180,000 a year and not a word from the media. The recolonisation of Australia is in progress, but nobody dares whisper a word in opposition.

When did the Australian public consent to this madness?

These demands for higher population growth simply reaffirm my belief that we are cursed with the laziest, least innovative big business community in the industrialised world. Productivity gains build long-term prosperity Heather, not rampant population growth.

KNOW WHERE YOU STAND COSTELLO - you lost me - a secret observer - hoping you would find the HEART & SOUL of this country and put something back for the people rather than yourself.

As a REAL "NO FRILLS" CONSERVATIVE, I say, if you guys put just ONE - TWO or THREE Million of your wasteful MEDIA Budget back into the Communities of CAPE York's - through Health and COMMUNITY SERVICE infrastructures - and supported COOK SHIRE as the HISTORICAL FIRST - WHITE Administration - for the benefit of CHANGE - we might half-way take heed of your disgraceful SPIN.

As you probably know I am A POLITICAL!

I have listened to you for years... thought you were going to come through there for a minute on your last trip to Cape York.

Sad, nothing seems to touch you guys... you are in a world of your own.

We NEED INSTITUTIONAL REFORM - given you are within my own age group with all your influence and resources, I would have thought you'd want to be remebered as a MAN who STOOD for PEOPLE. We need CLEVER PEOPLE who understand how to spend wisely... to do this.

Your budget was clever if self interest is all that WE needed.

I do hope you guys learn from this election that governance needs to take better care of the HOUSEWORK.

HEALTH - EDUCATION - HOUSING - COMMUNITIES need attention and you failed us in COOKTOWN and Cape York!

http://www.miacat.com/Media_Pan_One/REGIONAL_Pacific_News/Local_Cape_York/CouncilReform.asp

Our struggle is real and you are playing games with LIFE QUALITY!

A lazy post peter, for so very long the ALP did your job on the day the polls really matter .
Fools and failures like Simon Crean and Mark Latham did all your work.
And stunned at the good luck this government forgot a John Howard basic.
You can not fatten a pig on market day!
You can lie by lie day by day destroy faith in the government.
And you Peter among many others have done that job very well.
Rather Rudd than crudd.

Re-reading these posts I am saddened by the lack of acknowledgment of a job well done by the Coalition in the face of relentless opposition by the ALP at both federal and state level. So many excellent initiatives had to be abandoned because the states refused to cooperate with a Coalition government. Delaying tactics have also been employed so that it appears Canberra is doing nothing but, hey presto, along comes a state budget and suddenly the states start to use federal funds or try to channel them into the areas they think will make them look good and where they have been getting demands from a noisy few with a personal issue and the ear of the media.
The economy is back in shape (sure it has been assisted by the mining boom but that is not all of the story), unemployment is low and it is easier to employ and be employed, interest rates are at a reasonable level and we are finally able to concentrate on issues like the environment, education and technology. All that is going to go for nothing because people have been led to believe by the unions, the media and an opposition political party supported by these that all this is somehow a bad thing - that workers are losing "rights and conditions" we could not afford in the first place (safety yes but not holiday leave loadings etc) and that we should not have gone to war in Iraq (noone should have gone but the reality is that if the US went we had to go to preserve our trade and security ties and an ALP government would have done exactly the same thing and have privately acknowledged it).
I feel so sad and frustrated that the compulsion to attend the ballot box will mean that the ALP will come in benefit from the hard work, bust the economy and social structure and then we will have to start all over again. We never learn.

The big end of town should be grateful to the Coalition Government; Communicat, not the rest of the electorate. "Work Choices" is not in the interests of ordinary people, nor are increasing interest rates. Millions of dollars have been squandered on advertising; you need to be pretty thick to believe that a 30 second feel good tv add is going to provide useful information to a viewer. As miacat stated above those wasted dollars could have been spent on something meaningful.

The cut of the Government was illustrated just after the last election when with great arrogance the Anti-Terrorist laws and "Work Choices" were pushed through in undue haste. The termites have been busy, and now the "Work Choices" has been changed somewhat.
"Work Choices" has been partially about destroying Unions, in years to come Unions may become just as important, if not more so, than in the 1890s.

Suddenly we have a Coalition Government that is supposedly interested in water, and Climate Change. Also, they have been busy trying to tidy issues that have been irritating the electorate for some time such as David Hicks, and changes in relation to Health Insurance to name a few. These matters have been allowed to languish for years, and because Labor appears to be polling well the Coalition has been partially knocked out of their complacency.

Giving people a fair go was once a well understood concept in the Australian community, with the Coalition Government it is becoming a shrinking ideal.

This notion that the coalition has spent the last decade fixing the economy so now they can concentrate on other things is either amusing or worrying.

If you can only concentrate on one thing at a time, what the hell are you doing running a country? There's more to a nation than just the economy, which has either escaped the coalition's attention or they don't care. Either way that's a worry.

Are the rest of us seriously expected to be grateful for the profits and salaries we're seeing at the top end of town, which are getting more obscene by the day? Are we supposed to be happy about the erosion of Medicare and the propping up of private medical funds? The neglect of public education, environmental problems and the punishment of people having problems? FOI restrictions on a whim? Crapping on about a dozen refugees, vast sums of money spent on detention facilities that sit empty while immigration rates go through the ceiling?

That last one really gets me. I don't mind high immigration or multiculturalism or refugees myself, but plenty of my fellow Australians, like mickijo, are worried about it. Dog whistle with your citizenship tests to make mickijo feel better, then remove the full-fee paying student cap at universities which effectively increases the number of international students. That adds to immigration and the coalition knows it.

Dumbest of all, they've set precedents in board stacking, plausible deniability, advertising spending and a million other things they'll live to regret when they're in opposition. Contrary to what the coalition think, democracy is not about permanent rule. It's about losing your job if you don't do it properly, just like the rest of us.