The news makes me a little confused from time to time. For example, I recently saw a front page in Victoria how the state government was broke and we needed to fix the budget side by side with an article complaining about state taxes and how they should all be lowered which – to my limited mind – would worsen the budget bottom line. Of course, we could spend less on certain things such as hospitals… which have shocking waiting lists for surgery and emergency departments who can’t keep up.
So I find it hard to reconcile the recent calls for the government to rein in spending from the same media outlets who are calling for an increase in Defence spending to three percent of GDP…
I guess that if the government reduced its spending massively then the economy would contract and GDP would fall to the point where simply buying a couple of drones and paying the wages of the defence personnel would be a much greater percentage of GDP but I’m not sure that it would actually get it to the three percent demanded by the USA, and it certainly wouldn’t boost our defence capabilities.
Or maybe it would. After all, a couple of drones may be more effective than non-existent submarines.
Still, as I like to point out frequently, there is no such thing as good economic news. There is only slightly worrying economic news and absolutely terrible economic news.
Take the recent pay rise to all those on the minimum wage. I read a post from someone who was lamenting that this should happen when economic growth was so anaemic… Yes, it will make it harder for some businesses to pay the wages and maybe they’ll put prices up, leading to lower growth. On the other hand, I can’t see that reducing the purchasing power of all those on the minimum wage will necessarily boost growth. Perhaps if they would just work for free we’d have some sort of trickle down where this lead to prices falling and this would lead to… oh, a recession…
Anyway, you can clearly see that this wage rise wasn’t good news even if some of those people getting the extra money thought so.
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Wasting MORE money – money Australia does NOT have and can ill-afford – and spending it on submarines and other weapons of war will only achieve ONE thing and that is to turn our isolated nation of Australia into a big, fat TARGET!
This is exactly the type of thing the war mongers in the LNP usually promote! As such, many left-wing (ex)supporters of the Labor government are now SERIOUSLY DISAPPOINTED in the Albanese regime right now and, no doubt, intend to switch our vote to THE GREENS at the next Federal election.
What is Albanese thinking? Spending billions of hard-earned taxpayer funds on nuclear submarines – that we cannot afford – will prove to be a serious irritant to China and other neighbouring nations throughout Asia who are likely to see such a purchase as Australia “flexing our muscles” or, worse, posing a threat to peace within the Pacific region! Our nation, UNLIKE America, has always been respectful, friendly and helpful to our Asian neighbours and MUST continue to be so – the purchase of submarines and other weapons of war is NOT the way to cement and prolong that friendship! Wake up, Albanese – this is NOT the path our nation needs to take if we want to maintain good relationships with our Asian neighbours throughout the Pacific!
Australia does NOT have any enemies and China is, by far, our BIGGEST trading partner. Why why WHY do we keep acting like a crawling sycophant to America which is currently being corrupted by Trump, who is not only a notorious misogynistic predator but also a dangerously undemocratic megalomaniacal psychopath and CONVICTED CRIMINAL! Trump has ZERO allegiance to ANYONE except the sociopath who stares back at himself from his mirror every morning. Trump certainly has not displayed one iota of loyalty to our nation; has not exhibited one iota of gratitude for our steadfast (and disastrously short-sighted) support of America during the Vietnam War as well as the notorious and illegal invasion of Iraq and Syria! Trump is not only completely ungrateful but has shown our nation an appalling level of condescending contempt – Enough! Our nation has a miniscule level, if any, trade with America and considering that China is, by far, our BIGGEST trading partner, it is in Australia’s best interests to maintain our close ties and loyalty to China and our other close neighbours throughout the Pacific. Purchasing submarines and weapons of war will NOT be a deterrent as China is not only the most populous nation on the planet, next to the USA, it is the second-most powerful nation in the world. As such, Australia’s short-sighted decision to purchase submarines will just prove to be an irritant and, in all likelihood, have a detrimental impact on the close relationships our nation has developed with our Asian neighbours over many years.
The fact that America has taken its contemptuous, disloyal dismissal and betrayal of our nation one step further by imposing unfair tariffs upon Australia, it is now time to cut trade with America and expand our trade with other allied nations throughout Asia as well as Canada (which nation has also been snubbed and offensively mistreated by the Trump regime).
If that short-sighted, megalomaniacal political psychopath, Trump, wants to alienate America from its Allies and the rest of the world – so be it! THEY are the ones who will be worse for Trump’s betrayal of nations who stood by and assisted America in so many of their futile wars which cost the lives of so many courageous Australian men and women! Never again!
If Trump was DELIBERATELY trying to isolate the USA from the rest of the free world, he couldn’t be doing a better job! There’s no doubt about it, the ONLY thing Trump is succeeding in is to: MAKE AMERICA HATE AGAIN.
According to Tim Wilson, curtailing the tax concessions on those with over $3 million in superannuation is going to be catastrophic for our economy and cause immeasurable damage to the retirement aspirations of retirees in his electorate : as the changes only affect 0.5% of those with superannuation accounts we must assume that Tim’s angst is on behalf of those who supported him in Goldstein or is it just so much smoke and mirrors.
Agree with Katie.
Thx, Katie, for saving twenty minutes of my putting down for something similar.
For God’s sake, I am just watching and waiting. Will the government try the AUKUS hooey/,justifying spending cuts for social infrastructure?
@Katie: An excellent diatribe of the multi-party stupidity pursuing the self-serving USUKA sub debacle established by Scummo of the Five Secret Ministries as his treasonous self-serving post-politics ”income stream”. (It is NOT a career because that would require ”work”, a description that should never be put in the same sentence as ”Scummo”.).
Anything attributed to Tim ”Z1on@z1” Wilson, the unfortunately returned now representative of the GAZA GENOCIDE is likely erroneous. The full details are the ”new tax” is only applied to earnings in superannuation accounts over $3 MILLION, that includes less than 1% of taxpayers.
Given that any person fortunate enough to have $3 MILLION superannuation savings will likely have also have paid for the best available accountancy advice to legally minimise their income tax through ”tax sacrificing” and the other too many allowances in the taxation laws, then it really should be considered a minor charge for trading in a conservative LIARBRAL$ dominated political system that finally is required to begin paying its way.
Next, we need to see the foreign owned multinational corporations required to pay for the beneifts of trading in Australia and receiving OUR natural resources FOR NO COST.
Little Johnnie Howard has a lot to answer for in the present economic malestrum that Dr Jim Charming, the ALBANESE LABOR TREASURER, is sorting out for the benefit of Australian taxpayers.
Now what brain f*rt has Tinpot Ted OBrien, the LIARBRAL$’ nuclear baker, come up with to titillate the Murdoch Media Manipulation Monopoly this morning?? Really, the final demise of this once glorious political party should be swift & immediately terminal – for the benefit of the historians.
Whatever weapons we equip ourselves with……………..submarines are not something that should be high on the list, or even on the list at all. There are a whole lot of other weapons we could be buying/building that would have more impact than subs and most of them are airborne.
AUKUS has become just another massive con job. We are paying billions to help the American submarine industry under the promise of receiving some subs which neither America nor the UK have any sort of capacity to provide us with. They need every single one they can build for themselves. In the meantime we will be paying many more billions to prop up their industries so they can build more subs for themselves. This would have to be Morriscums biggest legacy and shame on Labor for ever agreeing to it in the first place. I still cannot believe they ever went along with this, it was always rubbish right from the start.
This whole project should be cancelled right now and they should give us our money back purely on the basis that we contracted for something we are never going to get.