Turnbull and Morrison as as thick as two short planks. If they can't get get their 'savings' through the senate, they must cut spending.

There are plenty of free-loaders in Australia to take money from, starting with the Labor-inspired NDIS, which was never funded by them because they knew that they were not going to be in government following the election after their stupid commitment to the crackpot scheme. Foreign aid; handouts to RET rorters – anything whereby low-lives are getting our money for nothing. Australians are sick of being ripped off by government, charity shonks and to many bloody public servants and non-contributing immigrants on the dole.

The need for Trump like economic activity?

Governor Sam Brownback; Republican, has pushed those type of policies in Kansas; he has made such a mess that it appears he is possibly going to be parashuted out of his position into a cushy position in Rome.

https://thinkprogress.org/is-sam-brownback-about-to-get-a-political-bailout-from-donald-trump-9545f12f5628#.6cq0yfv2p

The sheer stupidity of Trump is displayed by:

Quote:

"Just days after floating budget cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that would undermine America’s weather prediction system, President Donald Trump made use of that very system to warn the public about the impending snowstorm and blizzard.
With predictions of a crippling storm headed for the Northeast, the president took to Twitter on Monday to warn people to be safe and pay attention to local officials."

From:

http://thinkprogress.org/trump-tweets-snowstorm-warning-from-the-agency-whose-budget-hes-trying-to-slash-5c4d2f93389b#.vpy8d63j1

The LNP are having a spotlight shone on right wing madness, their reference being the Trump administration.
Take Conway seriously, and people will send their micro wave ovens to the tip.

Steve Bannon, the ex CEO of Brietbart, is having such an influence on advertisers to his former paper that advertisers are leaving in droves. Something like 1,400 companies advertisering on the Brietbart web site have left.

The LNP is in serious enough trouble, without copying the Trump administration which is manifesting as ideology gone mad.

The cost of living is largely in the hands of the consumers. We don't need to buy the latest and the greatest. We don't need to pay out extra fees to send our kids to fancy schools. Neither do we need to waste our money on pokies and other forms of gambling, or excess liquor and smokes. These things are all within our personal control. Wake up Australia.
David

"The rising 'cost of living' is a government problem".

Everything is a government problem because the government is involved in everything. And that's the problem.

"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Ronald Reagan

The issue isn't how the government can fix these problems. The issue is how to we get the government out of the way so that the problems can be fixed. Unfortunately after 5 decades of letting the government insinuate itself into every aspect of society, we now have a parliament which is able to exercise a veto on any and all proposals to pull back even a little.

To be fair, the authors allude to the need to get the government out of the way. But how to do that is not clear and I'm not sure there is a practical way to achieve it at present. Even if we were to be graced by a Trump like character, the ability of a PM to implement an agenda is not at the same level as that of a president. While Trump (or at least the GOP) control the Congress, the Presidency and (soon) the Supreme Court, I fear it'll be a long long time before any true reformer will have that luxury in Australia.

Things are going to get a lot worse before that'll happen.

There are some simple folk, who think that our economy will actually improve if we would just stop smoking, drinking and buying stuff! I do none of the above, save buy food, pay utility charges and have the odd flutter on lotto, but only when it jackpots.

Discretionary spending, including optional booze or addictive fags, as the sum total of our combined discretionary spending, alone powers the domestic economy.

This brings us to banking. We need a new people's bank to enable our two trillion plus super fund to find a more natural hospitable home, and finance some long overdue income earning nation building projects.

Like very large scale solar thermal energy projects or thorium power. Which would make already eminently affordable deionization (flow through) desalination even more affordable, to ostensibly, turn our own arid deserts into the most productive agroindustries in the world. With the relatively flat W.A. Coastal regions being the logical starting place?

The cost of living has an energy component in almost every part of it, most noticeably in food production, processing, preservation, transport, retailing and preparation.

Get those costs down with financed import replacing projects including failsafe energy projects, would be a good start to both reducing the cost of living, and putting idle (able bodied) hands back to work!
Alan B.

VK3AUU is right. We don't have to buy rubbish we don't need.

mhaze

"I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Ronald Reagan

There are scores of professional people who work for the government who actually do help people...Doctors, Nurses, Teachers, Fire Fighters, Psychiatrists, Dentists, Allied Health, Hospital staff, Ambos, Police etc etc

In relation to Australia's energy market the mess is looming large due to privatisation. Instead of workers receiving a rebate when the mining tax was dropped, the cost of energy has increased.
Privatisation leads generally to higher costs being incurred by citizens.

Of interest is that corporate profits have increased in Australia, while salaries and wages have hardly moved. A number of huge corporations do not pay tax; nothing is being done about that.

The trickle down theory has been shown to be a nonsense.

Whose problem?

The cost of living is a massive problem for consumers, especially would be if they could be consumers toward the bottom of the economy.

Re Energy, Tax:
Government must surely love high prices at the bowser because excise tax is higher when fuel cost is higher.
Of course higher fuel cost impacts business and really hurts consumers, especially those at the bottom of the economy, resulting in less cash to buy/consume.

Re Regulation, Banking:
Paul Keating put the Australian dollar on the market just like bananas are sent to market. So speculators are making money just by watching numbers, and you know who loses the money that speculators profit from.

Regulation of cash availability is forcing many consumers to borrow and pay interest or stop buying.
Profit from interest is good for top of economy finance business and government but not for a majority of consumers.

Look at it this way. If there were no interest rates, or a low fixed rate, interest free loans from a government bank would allow many more consumers to have the ability to consume.

More consumers and more consumption would mean more turnover and tax revenue.
But presently the finance industry and government it influences wants all control and all profit just from turnover of cash, without actual production of any produce.
At least one prime minister is even a banker.

I think government spending should be more focussed on building newly productive infrastructure that will produce product for local supply and especially for export.
Yes new roads save lives but they do not produce export product, old roads can already handle production and delivery.
The $50 billion plus NBN and pink batts scheme produce nothing for export, nothing.
In contrast I think modern water infrastructure to bring northern wet season water south into prime agricultural and farming land in cyclone free regions would result in new towns and new business and employment during construction, and forever after FOLLOWING construction.

Australia is a food producing nation, is it not?

The cost-of-living action summits that One Nation is proposing, sound good.

mhaze,
"The issue isn't how the government can fix these problems. The issue is how to we get the government out of the way so that the problems can be fixed."
No, there are three related issues:
1) Why do we have the problem?
2) How can the problem be fixed?
3) What is preventing it from being fixed?

Now there may well be instances where the government is in the way of fixing the problems. But just assuming the government is what's preventing the problems from being fixed is a recipe for disaster. Often the government is more able to fix the problem than any other organization, and trying to get it "out of the way" is severely counterproductive.

Also, in the minority of instances where the government is in the way, we must consider why. For if it's there to prevent a worse problem occurring, getting it out of the way so that the original problem can be fixed may end up making us all worse off.

This is an "Eye LOL"..:-))

If Pauline Hanson were to tape her mouth shut, she'd make heaps of sense. Australia needs Pauline Hanson, not Pauline Hanson-speak.

Anyone with a brain knows what's wrong with Australia, and it's cost of living problem: Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten.

The best way to dodge tax is to not pay it, and bingo, behold one third of the Australian economy is following that advice.
And of course, the other side example of corruption, as a leg up to succeed in the cost of living war, corruption itself.
And Bingo again a no tax win win. Isn't this economy firmly foundationed on casino gambling, and wink wink, laundering proceeds of Chinese corruption. The percentage of those untaxed funds is unknown to all but a few, ( and I'm sure Turnbull and Shorten would have the figures).

The unaffordable housing market, which is also geared to Chinese Corruption, as an avenue to launder huge sums, assisting GDP; transforming the Government from bouncer at the casino, to usher in the Church.

Those effected by the tax dodging at the top, those on the bottom, being those with the life threatening consequences of corruption and high cost of living, will actually have their kite confiscated, no kite flying for them!

Meanwhile, taxing the middle class is the way forward, their funds are transparent. Superannuation and property investments. Taxing homeowners by land tax is a scoop. So too is taxing capital gains. Removing concessions on super contributions is also lucrative, and a host of other attacks on the stretched middle class to improve bottom lines.
All the while supplanting the old guard middle class, with a new demography of middle class, those outlined in the above, rich in funds schooled in corruption, and willing to apply their lessons locally. No cost of living pressures here!

Hard to see it any other way with more honesty really!

JF Aus,

Paul Keating put the Aussie dollar on the market because speculators were making heaps of money at the Australian government's expense. 'Twas 100% the right thing to do; now speculators make money at each other's expense instead.

The government should run expansionary economic policy to increase production and give more consumers the means to consume. Low interest rates are part of the way to do this, but the lower they get, the lower the benefit from cutting them further.

Another form of expansionary economic policy is for the government to run bigger deficits. One nice effect of having a floating dollar is that, providing it sticks to its current policy of not borrowing in foreign currency, the government has unlimited credit.

Whether driven by monetary policy (interest rates) or fiscal policy (government deficits) expansionary economic policy does have consequences. Though it's good for increasing production, it can have the disadvantage of increasing inflation, particularly when the economy reaches capacity. The solution I favour is to keep interest rates low and instead use fiscal policy to control inflation: ignore the level of government debt, increase deficits when inflation is low (as it currently is), reduce deficits when inflation's higher, and run big surpluses in the boom times (and don't be dissuaded from running big surpluses if the government debt is eliminated).

_______________________________________________________________________________

Yuyutsu,

Long wires are often more efficient than battery storage.

Governments investing in their own countries isn't nationalism; it's common sense! And though I concede the current version of the NBN is worse than leaving it all to the private sector, the same can not be said about the version that was originally planned. And the NDIS, allowing disabled people to live dignified and productive lives, should never be dismantled!

The gas, coal that come from our ground are our mineral wealth! Which foreign firms pay royalties? Some of which goes to the Australian people.

Another Adani anyone?

Think, if these debt laden speculators had their way, they'd replace locally sourced labor and material with cheaper imports. And even where they employ Aussies? Often FIFO.

WE are governed by idiots who cannot conceive of anything more visionary than dig it up and sell it? What happens when all those lucrative mines, for foreigners, are nothing more than worked out holes in the ground?

What happens when sanity finally prevails and coal is just dirty fuel we can't give away?

Sitting on hands endlessly repeating, nuclear energy is not party policy solves nothing, particularly the energy crisis.

Every western style economy rests on just two economic pillars, energy and capital!

And until we regain complete control of both those, we will teeter from one crisis to another, all while our record domestic and foreign debt balloons! And everyone knows what happens to over inflated bubbles!POP!

A people's bank would start the process as would the rollout of publicly owned and operated, very local, thorium based, cheaper than coal, thorium, which will power many cities, towns rural/regional centres and critical industries, steel and aluminum smelting.

Enable quite massive decentralization, plus unprecedented growth and prosperity.

Some gormless gutless wonders are apt to endlessly repeat, the government has no business in business!

To them we need to rise up on our hind legs and say, folks like you have no business in government!

All we need after traditional essential service back in traditional Australian public, not for profit hands, is deprivatised power and a people's bank to put real competition into the so called capital market.

Currently just the corpse of what was once our capital market and the private operators, vultures ripping everything of value from it.

While massive record debt balloons into uncharted territory!

Governments can and ought to take charge of this ballooning problem, just not with more of the same, flawed dogma and idiotic ideology, which created it!
Alan B.

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The problem in my opinion lies in commercialism and import. I mean if we were entirely self reliant for everything, I’m sure we could control all the different aspects of the economy to suit what we need. The problem is that other countries have their own agenda and that affects costs for us at home too. Unfortunately a free market is never really truly free.