Brian Burke and Campbell Newman both did something good last week. In setting aside areas in the sea for national parks Brian Burke has done much to preserve sustainability of sea life which provides part of our food input. He has also helped preserve biodiversity. In doing so he interferred with Newman's plan to increase shipping from ports behind the reef which showed disregard for the environment. Campbell Newman cancelled the Winter Olympics facility proposed for Brisbane by the past Labor government. In so doing he interferred with wasteful and unnecessary spending by the past Labor governmment.

Sometimes things work out well. In the above two examples the two parties acted as a healthy check on each other.

Pollyanna

Dear Belly,

Ian McAuley, a lecturer in public sector finance at the
University of Canberra and a fellow at the Centre for Policy
Development tells us:

"Our taxes are among the lowest of all developed countries.
Yet from those taxes we're trying to juggle the tasks of
funding a welfare system and providing important public
goods. In this allocative process social welfare gets the
first (and growing) chunk of revenue, and the shrinking
residual is allocated for public goods - those services and
assets which the market cannot supply or which the market
can supply only at very high costs."

McAuley states that, "These public goods are important for our
economic prosperity. A right leaning government with a sense of
economic responsibility would have a policy of sustaining
low taxes, but cutting into welfare, preserving public
revenue for public goods. A left leaning government would allow
taxes to rise to sustain welfare, without compromising on public goods."

Unfortunately, the current government, as McAuley says, "is not
raising the issue of our long-term fiscal viability, having
allowed the Opposition to steer its attention to the single
issue of the short-term budget surplus or deficit."

McAuley says that the Opposition for its part is even worse.
"It's policies are neither Right nor Left - but simply
idiotic."

"Mr Abbott has made it clear that he would cut taxes,
the carbon tax, mining tax, and that he would re-instate
middle-class welfare. That can only mean deep cuts in public
goods - including education, health, infrastructure, and
environmental protection - which are necessary to sustain
our living standards and to build our economic strength
for the days when the commodity boom ends."

As McAuley and other economic experts claim - "It's a
complete reversal of earlier Liberal Party policy, which,
in accordance with its emphasis on self-reliance, was
tight on welfare but generous on building the nation's
physical and human capital."

It appears as McAuley says -
"Mr Abbott and his advisers don't understand
that a welfare system needs a productive base, and that
public assets are an essential part of that productive base."

The scenario that economic experts paint if
Mr Abbott is elected as PM is rather grim.
Mr Abbott will have a complex economy to oversee.

He'll face issues of productivity, labour force
adaptability, an over-regulated business sector,
the issue of middle-class welfare, taxation distribution
between states, core roles of government, and so on.
Nothing new there. Except for the fact - as experts point out,
that the world is moving so fast and is so interlinked that
Mr Abbott is going to need the best brains around him if
Australia is to measure up.

At the moment, we're told that Mr Abbott doesn't have the
team or structures in place. He's got sound bites, slogans,
and "Look at me" TV pictures on track but not any
underlying sense of economic competence.

His front bench economic team is threadbare at best.
Frequently offering confusing, contradictory, and nonsensical
sounding messages. They lack a sense of purpose.

When it comes to winning in politics it's real policy
debate over economic issues that matter not sound bites,
slogans and "look at me" TV pictures or simply telling us
what the government is doing wrong but offering us nothing
in its place.

Amen to that, Lexi :)

Lexi, bonmot, any one who is afraid of Conservatives posing as the Liberal party.
All those concerned about my lashing the ALP.
Know this, rather stand and fight! right now.
Remind the power brokers, not faceless to me, but not elected to Parliament for the most part.
THEY BETRAYED ME! my party, in knifing RUDD.
In putting Gillard in a roll she can only fail in.
Know I weep, for my party, before our defeat!
Those who know Jono, will know he is as solid as the harbor bridge.
He gets about selling our raffle tickets and SEEING WE BUY them.
One prize, always, is a gallon of whiskey.
Know under Gillard, loss is our fate, know I will fight to avoid that, no matter what.
If victory was to be won by a drawn raffle, if Gillard bought every ticket.
As unlikely as it could happen, Jono would drink the whiskey nock the tickets off and run away before Gillard won!
Now is the time to impact on our fate ,not after it has happened.
If you share my fear about Abbott's front bench, then do not blind your self to truth.
We need a leader!

Ah so we have come to a stuttering halt.
Never the less I continue.
All my life I have thought of the three wise moneys as fools.
One refused to hear the truth.
One refused to see it.
The third refused to talk about it.
Had each not done so? IMPROVEMENT may have began!
Question time today, as it usually does,highlighted even a willingness to? LIE by conservatives.
We need desperately, to hear and see policy's from them.
If, and while Gillard rules they are, to become government.
What disaster they will be!
And what a fall for us, our country, my party, IF LABOR continues to look only at how bad Abbott is, not at how unliked Gillard is.
The money with its hands over its mouth? never going to be me!