Well gentleman, you have had your chance to make a few telling points , but your back to playing the man and his foibles.
Barnaby , with his succinct and competent explanation of just how any decent Treasurer would review foreign investment made minced meat of the " he's not competent" trashing he's been getting .
Jones didn't get it , but I am sure many in the ABC audience across Australia could see who had some competency to talk big picture ecomia matters, and it wasn't Tanner http://abctv.blogspot.com
Tanners tired old talk of reasonableness in all matters demonstrated the woosy leadership style of those who can't stand up and say what they think in their appointed households.
Those who follow careless free trade talk to its natural end will find its " let everyone do what they like" -
sound's good to me ? Whats this ?--Labors version of how to grease the wheels of entrepreneurship, the trickle down theory of investment ? ) - The Labor party are running a family where the children are in charge and the noisy and the novel get what they want.
Barnaby wasn't alone on QandA last night. The pretty ones were trying to chime in- Labor looks like they can't do anything with the household budget but blow it on poorly targeted tokens, trinkets and old touchstones.
Well done Barnaby

The problem Foxy and Belly has nothing to do with our relative
position re other countries, but just the lack of growth.
Growth is getting very hard to produce.
Because energy has become so expensive, remember it has increased by
about five times in less than a decade, a large part of what would
have been GDP has ended up paying for the energy to produce that GDP.

The stimulus expenditure has not been in production but in overheads.
Therefore that expenditure, except for income tax & gst will not
produce enough return to cover capital and interest.

Even I as a non economist can see that.
I am not sure that Barnaby understands that either as I have never
heard him say anything about energy depletion. Wait a minute, I have
just remembered he did say something about peak oil some years back.
I guess he has been pulled into line by the politicians of both
parties and told it is a non subject !

No I am not paranoid, it is a world wide political plot !

I am greatly amused by the last two posts.
And extremely happy our Barny remains in the house.
Polls clearly still show an ALP victory.
Good onya Barny trouble!

>>Barnaby , with his succinct and competent explanation of just how any decent Treasurer would review foreign investment made minced meat of the " he's not competent" trashing he's been getting.<<

Do you believe he actually cut through, though? Which goes to my earlier point that he's not the best guy for the job. The problem with Barnaby is that he's typecast himself. The only thing that cuts through are his one-liners. As soon as he gets serious, it suddenly isn't noticed.

This will always be a problem for a politician regardless of whether he knows what he's doing. If the Coalition wants a hint, they should look to more solid individuals to put in charge of their economic team. If I was in their shoes, Turnbull would be leader and a sober individual like Andrew Robb would be Treasurer. As long as Joyce is in his current positione, the Coalition will gain no traction in the important economic arguments.