Tag Archives: barnaby joyce

Underdog Barnaby Closing In On Windsor

21 May

From the Northern Leader:

HITTING THE ROAD: Nationals candidate for New England Barnaby Joyce has forums in 29 towns and villages over the next three weeks. SOURCE: The Northern Daily Leader

HITTING THE ROAD: Nationals candidate for New England Barnaby Joyce has forums in 29 towns and villages over the next three weeks. SOURCE: The Northern Daily Leader

NEW England Nationals candidate Barnaby Joyce accepts he’s the underdog but he doesn’t think he’s as far behind sitting MP Tony Windsor as the latest poll suggests.

It was no surprise he was the underdog, Senator Joyce said, but he disputes just what the voters might read into the latest poll.

“I went into this fight behind … but I’m closing in,” he forecast as he prepared to tackle a six-week whistle-stop talking tour of the electorate.

He questioned the results of a poll published in The Leader yesterday from its sister publication, The Australian Financial Review, that indicated the independent MP held a 10-point lead over The Nationals deputy leader.

Senator Joyce said he believed he was much closer than what the poll showed – ranking Mr Windsor with 49 per cent of the primary vote against Senator Joyce’s 38 per cent.

He didn’t doubt the numbers but he did question the transparency of the motives behind the poll – who did it, what questions were asked, what the sample size was, and the demographic split.

“I would question whether it’s a reflection of the electorate, the way the questions were asked to determine the outcome,” he said.

The story reported that the polling was done by the resources industry to gauge how real were the concerns about coal seam gas, water and coal mining – and according to the results the resources issues ranked way below priorities like jobs and employment, the economy, cost of living and health and education issues.

Senator Joyce predicts those issues will be among the questions raised in his electorate forums, which begin at Mullaley tomorrow with an afternoon appearance in the Mullaley hall.

From there he will take a swing through the far flung reaches of an electorate that is nearly 60,000 square kilometres in size and extends nearly 400km from south of Nundle to the Queensland border and is about 280km wide.

There are about 56 towns, villages and localities – and Senator Joyce has 29 of them in his sights for stopovers.

“I want to get to all the corners, the little towns that get forgotten, like Ebor,” he said.

Mr Windsor has held the seat of New England since 2001 with a margin of 21.52 per cent – the 10th safest seat in the parliament.

But this time around Senator Joyce believes that while he’s behind, he’s not too far behind and certainly not 10 percentage points.

He thinks there’s a huge 30 per cent of undecided voters out there going inside the four months before the election.

How they decide to vote will be crucial to his chances of toppling Mr Windsor and he muses that while Tony Windsor’s campaign might be based on his loyalty and his length of service to his electorate, his premise is for the future, and a place close to the centre of the action in a future government.

He also expects to get an inkling of the feelings of supporters and the great undecided when he hits the forum track tomorrow.

He expects some torrid, tough questions.

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Clairvoyants Revelling In A Financial Kama Sutra

17 May

Barnaby Joyce writes for the Canberra Times (my emphasis added):

Budget bottom line? Theatricality trumps actuality

The Budget is defining for politicians. They preen and pose and the building fills up with tribal acolytes. But it is after all, theatre. It is not actual it is a budget.

Everyone has an opinion, and you can as well, as it is an amorphous interpretation that you can get as wildly wrong as you like without any ramifications to you personally.

Actuals, as opposed to budgets, they are real. CEOs, accountants, shareholders live and die on actuals. If you “fudge” as an accountant and the partner finds out, you are out. If you cannot get the account to reconcile, say so, stay back and get help, but do not fudge it as it is the cardinal sin of accounting.

Budgets are more wishful thinking, sometimes pure romance. So accountants – dour, colourless characters that we are – get joy out of actuals, but budgets are more the indolent afterthought.

Anyone can play budgets and many positions are possible with clairvoyants revelling in a financial Karma Sutra, but in actuals only one position is right.

Well by the time you read this, which I am writing on Tuesday night, the Budget will basically be an item of ridicule and all will be waiting for the election this time with a fear to match the frustration.

The forward face value of our debt is in excess of $370 billion and that is from a Government Treasury whose claim to fame in the past is that they are consistently and miserably wrong, underestimating the problem, leaving the Treasurer with the time to gloat over an undeliverable promise. The unethical issue of getting the forecast wrong is that the alleviating action is put off and massive debt hurts those who never caused the problem. How on earth do we pay this money back, what is for sale, whose job is safe?

On the big picture, the Baby Bonus is gone and we have no real idea what the National Disability Insurance Scheme is going to cost, nor what Gonski really means in detail as far as cost is concerned.

On things you probably may not hear, big business will be forced to go monthly on PAYG. This will move the cost down to suppliers who will be under the pump to pay sooner. If you want to get someone on a 457 visa, the application charge will now be more than double, at $900. Why? No real reason for this apart from the fact they are running out of money.

There is confusion as to what on earth the message is, saving while spending in unnecessary areas and getting further into debt. What is the big plan that can stand in the here and now without relying on heroic projections? The levy for NDIS is projected near $3 billion for a cost which some have estimated at near $20 billion a year. Our terms of trade will have to be on the optimistic side to say the least as commodity prices are currently weakening.

I have to admit New England got a few promises more than most electorates, making my job harder there, but the question is how does one deliver a promise in either opposition or more pertinently when we have no money. Promises should not be confused with delivery. This is a question that I do not believe sections of the media will delve into with much intent, preferring the colour of the announcement over the complexity of the delivery.

Complexity is hard to distil down to a line but a very good indicator always is the debt. For Canberra, as I have stated so many times, debt is the canary in the coal mine and Canberra should be more observant of this issue than any other city in Australia. Departments know the problems for them are directly correlated to the size of the debt for the incoming government. When the Greens, Labor and independents decided that prudence should be put aside, then with it goes stability and security for the city of Canberra.

The final analogy I would say about this budget is the overwhelming feeling in the building of irrelevance in the Government’s papers and following discussions. It was an anticlimax that happened in the corner without any of the gravitas or attention of previous budgets. Australia does finally get to the TV to switch off the politics; they have done that.

Hear hear!

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Barnaby And Windsor Clash In Corridor

16 May

Go the biff!

From The Land (h/t Michael Anderson @irontracktor):

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TENSIONS between Independent MP Tony Windsor and Queensland Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce flared up in a robust exchange in the parliamentary press gallery in Canberra on Wednesday.

As politicians walked the press gallery discussing the previous night’s budget, Mr Windsor and Senator Joyce unexpectedly crossed paths, sparking a brief but fiery exchange.

Senator Joyce had earlier used parliamentary privilege to try and link the $4.625 million sale of Mr Windsor’s family farming property to Werris Creek Coal, a subsidiary of Whitehaven Coal, and corruption allegations against former NSW Labor Resources Minister Ian Macdonald.

Relations between the pair are already strained with Senator Joyce challenging for Mr Windsor’s New England seat at the upcoming federal election, in a bid to enter the Lower House.

Senator Joyce said he was “accosted” by an angry Mr Windsor who told him to “say it outside”.

Mr Windsor was referring to the comments Senator Joyce made in a three-minute speech in Senate debate on Tuesday on Mr Windsor’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (EPBCA) Bill, which is linked to water protection measures for coal and coal seam gas (CSG) mining projects.

Senator Joyce said the Bill – which has already passed the Lower House – would be supported by the Coalition and Mr Windsor was one of its “grand architects”.

“Minister Macdonald was the minister in NSW when Mr Windsor sold his place for a very good price; for a very good price,” Senator Joyce said in the Senate debate.

Mr Macdonald is currently the subject of a high profile corruption investigation in NSW over allegedly corrupt mining deals.

“But it is a question we rightly want to ask: how do you manage to sell your place for such a good price?

“How do you manage to get three times what it is worth?

“I do not know. Do you know? How do you? It is such a great trick.”

…

Speaking to Fairfax Agricultural Media, Senator Joyce said his political foe was “highly sensitive about the sale of his land to a coal mining company which he made an extremely good price for, a bit less than $5000 an acre”.

“He’s so sensitive about it that he wants to accost me as I walk through the corridors of parliament house and he did it in front of people,” he said.

“Everyone can attest to it, I walked past Mr Windsor and in an agitated state, he asked if I would take something outside.

“At the start I thought he wanted to fight me, which I thought was a bit beyond his age.

“I think it’s fair enough Mr Windsor answers questions about this… it seems peculiar… he’s terribly sensitive about it.”

Read more here.

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“In A Few Years Time We Will Be Like Ireland”

15 May

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Barnaby Is Wrong

9 May

3D-Wrong

From the Australian:

SENATOR Barnaby Joyce says he will vote in a referendum to recognise local governments in the constitution and allow federal funds to flow directly to them.

But he has slammed the federal government’s timing of the announcement and its failure to say what the exact wording of the referendum will be.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard launched the “yes” campaign for the referendum on Thursday

At the federal election on September 14 voters will be asked to decide whether local councils and shires should be recognised in the Constitution.

Mr Joyce told reporters in Sydney on Thursday he would vote “yes” but questioned why the government had announced the referendum now.

“They’ve announced a dopey wedge that’s actually going to compromise our capacity to get up financial recognition of local government,” he said.

“They’re trying to create a distraction and this is why people don’t like politicians and get so cynical.”

No, people don’t like politicians because we have learned … and they daily continue to prove … that everything they say and do is just a smokescreen.

A smokescreen of words, camouflaging an unrelenting self-interest.

“Financial recognition of local government”, they say?

Bollocks, I say.

This referendum is about nothing more, and nothing less, than enabling the bureaucrats and politicians in Canberra to bypass the State governments.

In other words, to further increase the centralising power of the Federal government -

Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore described the referendum as “necessary” but about a “non-contentious” change.

“This referendum is essential to ensure that the Commonwealth parliament has the power to provide direct financial assistance to local government,” Ms Moore said in a statement.

I say “No” to this referendum proposal.

Indeed, I would generally say “No” on principle to any referendum proposal suggested by politicians and/or bureaucrats.

The only referendum that is likely to be worth even thinking about voting “Yes” to, would be one suggested by the general public.

Which is why I am a supporter of Swiss-style Direct Democracy.

Where the people are recognised in the Constitution, and have the power to force a referendum on the topics that they think are important.

Such as revoking the laws passed by politicians.

UPDATE:

From Quadrant (h/t Twitter follower @HiggsBoson4) -

While, at first reading, this proposal might have a benign appearance, a little thought reveals that the proposal restricts the state governments.

The idea of “democratic recognition” being included in the Constitution has the effect of limiting the power of the state government to fulfil its governmental responsibilities in such way as the state parliament chooses.

The “independent” panel’s discussion paper presents two possible proposals as follows:

Each state shall, and each Territory may, establish and maintain a system of local government bodies directly chosen by the people.

Each state shall, and each Territory may, provide for the establishment and continuance of a system of local government elected in accordance with the laws of the state or Territory.

Each of these proposals is an attack on state sovereignty. If either is appropriate at all, the place for it is the state constitutions, not the Commonwealth Constitution. Inclusion of either in the Commonwealth Constitution would limit the states’ power on how their governmental responsibilities should be administered….

Recognition of local government in the Australian Constitution has been rejected three times. The first was when the Constitution was drawn up, the second was at referendum under a Labor government in 1974 and the third was at a referendum under a Labor government in 1988. There is now an opportunity to appreciate the reasons for the three previous rejections, the reasons for now rejecting the proposal a fourth time and voting “No”.

As I was saying …

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“Australian Dollar Is Not A Sacred Cow”

9 May

Barnaby Joyce writes for the Canberra Times:

National Party Senator Barnaby Joyce droving a mob of cattle west of Longreach, Queensland. Photo: Peter Rae

National Party Senator Barnaby Joyce droving a mob of cattle west of Longreach, Queensland. Photo: Peter Rae

Government has left cattle industry out in the cold

Fred Pascoe’s family goes back a fair way in the Gulf, possibly about 40,000 years.

His family didn’t meet a “whitefella” until 1904. That was his great-great grandfather, “Kangaroo”. In Fred’s words a “lusty” fellow who had seven wives. Fred jokes with a smirk that unfortunately that part of the family genes did not flow down.

Fred’s great-grandfather started working the cattle that have been a fixture of the Gulf ever since. His love of the country was too strong for the city. He died six days after moving to town in retirement.

Now Fred manages his own cattle property. Cattle have given Fred and his family a additional connection to his country. Cattle are now part of their culture.

Cattle are part of the nation’s culture too. The economy of the north depends on cattle. The truck drivers depend on them, the stock and station agents depend on them and even the local show and rodeo would not exist without them.

That’s what makes the government’s bungling of the live cattle saga a few years ago so galling. It was an attack on a culture. A culture that has been built up over more than 100 years, and now threatened by a combination of government incompetence, the roaring of money printing presses in other countries and the failure of monsoonal rains.

We can’t do much about that rain. I will leave that one to the local graziers and their God. We can, however, stop making bad policy decisions and start a debate about the high Australian dollar.

When we shut down the live cattle trade, we affect the food supply to a nation of more than 250 million people next door. Because of the undisputed barbaric acts of a small number of people in a very large industry we impugned an entire nation’s culture. The message was implicit but clear: we don’t trust you enough to provide you with food anymore.

Our government engaged in a prejudicial policy condemning the many based on the actions of a few. Since then the Government has made little attempt to support our own domestic cattle industry or make amends with our largest neighbour.

Because governments caused these problems, there is a moral obligation on them to help solve these problems. On Tuesday, I attended a beef crisis forum in Richmond. In a town of only 500 people in the Gulf, a crowd of 500 turned up, in a mood, not to vent frustrations, but to propose solutions and to look for leadership.

One of those solutions was for the government to purchase 100,000 head of cattle to put an immediate floor price in the market. Because the live cattle trade fiasco has dropped demand by about 300,000 head of cattle a year, beef prices are plummeting. In Longreach, cattle sold for $20 per head last week. That’s the equivalent of buying your scotch fillet for 10 ¢ a kilogram.

But the price of the dollar means our beef is still expensive to those overseas. More than 30 foreign central banks now hold Australian dollars, along with Google, Apple and Berkshire Hathaway.

The Botswana central bank is not diversifying into the Australian dollar because they share our love of a sunburnt country and wide, open plains, but because we are becoming a “safe haven” currency. Our exporters are paying their insurance policy.

Our terms of trade have fallen by 15 per cent, and economic growth is being downgraded. Still, our dollar remains relatively high.

The Reserve Bank recognised this on Tuesday by cutting interest rates, in part aimed at the high dollar. The Australian dollar is not a sacred cow.

The RBA has clearly announced that its monetary policy is now looking to target the dollar, and we have intervened directly in foreign exchange markets on 35 separate times in the past 24 years, including eight times since 1997.

Other nations are not as restrained as we are. The United States is now delivering quantitative easing at a rate of $85 billion a month. The Swiss have imposed a ceiling on their currency, and the new Shinzo Abe government in Japan is actively adopting policies to devalue its currency, by 20 per cent since last December.

Meanwhile, we are keeping our innocence and making life near impossible for those who we are relying on to figure ourselves out of our current financial mess. What’s the good of being pure, if you end up broke?

Regular readers know that I have written on this topic of the over-valued Australian dollar (due incoming “hot money” from other, currency-depreciating nations) since late 2011 -

Australia’s Debt Dreamtime

Bob’s No Mad Katter On RBA “Independence”

The Single Biggest Reason Why I Will Vote For Bob Katter’s Australian Party

Queenslander! This Is Why You Are A Complete Idiot If You Don’t Vote KAP Today

It’s wonderful – if all too belated – to finally see a politician from one of the so-called “major” parties speaking truthfully about the AUD exchange rate, and the close-mindedness on the part of our economic mandarins which has caused so much damage to Australian businesses (and thus, the economy) over the past couple of years.

Barnaby for PM.

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“You CAN Influence The Price Of The Dollar, If You Actually Want To” – Barnaby

7 May

black-check-mark-hi

Bookmark this post, dear reader. This is historic.

Once again, Barnaby Joyce is the first major party politician (to my knowledge) to speak truth to power concerning a(nother) vital economic parameter.

In late 2009 and early 2010 – before new Opposition Leader Tony Abbott wilted like a week-old lettuce leaf and sacked him – then Opposition Finance spokesman Barnaby warned of the dangers of Australia’s rising Federal and State government debt trajectories.  Only in recent weeks, some three years later, leading economists have begun to acknowledge that Barnaby was right.

Today, 7 May 2013, appearing on radio 2GB, he is the first major party politician to state that the government can bring down the exchange rate value of the Australian dollar, and tell the plain truth about why they (the ALP, Treasury, and RBA) have not done so:

The dollar, if you actually want to, you can actually affect it. It’s not written on tablets of stone and presented from Mount Sinai. You can influence the price of the dollar down if there is real motivation and desire to do so. One of the reasons they don’t do it is because they want to be economically pure. The way we’re going at the moment we’re going to be pure in debt, economically dead, so let’s make sure we keep our industry going.

Just so.

Over the past few years, our great economic leaders – the World’s Greatest Treasurer Wayne Swan, and the Million Dollar Man, RBA Governor Glenn Stevens – have deliberately chosen a policy of not joining the global currency wars.  Of deliberately allowing the AUD to rise and rise versus other currencies, and to remain at unprecedented elevated levels. Why?  In order to “make room for the mining boom”.

In other words, because of the inflationary impact of the mining (investment) boom, they have chosen to let a far-too-high AUD deflate the rest of the economy … to “make room for the mining boom”.

(Yes, the same mining boom that is now ending; the one that they so confidently believed would give Australia a period of “unprecedented prosperity”, a China-funded “golden age” lasting “to 2050″, according to former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry).

They have pursued an economic policy of allowing the rest of the Australian economy to be hollowed out, white-ant style, so that their precious little (bogus) economic performance figures for “inflation” (ie, the CPI) would not get too far beyond their arbitrary boundaries of preference.

While the rest of the country (except mining and related industries) has watched countless businesses, and whole industry sectors such as manufacturing, slowly getting squeezed towards, and in a record number of cases, into bankruptcy, our ivory-towered boffins have sat back applauding themselves for their ideological purity, self-congratulating for their not acting to influence the AUD exchange rate.

Despite the fact that practically every other nation in the world who can, is.

As usual, it takes the little ol’ bush accountant to bell the cat.

Barnaby for PM.

He’s the only one with both brains, and b***s.

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“Gillard’s An Imbecile” – Barnaby

7 May

I do love that rare, near-extinct breed … the Straight-Talkin’ politician:

2GB Chris Smith Afternoon Show Transcript
7 May 2013

Topics: Beef industry crisis, Budget deficit.

Chris Smith: Barnaby, good afternoon.

Barnaby Joyce: Good afternoon Chris. How are you today mate?

Chris Smith: I’m very well. I’ve heard from your team to say that you are in Richmond at a beef industry meeting, but this is not the Richmond near Windsor in Sydney right? You’re in the middle of Queensland.

Barnaby Joyce: This is Richmond in the Gulf. We’re up here because we have a Beef Crisis Meeting. What that means Chris is that last week we had cattle selling for merely $20 a head at Longreach. That’s disastrous. When you think that you’d need 25 head of cattle to pay for the fortnightly groceries. You can’t do that, you’re not going to survive.

What is it caused by? Well, three things. One thing is the drought. There’s not much you can do about that except pray for rain. There are two you can do something about. One is the live cattle trade. When you shut it down; it completely decimated our markets so that people don’t have a market to sell into. Now all those cattle are going south and they’re forcing down the price in other areas.

The Indonesians are happily sitting back saying: “Well you made our life a misery and now we’re making your life a misery”. That’s why we need to be so careful that we never overreact. Sometimes we see these terrible things on television. They’re terrible but we have to fix the problem not stuff the industry.
We have a parliamentary secretary who doesn’t believe in the live cattle trade. This just shows you how incompetent the Labor Government is.

Chris Smith: It’s so out of whack. Maybe it’s because of all those farming-oriented cabinet members Barnaby?

Barnaby Joyce: They just don’t seem to get it. Why isn’t the Trade Minister Mr Emerson, instead of doing his funny little dances and his OP Ed pieces about et al and sundry, why isn’t he, the actual Trade Minister, over there trying to fix up our trade? Why isn’t he over in Indonesia trying to fix it up?

The other thing is the dollar’s high. The dollar, if you actually want to, you can actually affect it. It’s not written on tablets of stone and presented from Mount Sinai. You can influence the price of the dollar down if there is real motivation and desire to do so. One of the reasons they don’t do it is because they want to be economically pure. The way we’re going at the moment we’re going to be pure in debt, economically dead, so let’s make sure we keep our industry going.

Chris Smith: Let’s give people an idea. You’re saying $20 a head, right? Two years ago, one head of cattle sold for $500. That’s how far the industry has plummeted.

Barnaby Joyce: Yes, obviously they didn’t all sell for $20 a head but that was the bottom of sale. It gives you a sense that what happens then, so your listeners would understand, people won’t sell them at the saleyards; they’ll just shoot them in the paddock because the cost of transport is more than what you’re going to get. More to the point, these people are under the pump. The bank manager’s screaming at them, the values of their place is going down. If you think about it in another way, imagine if you got your pay packet and it was only a fifth of the money or an eighth of the money you usually got in it. You’d be a little bit shocked wouldn’t you?

Chris Smith: Now, the deficit, it seems to get worse by the day. We’ve had Penny Wong this morning on the ABC today confirming the blow out will hit $17 billion.

Penny Wong: What I can confirm is that we are facing a very significant revenue shortfall from what was anticipated. Certainly in the current financial year if you look at what was expected at Budget until now, we’re going to be receiving as a government, about $17 billion less and we do anticipate that we will see revenues hit across the Forward Estimates. So, in that context, given the challenges the Budget faces and the nation faces, the Government has to take responsible decisions, so we have indicated today that we won’t be proceeding with the boost, the additional boost to the Family Tax Benefits that was planned for later this year. That’s a regrettable decision, but one that’s responsible in the economic circumstance.

Chris Smith: Okay, so the Family Tax Benefit is out of the picture because there will be no added bonus associated with that. Another broken promise out the window – but they have to do that. While Penny Wong tells it how it is Barnaby, we have the Prime Minister yesterday with school children, she seems to have school children with her almost every week now, she didn’t think the deficit was such a problem.

Julia Gillard: Now, we’ve got to work our way back to a surplus and obviously pay off the debt, but the scale of the debt is around 10 per cent of GDP. What does that mean? It’s the same as someone who earns $100,000 a year, having a mortgage of $10,000. I think most of you would know, you’re probably living in homes mum and dad are buying, that they have mortgages well in excess of $10,000 and they would happily change places with someone whose mortgage was just 10 per cent of their income. That’s not something that you have to worry about.

Chris Smith: So Barnaby, relax, it’s only a $10,000 mortgage.

Barnaby Joyce: She’s an imbecile. This is incredible, the debt as we speak right now is $271.1 billion gross. If you don’t believe me, check it out for yourself, AOFM, Australian Office of Financial Management website. On top of that you’re going to have your state debt. Of course if things fall over you’ll be picking up the state debt as well. Between the State and Federal Government debt we would be well in excess of half a trillion dollars. Our GDP of this nation is 1.3 to 1.4 trillion dollars. So if my mathematics are correct, even if you just take the Federal Government debt, it’s getting close to 15 to 20 per cent of our GDP.

Dear reader, this really, REALLY angers me.

The “GDP” fallacy.

GDP is not … NOT … government income!!!!!!!!!!!

The government’s income (ie, from taxing us) for this financial year, was projected in the October MYEFO to be $373 billion.  Finance Minister Penny Wong has now declared that the actual budget outcome will likely be $17 billion less than predicted. So that’s about $356 billion in annual income for the Federal government this year.

The Federal debt is (so far) $271 billion. Meaning that the Federal Government debt-to-income ratio is 76%.

So Ms Gillard … and Barnaby … the correct, honest analogy would be as follows:

“It’s the same as someone who receives $35,600 a year on public welfare, having a personal line-of-credit of $27,100.”

Please, please … get this right!  GDP is not … NOT … government income!!

Chris Smith: She’s fiddling with the numbers mate.

Barnaby Joyce: You see what they do, it’s so annoying, they say, “Oh the net debt, the net debt…” So where are we going to get this magic money Ms Gillard to pay off your gross debt? Where they’re going to get it is the cash reserves in the Future Fund. The Future Fund’s there to pay the public servants’ superannuation because they never put the money aside for. So all you’re doing to taking money from one credit card to pay off the other credit card and both credit cards are overdrawn.

Chris Smith: So there was no real surprise about the Newspoll results today. Labor’s primary vote has fallen to 31. That’s normally shock horror stuff. I just get the feeling that we’ve become desensitised to these numbers now.

Barnaby Joyce: The Australian people have given up on them. The Greens and the independents go with this crowd. They’re also ducking for cover now, pretending they weren’t there. Mr Windsor gave us this government. Mr Oakeshott gave us this government. The reason they’ve done this to our country is because they let them. To this day they are supporting them. They’re all in there together. They all wanted their time in the sun where they ran the show. Well they ran the show and what an absolute and categorical disaster it is, from Richmond in the north where they’re dealing with a cattle industry in crisis to down in the south where we’re running out of money. Left, right and centre and all over the joint, we’ve gone out the back door.

Chris Smith: I want to put this to listeners this afternoon, Julia Gillard also last night spoke about her desire to see more female Prime Ministers and hoped there would be less focus on makeup, hairstyles and choice of fashion. Now as I remember, a lot of the cartoonists and commentators had a great deal of fun with his glasses and his eyebrows. What about Bob Carr’s glasses, etcetera, etcetera? I don’t think that we’ve been overly critical of Julia Gillard’s state of dress or what she wore or how she looked any more than we mentioned the same with other Prime Ministers. It’s just how good you do the job.

Barnaby Joyce: We all get caricatures. They’ve had me tangled up in barbed wire fences and hayseeds hanging out of my mouth. It comes with the territory. If you don’t like the heat get out of the kitchen. They probably will have more female Prime Ministers and I hope they do, but by gosh I hope they’re vastly more competent than the current one we’ve got.

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Greens “Land Of Little Pink Clouds Of Happiness”

6 May

How remiss of me. Here’s Barnaby’s column last week for the Canberra Times (my bold added):

Political fiasco drawing to an end, but the pain will linger on

It feels like the political show is rolling the credits and the crowd is leaving the cinema on this Green-Labor-independent matinee.

One evening this week, Tony Windsor flagged one evening his inclination for a same-sex marriage referendum; then, the next morning, he said he was not going to raise it with the Prime Minister, nor was he going to vote for it.

This was followed by some incredulous babble about Facebook, social media and all in all translated to utter confusion.

Julia Gillard told us that the economy was going so well that the deficit had blown out to $12 billion. The debt went up by another half a billion and now the earnest scribes who swore black and blue that the debt was not a problem are now looking earnestly at the camera saying it is. Meanwhile, Labor delivered a similarly confused explanation from the Windsor book of high Athenian rhetoric.

But we do have one cost that is proportionally going down and that is unfortunately, our defence spending, which is now at its lowest level since 1937. I find that the most powerful tool to engage the electorate is to suggest what would happen to our nation if we let this Green-Labor-independent political fiasco continue in the job.

At the current Wollomombi Falls trajectory, there would not be much among the rocks at the bottom to pick up.

The Greens want everything ever dreamt of in their Kubla Khan, Xanadu euphoria, otherwise known as party meetings, to be paid for by a mining tax. The fact that they can never nominate a mine they support or wish to expand seems irrelevant in the land of little pink clouds of happiness and chatty tea parties with hesitant girls, tardy rabbits, and mad milliners.

From our side of the political debate, my friend Clive has not been helping out. Clive, please, starting a party is what Bob Katter has made into an art house film. Why join him on the set? It is a little more difficult than what is first anticipated and new parties gather new ideas at about the same rate as they gather self-appointed messianic figures who wish to grace Australia with their unrecognised talent.

Business is sitting back biting their nails. Business wants certainty, sanity and honesty; it sees the government crab walking to a new tax to cover the National Disability Insurance Scheme because they have no money for its promises.

It is a genuinely essential program to look after those severely disabled, but to be genuine in your belief in this, the government must suggest what current plans would be cut to pay for it. Anything recurrent you borrow for is a sign of bad management and temporary in its sustainability.

Taxes are always a drag on economic growth. If you keep putting on a little new tax that won’t hurt you, you will ultimately get to one that, in combination with all the others, economically kills you.

At this juncture my feelings are not excitement at what the polls say is an impending election win; my choice to stand in New England makes my participation in that event a lot less likely. My feelings live somewhere between apprehension and anger.

How did this harlequin political crowd manage to formulate such a financially disastrous voyage? If they had done nothing more than continue on from where the Coalition left off, if they had basically gone on holidays, giving instructions that nothing much should happen beyond the set course of 1997, then our position would be vastly better than it currently is.

I remember very well the excited glee as Labor members went around a barbecue in the Parliament House courtyard at the start of the global, but actually more US and Europe – financial crisis. They proclaimed that government had to “go hard, go early, go household”.

I remember thinking they should have added “go off your head and go broke”. It was like the kid who had just learnt a rude word in a foreign language and was showing all in the school yard how smart they were.

They had no knowledge or desire to genuinely delve into the vast complexities of the financial grammar or even to undertake the sober step backwards, to have a good sleep, cold shower and observe the situation and our very minor global role soberly.

Now, Michael Chaney, chairman of National Australia Bank and Woodside Petroleum, is comparing our financial fate to that of Ireland. I wish him better luck than I had a few years ago.

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Barnaby: “This Is How Stupid They Are”

30 Apr

Dear reader,

Please enjoy a few minutes of politico-economic sanity:

2GB Chris Smith Afternoon Show Transcript
Tuesday 23 April, 2013

Topics: Chris Smith, Senator Barnaby Joyce
Subjects: Budget black hole

Chris Smith: Senator Barnaby Joyce, good to have you on the program.

Barnaby Joyce: My pleasure, how are you?

Chris Smith: I’m well. Where are you today?

Barnaby Joyce: Well I’m actually making my way to Canberra, but I’m stopping off in Tamworth on the way. The bloke I used to stay with, he and his wife, unfortunately he passed away from cancer so I’m going to the service for that. I was going to go to Rockhampton but changed direction.

Chris Smith: So, you’re heading to, hopefully, a new place. Have you done any polling of late to work out how close you’re going to get to Tony Windsor?

Barnaby Joyce: It’s going to be tough. Mr Windsor will desperately say he wasn’t there, he’s not responsible for this government and he didn’t put them there. I will keep on reminding people that he did. The only reason that we’re $270 billion in debt is because he put them there. The only reason that we’re heading towards another $12 billion deficit is because he put them there. The only reason we have a carbon tax is because he put them there. He’ll be saying it wasn’t me, it was somebody else, I was away that day.

Chris Smith: The Prime Minister’s big budget black hole, estimates now putting the budget deficit anywhere between ten and $20 billion which is not a bad effort considering we were told that less than a year ago that we’d have a surplus of $1.3 billion. How is it possible that $21 billion goes missing Barnaby?

Barnaby Joyce: Bad management, simple as that. What happens is, they’re spending 12 bucks and only bringing in 10 and sure enough you start running out of dough. All of your listeners would understand that the deficit is just like the loss of the government for the year. The real problem of course is the debt that sits behind it. The debt is getting bigger and bigger. They had a good week last week, they only borrowed another half a billion dollars last week. The week before they borrowed another two billion. If you put the price of your house out to $300,000 a pop that’s 6,000 houses that they borrowed for the week a fortnight ago. They borrowed for another thousand or so last week.

Chris Smith: They keep talking about their debt to GDP ratio. “It falls in line with the rest of the world”. The rest of the world is a basket case right now, how dare they compare us with the rest of the world right now.

Barnaby Joyce: Yes Chris, that’s like walking around the graveyard saying: “This person’s more dead than that one”. It’s irrelevant. Once you’re out the backdoor, it’s irrelevant. It becomes an argument in sophistry, an argument in rather large numbers you can’t repay. This is a garbage argument: “Oh, we’re not as bad as Greece. We’re not as bad as Portugal”. I hope not. If we keep going the way we’re going, Ms Gillard, Mr Swan, Mr Windsor and Christine Milne if they keep running the show, don’t worry we’ll get there.

Chris Smith: I had to laugh when I was hearing this long speech of 33 minute duration, off and on through my commercial breaks here yesterday. I was hearing this reference to company tax revenue being down and company tax revenue usually gives us, company tax revenue has hit us and company tax… I thought to myself, no wonder company tax revenue is down, because if they open their damn eyes they would have seen companies close left, right and centre.

Barnaby Joyce: People are doing it tough. I was talking to a manufacturer the other day. He travelled 500km to have dinner with us and amongst the things he wanted to show me was his carbon tax bill: $12.1 million for the year. He said: “What that means to me is that I should go to another country. Why do you guys do this? What is wrong with you people? If I moved to America this is my cost. If I move to Asia here’s my cost but I choose to stay here. Guess who gave me these costs – the government!”

Chris Smith: They change the goalposts so often. The other goalposts they’re about to change if you believe some of the scribes today, is this Medicare levy. We’re going to get to the stage where we’re upping the Medicare levy for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Shouldn’t they be looking at the bank, that is, our bank, the National Bank and say: “Hang on a second we’re in such crisis at the moment, maybe we’ll hold off on that for a while”, like most people do in business, like most people do with their house budgets.

Barnaby Joyce: The first thing they should be getting, as a little old bush accountant, they should be getting their day to day finances under control. Then other good things that you want to happen like the National Disability Insurance Scheme can be paid for. This idea that: “Oh we don’t know where the money is going to come from so what we’re going to do is borrow more money and if we can’t borrow it, we’re just going to tax you”. That’s just a sign that they’re financially out of control. The people with disability are a soft spot for me and I do want to do something to help them. My gosh you get frustrated when you find the money that has been put up against the wall and all these nutty ideas and when a good idea comes up they have no money for it. We’re beyond not having any money for it. We’re getting to the point where we can’t borrow. We won’t be able to extend our credit limit and we won’t be able to borrow more money.

Chris Smith: You said as soon as they get money they spent more, remember they didn’t get a zap from the mining tax and they spent that on handouts remember before they even got anything.

Barnaby Joyce: This is how stupid they are. They basically said” “We’ve got this ticket in the lottery and now we’re going to buy the house and oh gosh, the lottery didn’t come in. That’s a bad plan, that’s bad luck. Let’s put out a media release blaming somebody about that”.

Chris Smith: Yesterday was a shocker and as I said at the beginning of the program, someone who stands there for as long as the Prime Minister did to come up with a series of excuses as to why everything is stuffed, is a person who is more culpable every minute she speaks.

Barnaby Joyce: I don’t think anyone is listening. I had to deal with the same thing in this area, I had Mr Windsor say that he wanted to bring about a referendum on gay marriage, however he wasn’t going to bring it up with the Prime Minister and if it did come up he wasn’t going to vote for it. I was trying to translate that for people and it’s called confusion – mass confusion.

Chris Smith: The race to become Prime Minister doesn’t just involve Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, Clive Palmer’s thrown his hat in the ring. Is the Coalition under threat of having their votes diluted because of Palmer?

Barnaby Joyce: Clive’s a mate but a lot of things he’s doing of late things are getting out there. Clive’s a good bloke. I don’t know why we’ve got this distraction here. It doesn’t quite work like that. As you know to set up a political party you’ve got to have members, branches, policies, people willing to give up their jobs and go campaigning for you. It costs a lot of money and I know he has a lot of money but it takes a lot of money to run a campaign.

Chris Smith: I’ve got to tell you that Clive Palmer may be one of your mates but he doesn’t count Tony Abbot as one of his mates. This is what he told me yesterday when he was in the studio.

Chris Smith: Tony Abbott has never been Prime Minister.

Clive Palmer: Thank God for that.

Chris Smith: His party has never been in the position of running the country, is there a sense of vengeance?

Clive Palmer: Not really. My number one criticism is that all sides of politics wherever they’re from, have lobbyists who are not elected, who advise them. If you go to Parliament House, there’s a box in Parliament House, on the floor of Parliament where the advisers sit. Tony Abbott goes over and gets advice from his advisor and someone else gets advice from theirs. Those advisers have direct links, were or are or will become in the future, employed by lobbyist companies. If you go to those companies, it doesn’t matter if it’s a Liberal or a Labor Government who you want to influence policy, they’ll assist you for a fee. I think that’s subrogating the Australian rights.

Chris Smith: Thank God Tony Abbott has never become Prime Minister he said.

Barnaby Joyce: That’s not helpful. The thing is, if Clive’s got a problem with advisers and lobbyists, that’s great, let’s deal with that problem. What are we going to do? Leave the Labor Party there and the Greens and the independents to run the show for another three years? What do you think is going to be left of this country if they stay there for another three years? You won’t have to worry about me campaigning there for another three years because honestly I would be lying to you if I said I’d know how to fix it.

Chris Smith: This is all about vengeance isn’t it?

Barnaby Joyce: Vengeance is a bad thing. Vengeance eats you up and gets you nowhere. You have to learn to park grief and move on. If you start carrying around a bucketful of bile no one cares about it, it just eats you up.

Chris Smith: What’s your message to Clive?

Barnaby Joyce: Clive help us get the country back on the rails. We don’t need any more instability. I’ve got to give up my job, an easy-paying job to have a crack at a seat where the bloke has 71 per cent of the two-party preferred vote. Why? Because our nation has got to get back on the rails. We all have to put our shoulder in to get the show back on the rails, not try and sink the boat. If we sink the boat we all go down with it.

- ENDS -

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