Tag Archives: foil insulation

‘Til Debt Do Tear Us Apart

11 May

Senator Barnaby Joyce writing for The Punch yesterday:

Well, I hope you all feel comfortable that you now owe $140 billion. If you take our population as approximately 22 million, that means you owe in excess of $6300 for each man, woman and child in Australia.

I will keep talking about debt until people realise the dangerous position it puts us in. We are borrowing in excess of $1 billion each week. We see every night on the news the problems of other countries that have not dealt with their debt but have waited for the inevitable when the debt deals with you. How could we be so foolish as a nation to be mounting up debt the way we are?

Then, to all intents and purposes, nationalise half of the sector of our economy which has actually kept us from the jaws of recession – the mining sector. This is something that would be more appropriate for Hugo Chavez or Evo Morales or Castro in Cuba. Australia hasn’t experienced this sort of insanity since the failed approach by the Labor party when they decided to nationalise the banking industry in 1949.

The actions of our Government of late have been quiet bizarre – ceiling insulation, resource tax, BER, 2020 summit, fuel watch, grocery watch, war on obesity and the response to the Henry tax review that only accepted a few of the 138 recommendations.

The government has labelled these measures as a “revolution” or a “war” but really, it’s just been pandemonium.

People are genuinely getting worried that the Government has gone rogue and lost the plot.

Anyway, back to the debt. When will the Government come to the conclusion that as it keeps borrowing in excess of $1 billion a week that inevitably something is going to go “snap”?

The Government no doubt will tell us we should say “hip hip hooray” that our record deficit is not quite as big as they thought it was going to be.

Then they are going to tell us that at sometime in the future, when they cannot be pinned down, it will all get better, like the child who is going to clean up their room in three years’ time.

If there is one thing that Australians can do for themselves, it is not to get into excessive debt. There are no tricks in how you pay it off – it is just very hard work and lots of sacrifices and pain, where pain never needed to happen.

It’s always the same – the pain of paying it off is five times the joy of getting it and when you look at what the Labor Party has got us, they’ve really got us nothing, except for getting us into a lot of trouble. The resource profit tax looks like the last pill of insanity after a huge night on the town.

This budget will determine that either the Labor Party are going to start turning around the debt or it is going to confirm our worst fears about them. I clearly spelled these out at my National Press Club speech where I stated that the Labor Party has no respect for money, no capacity to handle money, and no knowledge of money.

All these fears have crystallised in their inability to grasp the nettle and immediately start turning around the debt – not in two or three years’ time, but now.

Barnaby Is Right.

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Rudd Ruins Businesses

7 May

Media Release – Senator Barnaby Joyce, 7 May 2010:

“I still have a distinct vision of Mr Rudd earnestly going to the front of Parliament House with a brand new note book and pen as props for the media grab at the one-on-one with the ceiling insulation industry representatives and the press gallery. He said something about fixing it all up himself, before zipping off. The news our office is getting is that this mess is far from being fixed,” says Senator Barnaby Joyce.

“Not happy with upsetting the resources sector in Australia and slashing millions of dollars off the share market, the Rudd Labor government has not just upset, but sent to the wall, hundreds of legitimate insulation companies. Yes, there needs to be recourse against shonky companies, who, let’s face it, took advantage of a sloppy government scheme, but where is the compassion for the “working Families” Mr Rudd likes to be seen to champion?”

“We have been contacted by many of these honest people who are beginning to have telephones disconnected, locked out of businesses premises, losing motor vehicles to finance companies and some have had mortgagee possession notices on their family homes, because the government will not pay them what is legitimately owed. Minister Combet’s media release on the 20th of April 2010 stated GST deferral was to be made available to insulation companies, yet the Australian Taxation office has sent debt collectors after these same debts. According to industry sources, you Mr Rudd, Mr Combet and Mr Garrett, have ruined a whole industry. So much for the stimulus package sent to save us.”

“Come on Mr Rudd. Where is the fair play you claim to have for “working families”? Why is this insulation program continuing to be such a debacle? Fix it now!”

More Information- Jenny Swan 0746 251500

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Labor Can’t Balance Fiddled Books

28 Apr

It seems Rudd Labor’s massive, panicked, and bungled response to the first wave of the GFC – roof insulation, the horrendously wasteful school buildings rort – is now making it difficult for them to keep yet another promise, to keep spending growth below 2% of GDP.

From The Australian:

The government is facing a battle to keep costs under its self-imposed 2 per cent growth cap, with blowouts in some programs and higher interest payments adding to the deficit.

Spending in the federal budget, to be released in two weeks, could be at least $10 billion higher in 2010-11 than was forecast when Treasury updated the government’s accounts last November.

Government officials confirm that the budget will forecast economic growth in excess of 3 per cent, which will trigger the rules devised by Treasury for returning the budget to surplus.

These rules dictate that once growth returns to normal, the government will keep spending growth below 2 per cent after allowing for inflation. They also require it to cover the cost of new spending with savings elsewhere in the budget and to bank any increase in tax revenue.

When the mid-year budget update was released six months ago, it looked as though the spending growth target would be easy to reach in 2010-11 because spending on the stimulus program was expected to fall by about $9bn in that year.

In one of the most popular articles I’ve written – “Labor Fakes GDP By 4.5%” – I showed from the government’s own budget documents how Rudd Labor have “revised” the historical data to artificially increase Australia’s GDP figures. Why is that important?

Because it has allowed the government to hoodwink the public and the lazy “we-check-nothing” media that they can keep spending growth below 2% of GDP.  That seems like an easy promise to make, when you’ve simply faked the GDP numbers upwards.

I also showed in “Labor: Hide The Increase” that, according to the government’s own “adjustments”, if they were required to abide by the previous traditional deflator method for calculating the effect of inflation on government spending, they would fail to meet their own 2% spending cap.

Now, we see from today’s article in The Australian, that even with all their massive fiddling of the nation’s accounts and historical records, the government is still struggling to balance their books.

Perhaps they might ask for the assistance of a qualified, experienced, and honest Accountant?

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Barnaby Attacks Julia’s BER

12 Apr

Last night Senator Barnaby Joyce appeared on Channel 7’s Sunday Night program, and blasted the massive waste in Julia Gillard’s “Building The Education Revolution” program (click here for the shocking video) –

The Building Education Revolution (BER) has become the Blatant Enormous Rip-off. This is money borrowed from overseas and off other Australians that you, the taxpayer, are going to have to repay. You repay it by going to work and paying your taxes, which are then sent off to the people we owe the money to.

When the Government does not control costs on these projects you end up working a lot longer than you needed to, to pay the debt back.

It is well worth the question whether many of the BER projects stacked around school yards are needed at all.

Are they really going to make your kids better at mathematics or english? Are they going to help them learn a second language? Or are they, in many instances, just over priced trinkets?

The big black signs that are adorning the perimeters of these schools where these projects are, say that this is part of an “Economic Stimulus Package”.

Now I don’t know whether you are getting stimulated by it but you are certainly getting touched.

People have seen the Labor Government coming and they are taking them for all that they are worth.

A fool and his funds are soon parted friends. Every week our nation borrows a billion dollars extra. When you look at projects such as these, it becomes really frightening as to where the management of our nation is off to.

While travelling around the countryside and in the cities, I am shocked at how easily we have been ripped off. It appears that no one in the Government wants to ask the hard question as to whether we are getting value for money and because others know the Government are not asking the questions, the bills for these buildings go unchallenged.

Like quarter of a million dollar shade cloths over playgrounds and millions of dollars in demountables.

Local builders are asking why they did not get a better go at the major contracts, rather than having to build them second hand, as subcontractors.

P&C’s are asking why the Government did not listen to them when they said they would prefer some other form of expenditure rather than a hall. Many are saying we just didn’t need it at all and we are really worried of the debt we are getting because of this.

On a positive note, it is good to see that Australians do care about the waste of money. Australians truly understand that there is something wrong with the mindless throwing of money to the wind for the shrewd and the cunning to take advantage of. This is what happens when you do not properly control costs.

How on earth is this waste helping any body?

How will you feel about it when you are sitting back late at night stacking shelves or driving cabs or stacking bricks in real buildings for real people or shearing sheep or driving earthmoving equipment, to pay off this complete waste of money where even in the waste you have been ripped off.

Barnaby is right.

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Tanner Lies About Budget, GFC

11 Mar

Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner has demonstrated yet again that he is a liar and a fraud:

Lindsay Tanner today accused the Opposition of punching a $2 billion hole in the budget after it helped defeat a means test on the private health insurance rebate last night.

“Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party are blocking almost all the government’s major initiatives in the Senate these days,” Mr Tanner told ABC radio.

“We faced a huge budget problem as a result of the global financial crisis. We have to repair the damage to the budget and we have to get the budget back into surplus as quickly as possible.”

“Yet he’s punched a huge hole in our savings initiatives that are designed to get the budget back into surplus quickly.”

In a recent column for the Sydney Morning Herald, ironically and hypocritically titled “Dishonesty in the debt debate”, Lindsay Tanner wrote:

Why are we going into debt?  Because the global financial crisis punched a huge hole in our projected revenues, and forced us to act to support the economy and to sustain jobs.  Had we just sat back and watched, as our opponents seem to suggest, we would have seen unemployment rise dramatically.  That would have reduced tax revenues even further, and thus pushed us into deficit anyway… The Rudd government had no choice but to intervene to protect Australian working people from the ravages of the crisis.  The dishonest campaign about debt being prosecuted by our opponents should be seen for the fraud it is.

Tanner’s claim that the GFC “punched a huge hole” in the government’s projected revenues, is an outright lie. And I will prove it to you, from the government’s own Budget documents.

The real reason that Rudd Labor faces a “huge budget problem” is not a result of the global financial crisis. Instead, it is entirely a result of their panicked, monumentally incompetent response to the idea of a GFC.

The simple fact is this: Contrary to Tanner’s recent claim, and Labor’s shrill proclamations throughout 2009, the GFC barely affected Australian government revenues at all. The “huge budget problem” is entirely of the Rudd Government’s own making. Because their team of uneducated economic illiterates panicked, and went on a massive, unnecessary spending binge. And now they are lying to cover up that fact.

Want proof?

Take a look at the Government’s 2009-10 Budget, Statement 10, released in May 2009.  It shows that Government income (“Receipts”) was estimated to be down by just $7.8bn (2.7%) on the previous year –

Continue reading ‘Tanner Lies About Budget, GFC’

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Joyce: Rudd On Risk

1 Mar

Media Release – Senator Barnaby Joyce, 1 March 2010

On the weekend I was flattered by Mr Rudd making a statement about myself and risk.  I heard the statement whilst driving from a major protest in Armidale about the decision to bring in beef from countries with mad cow disease, which I think is very risky and so do most Australian consumers.

Whilst driving there was blanket coverage on the radio about Mr Rudd’s insulation program, a program responsible for the deaths of four young men, a program which has burnt down approximately one hundred houses and created deaths traps in about another 1000. According to James Tinsley from the National Electrical and Communications Association  it could cost tax payers almost half a billion dollars to fix.

Yesterday I heard Mr Rudd asked about fixing the health system and he said, “We didn’t anticipate how hard it was going to be to deliver things.” Now he wants us to give him more time to do a proper job on it. Let us not forget that Mr Rudd continues to pursue the Emissions Trading Scheme. This is where he reconfigures the whole of the nation’s economy based on a colourless, odourless gas while taxing every Australian household at the power points in their rooms. This is on the belief that Minister Wong can single handedly change the temperature of the globe from her room in Canberra.

Surely Mr Rudd can see the paradox of his statements on risk and national management. I’ll have to inform Mr Rudd, that as I drive around the country I am told constantly about the parody that his government is becoming. I think the best summation of the Labor Government was given by two people, a worker in a mine talking about discussions with his union colleagues and a service station operator. The first one said we just do not understand anything Mr Rudd says and we are very concerned about our jobs and his position on the ETS. The service station operator said people just start laughing when they see Mr Rudd now.

That, Mr Rudd is the fair dinkum reality. It is like the mechanic who, asked to service your car has done nothing to it except mount up a huge bill. After a couple of years bits and pieces of the vehicle are strewn around the shed and now Mr Rudd rushes out the front to talk to you with his little note book and says, I know I’ve stuffed up but I just want you to give me a couple more years to do a proper job on this.

More Information- Jenny Swan 0746 251500

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Abbott Backs Joyce

1 Mar

From the Sydney Morning Herald –

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has defended Barnaby Joyce amid questions over the coalition finance spokesman’s economic credibility:

“Barnaby Joyce has not been responsible for the actual disasters in people’s lives that (Environment Minister) Peter Garrett has been responsible for,” Mr Abbott told Network Ten.

Mr Abbott said he was happy with Senator Joyce’s performance.

“Every member of the team including Barnaby is doing a good job. That doesn’t mean that all of us can’t on occasions lift our game but I’m confident in the team.”

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Joyce: Rudd ‘A Deadly Risk’

28 Feb

Barnaby Joyce has returned fire at Kevin Rudd on Saturday, after the PM suggested that Barnaby should be sacked:

“Surely Mr Rudd must see the paradox of his statement,” Senator Joyce told AAP.

“The person who has now admitted responsibility for a program that has burnt down 100 houses, killed four people, electrified 1000 houses and created fatal death traps and is going to cost $100 million just to fix, is stating that I may appear a risk.

“Quite evidently he is absolutely a risk, a deadly risk.”

Earlier on Saturday, PM Rudd had again tried to discredit Barnaby over his warnings late last year concerning the possibility of the USA defaulting on its massive debts:

“It’s now, I think, 87 days since Mr Abbott took the reckless decision, the risky decision, of making Barnaby Joyce the alternative finance minister of Australia,” Mr Rudd told reporters in Adelaide.

“In just 87 days he said that America could default on its sovereign debt, he said that the Australian states could or would default on their sovereign debt, he has said that the Australian government could or would default on its sovereign debt.

Kevin Rudd is a liar.  Barnaby Joyce never said that Australia could or would “default”.  Instead, he questioned whether we could repay our debt, if the Government continues on its present rapidly-rising trajectory of wasteful (and deadly) spending with borrowed money –

Kevin Rudd is oblivious to the warnings of many acclaimed international economists who share Barnaby’s concerns.

Kevin Rudd also appears ignorant of the deep concerns about US sovereign debt that were expressed by none other than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just three days ago.  She warned that the US deficit is a risk to national security:

“We have to address this deficit and the debt of the United States as a matter of national security not only as a matter of economics,” Clinton said. “I do not like to be in a position where the United States is a debtor nation to the extent that we are.”

Having to rely on foreign creditors hit “our ability to protect our security, to manage difficult problems and to show the leadership that we deserve,” she said.

“The moment of reckoning cannot be put off forever,” she said. “I really honestly wish I could turn the clock back.”

Kevin Rudd is a proven liar, an economic imbecile, and an arrogant, financially reckless fool.

Barnaby is right.

UPDATE: Abbott backs Joyce, happy with performance

UPDATE 2: ‘Fix the stuff ups’, Joyce Tells Rudd –

‘I am flattered that Mr Rudd would come out on Saturday to go after little old me but I really thought he had other things to do and if he has spare time my humble suggestion is to concentrate on fixing up your stuff ups.

‘If he wants me to make suggestions for his little notebook I will forward my mobile number later.’

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