Like it or not, the damage is done and no amount of taxing or shifting will fix the problem. Essenially, our only hope of recovery was the Abbott budget, but no one wants to do the heavy lifting, esspecially the late' society, the ones who happlily pay up to $50 per Lt for thier warmed milk, yet say they cant afford a house.

As for taxing the banks, governments seem to forget that they dont have to be here as they can simply vacate their four walls and do business elsewhere, leaving little more than a hole in the wall and a call centre in the middle of who knows where for you to vent your frustration.

The truth is we waste billions on welfare, billions on trying to educate kids who really dont care, and we give hundreds of millions to other countries BEFORE WE PAY OUR OWN BILLS.

My bed time wish is for Abbott to join forces with Binardi and Lathum and lead what could be a fresh new face in our political scene.

Bernadi and Latham and Abbott. What a trio. Good luck with that one butch.
Three cheers for bill, laid it on the line good and proper. With the coalition shifting to the left i would say they have played right into the hands of Labor.
The Abbott supporters still can not see daylight, Morrison never had a hope in hell in doing anything, shifting money from here and giving there, it done absolutely nothing.
In times of downturn you need stimulus. The coalition can not understand that. If things had of kept going like that there would be nothing left.
Butch liked Abbott's budget, that is not what we were promised from his election campaign. Not one of the Abbott worshipers can bring themselves to say Abbott done the wrong thing. They are still in love with Abbott no matter what. Now the whole party has fallen from grace and gone by way of Labor.

Graham you must be careful not to deceive yourself with wishful thinking.

Turnbull is never going to be any better than KRudd or Gillard, as long as his backside points to the ground. He is too stupid to know which way is up, too arrogant to ever listen to good advice & too slippery to ever be trusted. Wishing him otherwise is totally futile.

Wishing he was otherwise & trying to believe it is a recipe for a knife in the back. It has been patently obvious since the republic debate that he was in the wrong party. With his character & ethics he would be much more at home in the Labor party.

The article demonstates the usual conservative blinkered ideology. Taxes bad, government provision of goods and services bad.

The real problem with the housing market is high population growth rates and speculation by 'investors'. Allowing first home buyers to use super funds to purchase a house is demented. That would bid up house prices even more and erode the superannuation system. The main beneficiaries would the rentiers who infest the housing market, ie contributors to and supporters of the Coalition.

Whatever happened to the debt crisis?

Don't worry mac, the debt crisis is still there, & getting worse by the day, trying to fund the NDIS & Gonski.

However with a Labor lite twit in the chair, just like Labor, they have decided trying to get elected, or re-elected is more important than trying to fix previous mistakes.

There was just one little bump in our downhill slide since Howard, & there is now nothing left to even slow us down in our chase of Greece, Spain & Ireland.

Hold on tight, the crash at the bottom is going to be breathtaking.

Hasbeen,

The real debt crisis is not public but private, the country is nowhere near a Greece style catastrophe.The Banks have borrowed billions from foreign investors to speculate on the real estate market. When the housing bubble bursts and the proud owners of Mc Mansions discover that the houses are worth half their mortgages the voters will finally learn the hard way. Also Coalition politicians, because of their neoliberal ideology are intrinsically incapable of slowing down the bubble. Of course the government in power at the time will get the blame.

WA is a preview of the impending national disaster.

I agree that the crash at the bottom will be 'breathtaking', our own miniature GFC.