Really? This is the man who in 1993 boasted he was the love child of Bronwyn Bishop and John howard?
Where did I belittle the respective intelligences of Wayne Swan and Craig Emerson?
I dunno bout Emerson but I'm sure you've called Swan a dolt or moron or an idiot etc at some point. If you haven't you are the exception amongst partisan political followers and I withdraw the charge without reservation.
I think he's dangerously misguided regarding his Keynesian economics. And I've said he's a boring, smarmy, smug bastard. But I have not said he is an idiot.
Labor.Which one will you vote and why, for Federal?
Me (although I can't, stupid age restrictions!):
Liberal. Labor has (every time they get in) fucked up our economy enough. Now it's time for the Liberal's to come in and clean the mess Labor has compiled.
Debate.
come on that was obviously a heatofthemoment claim and not a carefully scripted gospel policy statement
Also, he looks like a duck.
Abbott's credibility as a leader is severely damaged by his hot-heatedness. What about that thing he said a week or two ago about not telling the truth? Hardly the wisest thing to say. We need a leader who isn't going to make rash decisions.
Smug? Swan? I've always found him to seem nervous and lacking self confidence. Rudd and Gillard are certainly smug and Lindsay Tanner seems to transcend smugness in that he seems genuinely annoyed and disgruntled that he has to suffer such fools in the press and in the parliament but Swan? Each to their own I guess, I withdraw the charge without reservation.
HAHAHAHAH! That's bullshit.
The insulation scheme wouldn't have been bungled if it wasn't rushed; and the justification for rushing it was economic stimulus. Similar deal with education; Rudd obviously now realises the problems with it, but it was a sacrifice he was willing to make in order to help the economy. The scale of these schemes means you can't seriously deny the underlying economic purposes.
A $10,000 payment for every stay at home mother, was it?
What of the Howard government's taking credit for Keating's labour market policies and such? Howard did fuck all, really. There was the GST and...What else? for 11 years in power, too. AND the tax cuts which are always poor policy, used for grabbing votes (which he sadly managed to pull off successfully repeatedly). He didn't even do enough to boost the mining boom.
I don't agree with the baby bonus/payments for such.
He didn't, actually. He (and Costello) repeatedly credited Keating's policies for putting the Liberals in the position where they could unfuck the economy, as it was.
I recall either Howard or Costello crediting Keating following their defeat in 2007. Not before it though. Politics is a nasty game.
Well another example, as I've already brought up, was Howard's successive tax payments which were in reality unsustainable during his decade-long term. Sure, you didn't notice any impact on the economy, but that doesn't mean they were a good policy, even though it shut up a lot of greedy voters.
nonsense his hot-headedness aka having a soul aka being a human is exactly what we need in a leader (cf: the kruddbot)
You would have been in primary school for the majority of their tenure.
I guess that depends on your perspective on tax, in that case. Generally Liberals and those of the libertarian persuasion regard income tax as theft, and generally a disincentive to hard work. I don't draw a direct causative link between economic growth and tax cuts, but if you can afford to give people back the money they've earned without impacting the economy, you should, and Howard/Costello did.