579, this says it in less words than I can use.

Keynesians believe government stimulus spending will boost employment
and consumer spending, thus flipping the economy back to its “normal”
expansionary setting. But bailouts and stimulus packages of the past
few years have produced only anemic results, and central banks and
governments can’t afford much more of the same.

Free-marketers nurture faith that if government spending shrinks,
that will liberate private enterprise to grow profits and jobs.
Yet countries that implement austerity programs show less economic
growth than those whose governments borrow and spend—until the
spending spree ends in bond market mayhem.

Neither side wants to acknowledge that its prescription no longer
works because that would imply the other side is correct. But maybe
both are wrong and growth is simply finished. There are, after all,
limits to both resources and debt.
unquote

This is what our politicians are struggling with, it is just that
they do not realise it yet.

Gillard is definitely a liar. It's simple logic:

Lawyers are liars.
Gillard is a lawyer.
Therefore Gillard is a liar.

Here is definitive proof Juliar lied:

As with most words there are more than one interpretation. If one uses more than a pocket dictionary, this definition also applies:

"A fifth alternative definition of lying avoids the objection that an intention to deceive an addressee is necessary for lying by dispensing with any intention to deceive addressee condition (Carson 2006). According to this definition, lying is not necessarily a form of intentional deception. In place of an intention to deceive an addressee, it substitutes two further necessary conditions, namely, that the context is one which warrants the truth of the untruthful statement to the addressee, and that the person who makes the untruthful statement does not take herself to be not warranting the truth of the untruthful statement to the addressee. It also adds a third necessary condition that the untruthful statement be false (falsity condition), and amends the untruthfulness condition slightly to allow that the statement can simply be not believed to be true:"

Conditions 1 and 2: Juliar emphatically and unconditionally made the statement "there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead" This meets the condition of warranting the truth of the untruthful statement to the addressee, and the second condition that the person who makes the untruthful statement does not take herself to be not warranting the truth of the untruthful statement to the addressee.
Condition 3, i.e that the statement was false is self evident.

Q.E.D Julia Gillard lied.

SM,

I recall you and I having a discussion on this issue way back when - and you mitigated John Howard's back flip on the Never, ever, GST as being perfectly fine because he took it to an election.

So my point is that politicians change their minds depending on exigencies - John Howard said the GST would "never" become part of Liberal Party policy....I mean "never, ever" are fairly strong words.

It "did" become Liberal Party policy - so according to your definition, they must be liars as well.

(btw, your previous post was the biggest load of opaque and impenetrable rhetoric I've ever had the displeasure of reading on OLO - congratulations!)

Is that the best you can do?

Good-O

Poirot,

A proof requires more rigorous treatment than "yes he did"

I went through a series of legal definitions of lying and their associated conditions, and showed conclusively that what Juliar said and did, definitively fulfilled the conditions of one of the recognised definitions of lying.

Howard in saying "never ever" was very silly, as ruling anything out forever, meant that one would be technically lying even a decade later.

In both cases we have a breach of trust, with Howard he realised his mistake and had to take a very unpopular policy to an election that the opposition hammered him with, but the voters had the opportunity to have their say.

In 2010, support for a tax on carbon had collapsed, and to prevent losing the election Juliar made a similar promise. A few weeks later she abandoned it, and the voters who were against a carbon tax were outraged. Trying to compare this to Howard's GST only makes it worse.

Good morning Poirot.
Loverly day for fishing.
Provided you are not the fish.
Take care.