The 'centre ground' is a myth. Nothing gets done in the centre. Besides, Turnbull took the Coaltion to the Left, barely pausing over the centre. Turnbull's Leftism culminated in the socialist budget we have just been lumbered with. He thought that it would give him a lift in the polls with the greedy electorate, but he got that wrong to – barely a waver the polls. Nobody likes the useless prick!

Brendan, you need to stop focusing on the impossible, take a breath, a long overdue reality check and just put that bucket down.

It doesn't matter how hard you run or how many times you fill and empty that bucket, you are never going to be able to empty the ocean into that hole you've dug in the beach, labeled conservative expectations?

Besides, you need the bucket for far more rudimentary use, as you continue to pontificate prodigiously?

We would be better served or just not have to hold our noses for the duration, if you tried, just once, talking from a little higher up?
Alan B.

Brendan, you are arguing for a fallacy.
Household budgets must have a slight surplus or break even. Government budgets are not like that at all.
If the Government needs more money, it just prints more. If it needs less money, it increases the tax on one or more items.
There is no requirement for the budget to be in surplus, in fact, since 1900, the Australian budget has been in surplus just 13 or so times and for the other 104 or so years it has run a deficit. If a budget runs at a surplus, then there are some needy sectors of the economy that aren't getting the money they deserve.

This is the joy of being a fiat economy. There is no other place in the world where Australian dollars can be legally printed and there is no external body which can control how much is printed.

Alan & Brian, while I totally agree with you that it would be hard to live, at lease in a major city, or hot tourist area on the basic wage, that is not the point.

The point is that unless we wish to be the next Greece or Spain, we can not continue to pay ourselves more than we earn, pensioners & those on welfare more than we can afford, or bureaucrats way above that paid in the private sector for the same work.

I was horrified when I came back to Oz how much it cost in 3 months living out of my bank account. I was equally horrified to find that people I later employed on low to moderate wages, really below a reasonable living level, were not actually earning enough to justify to the company the cost of employing them.

I had been away from 72 to 78, & in that time, the Whitlam years perhaps, something had gone terribly wrong in Oz.

I don't pretend to have an answer, any more than I can understand how we got into this mess so quickly. Vote buying comes to mind, but I fear only a major collapse, a major depression or a war, will be able to rejig the entire western world. The welfare society we have developed is just not sustainable, but how do we repair the system without injuring millions?

Brendan presided for years over the shambolic and heartless state disability department. To hear him say that this country cannot afford the NDIS shows he learned nothing in all those years. The Productivity Commission showed that in time, the NDIS will serve to grow the economy, quite apart from its social equity benefits. And there is no blow out, as is claimed.

I now believe that ex public servants should be banned from commenting
on anything. Others can comment on other points but his nonsense about
loading all communications traffic onto "wireless" indicates that he
simply has no knowledge on the subject.
He treats the spectrum like the magic pudding.
Why does he think telcom companies have bid billions for slices of it.