BER Inquiry initial report
The initial report of the inquiry into the Building the Education Revolution school buildings program is now available. It makes interesting reading. Most of the complaints received by the complaints taskforce were, broadly, to do with value for money, so [...]
The lifesaving stimulus package
We’ll never know for sure, but the stimulus package probably saved several hundred lives. There are quite a number of studies examining the adverse health effects of unemployment. It seems that many do find an adverse impact. A survey in [...]
Shock horror -pensioners play pokies!
If you don’t feel panicked enough by the flu outbreak in Mexico, how about a good old moral panic on top? Apparently, pokie revenues are up, purportedly on the back of the Government’s stimulus package: The warning comes as the [...]
Turnbull: The new "Mr 18 per cent", Labor 58:42
There almost seems to be a relationship between the economic bad news and Malcolm Turnbull’s poll numbers – he’s now down to 18% as PPM in Newspoll, as job numbers also tumble. Anyone might think that constant negativism on everything [...]
Standing between the people and a bucket of money
I must confess that this one had passed me by until I heard an interview on the ABC yesterday with Professor George Williams, constitutional lawyer of the University of New South Wales (can’t find it on the net.) It seems [...]
Spend! Spend! Spend!
The telly news led with rhetoric suggesting the February retail figures showed that spending “dried up” after the December stimulus, and the opposition chimed in with their claim that “the money was saved” (which apparently is terrible, even though it [...]
Newspoll Monday: Labor 58-42
No change since the last disastrous result for Turnbull and crew, suggesting that there might have been some real movement in the vote associated with the Liberals’ naysaying on the economic stimulus package, rather than a blip. Good luck with [...]
The Overshadow
Props to Paul Burns for cooking up the latest apt nickname for Peter Costello – it says it all, really. If the Liberal Party thought they’d recovered from the political morass they sunk themselves into with the stimulus package naysaying, [...]
Julie Bishop: economy just fine, thanks
There’s surprisingly good news on the employment front for January, with unemployment only increasing by .3%, full time employment holding steady and female full time employment rising substantially: ANZ economist Katie Dean said the stimulus package had worked to retain [...]
The politics of the Senate vote on the stimulus package
Possum has done an admirable job of spelling out the political implications of the stalling of the stimulus package in the Senate [see also Rob's earlier posts]: The real irony here is it’s the bloke in the middle [Malcolm Turnbull] [...]
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