merv09,
Could you please explain how a flat tax can make the wealthy wealthier & send the workers up the creek ? Interesting prognosis but how so ?

not seeing hearing or knowing much about the pain.
Belly,
that is about as hypocritical as anyone can be. The mob you defend so vehemently has;
1, caused most of this pain.
2, perpetuates this pain,
3, is out to create yet more pain.

Merciless Menzies ? Aren't you & millions others benefitting from his policies, the biggest being the Snowy scheme ?
What's your mob then ? The pain makers ? The pain perpetuators ? Sounds more like a mob of sadists than community leaders.

merv09:>> I might add, that our workers are just as intelligent or more so then those lawyers who have Hijacked the positions of Prime Minister and treasurer<<

Merv09, you have seen a load of talent from both sides of the house in your 81 years, but that is over and as you say lawyers now abound in our parliaments. I cried to Belly a while back about the Labor Party of old compared to the lot we have now, and Belly pointed out that the rank and file still carry the same aspirations and values that have in the past driven their MP's to implement "every" major social policy that has made Australia the equitable society that it is today.

Foresight and a want to make the dream a reality for the average Aussie came from the rank and file, local members escalated to political control. While lawyers represent corporations, people represent people, and there are no people left at the top of the Labor Party.

What Labor was:
•Legislated for Commonwealth Bank and issued Australia’s first national banknotes.
•Expanded and increased the old age pension.
•Introduced payment to mothers on the birth of a child.
•Introduced the first national system of widows’ pensions.
•Began funding public hospitals for the first time.
•Introduced legislation to create a public health system, paving the way for the creation of Medibank.
•Began planning of the national capital.
•Formed the Royal Australian Navy.
• Founded Commonwealth Shipping Line
•Began planning o the transcontinental railway.
•Created a government airline ‘Trans Australian airlines’.
•Began building the Snowy Hydro Electricity Scheme.
• Reformed the tertiary education system
•Legislated for the construction of the Australian National University.
•Legislated for a national worker’s compensation act.
•Introduced Australia's national superannuation scheme

This track record of real unambiguous achievement is all that we have left of a time when Labor was the people’s party. The advent of the educated Chardonnay socialist and the Fabian ideologues that were grown in our universities in the 70’s and 80’s took Labor from the people.

Merv09, we seen the best now we’ve got the rest.

sonofgloin,
succinctly put.

In 2007 the liberal government spend was 23% of GDP, today the ALP spend is 26% of GDP where the GDP is about $1000bn. If spending was cut to match the previous government's fiscal discipline there would be an additional $30bn for flood relief, paying off the debt etc.

There are two ways to get a surplus, one is to increase taxes and the other is to cut spending. Already Labor has cut $3.8bn by axing a few of its more idiotic spending programs, it would take very little to save the last $1.8bn.

However, Labor simply prefers to take the easy way out.

And Merve09 while I am ranting, where is that rank and file that had the sense to know when they were being duded. I think they have disappeared on the whole except for scattered pockets throughout the country. Social engineering has done one thing and that is smoother the "average Aussie", is there an average Aussie anymore? The term “average Aussie” for this exercise has nothing to with race or tenure with this country. It had to do with a nationwide mindset from the poorest of the poor that collectively decided that in the country they were building you called a spade a spade and you rebelled against the type of monolithic social structure that England bestowed on her masses.

We have imported on the whole migrants that come from countries where you need to keep your head down as opposed to the Eureka spirit of “we are not going to wear this”. That is what social engineering has achieved, our cities are so culturally mixed that "acceptance" of everything is the golden rule; we can't state the obvious without being a pariah to multiculturalism and of course being Politically Incorrect.

The vast majority of migrants from the seventies on vote Labor because the Libs are seen as "White Australia Klansmen", anyway the unskilled migrant was always going to go with the perceived party of the people rather than the perceived party of the establishment. So we have voter blocks that run with a party for a perceived personal security issue rather than a vote judged on the party performance and I believe that the Labor travesty of a government in NSW was kept in power more than partially due to the loading of migrants into Sydney.

That is why Gillard is still there, the migrant vote.