I think you all miss the point....Really who cares?

Wobbles,

The texts quoted in the press were sent by Slipper.

Labor never submitted their policies to treasury for costing whilst in opposition, yet are demanding that the liberals do so. Then they pull this sort of stunt of costing policies they don't even have the details of, and announcing cherry picked details. Labor are complete hypocrites.

Will Labor meet the surplus when nearly $5bn of income they had included in their interim budget is already gone? You have to be kidding. If the independents stop labor from pulling revenue from the next tax year, they will be out a further $8bn.

No wonder Labor is so corrupt.

The texts quoted in the press were sent by Slipper?

Well not quite.

The implication of what the texts contained was made by Paul Sheehan of the SMH and many other journos jumped on the bandwagon.

In fact there are only 4 messages listed in the affidavit out of ‘…the hundreds (claims Sheehan) of dubious and distasteful text messages sent by Slipper to his Staffer James Ashby’ - which is untrue.

Have you bothered to read the transcript of the text messages for yourself or are you only relying on media spin?

Only one of these was sent while Ashby was working for Slipper and none of the exchanges appear to have been considered as offensive by Ashby at the time.

Legally they fall outside the dates specified in the complaint and will be shown not to be relevant. The purpose of raising this matter was for personal smear tactics, which succeeded because he has resigned his position.

What is yet to be discussed is, if Slipper was involved in an alleged improper incident with a staffer in 2003, someone from the Prime Minister’s office (John Howard’s) covered it up, only to bring it to Ashby’s attention in 2012 for political reasons. Brandis perhaps? Or Pyne? Or Abetz?

Now, which Party can claim to hold the high moral ground?

I'm no fan of Slipper but we've been here before -http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4658&page=0#122155

Only then, the media failed to report Slipper's indiscretions and for some reason, kept them very quiet until they could be used against Gillard.

Funny, that.

Abbott's role as leader was to force an election as soon as posable. This has failed miserably. Now he is stuck for innuendo.
Slipper guilty of nothing, Thomson charged with nothing. All part of a plan, to force an election. Treat the people as idiots, hopefully the truth will prevail before an election.
Abbott will have his own worry, concerning that girl at uni.
That will show he has an ingrown aversion to women.
His negligence of blocking the Malaysia solution, for his own gain, all part of a plan to force an election.
A vial streak of misery, and a dangerous person.

Ok 579, and anyone else who thinks labor deserve to be there.

How do you propose we stop the bleeding and start accumulating (real) funds and increase funding for the likes of health, as they should be, other than to tax the big end of town.

Now while I hate increased taxes, this mess labor has created has to be fixed, and unfortunately the big end is about the only option, uless we wish to slash funding further.

And remember, this government may well have pulled a rabbit out of it's hat to achieve surplus, but they can only take an IOU once.

So I ask you to forget sides for a minute and tell us how we can fix the problem we find ourselves in.

Now of cause if you don't think there's a problem, then carry on dreaming.

Stop the bleeding and increase funding.
If we increase funding the bleeding will continue. It's a matter of prioritizing where the funding is allocated.
So what bleeding would you like stopped or cut as to put more funding into health.
Abbott's plan is to cut public servants and create an unemployment pool.
This will fund his welfare for the well heeled.
Budgets are created to allocate funding, so that is the time to make noises about extra funding for health, and at the same time it is a good idea to make suggestions as to what is unnecessary.
Lets remember it is not just federal money that goes into health.
So what we need is some suggestions of where the bleeding is.