Australian economy completely avoids recession (2 Viewers)

[Slidey]

Stunning economic growth as Australia weathers the global recession | The Australian

Economy grew another 0.6% last quarter.

Government stimulus had more effect than the government (specifically treasury) had expected. Jobless rate is highly unlikely to reach 7%. Interest rate increases will most likely start again this year, though there's room to wait, with inflation at 1.7% (below the target of 2% to 3%).

Apparently the only truly unhealthy part of Australia's economy through this 'Global Recession' was consumer confidence, which is now heading back to normal levels. We had none of the problems with sub-prime loans and whatnot that Britain, America, etc did.

 

[Rafy]

Time to scale back the stimulus. Or at least take a moment to pause and make sure it is spent wisely. The wastage is a disgrace. There's no rush now.

 

[Iron]

Lol fuck of Rafy you brainless hack

Rudd Labor has saved the country.
Viva!

 

[murphyad]

Hooray for us.

 

[loquasagacious]

Stimulus should definitely be reviewed. Even if the ammount stays the same the removal of the time pressure also removes any excuse for not 'doing it right'. By which I mean profligate spending and inefficient programs.

For example:

Building the Education Revolution (BER) has copped a lot of flack essentially because it invloved pumping more money through the same old broken processes. Handing out money without firm accountability for reciepients was just how things were - BER just continued this system of cheque-writing but with more money. Exposed the cracks in the system imo.

The Stimulus Package overspent the primary school component by something like insane like $1.7B while giving money to schools which were closing and missing some of the most needy. The overspend means the housing and insulation components of the stimulus needed to be curtailed.

Wasteful spending as a result of poor processes and poor record-keeping. Disgraceful showing by DEEWR imo.

If we are going to spend billions of dollars then lets at least try and minimise waste/maximise results.

 

[dog on heat]

Stunning economic growth as Australia weathers the global recession | The Australian

Economy grew another 0.6% last quarter.

Government stimulus had more effect than the government (specifically treasury) had expected. Jobless rate is highly unlikely to reach 7%. Interest rate increases will most likely start again this year, though there's room to wait, with inflation at 1.7% (below the target of 2% to 3%).

Apparently the only truly unhealthy part of Australia's economy through this 'Global Recession' was consumer confidence, which is now heading back to normal levels. We had none of the problems with sub-prime loans and whatnot that Britain, America, etc did.

wsup dud

 

[HumanDichotomy]

This obviously prooves how awesome we are.

 

[CIV1501]

FREEZE INFRASTRUCTURE SPENDING, THE ECONOMY IS OKAY.

lol

Continue the spending, our massive debts can be easily paid off in times of economic prosperity.

 

[spyro14]

I do recall Rudd saying we cannot avoid recession, he gets no praise from me for being lucky. Not only was he incorrect but by doing so he made the situation potentially worse with regards to consumer confidence.

Despite the fact we have managed the avoid the "technical recession" and also the abysmal employment prediction of one extremely wrong individual who will not be named *cough Ross Gittens*, I still believe the fiscal side of the macro-economic policy was not as technically sound as what it potentially could have been, they practically just started vommiting out cash. As for the Micro-economic policies, I really do think if Rudd keeps all his promises then there will be some cause for concern. Productivity can be rewarded with better working conditions and increased security, it just doesn't work the other way around...

 

[murphyad]

Productivity can be rewarded with better working conditions and increased security, it just doesn't work the other way around...

What, do you mean that better working conditions will not increase productivity...?

 

[spyro14]

What, do you mean that better working conditions will not increase productivity...?

People are lazy and take everything for granted. If someone expected of me as an employer to do everything I could for employee's who spent work hours on facebook and non business phone calls, I wouldn't take that too kindly. Employees should work for everything they get, not get everything upfront and not work hard enough because they know that ALP makes it so difficult to fire someone for incompetence.

 

[HumanDichotomy]

I do recall Rudd saying we cannot avoid recession, he gets no praise from me for being lucky. Not only was he incorrect but by doing so he made the situation potentially worse with regards to consumer confidence.

Well, what if he'd said we *could* avoid it, and we therefore did nothing about it. At least there were measures in place, so we were prepared...fear is better than doing nothing.

 

[zstar]

GDP measures monetary transactions in the economy harmful or productive. It was never meant to be an indicator of the state of an economy.

Much of this "growth" was from government spending and not real productivity.

It's basically like gaining fat vs gaining muscle.

 

[spyro14]

Well, what if he'd said we *could* avoid it, and we therefore did nothing about it. At least there were measures in place, so we were prepared...fear is better than doing nothing.

The fact is he didn't say that we *could* avoid it, even if he did(which he didn't), I should think that it would not stop him from still taking extra precautions into not going into recession in either case.

 

[murphyad]

People are lazy and take everything for granted. If someone expected of me as an employer to do everything I could for employee's who spent work hours on facebook and non business phone calls, I wouldn't take that too kindly. Employees should work for everything they get, not get everything upfront and not work hard enough because they know that ALP makes it so difficult to fire someone for incompetence.

How relativist of you. Perhaps you are lazy and take everything for granted, but this does not apply to everyone. Numerous social experiments (Elton Mayo, anyone?) point to an increase in productivity through recognising the social needs of workers. Perhaps if employees were more valued and did not feel as though the rug could be pulled out from under them at any time, we might see less of the incompetence you mention. I'm not sure that I like your dichotomy of the hard-working boss and the lazy employees because more often than not business culture permeates all levels of an organisation, meaning that both will be incompetent or neither will.

Another thing is that productivity is largely determined on a managerial level; i.e. government legislation forces internal change in business that is determined by management and then the effects of this are passed down to employees. Therefore it is really business that determines overall productivity of the workplace through the way in which employees are managed. While government policy does affect productivity, this is only on the most fundamental level and one must take into account the more immediate causes that are really determined within an organisation.

 

[HumanDichotomy]

Employees should work for everything they get, not get everything upfront and not work hard enough because they know that ALP makes it so difficult to fire someone for incompetence.

Also, I would like to point out that this is a very 'American' perspective. Their culture is very much based around earning what you're given. This can be extremely detrimental, because some people simply can't. I don't know if it's still the case under Obama, but certainly under Bush, if someone lost their job, they were given six months to find a new one, and then kicked out of their house, because they couldn't 'earn what they were given'. This is one of the reasons why there is such a high rate of homelessness in the U.S.

 

[murphyad]

Also, I would like to point out that this is a very 'American' perspective. Their culture is very much based around earning what you're given. This can be extremely detrimental, because some people simply can't. I don't know if it's still the case under Obama, but certainly under Bush, if someone lost their job, they were given six months to find a new one, and then kicked out of their house, because they couldn't 'earn what they were given'. This is one of the reasons why there is such a high rate of homelessness in the U.S.

A similar story in Japan, thanks to the LDP's deregulation of that country's industrial relations system. Over-casualisation of the workforce followed by a glut of homelessness when the recession hit.

 

[spyro14]

How relativist of you. Perhaps you are lazy and take everything for granted, but this does not apply to everyone. Numerous social experiments (Elton Mayo, anyone?) point to an increase in productivity through recognising the social needs of workers. Perhaps if employees were more valued and did not feel as though the rug could be pulled out from under them at any time, we might see less of the incompetence you mention. I'm not sure that I like your dichotomy of the hard-working boss and the lazy employees because more often than not business culture permeates all levels of an organisation, meaning that both will be incompetent or neither will.

Another thing is that productivity is largely determined on a managerial level; i.e. government legislation forces internal change in business that is determined by management and then the effects of this are passed down to employees. Therefore it is really business that determines overall productivity of the workplace through the way in which employees are managed. While government policy does affect productivity, this is only on the most fundamental level and one must take into account the more immediate causes that are really determined within an organisation.

I really love be summed up into one word, I really do.

Why is it so frowned upon to reward those who work hard and not reward those who don't. Even if the workers may be more productive from the very beggining with better conditions, how much more productive exactly? Noone can say accurately 100% of the time but I would put my money on it not being that much for a lot of people. More cost effective to keep rewarding productivity until the cost of sustaining the conditions begins closing in on the increasing productivity. It's a business, not a playschool.

 

[HumanDichotomy]

A similar story in Japan, thanks to the LDP's deregulation of that country's industrial relations system. Over-casualisation of the workforce followed by a glut of homelessness when the recession hit.

Yeah. Well, apparently there's huge pressure within the work-force on Japanese employees, and they also have the highest rate of teen suicide due to their schooling system.

 

[justanotherposter]

Does this mean that Rudd will finally stop putting us into debt? Atleast scale it down from the projected $300bn.

Unlikely but we can hope...