Tag Archives: julia gillard

Barnaby: “Funny How Tim And Julia Get A Choice But We Don’t When We Have To Marry The Carbon Tax”

16 May

Senator Joyce pulled no punches at Port Macquarie yesterday.

Enjoy:

“And then they tell us they’re going to give us ‘green’ jobs … and that’s where we get really angry!”

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How Gillard’s Use Of The Credit Card Makes Rudd’s GFC Spending Spree Look A Model Of Financial Prudence

5 May

A few days ago I wrote an article titled “The Real Reason Why Gillard’s A Spinster“.  It ruffled feathers.  Not for the intended reason, unfortunately.

Humourless critics were so rankled by my [insert self-righteous PC perjorative] that they did not see the point.

So here’s a follow up.  Without the creative literary device/s for decoration.

The following chart is an updated and extended version of the one used in the previous article.  This shows Treasury Note auctions from 2000 through to end April 2011 (the previous chart began at March 2009).

The other difference, is that the previous chart listed each individual auction separately.  It escaped my notice that there has been as many as 3 auctions p.w. in recent times.  So this new chart sums the total of all auctions of Treasury Notes in a given week into a single bar on the chart (click to enlarge):

Source: Australian Office of Financial Management (AOFM)

Some key points to note.

Firstly, there’s clearly quite a difference between how much the Howard Government relied on short-term debt (Treasury Notes), compared with the subsequent Labor Government.  The period when the largest block of Howard-era short term debt auctions occurred was through the year 2002 – coinciding with the 2002-03 global recession, which Australia largely avoided.

Secondly, for four (4) full years between October 2003 and the Rudd election win in November 2007, the Howard Government raised no short-term debt. Not one cent.

Neither did Kevin07.  For 16 months.  Until the GFC.

Thirdly, you can see clearly the period from March 2009 through around September 2009, during which the Rudd Government was regularly raising around $800m to $1,500m a week from short-term debt auctions. I assume that this reflects (at least in part) the government’s urgent need for cash to fund their “stimulus” response to the GFC.  Stimulus 1 – $10.4 billion in cash handouts in late 2008 (goodbye 50% of Howard surplus).  Stimulus 2 – another $42 billion in cash handouts and “nation-building”, beginning in … February/March 2009.

You remember. “Swift and decisive”. Rushed and bungled. $900 cheques to dead people. Electrifying foil insulation. Blazing pink batts. Rorted “green” schemes. Overpriced school halls. Literally billions more, to investigate and repair these Rudd-made disasters.

Finally, note the significant jump in both the frequency and the totals of short-term debt auctions, coinciding exactly with Ms Gillard’s rise to power. The fact is, she has presided over a $10.1bn (31.5%) increase in issuances of short-term debt in just 10 months, compared to the previous 12 months of the Rudd Government.

The big unanswered question that I have is this: WHY would a Gillard-led government suddenly need to bash the nation’s short-term credit card 31.5% harder than even the profligate Kevin Rudd did? After all, he had a GFC “stimulus” package or two to finance.

What is Ms Gillard’s excuse?

According to the government’s own budget records, we-the-taxpayers are already wearing an Interest-on-debt bill of more than $10 Billion per year:

MYEFO 2010-11, Appendix B, Note 10: Interest Expense

According to the AOFM, short-term Treasury debt is supposed to be used for financing “within-year”, daily cashflow requirements of the Government. And then there’s this official prediction:

Treasury Notes are not expected to make a major contribution to overall funding for the 2010-11 financial year as a whole.

Why has the Gillard-led government apparently been so incapable of planning their week-to-week expenses, that since that statement was published they have resorted to bashing the national credit card more than 31.5% harder than Kevin Rudd “needed” to?

The data supports the increasingly widespread view that the Gillard minority government is a shambles.  They have no financial plan – even over the short-term.  And so, from Day 1, have had to pull out the national credit card 31.5% more than Kevin Rudd, just to manage the week-to-week cashflow requirements of government.

One can only wonder just how much Interest-on-debt we will end up paying in total over the coming years.

While Gillard and Co comfortably retire.  On mega-buck, index-linked, taxpayer-funded pensions.

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Labor’s Date With Fate

3 May

On February 24th 2010, Barnaby wrote an article for The Australian (published 12:00am Feb 25th), wherein he uttered nine words that now serve as both the tagline for this blog, and a stark reminder to the nation of Barnaby’s wisdom and foresight:

If we keep borrowing at this rate Australia and all who rely on the government to provide a basic service of health, defence, subsidised medicine, childcare, unemployment benefits, pensions, are all going to arrive at a point of reckoning. Stresses will be placed on the government budget because we did not manage the debt at a point where it was manageable.

If you do not manage debt, debt manages you.

Prophetic.

Precisely 12 months to the day from when Barnaby penned those fateful words, Julia Gillard announced to the nation that the government she leads would introduce a carbon (dioxide) tax:

Yesterday Gillard announced the architecture of her pricing plan, but it was only foundations and scaffolding. Floorboards have yet to be laid or walls erected.

As Abbott quickly pointed out, her plan is a blatant breach of Gillard’s election promise not to introduce a carbon tax.

What would possess Labor to take such a huge political risk, on a policy that has (so far) cost the jobs of four political leaders?

Simple.

They have blown hundreds of billions on botched roof insulation.  Unwanted and overpriced school halls.  Rorted “green” schemes.  The Nation Bankrupting Network.  And many more EPIC FAIL thought bubble policies.  Now, with an Interest-on-debt cost of more than $10 billion per year, and no discipline to simply stop borrowing and spending, they need the billions in extra revenue that a carbon dioxide tax would raise:

MYEFO 2010-11, Appendix B, Note 10: Interest Expense

A week from today, the Goose will hand down his fourth budget.  His fourth unbalanced budget. And a new record budget deficit.

If pensioners are targeted, Family Tax benefits slashed, childcare rebates cut, or any other essential service that you rely on is affected, now you know why.

Labor’s debt is out of control.

If you do not manage debt, debt manages you.

Barnaby is right.

UPDATE:

Your business suffering thanks to the AUD exchange rate?  Michael Stutchbury says the deficit is driving up the dollar:

Wayne Swan complains that the soaring dollar is blowing out his budget deficit by crunching non-mining company profits.

But the more fundamental story is that Canberra’s structural budget weakness is helping to drive the Australian currency to its new post-float high of $US1.10…

Instead of being close to $50bn in the red, the budget already should be building up a solid surplus buffer to stabilise the mining boom economy.

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The Inevitable Deceit

2 May

It really is now or never to stop the carbon tax.  So it’s worth reprising Barnaby’s original fighting response to Gillard’s pronouncement back on February 25th:

Now that we’ve all picked our jaw up off the ground, because Ms Gillard and Mr Swan have precisely done what they said they wouldn’t do and are bringing in a carbon tax, we have to organise the fight to stop it.

Yes, we are going to have to go through all the arguments again and we will win again.

Let’s start from these. The people who couldn’t get fluffy stuff in the ceiling for the rats and mice to sleep on without setting fire to 190 houses; the people who decided to go on some manic building spree in the backyard of every school, whether the schools liked it or not and in many cases in multiples of the cost of the true price on the structures; these same people who thought they could reboot the global economy with the purchase of imported electronic goods with $900 cheques; the same people who have got you into $181 billion in gross debt; yet the same people again who looked down the barrel of a camera to talk to the Australian people and stated categorically they would never bring in a carbon tax in the term of their government; they are the people who are going to bring in the carbon tax because they have the quite evident expertise, despite all the history to the contrary, to cool the planet from a room in Canberra.

Not surprisingly, what they have changed is the temperature of people’s disposition. There is a palpable white fury from the deceit that people feel. People can hardly afford and in some cases not afford at all the power bills they currently have. They do not need any more motivation to use less power. They are totally focused on this because they can’t afford to pay for their current usage.

People understand that you either have cheap power or cheap wages. There is another alternative, no jobs and Australia’s manufacturing industry, or what’s left of it, is well and truly in the sights of this absurd decision of Ms Gillard. I look forward to AWU Secretary, Mr Howes, in his next Mussolini impersonation behind the podium, to go into bat for these jobs, but I haven’t heard boo from him today.
In the background, literally and photographically, are Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott. Mr Oakeshott, well you can just make your own mind up about him, but Mr Windsor’s statement at the press conference is peculiar. He said, “and please don’t construe through my presence here that I will be actually supporting any scheme”. Well, Mr Windsor, what were you doing there? Did you get lost on the way to the toilet and just stumble across the Prime Minister doing her press conference and decide to stand in on it?

Please don’t tell me that we have to go through this teeth pulling agony as you stand at the front of the political church in the big white fluffy dress saying,”I don’t know how I got here and I don’t know whether I shall say I do. Don’t construe that this dress means I’m getting married to another Labor/Green party decision.

I was not in the least bit surprised about the white fury I’m hearing in Sydney and how some of the illuminati misread that there would be such an overwhelming reaction against the announcement of the carbon tax. I am not surprised in the slightest by the almost monastic silence of Mr Bill Shorten as he sits back salivating on Ms Gillard and her Green cohorts happily mounting their own political pyre.

Day one, round one, and we, the National Party and the Liberal Party are ready for the fight.

Bravo!

There is only one way to stop the carbon tax.  That is to force a change of government, before the Gillard/Green/Independent Alliance can legislate it. The only way that can happen, is by the sheer volume of people power.  Quite literally “volume” – you must make your voice heard.  By Labor.  And the Independents.

Why?

The Coalition do not have the power to force a fresh election.  And, even if they were to win the next general election in 2013, they would have to wait till the following election (2016) to have a real chance at winning back the balance of power in the Senate from the Greens, in order to repeal the tax.

So if you want to stop the carbon tax, now is the final opportunity.

Back in late 2009, tens of thousands of us were angered enough to get politically active for the first time. We phoned and wrote and emailed every single member and senator in the Parliament.  Repeatedly.

We told them exactly what we thought.  And, what we’d do if they allowed the Rudd-Turnbull emissions trading scheme to be foisted on us.

We only won the first round.

Now the Gillard/Greens are back for Round 2.  They openly admit that the carbon (dioxide) tax is just a stepping stone to an ETS three years later.

It’s all up to you. What will you do?

UPDATE:

There’s big cracks showing in the mask of Labor solidarity:

In the week before the PM left for a 10 day trip to Japan, Korea, China and the UK, several Labor backbenchers privately spoke of how they thought the Julia Gillard experiment was going.

“Put us out of our misery now,” said one. “It can’t go on.”

“Clearly it hasn’t worked,” said another. “The experiment has failed.”

And this:

This group of MPs fear for the future of their party. And it is more than just short-termism thinking that infects them.

That is to say, they believe the best thing that could happen for Labor’s long-term prospects is to lose Government now and rebuild its support in the community. They would be punished but perhaps not as badly as they might in two years time.

UPDATE 2:

The Greens too, are revolting:

Bob Brown has warned of further tensions between the Greens and the Gillard government if it rewards big business over households in the upcoming May budget.

The Greens leader acknowledged that his relationship with Julia Gillard had now changed, describing her criticism of his party last week as a “serious turning of events”.

Time to move in for the kill.

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The Real Reason Why Gillard’s A Spinster

1 May

Why is Julia Gillard really an unmarried, childless, career politician spinster?

The answer may surprise you.

Take a look at the following chart, showing Commonwealth Treasury Note auctions from March 2009 through this past Friday (click to enlarge):

Source: Australian Office of Financial Management (AOFM)

Since Ms Gillard took over the nation’s top job, the size of weekly Treasury Note auctions has jumped dramatically.  Under Gillard, the government has auctioned $46.7 billion worth of Treasury Notes in just 10 months.  By contrast, the Fairy Ruddfather sprinkled $50.2 billion in the preceding 15 months, before Gillard banished him to the spare bedroom:

Now, it’s important to understand the special significance of Treasury Notes.  According to the Australian Office of Financial Management (AOFM):

Treasury Notes are short-term debt securities used primarily to meet within-year funding flows. Issuance decisions are made weekly and depend on the Government’s projected daily cash position for the weeks ahead.

Then there’s this:

Treasury Notes are not expected to make a major contribution to overall funding for the 2010-11 financial year as a whole.

Right. With 2 months to go, she’s already auctioned $11.1 billion (31.5%) more in Treasury Notes than the Fairy Ruddfather did in the previous financial year.

Conclusion?

Clearly, a Gillard-led government is incapable of managing the weekly cashflow.  The kitchen’s closed, the children are running amok, the House is a shambles, and the budget is out of control, ever since she took over the purse-strings.

Which explains once and for all, why she’s an unmarried, childless, career politician spinster.

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..

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P.S.  I thought it apropos to reveal Gillard’s big secret today.  A day so very close to Julia’s heart.  International Worker’s Day.  Labour Day.  Otherwise known as May Day.

That’s also why I’ve changed this blog’s theme colour for today – in honour of the occasion.  Though I’ll admit it was rather difficult to decide whether it was more apropos to go red or …

“Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money.”

– Margaret Thatcher, 1976

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Julia, Things Have Changed

27 Apr

UPDATE:

Essential Research’s latest polling confirms it.  We used to care.  But things have changed.

Via Crikey’s Poll Bludger –

Seventy two per cent of voters believe “will promise to do anything to win votes” applies to Labor, up nine points since March last year, while 66% believe “divided” applies — a massive 30-point increase since last year. “Out of touch” has increased 13 points to 61%, and “moderate” has dropped 12 points to 51%. Even otherwise uncharacteristic descriptions such as “extreme” now garner significant support, up 12 points to 38%. And whereas even last year 52% of voters thought Labor had a good team of leaders, only 34% now feel that way.

For the Liberals, however, it’s all positive: a drop in the number of voters who think they’ll promise to do anything to win votes — down from 72% to 65%; a rise in “moderate” perceptions by five points to 55%; “out of touch” down to 54%, “divided” down from 66% to 49%. There was also a big improvement on “good team of leaders”, but off rather a low base, up nine points to 40%. The Liberals lead Labor on nearly every positive indicator and trail on nearly every negative indicator. Labor still has a one-point lead on “looks after the interests of working people.”

Full report here.

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Now Or Never To Stop The Carbon Tax?

26 Apr

A great bloke over at Business Spectator, Rob Burgess, has crunched the Senate electoral numbers with a view to the likelihood of Tony Abbott actually being able to repeal the Labor/Green/Oakeshott carbon dioxide tax at any time soon.  It makes for troubling reading (free subscription access) –

Labor is revealing its carbon pricing policy with all the coy teasing of a professional stripper – a glimpse here, a peek there. All Greg Combet showed us yesterday was that 50 per cent of carbon tax revenue would be handed back to households. The rest of his National Press Club speech was old hat.

And all the while Tony Abbott hopes he can get them off stage and close the club before we see ‘everything’.

In an important sense, that’s Abbott’s only hope of triumphing in the highly polarised debate over the carbon tax. The anti-carbon-tax rallies and marches of the past few weeks have elicited rash promises from the Coalition figures who have attended, that they will repeal any carbon tax and get on with reducing emissions their own way. As Abbott put it in February, “we will oppose it in opposition, we will rescind it in government”.

I doubt the thousands of concerned Australians turning up to the rallies know that the Coalition can’t deliver on this promise.

While it’s certainly true an Abbott-lead government would wish to repeal the tax, there is an infinitesimally small chance it would have the Senate numbers to do so in its first term. And it’s pretty clear there would be no help from Labor or the Greens to overturn legislation for which they have so bitterly fought.

The Senate is a tricky beast. Indeed, it’s designed to be that way – the manner in which the house of review is elected virtually ensures a broader range of parties will be represented than in the lower house. Moreover, because only half the 76 seat chamber is elected at each general election, it takes a bit of scribbling on the back of an envelope to work out what’s going to happen (okay, I do it in Excel).

And here’s the results.

The probability of Tony Abbott winning government, whether from the floor of the house, or through an early election, or through a normal general election in 2013, and having enough votes in the Senate to repeal the carbon tax … practically nil.

The odds of Abbott winning government, serving something close to a full term and winning the next election (in 2016, say) with a Senate majority … slim, but not impossible.

…

To win 22 seats at the next election, the Coalition needs to retain the one seat it holds in each of the territories, and win 20 seats in the states. With Tassie likely to repeat its familiar pattern, that means winning:

— four out of six seats in three of the non-Tassie states

— three out of six in the two remaining states

— one seat each in ACT and NT.

That would give the Coalition the 22 votes required to repeal the carbon tax. That would also give bookmakers across the land heart attacks, because the odds of such an electoral coup are so extraordinarily long.

…

That fact remains, therefore, that if Tony Abbott’s team does not find a way to bring down the government before the carbon tax is legislated – most likely in November of this year – the Coalition will be powerless to repeal it until two Senate elections have taken place. That most likely means a carbon tax for four years, and by that time who knows where global carbon politics will have taken us.

Our only other hope would be a double dissolution election – where both houses of parliament are dissolved, and full elections for both houses held:

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Gillard: Why Should You Vote Labor?

3 Aug

UPDATE: 3 August 2010

Julia says my video’s punchline is true:

After publication of the Fairfax Nielsen poll showing the Coalition was ahead, she declared she was “in the fight of my life”; then when she got wind of The Australian’s Newspoll, showing the parties dead even, she told The Daily Telegraph: “It’s about me.”

…

Of course this election is all about her but, once again, it probably wasn’t the smartest thing for her to say. Elections are supposed to be about the voters.

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Joyce: The Labor Government Is Dodgy

15 Jul

Media Release – Senator Barnaby Joyce, 15 July 2010:

In trying to think of a metaphor to describe the Labor government in one word, it is this – dodgy! Their figures are dodgy when they talk about a $7.5 billion reduction in revenue but apparently only causing a $1.5 billion reduction in income. Their approach is dodgy when they talk about net debt as if the people who lent us the money don’t want the money back in gross terms and just for the record, we currently owe $150 billion and are currently borrowing an extra $150 million a day.

They are completely dodgy with how they change Prime Ministers in the middle of the night without telling the Australian people. They are even dodgy amongst themselves with the deals they make, such as the one between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard on the process of leadership transition which Julia obviously didn’t honour because the backroom boys told her not to. They are dodgy in how they talk about future surpluses, yet their past prescriptions about current surpluses have been so totally wrong and actually end up as deficits.

They are dodgy in how they describe solutions for the processing of boat people in East Timor when they haven’t actually done the homework to get the deal through East Timor. They are dodgy in how they employ mates such as Mr Kaiser for $450,000 a year without even putting an advertisement in the paper so that other Australian’s can apply for the job. They are dodgy in how they go forward with a $43 billion capital infrastructure program such as the NBN without doing a cost benefit analysis as to whether it will actually work.

They were dodgy in the way that they allowed the importation of beef from countries with Mad Cow Disease until we found out about the deal and then they changed the decision around again. They were dodgy in how they told people that the ETS was the greatest moral challenge of our time, but the person who was crucial in changing that moral paradigm is now enjoying the benefits of the Prime Minsters office. They were dodgy when they inferred that an ETS would change the climate when quite obviously it was never going to.

They were dodgy with how they told the Australian people that they would fix the hospital system by July 2009 or they would take it over and in the end, they did neither. They were dodgy when they decided to build school halls across our nation for $16.2 billion whether you wanted them or not and at three times the price. They were dodgy when they decided to put ceiling insulation into roofs and burnt down over 180 houses causing tragically the deaths of 4 people that we know of.

However, where they are really dodgy is this – they told people that they would assist with the cost of living. They had the dodgy fuel watch scheme and the dodgy grocery watch scheme which were announced with fan fare but achieved zip.

The cost of living in Australia is going through the roof because this crowd in government is dodgy and has absolutely no idea how to get the basics right. You cannot keep borrowing money at the rate they are, putting upward pressure on interest rates, and squeezing the last drop of blood out of working families and then claim to know something about the cost of living.

You cannot talk about reducing coal fired power replacing it with renewables at many times the cost and not expect that this is going to make working families poorer. You can’t fail to develop the inland and not expect the result to be far greater pressure on the social and economic infrastructure of urban Australia. If you don’t develop water infrastructure then you have to expect the price of a limited resource, water, to go through the roof. If you keep on making it difficult for farmers to farm, with continual new laws on vegetation, and everything they do from sunrise to sundown and in between, while at the same time failing to oversee that farmers are getting a fair price at the farm gate, then the farmers will disappear and the price of food will go through the roof. You can’t borrow hundreds of billions of dollars from overseas and not expect that it has to be repaid by people who have to pay taxes, working families, who could have otherwise put that money in their pockets.

In summary, many people at the supermarkets and at the pubs and clubs and at the church on the weekend and at the sport with their kids understand one thing – that they seem to be poorer under this crowd then they were before, they have less money than they did before. They seem to be watching a political soap opera that has more episodes than Blue Hills standing in proxy for decent government.

My statement to the Australian people on behalf of the National Party in the Senate will be this – Do you honestly believe that you can carry on with this crowd for another three years? What do you think will be left of the show if you do?

More Information – Jenny Swan 0746 251500

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Joyce: Gillard Set To Outspend Rudd

25 Jun

Media Release – Senator Barnaby Joyce, 25 June, 2010:

Rudd borrows $95 million a day, Julia set to break record

Senator Barnaby Joyce today said that the new Labor Government has a lot of work to do to get this country back on track.

“The new appointee of the faceless factional bosses, Prime Minster Gillard, has already stated that she wants to get the Government “back on track”, and it certainly is a long way off-track at the moment” said Senator Barnaby Joyce, Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Infrastructure and Water today.

When this Government came to power Australia’s gross debt was $59 billion. It is now $147 billion. This Government has spent $88 billion in 935 days. This is a new record for Australian Prime Ministers.

“This Government has been an unmitigated disaster for our country, and even the Labor party now agrees. They have been racking up debt on the national credit card at $95 million a day.

“Every day of the Rudd Government, that money could have built almost 500 km of sealed country roads or repaired and refurbished over 100 bridges in regional Australia. Instead, thanks to Julia Gillard and her team we have overpriced trinkets at the back of school yards. .

“If the new PM really wants to get this great country back on track, she needs to stop this reckless and wasteful spending. The budget that the Deputy Prime Minister handed down less than two months ago forecast borrowing of $150 million a day for the next financial year. Gillard is already on track to smash Rudd’s record and things look like getting worse before they get better.”

“Australia can’t afford another term of pandemonium from the Labor party.”

More Information – Matthew Canavan 0458 709 433

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