What I also find ironic is that the BER and insulation project were done in accordance with what LNP promulgate.
Allow private enterprise to do the job with minimum regulation and it will be done in a more efficient manner.
When you look at the research/facts with regard to both projects there is evidence of price gouging, shoddy workmanship and unsafe work practices and if it suits your political agenda overlook a 97% satisfaction rate for BER and a reduction in house fires caused by electrical faults in house roofs to name just 2 of the benefits

"What I also find ironic is that the BER and insulation project were done in accordance with what LNP promulgate.
Allow private enterprise to do the job with minimum regulation and it will be done in a more efficient manner."

More blatant stupidity from the socialists. You favour a socialist redistribution scheme, and when it results in exactly the evaluational chaos that libertarian theory correctly predicts, and your theory completely fails to predict, you blame it on capitalism!

The entire BER was a socialist exercise. It involved the State taking the money, and diverting the physical wealth, from its private owners, and expending it on projects and favourites which were politically and bureaucratically decided.

How could you fail to understand this quintessential point?

So far as the LNP promulgate such schemes, then they're promulgating socialism and you're wrong. And so far as the LNP don't promulgate them, then they're promulgating capitalism and you're wrong.

"When you look at the research/facts with regard to both projects there is evidence of price gouging, shoddy workmanship and unsafe work practices..."

More confused illogic. The whole things was state-sponsored, and would not have taken place otherwise. Stop trying to squirm out of the responsibility for your failed ideology. The libertarian argument against these stupid schemes is precisely that they will result in evaluational chaos. Your proving my argument while disproving your own.

"if it suits your political agenda overlook a 97% satisfaction rate for BER and a reduction in house fires caused by electrical faults in house roofs to name just 2 of the benefits"

You're back to pointing to improved crop fertility - mere benefits - without taking into account the costs and opportunity costs in terms of the forced sacrifice of human values and welfare that were the basis of the entire exercise.

I doubt you guys can be as ignorant and illogical as you're pretending. Obviously you're starting out with a purely ideological commitment to socialism, and then working backwards to try to scrape together any justification you can, no matter how self-contradictory you're proving yourself to be in the process.

Hi Jardine K Jardine,

This is your lucky day! As it happens just this week this whole topic is being thrashed out in substantial depth. Right here at OLO.

Start here: "So what really did save Australia's economy?"

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=15380

Then read the discussion following with Ludwig, Yabby and Grim23.

Then go to this: “The power of the Murdoch media to manipulate”

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=15412

Then see the discussion following with Yabby and Rhian.

We have resolved all the issues you raise here in this thread.

We have seen clearly how through the GFC Australia rose from 10th-ranked economy in the world in 2007 – behind Iceland, Singapore, China, United Arab Emirates, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Norway, Taiwan and Hong Kong - to top of the world now.

Pretty impressive social benefits resulting from that, huh?

We have discussed at length the logical question of coincidence versus cause. We agree simultaneity does not imply causality.

Re: "According to your confused illogic Australia would be wealthier if it blew up a major city. Think of all the money that would put into 'circulation'. Think of all the economic activity that would 'stimulate'.”

Correct about economic activity. That would go up. But incorrect about net assets. They would go down.

What we want is for both to go up - as happened with the pink batts and the BER.

Happy to continue the discussion here or at either of the other pages.

Cheers, Jardine.

Alan

Writing this on the eve of the election, it's all a moot point now as the election is a slam-dunk for the Murdoch-Coalition.

It really angers me that these setting-the-record-straight fact-checks are finally appearing now, when they should have been appearing regularly for the last three years. The ALP should have been doing this for itself long before now, but it appears to have been as cowed by the Murdoch Press lies as everyone else was. Or perhaps it assumed that the Australian electorate was far more mature and astute than it actually is (a mistake the Murdoch-Coalition NEVER makes).

Now it's too little too late.

I suppose we can all take a bow that we have pulled off one of the greatest acts of mass electoral stupidity in modern politics - i.e. to chuck out a government that handed us the world's best economy during one of the world's worst recessions.

So let me get this right
Are you saying it is better to have a budget surplus(that was achieved in the main by selling income generating public assets at fire sale prices in a voodoo economics exercise) "for a rainy day" and let the country spiral into an uncontrolled recession and bugger the consequence?
I can tell by the cheap attempts at insult that you aren't sure of your own stance.
The money that was spent on these projects belongs to all Australians and held in trust and to be used in an appropriate manner.
Before you slag off, I happily pay the top rate of income tax and am of the opinion that the economy given the natural resources we have in Australia should always be running in deficit.
As Alan mentioned earlier the whole basis of the exercise was get that money out there. The Global Financial Heist (thanks Emperor Julian) wasn't just a rainy day it was a monsoonal downpour

Killarney
Don't get too angry, there will be a huge blood letting regardless of the result. If half of what is getting around in the Bloggosphere is true,I don't think a LNP government will be able to survive the blood loss.
I have a feeling some have been holding back on the allegations to keep their own chances of election alive and to stop the Murdoch damage control apparatus getting to work.It is a very powerful yet at the same time fragile machine.
I'm going to Get Up and hand out score cards tomorrow every little bit helps.
By the way I Pre-polled in Swan today and had to queue at the door for about 15 minutes and the ALP crew were handing out a lot more cards than the LNP crew