Newman says he can't afford public servants, and Abbott is agreeing with WA, they need more of the GST than the eastern states.
All of the east states will not be very popular by the time of an election.
When the chips are down people vote labor.
All eastern states are crying broke, they can't handle economics.
Give more to the miners and see how fat they can get, that is the noalitions only solution.

good avoidance, Thinker. Do you "Think" you could answer my question about planting the seed.

Apologies Austin for not addressing that. I do believe an Abbott Gov't would be worse. And I don't believe boat people are the massive problem they are made out to be.

I heard an LNP spokesperson trying to align our defence capability with boat people today Austin. I think that is an absolute disgrace, considering it is our humanitarian capability we should be showing when it comes to asylum seekers.

Pretending that you plan to surround Australia's coastline with surface to air missiles (reading between the lines) to blow boatloads of fleeing refugee family's out of the water for votes, is not one of my favourite political pastimes, figuratively speaking.

Internationally such policy renders us pariahs in our region and beyond, as discovered by Julia (death stare) Bishop during her current visit to Indonesia where she is being told politely that her parties policies aren't acceptable. The inward thinking of the LNP and it's ideology has always been a thorn in our history.

Our Gov't, particularly the Gillard Gov't (to their shame) have been complicit by allowing the issue of boat people to bubble along on the local political landscape, allowing the LNP to set the agenda, inflame and talk up the situation, and then failing to be decisive in finding a solution that meets the conditions set out in our International Humanitarian Agreements.

Thereby putting the issue to bed and getting on with allowing/helping people to understand, that the number of people arriving seeking asylum here, is practically entirely dependent on the level of international conflict and its proximity to Australia. Supply and demand, push factors, as I have already said.

the hidden danger of allowing boat people in is that, with so many 'refugees' arriving with no ID papers, we don't know who is actaually coming here. How many terrorists are passing under the radar while do-gooders are tripping over each other to allow them in?
Also, why is it proportionately more male adults than everyone else who are on these boats? True refugees would have their women and children with them, not leave them behind to some perceived danger in the 'homeland'.
Also, true refugees wouldn't be agitating to have similar conditions, laws etc from their 'homelands' to be introduced to Australia.

Then you would have to hark back to the numbers Austin, and also realise that the numbers arriving by boat here are small compared to other nations offering and providing safe asylum.

In addition the numbers of illegal immigrants arriving by plane and overstaying their visa, massively outweigh those arriving by boat in this country. No one it seems is doing anything about that.

As to the issue of formal identification, it is fair to say that if you were fleeing a war zone in a country that provides little in the way of citizenship papers anyway, that you are not likely to be able to provide paper work.

Conversely if you knew that having papers will speed up your entry in advance of the journey you would do your level best to have some.

It is definitely a hard one (the matter of processing) and security is part of the mix, I agree Austin. As for terrorists making Australia a target, that would probably be most likely because, we run around the world fighting America's battles now, instead of focussing on our own defence. A little less of that might help.

As for both sides of politics today, the one thing they share is their place in a bi-partisan conga line to the Whitehouse.

T2,

If the numbers of asylum seekers is dependent on push factors, then there must have been a sudden 30 fold increase in conflicts world wide after 2008 that we didn't notice.

The voters remember that the coalition had the problem solved and that what we have now is a Labor creation.