So, tomorrow night is federal Budget night.
Make your blatant vote grab predictions here.
34 Responses to “Let the cynics run free”
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Dollar $weets will now cost 50 cents.
I predict that the young and childless will miss out again.
GST exemptions extended to pearls and hairdressing for barren women.
Might be a good time to buy up some ABC Learning shares. More cash handouts for childcare means that ABC will have a firm basis for knowing how much to up the charges to absorb it. Ch…ching.
It will be interesting to see if Cossie finally does something to sort out the punitive marginal tax rates on returning to work. A policy area that has been neglected for more than decade. Quite ironic really for a government that professes a desire to get people back to work - yet the transition can mean being penalised on benefits at the top marginal rate. A family on unemployment and healthcare card can actually go backwards if the breadwinner gets a full time job. Go figure.
Well, you might be surprised to know that, while EMTRs are still high for income support recipients returning to work (and for low income people earning more), this government has actually done more than
No matter what is in it Rudd will proclaim it a “disaster for Australian families” for most of the elements and “a blatant rip-off of ALP policy” for anything he agrees with. Ho hum - if the positions were reversed it would be the same outcome.
Fortunately, unlike 10 years ago, we now have a substantial surplus so we are unlikely to incur more national debt in paying for the vote grabbing.
They are politicians, people - they take it from us and then use our own wealth to bribe us. Deal with it.
Sorry about that premature submission
What I was in the process of saying was that this government has done a fair bit to reduce EMTRs in the places where they were highest. It has gone further in the area of family benefits (where EMTRs have basically been cut by 30 percentage points - ie people get to keep and extra 30 cents of each dollar they earn) than for unemployment benefits, but there really is a limit to how far you can go if you want a welfare system that:
(a) pays people without jobs enough to live on;
(b) doesn’t end up subsidising too many people with full-time jobs; and
(c) doesn’t cost too large a proportion of GDP.
I’d be happy to see another lift in either or both of the income threshold for paying tax and the point at which the 30% tax rate cuts in. Both of these would improve the incentive for people to move from welfare to work.
The Centrelink budget papers will trumpet the savings from the new DSP and Supporting Parent benefit changes, but the total administration costs will be buried in a footnote to Appendix ZZZZZZ.
No significant extra money for public education, universities, or the arts.
More money for: farmers, inefficient industries, people with babies, people whose children have babies, and the environment (narrowly defined as the bits of the country you can dig up, chop down, or show to tourists).
Whatever its target, new funding will come with sufficient red tape to make people wonder if it’s worth the effort. But the great god of accountability must be appeased.
Self-indulgent over-paid over-educated single inner-city theatre-going latte drinkers like myself will be disappointed again.
(Suggestions for a hyphen-something to go with ’single’ gratefully received.)
More cash handouts for childcare means that ABC will have a firm basis for knowing how much to up the charges to absorb it. Ch…ching.
You may be a cynic, Slim, but you’re absolutely bl00dy correct. That disastrous government policy of “give the money to individuals as cash and let them CHOOSE!! (buzzword) which service to use, let the service follow the child” ethos is interpreted by private schools, childcare, medical providers etc as: “more cash overall, therefore we’ll raise our prices. The same people will miss out, but we don’t care because we’ll make more money.”
Guise, you asked for suggestions for a hyphen-something to go with ’single’. How about ‘deliberately-single’
“irresponsibly-single”?
Deliberately, yes, but I’ll go with ‘irresponsibly’. It better suits the overall picture of someone who is completely unrepresentative of modern, relaxed and comfortable Australia.
Should have included something about being a union member, too.
I predict that sales of Home Entertainment Systems will increase in the next 3 months, as well as “Family Holidays” - especially amongst the UNmarried Teen Mothers - those same people who the current Govt despise.
Bloody Hypocrites.
Well, perhaps they despise them (though I don’t recall ever having heard any of them say so), but to give them their due they’ve done more than any other government (except perhaps Gough Whitlam’s who invented the sole parent pension in the first place) to increase the financial benefits and relative financial incentives for teenage parenthood.
Perhaps that is where they really think the increased fertility rate will come from
Free beer! Free beer! I want free beer, Mr Costello!
Free puppies? Hell I’d vote Liberal if they gave me a free puppy…
Just one puppy?
I’m holding out for the kitten pile.
The Heff Anti-Barrenness Initiative:
Anti-barrenness stipend: a one-off cash gratuity to all women who conceive before the date of the next federal election.
The stipend is to be pro-rated in value to the closeness of the Two-Party-Preferred vote in the electorate of residence of the expectant mother, i.e., the closer the TPP, the larger the gratuity.
Oh the misery of a government actually having a surplus. Terrible isn’t it, luvvies?
Frank Calabrese
Indeed hypocrisy is to be despised. As I have not been following the local press much of late, could you be so kind to provide a link for this
Free beer, nothing. I am inner-city latte-sipping artsy-fartsy deliberately-barren cultural-elite unrepresentative swill AND I VOTE. I want my free Laphroiag. And I want it now.
And the free kitties as well.
Didn’t they already do that?
But PC,
The genius is in the methodology for calculating the size of the gratuity.
Yes, PC, but you, me, and all our other latte-sipping unrepresentative swill vote Labor. In safe Labor seats. And hence we don’t count.
As for conception bonuses, at the moment you have to hang on till delivery to get the dough.
Free public transport cards for anyone who is remotely retired, not subject to means test - expiry date next election.
Peace on Earth. Goodwill amongst all people.
Some tax breaks for the film industry so it can once again be run by criminals.
An amalgamation of federal film funding agences to create one big “super-agency”..
These are both completely serious.
The Adelaide “Advertiser” had a poster saying big spending on defence.
That would be a bit weird if accurate.
The Adelaide “Advertiser� had a poster saying big spending on defence.
That would be a bit weird if accurate…says hannah.
Na, hannah that falls in line with other rogue states, like North Korea.
Military first and then the people.
Well, judging by the leaks, they seem to be following the ALP around like a cashed up, lost puppy.
Dental health and solar panels, for all , are a must.
You watch the treasure, provide.
Cossie can express it all, with his bright clean teef and a funny.. yankee style.. solar cap, to match.
Then change it, next budget.
He are, pure genius.
So where is that Trade Deficit thingy at? Or to put it as a manager would put it: Robbing Peter to pay Paul!
Slim- ABC learning Centre rose 5% on Friday. Any want to bet there was a leak?
Please Mr Howard and Costello, I will vote for you if you spend all your budget putting yourself in containers guaranteed to be safe and secure for at least 25,000 years and burying yourselves and your entire government deep underground - preferably in a geologically stable region like Central Australia. For this I am willing to forgo any other handout for the rest of my life.