Tag Archives: penny wong

Barnaby Pings Wong On Carbon Tax Impacts

14 Mar

“The government stands by the Treasury modelling … the government stands by the Treasury modelling…” – Penny Wong

L.M.A.O.

Watch it all, and note in particular (a) Wong’s obfuscation, misdirection, and abject failure to answer, and (b) Bob Brown’s intervention, attempting to silence questioning of the Green-Labor CO2 derivatives scam:

Enjoy also Barnaby’s speech to the Senate yesterday:

“‘We are us’ … what exactly, what on earth does that mean? ‘We are us’ … I mean, who else could you be? We are somebody else? Somebody else is us?”

“In the last four weeks the Labor party have borrowed … an extra ten billion dollars, just in the last four weeks … that would buy about 20,000 houses in Brisbane”

“Treasurer Wayne Swan … is the Treasurer of the Millennium … we are so lucky to be blessed with him”

“What’s a Midas Touch backwards? … a Sadim, perhaps”

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Wayne Wins Award – My Reaction

21 Sep

Congratulations Wayne –

‘Nuff said.

UPDATE:

Some say that there is more to be said –

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Labor Begins To Steal Your Super

12 Sep

Barnaby was right.

From the Australian today (emphasis added):

Labor is planning to withdraw hundreds of millions of dollars from the Future Fund in an unprecedented move that will help the government meet its promise of returning the budget to surplus in 2012-13.

A spokeswoman for Finance Minister Penny Wong confirmed to The Australian that more than $250 million worth of assets were due to be withdrawn from the Future Fund in the 2012-13 financial year, despite the fund having been created, by Peter Costello, under the condition it was not to be touched before 2020.

The government, which has forecast a surplus of $3.5 billion in 2012-13 after several years of heavy deficits, claims that the assets will be returned to the fund at a future date.

But the opposition has slammed the move as “reckless and fiscally irresponsible”.

“The fact is that the government is planning to raid the Future Fund, including the revenue from the expected sale of Future Fund assets in its revenue forecasts, yet they haven’t been able to point us to where in the budget that money is supposed to be going back into the Future Fund,” opposition assistant Treasury spokesman Mathias Cormann said yesterday.

Mr Costello, the then treasurer, established the Future Fund in 2005 to cover the costs of future public servant superannuation liabilities. At the time, he told parliament: “The fund will only be drawn upon at the earliest in 2020 or a time when an independent actuary determines that the fund’s assets are sufficient to offset the unfunded part of the government’s accrued superannuation liabilities.”

The Future Fund’s own website sets out that “withdrawals from the Future Fund may only occur once the superannuation liability is fully offset or from 1 July 2020″.

…

A spokesman for the Future Fund confirmed the anticipated withdrawal was known to the fund and that this was the first time a withdrawal had been included in the budget bottom line.

Senator Cormann said the “real concern is that, if they get away with their plans to raid the Future Fund now they will do it again and again, every time they need more cash to fund their wasteful spending”.

“The Future Fund was set up by the Coalition after we paid off the Hawke-Keating debt and it shouldn’t be touched until the public service superannuation liability is under control,” he said.

Remember Barnaby Joyce’s forewarnings before this year’s May budget?

Before the budget (5th May):

In response to a question I put in Senate estimates, Treasury revealed that $64 billion of the difference between our gross debt and our net debt is made up of the cash and non-equity investments of the Future Fund. The Future Fund is there to cover the otherwise unfunded costs of public servants’ superannuation.

That is a little fact that the people of Canberra might be interested in. When Wayne mentions net debt translate that to, I am going to pay his debt off with my retirement savings.

And right after the budget (13th May):

Of course, the public servants will not be happy when we use their retirement savings, put aside in the Future Fund, to pay off some of Labor’s massive debt.

Barnaby was right when he forewarned of the US debt crisis.

And he is right again, about your super being stolen by our government.

Think it is only public servants’ super that is at risk of being stolen by our government?

Think again.

For quite some time now, your humble blogger has been covering the wave of government confiscations of private citizens’ retirement funds that has been sweeping the over-indebted Western World, and warning readers that it is going to happen here too.

The reason this has been happening in so many countries abroad, including the USA, UK, France, Ireland, Poland, and more?

Exactly the same reason as cited by our own government now.

To help meet the government’s budget targets. With the vague promise that the “borrowed” monies will be returned at some unspecified future date.

And we all know what most politicians’ promises are worth.

Barnaby Joyce is the only politician in our nation with the wisdom, foresight, integrity, and courage, to publicly confirm what this blogger has been repeatedly forewarning.

That government theft of private super savings, is a real and present danger here in Australia too.

And don’t kid yourself that a Coalition victory at the next election will save us.

The Liberal Party quietly announced a new policy on June 3 this year, that should have every citizen deeply concerned. It represents an even more blatant move to have the government get their hands on not only public servants’ super, but everyone’s super.

Learn more, in this most recent of my many previous blog articles on the topic:

Stealing Our Super – I DARE You To Ignore This Now

UPDATE:

Senator Wong denies that their plan is to steal public servants’ super.

Are you convinced?

I’m not.

Wong’s very opaque counterclaim is that they are “simply making a small change to the types of assets it holds”. The key here is having a very clear definition of exactly what is meant by “a small change”, and “types of assets”.

This denial in no way convinces me that Labor are not shuffling/stealing money (and/or figures) to meet their objective – a media headline of return to surplus in 2012-13. After all, this government has form for fiddling the books, as documented numerous times on this blog … and openly conceded by former Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner in his book after retiring.

And not just form for fiddling the books … there’s also this:

(March 2007) Peter Costello: Rudd will mortgage future, leaving kids to foot

(April 2009) Kevin Rudd raids Future Funds

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Wayne’s Wong: What’s A Billion Or Two Between Friends?

12 Jul

My slaughter of the Treasury sacred cow appears all the more apropos today, after reading Christian Kerr’s article in the Australian this morning (emphasis added):

Swan and crew a billion or two short of budget neutral

Most voters hope their treasurers live by the old saw “look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves”.

Not Wayne Swan. He considers billions neither really here nor there. Or so it seems.

On ABC radio yesterday, the Treasurer first tried to avoid answering a question about whether the government’s carbon tax package would be, as promised, budget neutral.

“There always is an upfront cost with these very big reforms,” the Treasurer replied. Or started to.

The interviewer pulled him up. “You’ve promised for a long time that this would be budget neutral, not that there would be an up-front cost,” she said.

Swan caved in. “It is broadly budget neutral over the forward estimates,” he conceded, and added: “We will bring the budget back to surplus in 2012-13.”

Swan was reluctant to discuss the detail, and Finance Minister Penny Wong was simply not across it. Or got it wrong. She stumbled over just how much revenue a carbon tax would raise.

“I think it’s about $18bn from memory,” Senator Wong said on Adelaide radio.

Christopher Pyne was also on the show. “Are you sure it’s not $21bn?” he suggested.

“Twenty-one, he might be right,” the Finance Minister conceded.

“It’s $21bn,” Mr Pyne replied. “I’m not the finance minister but I read the documents.”

It was not a good look for the minister charged with looking after the government’s bottom line. Particularly when she is also the former minister for climate change. But it turns out both Senator Wong and Mr Pyne were wrong. The figure is $25bn.

If you know someone who actually believes that Treasury/Swan/Wong are within a bull’s roar of knowing what their Great Carbon Dioxide Scam will really cost ...”Tell ’em they’re dreaming!”

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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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Wong Wastes Water Money

31 Mar

Media Release – Senator Barnaby Joyce, 30 March 2010:

Reports in the Australian Financial Review today confirm that Penny Wong is presiding over a water buy back scheme that is frittering away money. Senator Joyce said “reports suggesting that Penny Wong has overpaid to the tune of $40 million and that some water sellers are getting special deals fuel the confusion and uncertainty surrounding Senator Wong’s plan for the Basin. Who expects irrigators to invest in water-saving technology in this climate of confusion?”

Senator Joyce spoke yesterday to a number of irrigators and farmers. These initial discussions have confirmed reports in the media today. The Government is not providing sufficient feedback on the status of some farmer’s tenders. As the Productivity Commission reported last year, Senator Wong’s scheme has also failed to recognize the effects on local communities of farms closing down. Senator Joyce will be travelling along the Basin over the next few weeks to get first-hand experience of these impacts.

Senator Joyce reiterated that he has no problems with the buying of water, or moving towards to a nationally coordinated use of water from the Murray-Darling Basin. “We need a water policy that provides jobs in regional areas, guarantees food security for all Australians and protects the environment. Current policy appears to ignore this triple-bottom line approach,” Senator Joyce said.

More Information- Jenny Swan 0746 251500

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