Intriguing discussion. Thank you.

@Onthebeach, no, taxes are good. They buy civilisation.
The GST in Australia is quite fair with its current offsets. Any tampering, however, would do more harm than good: extending it without offsets would be regressive; extending it with more offsets would render the system far too complicated and costly to administer.
Far better simply to get the wealthy to pay a fair cop by stopping the rorts and tweaking the income tax and corporate tax rates.

@Foxy, yes agree with that.
We may be witnessing a shift in the influence of Mr Murdoch's newspapers as we speak.
Recent election results in Victoria and Queensland suggest it may be in decline. Hard to prove, however.
Some of Mr Murdoch's corporate investor partners are now pressuring him to close all newspapers because most, if not all, make substantial losses.

@Runner: No, the opposite is true.
All the evidence confirms that Mr Murdoch has actively opposed all Labor governments and leaders since 1972.
Don’t be fooled by that sneaky ruse in 2007. It was not at all genuine.

@ Jardine K. Jardine, please calm down.
The opposite of what you say is true.
This piece simply matches the words of the mainstream press before the 2013 election with their words now. Nothing more.
There is no expression of “blind and ignorant hatred”, is there?

Cheers, AA

There you go folks - we've now been given a perfect example of -
forming an opinion without having to get the facts.
A great time-saver.

Ooooops - my previous comment was meant for
Jardine. I forgot to address it to him.

Dear Alan,

I think that Murdoch's support will drop even further
when Mr Abbott's popularity continues to dive. Murdoch
does not like "losers."
Take a look at Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones,Miranda Devine,
Janet Albrechtsen - and other previous
supporters.
No more.

'@Runner: No, the opposite is true.
All the evidence confirms that Mr Murdoch has actively opposed all Labor governments and leaders since 1972.
Don’t be fooled by that sneaky ruse in 2007. It was not at all genuine.
'

Thanks for clarifying that Alan. It was pretty hard believeing Murdoch would be so stupid as to support Rudd. Rudd seemed to suck in a huge number of the gullible. Just maybe Murdoch understands that a surplus is actually a good thing, something that in decades the Labourites/Greens have not.

Dear runner,

It's time that you and the government stop blaming
Labor. The government needs to govern. At the moment
Mr Abbott and his front-bench act as if they're still
in opposition.

It is not the responsibility of governments to make
a profit. National priorities are important and
social services are the responsibility of governments -
even if they profit nobody - such infrastructure
as public schools, universities, sewers,police forces,hospitals,
the army, navy, air-force, fire departments, libraries,
parks and the like.

Having a surplus at the expense of cuts and neglect to
infrastructure, health, education, and other socially
valuable services is not a good thing - as John Howard
learned.

We're stuck with a party that wants cuts (not for the rich
mind) and voters who are worried about services. If the
current government and Mr Abbott remain deaf and indifferent
to the concerns of the voters - they will undoubtedly follow
in the footsteps of Victoria and Queensland at the next
federal election.

The state election in NSW is just around the corner.
It will be interesting to see whether Mr Abbott stuffs up
prior to that election - as he did prior to the Victorian
election .

'Dear runner,

It's time that you and the government stop blaming
Labor.'

no Foxy I blame the totally ignorant voters who obviously have no idea. And when did you say Labour last produced a surplus? How many times did Swan promise it?