Election Night Bingo!

Let’s have no more ‘gotchas’ and instead focus on some serious policy issues.

The Coalition is guaranteeing essential services and lower tax. We can’t have both …

So says Keating M.
https://johnmenadue.com/essential-services-lower-tax-cant-have-both/

Realistically, sound management requires the incoming government to balance the budget, if not straight away, then at least by 2023-24 …

The government is also guaranteeing essential services, but many are hugely underfunded, examples include:

the promise to fully implement the recommendations of the aged care and disability services royal commissions
tertiary education, which will be funded less in 2024-25 than it was pre-pandemic in 2018-19
health funding – abstracting from the impact of the pandemic, the rate of increase in health funding is projected to be less than half the increase pre-pandemic
defence, diplomacy, and foreign aid spending which will be needed to plug a massive capability gap over the next twenty years or so years

Suspect it doesn’t sell papers or win elections. No wonder ‘democracy’ is in decline. (And across the world.)

Are you writing material for GetUp?

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seems to be going well!
* Finland and Sweden to join NATO
* NATO more untied than ever
* Proof that Russia is a struggling middle power
* Tens of thousands of Russian military dead
Thanks Vlad

Yes NATO is more untied than ever. And the US arms dealers are higher than ever. But all is not well. Not that will stop the celebratory nonsense.

Some speak (approvingly) of Russian deaths but the lives destroyed in Ukraine are not mentioned. Why would that be? Or are there none? Perhaps a sub-conscious bias?

Here’s a perspective (and not from Australia).

Ukraine will never be the same – and

The global order that Australian politicians love to extol is fractured and unravelling. …

Evidence indicates that pouring funds into Ukraine’s reconstruction could feed an already corrupt elite. In 2021 the European Court of Auditors (pdf) identified “the abuse of high-level power that benefits the few, and causes serious and widespread harm to individuals and society”, or “grand corruption”, in Ukraine. Ukraine was regarded as having a transitional or hybrid regime in 2021 by Freedom House, and “a judiciary that worked to undermine the basic government principle of checks and balances” and frustrating anti-corruption initiatives.

The militarisation of the population and the radicalisation that generally accompanies war will test EU unity and values when it comes to Ukraine. In 2020, Freedom House noted that “in recent years the country’s significant democratic gains have been paralleled by a dramatic increase in the activity of far-right groups”, and reported “they now represent a sophisticated and politically influential element of society”.

https://johnmenadue.com/a-fractured-and-unravelling-global-order-will-confront-the-next-australian-government/

Who can blame him

So Ukraine had a right wing party. I suppose Russia should have bombed Paris when they elected a neo Nazi mayor

“” Australia does have a right wing party … and they are the government …””

What do you mean by right wing??

“””” Therefore, I cannot accept that you don’t know what people mean when they say ‘right-wing’.””

Right wing is anybody who has a different opinion to TB of Queensland

Rundle in Crikey.

I think I see where you went wrong 😉

they don’t want people to retire with enough super to live comfortably BUT they hate welfare

They are longing for the bygone era of the Grand Victorian era, where the dregs (ie, the worker bees) can be disappeared away, only to be used as a cheap source of Labour as required. They are of no consequence.

How many properties would these two numpties own between them, mostly paid for through taxpayer dollars

https://static.ffx.io/images/$width_768%2C$height_432/t_crop_fill/q_86%2Cf_auto/8430b950277c06321db9520f781fbcf518add84f

Pass around the prayer books and sing a coupla hymns

I think you mean ‘hims’ TB 😉

Maybe elon stepped in?

Blocked, splats, not banned. They are different terminologies in the twitterverse for different levels of restriction

So, Total Recall wasn’t Science Fiction, it was Science FACT! I knew it!

So there’s change in the wind including:

a 2 per cent increase to the public sector efficiency dividend to save $3.3 billion dollars

So with that ‘efficiency dividend’ be applied to the parliament itself (and all whose salaries reside within)? Will it be applied to the enormous amounts paid to non-government schools? Will it apply to the Army, Navy, Airforce? Or are they not part of the ‘public sector’?

If not, are they part of the ‘private sector?

While the political (sideshow) debate focuses on Albo versus Morrison, the significant development is the ideological shift of dollars from the public sector to the private.

Here’s an example:

With a litany of special deals that have shamelessly favoured the non-government sector, the Morrison Government has barely maintained a pretence of governing in the interests of all Australian children. They include JobKeeper subsidies for private schools that made huge profits; flood disaster relief for private schools only; a $1.2 billion dollar ‘Choice and Affordability’ slush fund for the non-government sector, and yet another billion in the March budget.

https://johnmenadue.com/no-education-minister-opposition-without-school-funding-policy/

the leftists controlling the MSM,

Oh, how we all laughed

BTW, I see resolve have the libs ready to pounce. What a joke our msm is

any organisation abusing a disproportionate number of your babies is not your friend.

Corruption, rorting, sinecures or whatever pejorative you like. It just get worse – positions at the AAT being a classic example:

“Under John Howard political appointments were 6 in 100, under the current Government that has soared to 2 in every 5.”

From 6% to 40% and this on top of a rather generous superannuation scheme.

Never a greater need for an ICAC with fangs. Vote often! Time is running out.

I think it would.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster has to have hung out some where. (ie, there is always an ‘out’, no matter how lame)

Re:

Would it undermine theist doctrine, and indeed texts, …

Not really because we are told that the Lord moves in strange ways .

It’s a universal (and generalised) back door . The first thing any smart (and not so smart) politician builds before anything else.

Re:

Labor has talked the talk …

When? Must have missed that bit.

Seems to me that Morrison lost this election just as Shorten lost the last.

Albo’s first (macro) priority will be to win (or not lose) the next election so there won’t be any imaginative agenda. But there will be pressure from The Tealers and The Greens to ‘govern’; to ‘lead’; to ‘intervene’ in the market – in contrast to the previous administration which didn’t believe in ‘governing’ except when it came to ‘pork distribution’ and the allocation of ‘sinecures’.

Nevertheless, such a future will be enough for Barnaby to drink even more but this time the ‘shout’ won’t be on the public purse. Should help with both the deficit and the debt in the medium and longer term. And one suspects that while the government will be out of his life , he will have many, many regrets.

Suspect that Rudd will make a reappearance in some form or other – despite protestations to the contrary. Perhaps he could head an Inquiry into the Murdoch Empire in Australia? 0r at least write the Terms of Reference. Probably do that for free.