*Yabby, there is no reason to expect price rises on home grown/manufactured goods if internal competition is healthy. Monopolies and non-competitive practices would be illegal. Who would pay $6000 for a computer?*

Exactly, who would? In reality people would simply not be able to
afford many of the consumers goods, which they take for granted now.

Australia has a mere 20 million, which is far too small to have
economies of scale on many products. We have been through all
this before in Australia, when tariffs first came in. You landed
up with lazy, fat manufactuters, making many shoddy products, with
consumers having little choice but to buy them, as tariff walls
protected the locals. That is exactly how the Melbourne
establishment became so rich, at the expense of consumers, farmers
and other exporters, who had to pay through the nose for their
inputs. That made the latter even less competitive.

You can legislate all you want, if there are not enough competitors,
there won't be competition. Even with a couple of players in a field,
they each soon find that settling at say a 50% margin at high prices,
is far more profitable then competing with the other guy.

Result, consumers lose and get screwed.

A couple of other things I would do

Stop any further sell off of public assetts

Request all political parties to put forward a population policy.

Banjo

You pinched most my policies. Now that's a worry for you.

If I was PM there would be three possibilities

First find my doctor and demand he change my medication because these arthritis pills sure have funny side effects.

Go and see the bloke with a ginger afro called Suzy Goodytwoshoes who stood for the SA parliament in 1970 on behalf of the Happy Birthday Party because he would now be president ...No other party would have me.

Try not to sulk because I’d been demoted from emperor
Then I’d appoint Foxy as minister for diplomacy.
Fractelle minister for the arts and having a good time
Pelican minister for stopping wars
Bronwyn for minister for serious occasions and other rare events
Belly minister for doing the right thing
Runner as minister for well…just a minister
TRTL minister for directions
Steven minister for maintaining good relations with the Eskimos
Rob minister for giving away money
Davidf minister for finding rob
Hasbeen speaker of the house
CJ minister of making sure we all don’t get too big headed
The rest can write letters for us to discuss in cabinet
Leave the public service to run what’s left of the country.
Finally Give out warm clothing as Hell has frozen over

:-(

runner,
I just looked at the 10 policies you listed and do not see any connection at all.

My policies stand on their own merrit and reflect the issues I have always argued for, both on OLO and elsewhere.

Pelican

Once you're safely ensconced as our new Prime Minister, may I suggest you appoint Bronco Lane as your senior advisor. And may I urge you to implement every item on his 'Progressive Statesman' list within your first one hundred days in office!

Houellebecq

Great satire. My guess though is that given the top job you actually would implement that list and love every minute of it!

I can just picture you, with Col as your Right hand man, reading to you earnestly from his well-worn 'Epistle from St Maggie' and Polycarp, juggling the bible and the quoran and quoting copiously from both, as your Minister for Religion and Ethnic Affairs!

Sorry, examinator, I know I'm being very secondhand here. You know of course that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. :)

Runner

"Banjo - You pinched most of my policies. Now that's a worry for you."

Some self-deprecatory humour, Runner. Well done, a welcome change from your usual tone. Keep it up. :)

It seems though you're not the only one who needs to lighten up. Having just been appointed 'Minister for serious occasions'. I'm thinking there's a message there for me too.

As for the 'other rare events', I'm not sure what the Emperor is getting at there. But no doubt there's something in my posting history that's prompted that somewhat dubious honour!

I'm not so sure about Hasbeen as Speaker. I'm sure he'd bang the gavel as soon as I tried to speak. I doubt Fractelle would fare much better.

BTW, you forgot Romany - as Minister for Foreign Affairs.