The cost of living is going to be one of the main points of the upcoming election. Appartently, Dutton will be asking if we were better off three years ago than we are today, which some have unfairly suggested that this is a slogan he borrowed from Trump. This is unfair because Trump asked if people were better off now than they were four years ago, which is a whole year different, giving it a more Australian focus.
Personally, this won’t encourage me to vote for Dutton because I am better off than I was three years ago thanks to an economic plan I’ve borrowed from Trump, or at least I will be thanks to my cunning plan. You see, I frequently buy my wife a cup of coffee and the cafe has been very, very unfair on me because they have a trade surplus with us. So, in future, I’m going to add a twenty five percent tariff on the coffee which should boost our household budget. At first my wife suggested that this wouldn’t really boost it by very much but I explained that if it wasn’t enough, then we could drink more coffee thereby forcing the coffee shop to give us the free coffee from my coupon on a more regular basis. She didn’t think this would help and tried to suggest that she’d be paying the tariff so it wouldn’t actually help our household budget, thus demonstrating that she lacks the economic understanding of me and the President of the USA…
Anyway, Dutton hasn’t spelled out why exactly being worse off when you changed the government means that you should change the government again. I mean if the last time you did something it made you worse off, doesn’t that mean that you shouldn’t do it again? And if his point is that Josh Frydenberg was a better Treasurer, how does that mean that we should allow Angus Taylor to have the job given that he often muddled his figures such as when he confused the yearly inflation rate with the monthly rate. And surely, if things were better when Scott Morrison was leader, he should stand aside and ask Morrison to return so we could have a politician that doesn’t take someone else’s job by holding a hose…
Whatever, the election will be called any day… Or any week… But it will definitely be called and until it is we can all spend our time productively by speculating on what the day of the election will be… Personally, I’m betting on a Saturday.
We can also speculate on whether the Reserve Bank will lower interest rates next week. Lots of people are saying it’s an almost sure thing. This has led to Peter Dutton saying that the RBA should resist pressure to lower them because lowering them would be a big mistake if it turned out that, even though inflation is in the 2-3% target range, it might not stay there, so even though people are hurting, Mr Dutton would like you to put up with it because temporary relief is just a bit of a sugar hit like everything other cost of living relief measure that he’s voted against.
The other big election issue will be, of course, nuclear power. With power prices not rising by as much they have been, there’s a strong need for nuclear so that the taxpayer can finance the enormous cost of building nuclear plants so that they can sold off to private industry in the future. Renewables, I’ve discovered, are very disruptive because they can lead to hecklers. Not only that but they need to hooked up to the grid, and many farmers are objecting to poles and wires running through their properties. Nuclear, on the other hand, will apparently be magically transported through the air and land in your switchboard. The main point is that – after some initial cost – nuclear will be much cheaper because we’ll be using less power owing to the fact that so many businesses won’t be needing it any more… that seemed to be what the modelling from Frontier Economics was saying.
But the main thing I’m looking forward to this election campaign is the return of “the best retail politician in Australia” Barnaby Joyce. He’s been so lacking in public profile recently that someone suggest that he’d been put into witness protection. I find this strange because that would suggest that Mr Joyce had witnessed a crime and if there’s one thing that’s been consistent in Barnaby’s career it’s his inability to notice things. For example, noticing the lack of water in a contract to buy the stuff. Or when he ranted about wanting to get the government out of people’s lives, including his, which would have been less strange had he not been a government member at the time…
Still I’ve never understood the phrase “best retail politician”. Does it mean that there are politicians you can get wholesale?
Whatever, buckle up. While there are laws about misleading information in an election campaign, there are no laws against making things up before the campaign starts, so we’d better get ready for stories about a Labor death tax, or the Liberals wanting to remove the right to disconnect laws and to make it harder to contact Centrelink by sacking thousands of public servants… Ok, I know that the Coalition have said those last couple but just because a politician says it, that doesn’t make it true!
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Am I better of than I was three years ago is the wrong question … the correct question is … how much better off am I under the current government than I would have been if the LNP was still in government for the last three years … I can assure you that it would have been way way worse!!
The long shadow effect of that political filth Maggot Morrison still haunts and hinders. And Jolly Juiced Joyce is just the man (hah) to occupy positions of political filth superbly. Apparently polled punters are to feel pain and alter votes and deliver possible control to a Dutton, Peter Duckwit-Futton actually, a well know utter failure at every office ever held and thus a great Australian conservative candidate. Actually a Dutton is a brown bumblast, synthetic, and a simulation of the real thing, but with saturated instilled permanent stench, how malodorous. I’m no worse off than before and can see some recovery from the putridity of social, economic, cultural and political life from Anality Abbott to malevolent Morrison. Wasted years, but some want a repeat!! If you told the mug to pay less for a nice butcher and not heaps to a heart surgeon, would they accept? Yes? If Merde Dog’s maggoty media said to, would they do that? So, if the coalition is the answer to any sensible question, then seek a wife in Palmer lane, get a Cup winner cheap from the knacker’s yard and do buy a car from old John L’s estate. It is just so sensible…
@Rossleigh, that second paragraph is a spectacular example of LNP logic. Your writing skills are up there with the best.
Of course there are politicians you can get wholesale; look at Gina and Rupert – they bought the entire LNP and ALP and bargain prices.
I am amazed to hear on various current affairs programs that Spud Dutton is odds-on to win the upcoming election even if he has to settle for a minority government.
The Australian and SKY after Dark tell us in all seriousness that Dutton has done the hard yards and proved his leadership skills and he deserves to be our next prime minister : after all his economic leadership from opposition has seen the ‘inflation dragon’ slain : down from six percent to less than three due to measures taken, we are told, by the previous coalition government. The two surpluses achieved by the Labor government were, we are told, inevitable following the astute leadership of Morrison’s multi-portfolio leadership.
This level of misinformation is quite alarming as, we all know, the coalition don’t actually have any policies beyond tax-free lunches for their mates (no grog they tell us.) And sacking thousands of public servants a la Trump – always a vote winner.
From my observations, the coalition are just a rag-tag mob of wannabes who are not capable of running a chook raffle [they would call in consultants] let alone leading this country.
This is going to be an election campaign the like of which we have never seen before in this country; we will be bombarded with Artificial Intelligence promoting substantive stupidity…………beware my friends!