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The Forum > Article Comments > K-Dudd: the heartless wonder > Comments

K-Dudd: the heartless wonder : Comments

By Jason Whittaker, published 6/11/2009

Kevin Rudd - Howard-lite as he was dubbed during the election. If anything it’s a fairly flawless reproduction.

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Despite the fact that Krud has had some tough times to deal with in his two years, at least he came to power with record employment, from high business confidence and money in the bank.

Notwithstanding the fact that he has failed his first ‘real challenge’, the boat people, he has created a mass ‘loss in confidence’ throughout the business community with his failed management of major stimulus projects.

Now it’s all well and good to say that his personal stimulus packages and government funded schemes helped employment, but, it was like throwing petrol on to wet wood to start a fire.

Shaw, if you have enough petrol the fire will start, however, if your petrol runs out, as it has and, the fire has not started, which it hasn’t, then what!

Solar and insulation are two schemes that come to mind. Here we have a situation where he has started an employment creation scheme, of grand proportions, and he has run out of money, mid stream, so he has shifted the goal posts.

Now how many of these employees, who thought they had reliable work, and rightly so, have committed themselves to debt. What now!

Do they loose their car, boat, house?

So now what! We have contractors facing ruin, both through high investment in plant and equipment, which was much needed to meet demand and some sticky situations whereby contractors may be legally committed to jobs but are now going to be $400 per job out of pocket. That’s 25% of the job value slashed!

Moving forward we may have to deal with the ETS taxes he is wanting to impose.

This will simply increase costs, which will ultimately be passed on to the consumer who, has less money to spend and less confidence to spend it as they don’t know if their jobs are safe.

Just remember, when the dust is settled and Krud has run his race, in either 1, 2 or 3 terms, he will still be a very wealthy man, but will we!
Posted by rehctub, Wednesday, 11 November 2009 6:53:00 AM
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spindoc,

I am sorry I have taken so long to get back. I tend to check if there have been any responses to my posts for a few days and then go on to other things.

There have been definite improvements as a result of that expenditure. The Victorian auditor-general’s reports showed higher test scores among primary students, but not among secondary students, so naturally the media headlined the latter and not the former. Victoria is first or second of all the states in almost all NAPLAN tests. Of course, we have to remember that most students spend 13 years at school and an improved investment in one year will not turn around past years of neglect. If you looked over the past two and three decades, you would see a decline in teacher pay and in the entry scores for teacher training, but the effects of this decline are moderated by the fact that the system still has in it many of the highly able teachers who joined the profession years ago. By the same token, the recent increase in teacher pay should lift the entry score for teacher training, but the system will still have the lower ability people in it who came in when entry scores were lower. Nor is expenditure the only factor in educational success. There are other steps that the Victorian government has taken and is taking that will add to the state’s achievements. It is worth looking at the fees of top private schools of around $20,000 to see what parents who value education and have the money are prepared to pay. By contrast, the last time I checked, Australian public school costs were about $11,000 per student.

You can see longer discussions in my posts at:
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/meganomics/index.php/theaustralian/comments/the_debt_baby/

and
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/meganomics/index.php/theaustralian/comments/judicious_regime_oversees_steady_state/
Posted by Chris C, Monday, 16 November 2009 5:48:48 PM
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Rudd’s greatest flaw has not even been alluded to by the article author or one single respondent, as far as I could see.

This is his massive acceleration of our national growth rate, via record-high immigration, a boost in the baby bonus and the espousal of his ‘big Australia’.

This is exactly what we don’t need at this point in time. We desperately need the opposite. We need to head directly towards a sustainable future in which the number of people and the demands they make on our resource base and pressures they exert on our environment can be brought in to balance.

Rudd doesn’t have the slightest mandate for his massive expansionist position. He didn’t mention anything about boosting immigration or steering Australia towards a population of 35 million by 2050 in the election campaign or beforehand.

This means that he is either making his policy direction up as he goes along or he has deliberately and gravely misled the Australian people by way of not expressing his intentions in regard to this all-important aspect of governance.

After eleven years of Howard’s very high immigration and worship of continuous growth, it was time for a huge change. It was quite desperately time for a reversal of that sort of policy, with a careful winding back of immigration, a termination of the ridiculous baby bonus and an espousal of a population level of not more than 25 million, accompanied by a steady state economic system.

It was high time for the dinosaur era of continuous-growth-with-no-end-in-sight madness to end.

So what did we get? Rudd, the ultimate antisustainabiliyist!
Posted by Ludwig, Wednesday, 25 November 2009 3:58:00 PM
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I find it ironic, that Rudd has so many people entranced in his rhetorical campaign of lies to enforce a third tier tax system on us. The wonderful thing about science is, if you do an experiment one way, you will get a result of which you are looking for but if you incorporate other factors, it will give a completely different outcome depending on the factors incorporated. The elephant in the room they don't want to talk about is deforestation. The last wilder beast migration left on earth is in South Africa & the way the forests are being burnt & depleted means they will turn to baron plains. Baron plains = desert conditions & the drying up of the last river of support & deserts mean no trees, water or rainfall & that = higher temperatures. Just like a desert that melts snow & ice.
Posted by Atheistno1, Thursday, 26 November 2009 8:47:30 AM
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