Neil Mitchell questioned the need for a flood tax and the value we would receive given Labors track record. He intimated that the same corporations who delivered us $200 per square buildings for $1200 were on the payroll again. This press release from Leighton Holdings:

"Mr David Stewart, Chief Executive Officer of Leighton Holdings Limited, today applauded the Prime Minister’s initiative to involve the business community in rebuilding Queensland communities.

“It is the right thing for corporate Australia to give back to the communities in which we work, and I look forward to the first meeting of the Business Taskforce next week,” Mr Stewart said."

This gobbledygook translated succinctly reads "gold rush is on again boys, but this time its big ticket items such as roads and bridges"

In defense of the tax the masterful Julia told Mitchell that an invalid pensioner had called her office wanting the tax to be taken from their pension, what absolute tripe and the hide to trot it out as a defense speaks volumes.

This is another gem from Julia verbatim:

"I thought the best place to make budget cut backs to support this package was in a range of environmental projects, we are going to get on with the job of pricing Carbon"

She tells us we are paying this tax, that we are losing gazetted projects, and she is mad keen to get a Carbon tax into us. She does not give a tinkers cuss for anything except the ideology of the party. The strange thing is that it is not Julia who is pathetic; it is half of the Australian population.

What a lot of crappy opinion. You must have trouble sleeping with tripe like that on your mind.
1.40 a week, it's all to much for you.
There's 2 cyclones in the area now. Get hit again and people will be rethinking their donating ,with rubbish like that floating around.
Politically biased for any reason and all reason.

I had a grumble about the levy, then I got over it. In my fortnightly budget, I give myself $20.00 in discretionary spending. The rest goes towards living expenses and saving to put a deposit on a house, something that appears to be perpetually out of reach for me. Well, that's now $17.20 a fortnight. Easy fix: I won't be buying myself a can of Coke at work as my 'Friday treat' anymore. It's as simple as that.

My main gripe with the levy, though, is that it seems shortsighted. I don't believe there should be exemptions, and I don't believe it should be for one year only. As a nation, we live with the constant threat of natural disasters. I would not object to a levy or tax that existed in perpetuity and was used solely for rebuilding after disasters.

By imposing a one-off levy this time round, our government is effectively telling us that the QLD/VIC/TAS flooding is a more important disaster than any that has come before or will come after. By exempting those who have been affected, our government is telling us that these people's hardship is greater than the suffering of people in any bushfires, any tropical cyclone, any catastrophic storm or any other terrible event.

I would have hoped for more guts in our leaders here, and the establishment of a levy (unpopular though it would be) that would mean the government actually has money in the piggybank when the next disaster strikes. Popularity should be no concern - there's plenty of time to regroup before the next election.

What a lot of crappy opinion. You must have trouble sleeping with tripe like that on your mind.
a597,
May I suggest you take a look behind your academic mirror ? you'll find that there's a whole world behind it, a world that requires common not academic sense to function.

I heard some of that interview, replayed I think, on the ABC. No it couldn't be, it must have been on a real radio station.

It certainly dispelled the rumor that Julia is actually a zombie, with her blood heated to one degree kelvin, above absolute zero. This rumor of course has been developed due to her speaking at 2 words a minute, when ever in public.

We now know that, like Ruddy before her she is not "natural" but a product of some strange Labor training program. A program designed to hide what these people really are, in preference for something the hierarchy believe is more acceptable to the Oz voter.

Unlike Rudd, who is obviously a better trained actor, little Julia let her training slip in this interview, probably the first time she has not been given full support of her interviewer, & actually asked a question she had not rehearsed. Rudd managed to hold his character for almost 2 years.

Note to Julia, stick to the ABC love, they are all on your side, so no hard questions.

So now we know she can talk, what we need is a test to see if she can think. As the saying goes, "I'd like to see that".

Well I agree crap.
And some of those proposing it is not need to look out the back yard and ensure the dog is chained up, the average family IQ could go down fast if it leaves.
Of interest,to those who want the truth, major construction/reconstruction can only be done by very big firms Theiss Leighton's, John Holland you name it are owned by over seas firms,for the most part two firms.
Real waste would be employing back yarders to do work they cannot and at a price much higher.