill Kelty and fellow union leaders Martin Ferguson and Jennie George to negotiate what became the government's last accord with the labour movement, unions argued for an upper limit on inflation of 3 per cent.

"Unions were the progenitors of low inflation in this country," Mr Keating told an audience in the Hunter Valley, where he was launching the campaign of another former ACTU secretary, Greg Combet, for the seat of Charlton. "They were the inventors of the 2 to 3 per cent [target]."

He said the then Reserve Bank governor, Bernie Fraser, had "co-adopted" the target with the government.

Mr Keating's combative defence of unions was designed to blunt a Government attack - in the wake of Wednesday's ominous inflation figures - in which Mr Costello said a union-dominated Labor government would push up inflation and create a recession. "This inflation target didn't begin with the Reserve Bank; it began with me, as prime minister, and Bill Kelty representing the ACTU."

Last night, Mr Fraser disputed Mr Keating's recollection, saying he had conceived the 2 to 3 per cent target in March 1993, floating it as an option during a speech to the Economics Society in Canberra. But he endorsed Mr Keating's defence of the unions, saying the ACTU had been vital to containing inflation at the time.

"Paul's recollections are a little different to mine," he told the Herald. "The origins of that target predate the meeting he is talking about in 1995, and they certainly predate 1996, when the present Government came to power. But [it] is absolutely true that the unions and the government got on board and we were the only country in the world, as I recall, where the unions supported a central bank inflation target."

Mr Keating also accused John Howard, as treasurer in 1982, of presiding over the biggest wages explosion in postwar history, when wage demands hit 18 per cent. "The last wages blow-up occurred under John Howard," he said. "He was in the tinderbox, with all the TNT around him, and he went in and lit a match and said, 'where am I?"'

During a feisty speech, Mr Keating produced his handwritten notes, which he had archived for the past decade. According to his notes, obtained by the Herald, the "accord partners remain committed to the maintenance of low inflation and regard it as a desirable social outcome".

Campaigning in Perth, Mr Howard distanced his Government from any responsibility for the impending rise in interest rates by saying the latest inflation increase was driven by factors beyond his control.

"Many of the components in the increase of the cost of living over the past year, if you look at the CPI, have been due to issues related to the drought," Mr Howard said.

"There's no evidence to suggest that an alternative government would have done any better in relation to that and there's plenty of evidence that an alternative government would add to inflationary pressures through its industrial relations policy."

Mr Howard noted that the Reserve Bank has found wages growth was "behaving in a very sensible and restrained fashion" and that "investments that have come through in recent times have eased capacity constraints".

"So that deals with both of the arguments that have been advanced by the Labor Party," the Prime Minister said.