...Joe and Tone have now firmly distanced yourselves from the "Poor White Trash" of Asia.

This is the most responsible budget in nearly a decade, with the first genuine attempt to balance the budget and avoid losing the AAA credit rating that Howard achieved.

http://resources1.news.com.au/images/2014/05/15/1226919/503061-6e3f9e7e-dc0a-11e3-8e7a-50682b5c038f.jpg

As Thatcher said, "The problem with socialists is that eventually they run out of other people's money."

The debt is not horrific by world standards, but the worst of the Labor legacy is the record high spending / low tax legacy they left which is threatening decades of deficit and eventually to match the debts of the EU countries.

Shadow Minister;

a) the 'other peoples' money' argument doesn't wash when its applied to social insurance or collective consumption. That's money we 'spend' (collectively) for ourselves and our loved ones - for security and peace of mind apart from anything else. (eg: Disability Insurance; or Unemployment insurance in case we lose our jobs; or to defend us from a desperate reserve army of labour being used to destroy our wages and conditions...).

b) The Redistribution argument is harder to press is you are ideologically opposed to it per se... But my position is that 'labour market forces' do not necessarily deliver fair results. Hard working cleaners, child care workers, aged care workers get paid very little for very hard work...

Finally I believe in the maxim "from each according to ability, to each according to need'....

But I expect you believe in a twisted version of 'meritocracy' where we are all left 'to sink or swim' on our own. Though the most radical proponent of meritocracy - Henri Saint-Simon - opposed inheritance full stop... I doubt the Conservatives here would agree with that....

Tristan, you write with a nonchalant and apparently thoughtful concern for the disadvantaged, but that slogan 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs reveals that your thinking is corrupt. Yourthinking is based in an ideology that killed 120 million people in the last century and condemns whole populations to horrific poverty in the few criminal states that still think that way.

International freeing of trade, comparative advantage and the initiative of entrepreneurship haave lifted the human race from squalor, whether squalor created by ignorant and oppressive feudalism, or the ignorant and oppressive feudalism that socialists created.

The entitled class, the taker class can loot the productivity of the employed maker class only so far, until you create Greece, or worse Cuba or Venezuela.

Tristan Ewins's arguments are like multi-faceted slivers of gemstone. No matter which way you look at them, they're always shallow.

Tristan,

Don't verbal me, I simply commented on the rapidly growing deficit. So please cease your sanctimonious finger wagging.

Labor left a debt of 12% of GDP or nearly 50% of the annual budget. On top of that they committed to handouts and programmes that left the debt growing by nearly 3% of GDP p.a. with interest already consuming $12b p.a. or 3%. Hence the government is spending other people's money.

Welfare and medical already consume about 58% of the budget, and are growing faster than inflation at about 6%. It pretty much doesn't matter what one does with the rest of the budget, without tackling welfare and medicare, there is no chance of balancing the budget or retaining the AAA rating that Howard achieved.