bye bye Mr Rudd

[Psyber]

Can someone tell me why when I was thinking about buying my house the Federal grant was going to help with the deposit but the States $16,000.00 stamp duty kept me in the rental for another 2 years then I was on the roundabout because housing had gone up my stamp duty was $21,000.00

Why can't stamp duty be waived for first home buyers or the % of stamp duty be halved at least, what in the hell do the State Government do to help with the purchase of a house?
Young married couples these days can't have kids because it needs 2 wages to try and save a deposit and make mortage payments.

seems toe if you are paying taxes and working you are definately behind the eight ball.

Regrugees, ex cons, can get public housing,single women who have never contributed to the tax system can have a kid a year $8,000 bonus a year a good pension and never have to work plus public housing and usually a defacto to help suck the system blind.

Makes me think sometimes should I be lying in a warm bed at 6.30 am and not leaving for work? and waiting for the Government to put my "pay" in the bank.

Depressed

Peter Costello periodically points out that part of the deal with the Howard government that gives the states all the GST revenue was the abolition of all state taxes including Stamp Duty. Since it has become obvious the [Labor] state governments have welshed on the deal and have no intention of doing this, he has argued the case you have just put up on a number of occasions.

All the state governments seem to be against home ownership and the Stamp Duty has escalated by much more than inflation. Perhaps in Socialist dogma anyone who buys a home is by definition a "Rich Bastard" and should be brought down. I remember in the Dunstan era there was a state minister who argued that all property should be state owned, and he objected to councils having any R1 areas where blocks of flats and units were not allowed to be built.

As one Federal MP said to me in conversation, "We can give them the money for housing, schools, and hospitals, but we can't control what they do with it!"

When I lived in SA I was all for digging a moat around Victoria and NSW and cutting them adrift from a new Western Confederacy, but having lived over here for a while I now favour scrapping state governments and having a single federal one - but we need to move the national capital to Darwin or Alice Springs, and make them live there while in office, to give the MPs perspective.

[Hondo]

There's an arguement that dropping or reducing stamp duty on homes would actually increase the demand for homes (now cheaper) that would end up pushing up prices to offset the stamp duty saving - and we would end up paying the same amount for the house anyway.

When the 1st home owners grant came in there was a marked increase in house purchases which lifted prices apparently.

Not that I agree with Stamp Duty mind you - it's a huge extra cost on top of the massive investment already being made.

It would need to be staged out, if that ever happens

[blueandwhite]

mmmm, perhaps the title of this topic should be changed, it's really a bit like J.Howard- out of touch and out of date. I don't think Mr Rudd has said "bye bye" to anyone. It's looking to many that it may be "bye,bye" Mr Howard, unless another "Tampa " comes sailing over the horizon.
What are the chances of Howard revelling in the euphoria of the APEC summit with his life long friend and co-conspirator G.W.Bush and then call it quits. He could then go out on what he considers a high. Just can't wait "Peter the smirk" to take over the reins.

[Psyber]

mmmm, perhaps the title of this topic should be changed, it's really a bit like J.Howard- out of touch and out of date. I don't think Mr Rudd has said "bye bye" to anyone. It's looking to many that it may be "bye,bye" Mr Howard, unless another "Tampa " comes sailing over the horizon.
What are the chances of Howard revelling in the euphoria of the APEC summit with his life long friend and co-conspirator G.W.Bush and then call it quits. He could then go out on what he considers a high. Just can't wait "Peter the smirk" to take over the reins.

The idea of Abbott and Costello running the country has always appealed to my sense of humour, and I suspect the originals would be no worse than any of the candidates for any party on offer now - "Pete the Smirk" [whom I've met and talked to] or Punch & Julia.

[Hondo]

Howard may have hung on 1 election too many

Now that he has announced he won't run again after this election, I wonder how the voters will react?

[smac]

Personally, I reckon Howard at least offers something.

Rudd has yet to offer anything at all. It is time to put the fence-sitting nice guy away and show some balls and some direction for our future. If he does that, he could get my vote. I have absolutely no party allegience and will vote for who I believe is the best candidate. Even if it means I have to vote for Kate Ellis in a federal election.

[Psyber]

Personally, I reckon Howard at least offers something.

Rudd has yet to offer anything at all. It is time to put the fence-sitting nice guy away and show some balls and some direction for our future. If he does that, he could get my vote. I have absolutely no party allegience and will vote for who I believe is the best candidate. Even if it means I have to vote for Kate Ellis in a federal election.

I suspect that is because he doesn't have any policies - he'll be told what they are after the election so he can maintain "plausible deniability" until then.
[That's why I used "Punch & Julia" referring to puppets in the earlier post.]

It is a bit like it was for Ronnie Reagan for US President - in his case a plausible image as front man for the John Birch Society - he didn't need policies either, and if he had known and declared them it might have scared off the voters..

[noone]

It is a bit like it was for Ronnie Reagan for US President - in his case a plausible image as front man for the John Birch Society - he didn't need policies either, and if he had known and declared them it might have scared off the voters..

and a bit like howard running against keating, oppositions dont win elections, governments lose them. Look at latham and hewson, both had large amounts of adventurous policy (irrespective of the merits of said policy), they both proposed change.

Releasing policy from opposition is very hard to do, ignoring all the problems about not knowing the current state of finances and resources etc, the simple fact is that if an opposition releases a policy, three things can happen

a) policy is well received, b) policy is badly received, c) nobody really notices/neutral response.

In the case of A the government of the day will neutralise the issue buy essentially copying the opposition policy, claiming that the opposition is themselves copying an existing policy, or modifying their existing policy to take the sting out of the positive media gained by the opposition (ie amending policy to include/exclude a similar precaution or measure)

In the case of B (forestry policy, GST (hewson)...) you lose the election as it appears on every tv add during the campaign.

in the case of C well nothing happens, as well nobody noticed.. next round

Its pretty much like playing texas holdem with your cards face up!

Now put yourselves in the feet of an opposition leader, why would you release policy. With A and C you get a split pot, and B you get knocked out of the tournament. Not the way to become the champion of poker/politics.

might be a little simplistic, however I cant think of many cases where it is proven wrong.

Last NSW election, Iemma was deeply unpopular, only won the election Debnam made a whole heap of drastic policy proposals , wanting to slash 10k(i think) public sector jobs played out wonderfully for labor billboards, pushing an unpopular IR agenda didn't help either. If debnam (or if the NSW Lib right hadn't knifed Brogden) had basically kept his mouth shut he likely would have won.

[Psyber]

I agree that the strategy is wise in the present situation. The last time I recall a party won by putting their policies out in front of the voters was Gough Whitlam in his election in 1972. Mind you Vietnam was a big factor in that one. One current Liberal pollie told me even he considered voting for Gough over that.

[noone]

Whitlam was clearly the first that came to mind, however even his moto, "it's time - for a change" is one that focuses on the government being old and needing to change.

ah the last Spanish elections were won by the party that advocated getting out of iraq asap. I dont know if their were other factors in the win or not, but there is one example. Still an exception to the rule though.

[topsywaldron]

Personally, I reckon Howard at least offers something.

Masterclasses in mean trickiness?
Five, probably six, interest rate rises?
Dog whistle politics for the ACA/ TT crowd?
Pointless wars?
Profligate spending of taxpayer money on political advertising?


Yes. He sure offers 'something', just a shame there's a lot of it and it's brown, soft and stinks.

[mick]

Personally, I reckon Howard at least offers something.

Masterclasses in mean trickiness?
Five, probably six, interest rate rises?
Dog whistle politics for the ACA/ TT crowd?
Pointless wars?
Profligate spending of taxpayer money on political advertising?


Yes. He sure offers 'something', just a shame there's a lot of it and it's brown, soft and stinks.

You forgot unparallaled economic prosperity and record low unemployment

[topsywaldron]

One post on here in months and still Mick manages to reply within an hour.

Get a job Mick.

[smac]

Is 6.50% high interest though, topsy? All the market is currently doing is correcting itself (like the share market last week). It was due to happen.

The war may be pointless, I am not in a sufficiently informed position to comment on it.

The rest of your post was pointless, I will let it be.

[topsywaldron]

The rest of your post was pointless, I will let it be.

Profligate spending of taxpayer money on political advertising?

Half a billion dollars at last estimate in the life of the current Coalition Government. This would help a few schools and hospitals I would have thought.

Hardly pointless since it's OUR money he's throwing around.

[smac]

That's an 11 year government though - do you seriously believe Rudd will spend less? Given I believe the alternative is no better, I still reckon it's pointless.

[mick]

One post on here in months and still Mick manages to reply within an hour.

Get a job Mick.

Personal abuse rather than argument

[topsywaldron]

Personal abuse rather than argument

Just adopting the conservative side of politics behaviour .

And why do we have the things you trumpeted as the Howard years as having achieved? Because the Hawke/Keating government had the intestinal fortitude to deregulate both the financial and labour markets, a point often missed in the 'don't trust Labor with money' scare campaign.

In turn Howard and Costello have excelled in churning. Taking high taxes from us, amongst the highest in OCED, and then returning them as family benefits etc. A waste of time and a HUGE waste of taxpayer money. Much like those 'information campaigns' they love to run about three months out from an election.

It's time Mick.

[mick]

I think anyone would concede that Hawke/Keating made some important economic decisions that were in the best long term interests of the country. The compulsory super for example has created a pot of investment money that now seems to be insulating us from the boom and bust of the past. Unfortunately the Keating prime ministership saw higher taxes (after the Hewson GST election) and a return to some of the old socialist policies in order to win back the grass roots supporters. It may well be "time" I just hope what we get is a little better this time than the economic chaos of the Whitlam era, that took decades to overcome. If I could be sure that conservative Mr Rudd was calling the shots I would sleep a little better, but I fear the the likes of Gillard and Garrett will have a great deal of influence. If the ALP is elected on the basis of the current polls, Mr Rudd will be spending a great deal of time controlling a big and possibly unruly backbench, which won't be easy despite the stalinist discipline of the party machine. This is all theory at present, we are now entering the premiership quarter, Howard is 10 goals down, but I wouldn't write him off just yet as this years Grand Finalist.

[blueandwhite]

"Stalinist disciplines " ,what next "reds under the bed", where is Sen Joe mcCarthy and Bob Santamaria when you need them. There may be a few socialists on the extreme right of the ALP but there probably are more red neck thatcherites on the far right of the Tory's.