Tag Archives: barnaby joyce

“One Day You’ll All Wake Up And Realise ‘Hey, He Was Right After All'”

17 Apr

From Catallaxy Files:

Click to enlarge

Indeed.

Especially when it comes to debt and deficits ….

Barnaby is right.

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God Spare Us From The Government’s “Modellers”

16 Apr

Media Release – Senator Barnaby Joyce, 16 April 2012:

Dodgy modelling on Murray-Darling plan means consultation falls short

New economic modelling on the Murray-Darling Basin plan shows that the government has failed to consider the economic and social impacts of its draft basin plan. The government must immediately commission new economic research which covers the entire Murray-Darling Basin.

The modelling by Chris Murphy, of Independent Economics, shows that the draft basin plan could lead to the loss of 2100 jobs and a 9 per cent reduction in economic activity in just five towns around Griffith.*

“Chris Murphy is one of Australia’s leading economic modellers. His work shows that the economic impact of the draft could be up to 10 times worse than what the government has admitted to date” said Senator Joyce today.

“The government’s economic modelling of the Basin Plan is a complete farce. It assumes that no irrigator will leave the region after water is bought back from a community. The reality is that Bilbo Baggins gets his cheque and retires to the Gold Coast. I raised this issue with the government almost two years ago in Senate estimates and they have completely ignored it.**

Chris Murphy’s model allows people to move away from irrigation and he shows convincingly that this reason alone makes the difference between his results and the governments.

“With work this dodgy it’s no wonder Tony Burke has yet to get the support of one State Government for the Draft Basin Plan.

“The government can’t reject the findings of this modelling because it has been partly funded by the government through its Strengthening Basin Communities program and Regional Development Australia funding. Unfortunately the funding has only been able to pay for modelling in one of the 21 catchments in the Basin.

“The government must immediately fund more economic modelling for the entirety of the Basin. Without it there can be no guarantee that we will deliver a triple-bottom line outcome.”

* http://www.independenteconomics.com.au/Latest.aspx

** Senator JOYCE—If it is a general equilibrium model, my understanding would be, for example: say I buy a place in Leeton—a town that you did not visit—and the money just goes to everybody in the town, not to the person you actually bought the licence from.

Mr Gooday—You are getting at the way in which we distributed the proceeds of the sale of the licences back into the regional economies. The way we modelled it is what you described. For a region that sold, say, $10 million worth of water entitlements, the modelling was done by putting $10 million back into the region by spreading it across each industry. We recognise in the report that that is probably not the ideal way to do it, but the general equilibrium model does not distinguish between farm households and irrigation households. So we were not able to do it the other way.

Senator JOYCE—It is not even vaguely close to what happens. What happens with the general equilibrium model is: Bilbo Baggins gets $5 million for his water licence and he goes and retires on the coast. He does not go back into town and buy battered savs off the local servo.

Mr Gooday—Yes. And we understand that. I think the real point here is the level at which the general equilibrium model is constructed. It really does not matter how we give the money back. It does not make any great difference to the results, because the regions are rather large, and each of these seven regions contains—

… Senator JOYCE—This really brings us to the issue. Given the limitations of this study which we have just spelt out—and that has been in 10 or 15 minutes—in your view, does the study’s conclusion support the minister’s view that the report, and I quote:

… confirms that the Rudd Government’s long-term Water for the Future plan is supporting the future viability of our Basin communities and returning the rivers to health …

Senator NASH—That is hilarious.

Mr Gooday—The report says what the report says.

http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate_Committees?url=@Hansard/S13017.pdf

16 April 2012

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Barnaby Bashed On Baby Bonus: Another Media Beatup?

15 Apr

Slowly but surely a clearer picture is beginning to emerge over the claims in Australia’s biggest selling Sunday newspaper – including a misguided denouncement by the Editor, no less – that Barnaby Joyce had called for a doubling of the baby bonus.

First, Barnaby’s media release.

And, this from ABC News (emphasis added):

Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce says he is sceptical about the baby bonus and thinks it should be reviewed.

Senator Joyce has disputed News Limited newspaper reports he is pushing Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to make an election commitment to double the bonus to $10,000.

He says the plan to boost the payment was something the Nationals floated before the last election, but he is not in favour of it.

“I can assure you I don’t believe in doubling the baby bonus. I think that would be a ludicrous idea,” Mr Joyce said.

“I have, to be honest, serious concerns with the baby bonus as it is especially when it ends up not being spent so much on the baby, but on problems in certain communities – especially such as alcohol.”

The baby bonus is paid in fortnightly instalments to eligible families with an annual combined income of less than $150,000.

This sounds far more like the practical, objective, well-reasoned, and fair-minded Barnaby Joyce that your humble blogger admires and respects.

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Barnaby Media Statement On Baby Bonus

15 Apr

Media Release – Senator Barnaby Joyce, 15 April 2012:

Baby Bonus

I have never contacted Tony Abbott to push for a doubling of the Baby Bonus.

With a strong on the ground experience of the problems that large lump sum social security payments can create, I don’t think I ever will support a policy that would exacerbate these issues.

Before the last election gross debt was to peak at $220 billion but it is now forecast to peak in excess of $270 billion so unfortunately, like the nation, our aspirations are affected by Labor’s debt.

The Nationals believe that the Baby Bonus should be made in interval payments over a longer term to avoid the social problems of lump sum payments being made that, in some instances, do not go toward the baby but go to alcohol or other items that are actually at odds to the welfare of the child.

More information: Matthew Canavan 0458 709 433

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Oh Dear, Barnaby

15 Apr


From the Daily Telegraph:

BARNABY Joyce is kidding himself – and all the Australians planning to vote for the federal Coalition at next year’s election – with his latest policy thought-bubble of $10,000 baby bonuses for stay-at-home mothers.

Nobody would deny it’s hard work being a mum, or that the financial pressure on families is increased with every new baby.

But the Nationals Senator’s idea of handing $10,000 to women who choose not to take paid employment is a social policy nightmare.

It would be a tacit encouragement to women to stay at home instead of maintaining their careers with part-time or full-time work, contributing to the taxation system and building up their own superannuation balances in preparation for retirement.

It would, without a shadow of doubt, create a generation of women who opt out of the workforce.

Australia can’t afford that luxury.

Indeed, it is a social policy nightmare in the view of your humble blogger also.

But for the polar opposite reason of that propounded by Neil Breen, editor of the Daily Telegraph, who clearly thinks the biggest problem with the Nationals’ policy is that it would encourage mothers not to go back to doing their “modern” “enlightened” “liberated” duty … their “equal right” to be binary-digit earning, tax-paying, interest-paying lifelong debt slaves of The Machinery of “modern” society.

Back to that in a moment.

First, some balance.

All the lamestream media commentary I have seen on this subject fails to consider context and nuance.

As usual.

First, they are automatically, in typical knee-jerk style, sheeting home all responsibility for this policy suggestion to Barnaby Joyce. Even though it is not necessarily his personal suggestion – it is a revived Nationals policy:

Fearing a backlash over the generosity of the Coalition’s proposed paid-parental-leave scheme, which would offer wealthy working women up to $75,000, the Nationals have proposed a better deal for stay-at-home mums.

“It’s an incredible sacrifice for women to stay at home. You can see it in their superannuation and everything else,” Senator Joyce said.

“We want to make sure people don’t lose their house. Because everything is based on two incomes these days. All policies have a cost. But it’s a substantial sacrifice for people not to go to work.”

The Nationals first flagged the policy at the 2010 election …

Nationals leader Warren Truss stressed the plan to double the baby bonus was a policy of the Nationals rather than the Coalition and had not been endorsed by Mr Abbott.

It is clear to any thinking person that The Nationals revived policy suggestion is motivated primarily, if not entirely, by the gross inequality of Tony Abbott’s paid parental leave scheme, whereby working mums would receive 6 months paid leave at full pay for those earning up to $150K pa – meaning, up to $75K of taxpayers’ money for a high earner – while stay-at-home mums receive nothing.

Barnaby Joyce is nothing if not fair minded, and genuinely concerned for the many who get overlooked and left behind by the popular (social-engineering) politics of the day – witness his attempts to see justice done in the abhorrent Heiner Affair. So I applaud him for wanting to see a rebalance of the Abbott policy.

However. This is not the way to do it.

In my personal view, the baby bonus is bad policy. As with so many (all?) government “solutions” for society, it is classic good intention, bad outcomes. Indeed, the baby bonus is one of several major criticisms I have of the Howard government era.

Why?

For all the good intentions, it is my view that cash handouts for having a baby simply (1) encourages by reward the “handout” / welfare state dependency mentality, and (2) encourages the very young, the vulnerable, the desperate, and the foolish, to fall pregnant just to “get the cash”.

I have personally witnessed numerous examples of both those outcomes.

And so, for those reasons, I oppose the idea of a “baby bonus” as a matter of principle.

If Barnaby Joyce and/or the Nationals want to see government encouragement for, and a better and fairer deal for stay-at-home mums, that I strongly applaud.

Indeed, quite unlike Neil Breen of the Daily Telegraph, this blogger is all for a society where parents are actively encouraged to stay home and nurture and raise their children themselves – for the long haul, not just 6 months – rather than push their babies onto (government-regulated) “carers” a.s.a.p., so they can get back to “earning money” and “pursuing MY career” a.s.a.p.

Having witnessed many friends with young families who have followed the ever-growing trend in so-called “modern” “advanced” society to do exactly this, I see the results in the little individual horrors that others raise for them, and wonder at the collective horrors we may all face within a generation or two.

Back to Neil Breen, editor of the Daily Telegraph one last time:

It would, without a shadow of doubt, create a generation of women who opt out of the workforce.

Australia can’t afford that luxury.

Yes, we can.

The entire world can.

All it takes is a transformation of our “money” system.

From being our master … to being our servant.

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Robb And Joyce Have A Vision, Dam It

12 Apr

Media Release – Senator Barnaby Joyce, Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Water, and Andrew Robb MP, Shadow Minister for Finance, Deregulation, and Debt Reduction; 12 April 2012:

Northern vision held back by leadership deficit

The Coalition Dams and Water Management Task Group visited the Northern Territory this week and found that the vast economic opportunity of the north is being held back by a culture of bureaucratic inertia and apathy from the Northern Territory Labor government.

“There are enormous economic opportunities in the north of Australia” said Chairman of the Dams Task Group, Andrew Robb.

“Currently 28 per cent of the world’s middle class now lives in the Asia-Pacific. The OECD forecasts that by 2030, 66 per cent of the world’s middle class will live between India and China. This finally delivers to the north what they have lacked, affluent markets close to our ports.

“To take this opportunity though we need to have governments which show leadership and vision. I was astounded that the Northern Territory government snubbed the task group and refused to meet with us. Every other government in Australia, be they Labor or Liberal-National, have welcomed the task group.

“From what we did learn, the Northern Territory government is letting down Territorians. They released a plan for Darwin without any plan for where future water supplies would come from. Down south this kind of stubbornness has lead to the financial disasters of desalination plants. The Northern Territory does not want the same outcome up here.”

Senator Joyce, Deputy Chair of the Dams Committee, said that the government seemed to be hiding between environmentalism rather than doing the hard work of providing a proper balance between economic, social and environmental factors.

“It’s so disappointing when you meet people who want to make a go of it, who want to create a new area of wealth for our nation, but then are held back by stifling bureaucracy and inertia on the part of government.

“It seems like you only have to mention the word “environment” and you are miraculously transformed into an omnipotent being who dare not be questioned. It’s not good enough. Why should we limit water use to an arbitrary figure of 20 per cent? Nobody could tell us.

“That’s absurd. The flow of some of these rivers is half the whole of the Murray, and use is currently less than 1 per cent of what is used in the Murray. Development seems to be stopped because people are afraid the Territory could end up with the issues of the Murray-Darling.”

Tony Abbott established the Coalition Dams and Water Management Task Group in January with the remit to look at options for investment in new or expanded dams throughout Australia. The task group has now visited every State and Territory in Australia and has met with and received submissions from over 100 organisations and individuals.

The task group will issue an interim report in the coming weeks.

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Barnaby: Government Ignores Debt At Its Peril

12 Apr

True to his word, Senator Joyce has not relented in drawing attention to the dangers of ever-rising debt.

From the Canberra Times (my emphasis added):

A couple of years ago I was apparently a financial hayseed from the wild west of Queensland when I mentioned the debt.

Canberra is the canary in the coal mine for debt and the canary hasn’t been chirping lately. Mr Wayne Maxwell Swan has lost control and the cuts to spending and jobs are imminent.

I was startled at the trajectory of the debt when it was at $100 billion, and to be honest most ignored me. It wasn’t the size but the speed of the increase that worried me. Our gross debt is now $238 billion.

Last year Thomas Sargent won the Nobel prize for economics partly because of his work on government debt.

He noted that if you choose not to debase your currency, which can be the precursor to social collapse, government debt must be repaid through running budget surpluses at some point in the future equivalent to the size of our debt.

Debasing your currency is what the USA, UK, and EU are all doing, by “printing” money. In our Orwellian world of doublespeak, that is now euphemistically called “Quantitative Easing”. Their currency debasement is the key reason why (a) Switzerland’s central bank pegged their currency to the “QE’d” Euro, to protect their economy, (b) Norway’s central bank acted to weaken the Kroner, after all the “hot money” that was going to Switzerland went looking for a new “home” threatening to damage their economy, and (c) why the Aussie Dollar is way overvalued, wiping out whole industry sectors here, with only Bob Katter (and now, Paul Howes) arguing that something should be done.

Mr Swan believes, and this is just not going to happen, that we will have a surplus of $1.5 billion next year. Well, by then our gross debt will be about $270 billion and the custom of late means that it will be vastly more than that.

When Labor came to office, you owed $56 billion, so to get the debt back down to this level, Mr Swan will have to run budget surpluses of $1.5 billion for 142 years.

That’s the important point. A surplus does not mean that the debt is repaid, it just means you have a little bit of money to start paying off the debt.

So what are our other options?

Before our debt gets to $270 billion it has to pass through our current debt limit of $250 billion.

What would happen to Canberra if the limit on the nation’s credit card was not extended? A rather large train runs into a rather large boulder in a few months’ time.

If you choose not to do that you have to instead extend your overdraft again to your fourth debt limit in four years. Now we have an incredibly fast train going off the edge of a very large cliff in a year or so. So which one do you want?

Or do you just close your eyes and say a quick prayer to the Lord that it will all go away? Dear Jesus please pay our credit card off.

My humble suggestion is that you do everything possible for the cogs of the economy to turn in the most efficient way to make us as much money as possible.

This should start by getting rid of the carbon tax.

In my portfolio of water, I would recollect that between 2000 BC and 4000 BC the great civilisations of the world managed to create an economy from the development of irrigated agriculture. The Tigris and Euphrates, the Indus Valley in what is now Pakistan and the Yellow and Yangtze in China.

If you do not have the capacity to create excess commodities, you do not have a surplus-generating economy. Yes it must be environmentally sustainable but it must exist.

This week I have been travelling around the Northern Territory looking at options for expanded agriculture. The people up here were hit hard last year when Four Corners ran the country for a month and exports of live cattle to Indonesia were banned. They are still recovering.

I have just been to a meeting where it has become apparent that when the government doesn’t know the answer they just invoke the word ”environment” and then they are miraculously endowed with omnipotent qualities that preclude your right to question them.

There is one other way we can pay back the debt. We can just tax people to within an inch of their life and vainly hope that they are motivated to remain in the legal economy.

On a scale of one year, you only started working for yourself in the last week. From January 1 to April 3 you have been working for the government.

How much longer do you want to work to pay for the NBN? How much longer do we all have to wait before common sense takes over in a big white big building on a hill in Canberra?

More wisdom and commonsense in his little finger, than in the rest of Parliament House combined.

Barnaby is right.

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“Selfless Shine Above The Selfish”: Barnaby

8 Apr

To a humble blogger whose most fervent core belief is that “PRIDE is the root of all evil”, Senator Joyce’s column in the Canberra Times resonates strongly:

Selfless shine above the selfish

Easter, Queensland’s state election is over, Parliament is out, time to relax with the family.

Relaxation is essential but in so many careers our life is like climbing a cliff continually reaching for that next foothold or crevice to pull us further up. If you stop too long you will cramp and fall off and if you have reached your top, well then, it is all downhill from there.

At the triathlon in Mooloolaba last week the general aim of competitors was to do a PB. At work, a career implies aspiration, as the alternative is regret. How many colleagues in the coffee room tell you that they are aspiring to a lesser job on lower pay? Spiritually, have you ever come across someone who told you they actually did find enlightenment but got bored with it in favour of banality?
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Relaxation, like sleep, is an elixir on so many levels. So I am in Forster-Tuncurry ”relaxing”. At church on Sunday the local parishioners asked what I was doing. I told them I was ”relaxing with the family” which can be an oxymoronic juxtaposition. Some of the parishioners were ”relaxing” as well; some had been relaxing for years.

There are a lot of businesses that are very busy here helping people relax. To relax, apparently you have to consume lots of stimulants such as coffee, served at many shops up and down the main street.

You have to be eternally vigilant that you don’t go from purposeless relaxation to exercising as you go for a walk. Just as dangerous is reading the paper in which you may find a philippic written by some column troll and you will be taken back to work to write your rebuttal against this oxygen thief.

Then there are the questions you ponder as you stare at the ocean – what is the right proportionate mix of all these component parts; career goals, physical health, spiritual depth and how does one make sure that it is does not crowd out the most important responsibility to your family. How much is the appropriate amount of guilt you should feel before you are stirred from the slumber of ”there is more that I can do but I really cannot be bothered”.

Senator Judith Adams was a great example of an unselfish determination to serve. While some at Judith’s stage of life would have been content with relaxing, Judith instead took on board the major challenge of federal politics. Judith would have known her fate, but she worked until the end.

Born in Picton, New Zealand, she migrated to Australia and worked as a nurse. Judith began serving in the Senate in 2005 at the age of 62. I started then, too, I was 38. She was pro choice; I was and am pro life. Judith was a regional Lib, I am a regional Nat.

On so many levels we were likely to lock horns, but we didn’t. In 2008, I was honoured to attend the funeral of Judith’s husband, Gordon, a former Royal Flying Doctor pilot. Judith was a very matter-of-fact, practical and driven woman.

Politics is a job where you have the unfortunate experience of working with colleagues who die. Good people. It is the flip side of people like, and I will say it, Craig Thomson. I will say it because some drag the office down while others raise it up. A person can respect their public office while being completely at odds with a lot of what you believe in, but they conduct themselves in such a manner which deserves nothing but respect. Judith was such a person.

My recollection of Judith will be her intense interest in the lives of regional Australians. She committed to the task knowing she was never going to be a senior office holder. The reality is that many of the wider public would probably not even know her name. The strength about Judith was that this was not what was driving her.

She just wanted people to have their lives affected in a way which made things better for them. She didn’t want the fuss and the bother of the laurels. Even when she was going around on her electric wheelchair in Parliament, she always said that this was only temporary and that she was getting better. I have a sneaking suspicion she realised the truth but just didn’t want the attention to distract her from her job for others.

Barnaby is right.

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How Powerful Is That Minority That Wants A Carbon Tax?

7 Apr

Barnaby Joyce has written an article for the Australian Conservative, posing a question that regular readers all know the answer to (my emphasis added):

David Murray, outgoing Chairman of the Future Fund has blasted the carbon tax as the worst piece of economic reform he has ever seen.

So if the unions don’t like it, big business doesn’t like it, manufacturing doesn’t like it, farmers don’t like it, the electorate pathologically hates it, well the question then is who actually wants it? And how powerful is that minority? Where is the constituency that wants this tax? In Warrego on the weekend, out of 20,000 votes, the Greens received only 325. Maybe this is an example of how toxic these types of green policies have become.

The Labor party have tried to change the name to make the tax more palatable. First it was a tax to deal with global warming, then it was a tax to deal with climate change and now it is a tax for clean energy. What’s next? The happy pet tax? The peace in our time tax? It’s all the same, it’s an insane and very economically dangerous bureaucratic rip off.

Read the whole article here.

And if you are a new reader who does not know the answer, try this – Ticking Time Bomb Hidden In The Carbon Tax.

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$12.5 Billion And Then It’s “Credit Transaction Declined”

31 Mar

From the Australian Office of Financial Management (AOFM), 30 March 2012:

Debt ceiling?

$250 billion.

Typical weekly borrowings?

Around $2 billion.

With any luck, the government will just make it to the May budget before hitting the debt ceiling.

Again.

So you can be certain that, just like last year, there will be a little piece of legislation quietly slipped into the May budget, to raise the debt ceiling.

Again.

For the fourth time in five years.

Looks like I was right:

2 November 2011 – “Australia On Target To Hit Debt Ceiling By Mid-2012”

13 March 2012 – “Australia Debt Ceiling Hit By June”

Oh yes … did I forget to mention that on latest RBA figures, around 84% of our debt is owed to “non-residents”?

UPDATE:

Thanks to Kelly in comments who correctly notes that the title should read “$17.15″ billion till credit transaction declined, as the actual amount issued subject to the Commonwealth Inscribed Stock Act 1911 is $232.85 billion, as noted in the fine print in the last line of the screenshot above. Of course, this begs the question “what kind of debt instrument have they issued to the value of $4.59 billion, that is not subject to the Act”? My first guess would be bonds used to finance the NBN, which I seem to recall reading will be listed Off Balance Sheet in the Budget (to achieve that “surplus”, you see).

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