Tag Archives: kevin rudd

Rudd Deserts Another Principle

7 May

Media Release – Senator Barnaby Joyce, 6 May 2010:

“The release of the long-awaited NBN study today reveals that Prime Minister Rudd has deserted one more of his once closely-held principles,” Senator Barnaby Joyce, the Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Infrastructure and Water said today.

In the 2008-09 Budget the Government committed themselves to:

  • “Decision making based on rigorous cost-benefit analysis to ensure the highest economic and social benefits to the nation over the long term.”

But page two of the NBN implementation study explicitly states that it is not a “cost-benefit analysis of the macro-economic and social benefits.”

“The NBN study reveals another Labor broken promise,” Senator Joyce said today. “Two years ago Mr Rudd was talking up the benefits of establishing Infrastructure Australia and subjecting infrastructure investments to rigorous analysis. But on the biggest infrastructure project he has committed to he has deserted these principles, just as he has deserted the ETS.”

“Infrastructure Australia has been effectively gagged on the issue. Their public analysis has amounted to five paragraphs last year in ticking off on an investment of up to $4.7 billion from the Building Australia Fund. At almost $1 billion per paragraph, it wasn’t cheap advice. Minister Albanese, the Minister for Infrastructure, was missing in action.”

As Ken Henry, Secretary of the Treasury, stated last year:

  • “Government spending that does not pass an appropriately defined cost-benefit test necessarily detracts from Australia’s wellbeing. That is, when taxpayer funds are not put to their best use, Australia’s wellbeing is not as high as it otherwise could be.”

“Is it any wonder that this is a Government that has racked up $138 billion in debt and is continuing to borrow up to $2 billion a fortnight? Like much of this borrowing, the Government made its decision to spend $43 billion on the NBN in haste. In Senate Estimates last year it was revealed that NBN Mark II was conceived between Senator Conroy and the Prime Minister during two plane flights on Mr Rudd’s VIP jet” Senator Joyce said.

“The ‘back of the boarding pass’ approach to infrastructure selection must end. A Coalition Government will conduct and release cost-benefit analysis on infrastructure investments.”

More Information- Jenny Swan 07 46 251500

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History Repeating

5 May

From the Chicago Tribune, 1934:

Note carefully the title at top, and the ‘plan of action’ in the lower left corner.

Rudd’s borrow-and-spendathon – playing straight from the old Marxist playbook.

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Another Week, Another $1.8Bn In Debt

3 May

The Rudd borrowed-money spendathon continues.

Already $138.5bn in the hole, this week alone the Australian Office of Financial Management (AOFM) reports that another $1.8bn in Commonwealth securities and Treasury notes will be auctioned off, to raise money for yet more wasteful spending.

Meanwhile, the interest rates that the government must offer to pay to attract buyers for our sovereign bonds continues to steadily rise.

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.

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Roubini: Rising Sovereign Debt Leads to Defaults

30 Apr

Nouriel Roubini, one of just a dozen economists who publicly forecast the GFC, and who recently declared that ‘risky rich’ countries are in greatest danger of default, comments again on the rapidly spreading sovereign debt crisis (from Bloomberg):

Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who forecast the U.S. recession more than a year before it began, said sovereign debt from the U.S. to Japan and Greece will lead to higher inflation or government defaults.

“The bond vigilantes are walking out on Greece, Spain, Portugal, the U.K. and Iceland,” Roubini, 52, said yesterday during a panel discussion on financial markets at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California. “Unfortunately in the U.S., the bond-market vigilantes are not walking out.”

“The thing I worry about is the buildup of sovereign debt,” said Roubini, a former adviser to the U.S. Treasury and IMF consultant, who in August 2006 predicted a “painful” U.S. recession that came to fruition in December 2007. If the problem isn’t addressed, he said, nations will either fail to meet obligations or see faster inflation as officials “monetize” their debts, or print money to tackle the shortfalls.

Roubini, who teaches at NYU’s Stern School of Business, told attendees at the Beverly Hilton hotel that “Greece is just the tip of the iceberg, or the canary in the coal mine for a much broader range of fiscal problems.”

“Eventually, the fiscal problems of the U.S. will also come to the fore,” Roubini said during the panel discussion. “The risk of something serious happening in the U.S. in the next two or three years is going to be significant” because there’s “no willingness in Washington to do anything” unless forced by the bond markets.

Barnaby Joyce began trying to draw attention to the dangers of growing sovereign debt – warning of a coming day of reckoning in the USA and Europe and here in Australia – as far back as October 2009. As I have shown in countless posts on this blog, many leading economists, financiers, and informed commentators in other countries have been raising almost exactly the same concerns as Barnaby.

Few in Australia chose to listen.

Instead, Barnaby was ridiculed by the government and the media for every minor gaffe or slip of the tongue, his every statement misquoted or twisted out of context. With the ultimate result that he lost his position as opposition Finance spokesman thanks to the relentless attacks on his economic credibility. Despite his being better qualified to comment on finance than the entire Rudd Government economic team.

Only weeks later, those who do choose to look and listen can see ever more clearly… Barnaby Is Right.

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Barnaby Ridicules Rudd’s New ETS

29 Apr

Media Release – Senator Barnaby Joyce, 29 April 2010:

ETS – the Extra Tax on Smoking – was it?

Well, this should allay our fears about the Prime Minister’s sincerity. He’s decided after 10 months of having the plans on hold to put a new tax on, wait for it – smoking. What a stroke of genius.  I suppose it’s a carbon abatement scheme of sorts, but I don’t think this is the one he took to the election. It is, though, a good reflection of the proportional relevance of his policy delivery. He talked about an emissions trading scheme to reduce billions of tonnes of carbon, but what he gave us was the removal of a few durries, with another moralistic sermon as a bandaid on his street cred which is more than a little bruised of late.

While in November last year, Mr Rudd said that any delay on climate change action would be “political cowardice … an absolute failure of leadership … and … an absolute failure of logic”, he has now managed to gather the courage to introduce what he called today “an unpopular” move to increase the cost of cigarettes by 25%.

This may be a good move in the interest of health, but it’s not going to cure Mr Rudd’s lack of credibility. It will be called for what it is – ‘a government desperate to do anything to avoid attention because the reality is that they’ve done nothing’ story.

Mr Rudd says this is not a diversion from the ETS, so why wasn’t it announced as part of his health reform package or the budget?  He doesn’t have the conviction to get the “Great Big Tax on Everything” up through a double dissolution, but he can put a tax on the individual emissions from the smokers of Australia. Maybe a tax on cigarettes is a more authentic exposé of the depths of his political complexity and belief.

More Information- Jenny Swan 0746 251500

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Rudd Destroys His Minister’s Beliefs

28 Apr

* This April 28, 2010 post has since been revised, updated, and expanded with new developments in the ongoing Turnbull saga, in the following articles –

“Compassion For Malcolm – He Just Wants His Balls Back“
“Malcolm’s Motive: His ETS Lie Unravelled“
“Doing God’s Work – Turnbull An Angel Of Death Derivatives“
““Turnbull Once Said To Me, ‘You Capitalise On Chaos'””
“Spread The Word – ‘Untouchable’ Turnbull Is A Goldman-plated Turd”
“Malcolm Turnbull – The Goldman-churian Candidate?”

********************

The following media release by Barnaby just goes to show that he isn’t always right.  There is plenty of evidence to strongly suggest the true reason why Malcolm Turnbull really “believed” in an emissions trading scheme.

Simply take the time to review the history of the HIH collapse.  Consider the highly questionable role that Goldman Sachs Australia – of whom Malcolm Turnbull was chairman at the time – had to play in this, the biggest corporate failure in Australian history.

Consider the subsequent $500 million lawsuit brought against the key players in the HIH collapse… including named defendant Malcolm Turnbull.

Consider that only a few years after the collapse of HIH, even as those legal proceedings were being prepared, Malcolm Turnbull’s (again, questionable) takeover from Peter King as the Liberal candidate for the seat of Wentworth gave him a ready made entrance into Parliament in 2004.  Consider his rapid elevation to the key role of … Environment Minister. Followed by the first suggestion that the Howard Government should adopt an ETS.

Consider the revelation only a short time later that then Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull was to be spared from appearing in court as a defendant in that $500 million lawsuit.  Why?

Because his former employer Goldman Sachs had made a “confidential” settlement on his behalf.

Finally, consider which massive international banking power has been behind all the great bubbles in modern history – and is again behind the global drive for a new derivatives-based trading bubble, the likes of which the world has never seen.

It hardly takes a rocket scientist to put two + two together.

Malcolm Turnbull, the former Goldman Sachs chairman, named co-defendant, and beneficiary of a “confidential” settlement by his former employer, “believed” so strongly in Australia having an emissions trading scheme for a very good reason indeed.

But I personally harbour the gravest of doubts that “saving the planet” had anything whatsoever to do with it…

Media Release – Senator Barnaby Joyce, 28 April 2010:

“My heart actually felt for Minister Wong being dragged through the public teeth pulling exercise on radio this morning explaining that the Labor Party no longer has a carbon reduction scheme of any sort,” said Senator Barnaby Joyce. “In fact, it is now apparent that the only scheme likely to get up at the next election is the Coalitions as the Labor Party does not have a CPRS policy. Mr Rudd has yet again destroyed another one of his colleagues by revealing his lack of a political soul and his mercenary ambivalence that puts polls over statesmanship.”

“How can he possibly hold any credibility when he publicly denies the fundamental tenant of his political faith so illustriously espoused at the previous election? Mr Rudd has jettisoned the ETS as one would put aside a paper plate at a picnic.”

“One can now see that at least Malcolm Turnbull, although he had a view I fervently disagreed with on the ETS, was willing to put his job on the line because he believed it was right*. Likewise, Brendan Nelson. I don’t believe Tony Abbott is going to change his view to be in favour of an ETS because the polls say so, or Ron Boswell for that matter.”

“Mr Rudd is a philosophical soldier of fortune who chameleon like uses faux earnestness as a key tool of deception. He has made Peter Garrett completely recant all his former beliefs, he has handed Combet his ceiling insulation problems in a modern version of the ‘loaded dog’, and now he is piece by piece dissembling the belief structure of Penny Wong. Why? Because the poll monster told him to do so. Mr Rudd is a political bric-a-brac shop of kitsch philosophies – overpriced, under planned and dispensed at will.”

More Information- Jenny Swan 0746 251500

UPDATE:

Post reorganised to lead with Turnbull/Goldman connection, followed by Barnaby’s media release.

UPDATE 2:

Interesting. Less than a month after announcing his intention to retire from politics, Turnbull changes his mind.

Or should that be, has it changed for him.

(There are numerous anecdotal reports that Turnbull’s “overseas” trip was for a meeting with Goldman Sachs in NY)

UPDATE 3 – 19 May 2011:

h/t Twitterer wakeup2thelies –

@BarnabyisRight Thats a fantastic write up Head of CSIRO also Fmr director of Aus arm of of Rothschild 2001-03 resume http://bit.ly/mqpJx9

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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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Australia’s Property Bubble: It’s Here

27 Mar

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

It’s official: 60 per cent of investors believe Australia has a property bubble. A confluence of housing shortages, low interest rates, speculative fervour and last year’s move by the Rudd Government to relax foreign ownership rules on real estate have turbo-charged house prices.

This is all scary stuff.  Investors played a key role in expanding the property bubble through the late 90s. In 1990 investment loans represented 16 per cent of Australian mortgages at $13 billion. By 2008 that figure had ballooned 2400 per cent to $310 billion, or 31 per cent of total mortgages. Investor attitudes matter.

The survey revealed, however, that moral hazard may be much larger than investors themselves admit, with 42 per cent expecting the Rudd Government to introduce another round of first home buyer grants if the current boom shows signs of ending.

The increase in foreign purchases also cannot be under estimated, following the decision last March by the federal government to relax its rules on property ownership. This abolished mandatory reporting of such acquisitions in a bid to ”enhance flexibility in the market”.

Before the change, foreign investment in Australian residential property had already started increasing, up 33 per cent to $20.4 billion. It is not known what the figures stand at in 2010 but there are suggestions that more than 30 per cent of homes auctioned are purchased by foreign speculators. If this is the case, it will dramatically add to the property bubble.

It is a potential political time bomb. Numerous readers have written in complaining that they are being priced out of the market by overseas bidders…

Another Investor Pulse reader wrote: “So much for Rudd’s ‘working families’. Australians should get priority over foreign investors for what limited housing we have. How can Australians compete when Chinese borrow at home at 1 per cent? The Australian property market is strong and doesn’t need to be propped up. The Government should act now to stop this misguided and UN-Australian policy. Shame on you, Mr Rudd, for selling out on Working Families.”

Barnaby Joyce is the only Australian politician who has been brave enough to endure smears and criticism, by daring to question the Rudd Government’s relaxing policies on foreign investment.

Here’s just one of Senator Joyce’s press releases on the topic from last year,  “FIRB Changes – Australia’s Sovereignty At Risk“:

Senator Joyce today called on Treasurer Wayne Swan to re think his undermining of the present system of reviewing foreign investments and takeovers.

Mr Swan’s announcement should sound very loud alarm bells to anyone concerned with maintaining Australia’s sovereignty over its resources and business interests given that  Mr Swan plans to remove  Foreign Investment Review Board supervision of over 20 percent of all business applications currently reviewed by the board.

This effective sidelining of the FIRB relating to a substantial number of applications is deeply troubling as it removes a long standing and much needed level of accountability and transparency of foreign investment in Australia particularly by individual investors from countries such as the Peoples Republic of China.

It is astounding Mr Swan would seek to punch such a big hole in Australia’s foreign review processes, leaving the back door wide open for foreign interests to buy Australia paddock by paddock, business by business without any accountability to the Australian people.

Unfortunately for Australia each of the announced measures will allow that hole to get bigger to the detriment of Australia’s sovereignty and its national interest.

Yet again, Barnaby is the only one who is on the ball.

UPDATE:

From The Age:

Foreign buyers inflating market

Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens says foreign buyers are a factor in rising house prices.

Mr Stevens said the bank was monitoring how much the federal government’s decision last March to relax its rules on foreigners owning property had contributed to surging prices for housing.

He said the role of foreign purchases was ”an important one and it’s one we’re giving some attention to”.

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More Labor Bad Accounting

20 Mar

Media Release – Senator Barnaby Joyce, 20 March 2010:

The Labor Party has added another $2.1 billion to our debt in the last fortnight which cracks the $130 billion mark. This is slightly less than the Clem 7 tunnel in Brisbane and would build 10,000 kilometres of sealed roads in regional Australia. They know they will never be responsible for paying it back.

Every week we find out more and more of what they have purchased with our credit card. The Building Education Revolution (BER) appears to be a very choice piece of work. Yet another brilliant example of the Labor Party not dotting the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s, as Mr Tanner pointed out with regard to his input into the Ceiling Insulation Program.

The Labor Party cannot control costs. It appears they have never had experience in running a business and have now decided to experiment with the Australian economy as an economic crash test dummy with silly and dangerous ideas.

The cost overruns, inside deals for unions, burning houses and electrocution fatalities are just the start of understanding how the Labor Party manages the economy.

Today, what inspired this media release is that I have just walked out of a K Mart, after a buying a cheap pair of working trousers, and a mother with two children and an older couple were lined up to tell me about money that has been squandered in their district. They were concerned what the effect of going public with their story would have on their local school teacher but the story has grabbed my attention.

$250 000 has just been spent on a school hall in a local village/town. They could identify $110 000 worth of costs but $140 000 was for them “mystery money”. The school raised a complaint with the contractor and has since been refunded in excess of $30 000.This seems to be the story nearly everywhere you go and now is more widely ventilated with what we are reading in the papers.

Mr Tanner, Mr Swan and Mr Rudd are responsible for this. Their whole management critique is farcical. The ceiling insulation program has literally turned into a national crisis; the BER is the Big Education Rip off; the hidden Henry Tax Review; the $43 billion NBN project that was begun without a cost benefit analysis. To top it all off, is the Labor Party’s continued insane desire to re-jig the whole Australian economy based on a colourless, odourless gas that will apparently lead to Australia, single handedly, cooling the planet. On and on it goes, this rolling Greek tragedy, which is Labor Party management.

As an accountant, I have seen this form of management that the Labor Party indulges in.  It reminds me of the new arrival in the family business who is flash as a rat with a gold tooth and is quickly swindling away years of hard work.

They have the whole household on hire purchase, with the new car, the new boat, the new pool, the new stereo, multiple overseas trips to many and varied destinations but they have no new income and the result is a massive debt. You get this sinking feeling that just like they blew in, they are going to blow up then blow out.

More information- Jenny Swan 0438 578402

Next week, the Rudd Government has scheduled to take us another$2.1bn into debt.

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