Joni at Blogocrats notes that the Liberals are bringing back the debt truck. From ABC News:
Mr Turnbull will today launch a new debt truck campaign which will see the vehicle driven around the country with a billboard that will highlight the Government’s debt.
The Coalition last used the truck in the lead up to the 1996 election to hammer home the Keating government’s foreign debt levels to voters.
Why stop at the debt truck, Malcolm? How about Incentivation? Or maybe The Things That Matter?
Or, alternatively, how about forming something resembling a coherent critique, rather than the “Labor! Debt! Scary! BOO!!!!!” approach which is all we’ve gotten so far?
How about “Under Labor your savings will be safer under the bed than in the bank”?
How do you do?
I suggest “The ALP is a party of puppets with the Commos pulling the strings”.
God, why is change so hard for these parties?! They should be leading it, not the public. Instead they’re pathetically mired in past triumphs, ever at the expense of today’s gains.
Back to the future again, not an original thought in the (w)hole that is know as the coalition
Or may I suggest a really strong campaign theme, illustrated with a hand holding a fistful of $20 notes? “The Liberals will give you cash, cash, cash!!”
Hang on. What’s that you say? A LABOR prime minister has pinched that one from us too???
Harrumph. Bring back the DLP and compulsory preferential voting.
Why not use a ute?
*keep on truckin’*
sounds better than
*keep on utein’*
but they sorta rhyme
and it may just be that Malcolm wants us to forget UTES though it’s difficult to see why….
A truck, you say?
I should prefer the Liberal Party to use a lorry.
It’s more British.
Just in passing, there are coloured chappies up here in heaven.
They serve the drinks.
No fellows from the DLP, though.
They must be very disappointed.
Yes, Sir Robert. Would you like us to mention the “forgotten class” of shopkeepers? Quote some Thomas Ford?
ALPine spending and imagine how much worse ‘twould’ve been if they’d bought that ute.
Sir Robert, we’re actually the only ones here. As a result of an intercession by myself with The Authorities up here, you have been located in one of the more salubrious precincts of Limbo.
And are some of the coloured chappies those very fine West Indian cricket champions of your era, Sir Robert?
Did it surprise you upon arrival that the “Cinque Ports” referred to the very limited range of ports available in the only bar they’ll let you into, the Colour Bar?
Cheers, Sir Robert: it just doesn’t do to complain. Her Majesty will join you in due course.
I’m not surprised to hear, Sir Robert, that there aren’t any DLP members in Heaven. I imagine they’re busy in Hell, running group tickets to keep the Communists out.
B.A., you always were a useful idiot.
I see that death has robbed you of at least one of those characteristics.
Sir Frank, I have always admired the instinctual athleticism of your ilk. It takes training to apply the bitters in just the right volume.
Some are born to play cricket. Others can be made useful.
Isn’t that right, Mr Santamaria.
The truck will have blank spaces in the columns for private debt 1996/2007, I suppose.
Private debt? Public debt?? What’s the diff???
Oh sh*t, the Debt Truck diff is shot and we’re scarcely on the road. Bugger.
Sir Robert, while you’re on the line: did Robert MacNamara end up at the “other” place?
Sir Robert,
Presumably you can see that very high wall off to your far right, behind which, occasionally, a great deal of noise can be herad. We like them to thinbk they’re the only ones here.
Yes, M. Saigon.
Remarkably, Mr MacNamara arrived by helicopter. Then the devils tipped it overboard.
Made quite a splash.
I see M. Diem (who is a great chum of Mr Santamaria) seems to have a bone to pick with Mr. MacNamara.
On topic, if the Libs are going to do this why don’t they just suck up their pride and ask Howard back on board?
This thread is designed to repel those of us born after the demise of Ming and the DLP (`77, ‘78, right?).
Ah, an even cleverer parody of Liberal policies than I had even thought!
Ah, Sir Robert! I’m just here to serve drinks.
Fantastic!!!11!!!1!!!111!! The Debt Truck (TM) is doing a “Hey! We’ve run out of drug money!” tour! Spinal Tap, eat your hearts out.
w00t.
“demise of the DLP”?
How is it then the grand old party has a seat in the Vic Parliament? The news of its demise seems somewhat exaggerated. Please try to keep abreast.
Look, I’ve learnt how to “link” as you young people say nowadays DLP
Surely the ALP will quote the number of GHG emissions from the truck’s useless meandering around the country, every time they get a question in QT.
It’s like fish in a barrel with these people.
Now look what you’ve done.
Seriously, though, the neo-liberal ideology is simply designed to remove wealth from labour and concentrate it with capital, e.g. the decision today by the so-called “Australian Fair Pay Commission” to reduce the real dollar wage of the lowest paid workers in Australia.
Business claims this will protect employment. What it will really protect is profit margins.
The ‘debt-deficit hysteria’ is purely a neo-liberal lie based upon faulty economic reasoning from a by-gone age. Their aim is simple: to prevent the Government from pursuing full employment in order to keep wages down and a pool of unemployed people to provide cheap labour when they do get offered a job.
ACOSS responds to the “Australian Fair Pay Commission” decision to punish low paid workers (ABC News Radio).
@27 – Thanks, andos. I might put up another thread on this because I don’t think it’s really on topic for this one.
Well, Frank McManus, as the man who promoted the creation of a schismatic micro-party DLP organisation after the NCC unions & most of the branches folded shop in ‘78, you of all people should be careful about invoking the old “rumours of our demise” saw.
And Kavanagh is really a pro-union rural independent, not unlike Susan Davies was when she left the ALP to serve as MLA for West Gippland.
Discussion of the Fair Pay Commission decision can go here:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/07/07/fair-pay-commission-still-a-misnomer/
kymbos @ 25. they could if they weren’t doing the same lame thing. Check midway down http://www.smh.com.au/national/politicians-hit-the-road-with-a-truckload-of-rhetoric-20090707-dbvy.html
Well, yairs.
Always more to learn. But have a look at that DLP website. Very respecful of my old party. Claims the old DLP brought many issues into the mainstream for the general good.
Susan Davies left the ALP before she was elected as an Independent in Victoria.
My old DLP wasn’t anti-union. It was anti-commo-union. Or are you suggesting that anyone who was anti-commo was automatically anti-worker and anti-union? I don’t agree, “Must learn more”.
Yes. And not just your mob, but also the bloody anti-Soviet revisionists like the Aarons family, the Tafts, Frank Hardy, Jack Mundey, Laurie Carmichael, John Halfpenny, Mikhail Gorbachev, etc.
Heh.
The DLP still exists?
Next you’ll be telling me that my beloved Carlton Football Club is full of criminals.
Preposterous.
Oh Dead Frank, I’m tempted to google those “NCC unions” I mentioned @ 30 to find out whether they were pro-union or not!
(But seriously, there are Leftwingers here who would dispute that the DLP was ever pro-worker. We better not start that argument. I don’t won’t a double chai latte thrown over my head by an enraged defender of the socialist faith. Which, in this topsy-turvy age, would probably make me decide to start voting Green.)
You’re all a pack of self-serving bastards. What? Oh a pink gin thanks darling. Have we taken off yet?
And that’s God Calls Me God to you Bob.
Sir John, the day you voted yourself out of office was your finest day of public service.
By the by, when Harold, my successor and your predecessor, eventually turns up here in heaven, I imagine he’ll be very fluent in Mandarin.
Wouldn’t you like to be fluent in at least one language, Bungles?
Debt is not debt!
“The ‘debt-deficit hysteria” is purely a neo-liberal lie based upon faulty economic reasoning from a bygone age. Their aim is simple: to prevent the government from pursuing full employment in order to keep wages down and a pool of unemployed people to provide cheap labour when they do get offered a job.”
Perfectly summed up in one go Andos.
The sad part is that the lie is so believable to the misinformed public because it makes such logical sense – of course a the budget of a government that presides over a modern monetary economy utilizing a non-convertable fiat currency with a floating exchange rate works exactly the same way as a household budget…… doesn’t it? Of course they have to finance their spending through earning, taxing or borrowing……..don’t they?
Of course, we know that this is completely wrong but when it comes to understanding how the basics of the modern economy function, the public is completely unaware of facts and their implications such as (1)Keating floated the dollar, (2) the Bretton Woods system is history and (3) the gold standard is WAY history.
So we could stay chained to the neo-liberal ideology for a long time to come yet.