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!