Of course Tony is going to cut and slash, and I say start slashing. The labor party has cause all this and the voters should blame them when the cuts come. It's that or go under. It wouldn't matter if mickey mouse was PM, the cuts HAVE to be made what afrontary and gall of wong, she's just plain wong on all counts. It will take 220 years to pay off a debt those fools have run up on a credit card and they expect maybe Tony's going to carry on running the country with that millstone ?. In any decent democracy, those people would be arrested for treason for deliberatly destroying the future of Ozz. It's going to get worse before it gets better but the blame is squarly on labor and crying over cuts isn't going to fix it. Tony would do well to start by cutting half the public service - get rid of 'dept of climate change' and all the hangers on first.

Toddle off and educate yourself - there's a good pepper.

http://www.percapita.org.au/01_cms/details.asp?ID=618

...Toddle off and educate yourself - there's a good pepper.

Your kidding Piorot, surely you don't believe this incompetent mob have done a good job.

Bravo to you pepper, at least some people can see behind the labor spin.

Can you imagine where any of these fools would be if they were on a board, or even a company director/CEO.

Insulation, on trial for man slaughter.

Fuel watch, grocery watch, sacked for incompetence and wasting funds.

Live export, in hiding from angry farmers after being sacked for incompetence.

Copenhagen debacle, contract canceled and under investigation for inappropriate waste and over the top staff allowances.

Budget forecasting, sacked for incompetence and under investigation for suspected fraud and theft.

School halls, sacked for misappropriation of company funds and for being asleep at the wheel.

Gonski, a please explain as to how this can be afforded, especially given the losses we have suffered over the past five odd years.

NDIS, same as above.

There's more of cause, including the illegals debacle whereby a working system was dismantled.

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Cut the public service in half. Get rid of the quangos [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11405840]
Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organization
Bring all the military home
Stop foreign aid altogether until we can actually afford it
Rework the Human Rights and Refugee Conventions to suit our needs
Kill off the NBN
Throw up the Tariff barriers to protect Australian industry
That will save enough money to put us so far in the black we could actually afford more hospitals and schools and police and even pay higher wages to our teachers and nurses and firemen and police.

Poirot, looked at the way the govt wants us to look at the debt, the
debt position is not unreasonable.
However their position presumes normal growth.
We, and the rest of the world, no longer have normal growth.
If our growth gets down to zero we will be unable to repay the capital and probably the interest.

Other countries have been making payments by printing money or just
robbing Peter to pay Paul, or indeed charity.

The upshot is we will have to indeed cut cut cut !

You just do not have the money !

Chris, while I agree with most of what you say, it does sound like a great Pauline Hanson of an idea, but the reality is, we are a very small fish, with huge lifestyle appetites in a very big sea, and we need the other fishes more than they need us.

You see we enjoy sometimes unrealistic lifestyles, afforded only by our trading partners choices to buy from us.

In other words, we are too small to be self sufficient and maintain our lifestyles.

What I think we need is a far more efficient tax system, one that taxes money, not money earners, because whereas income can only be taxed once, transactions are taxed each and ever time.

It has been suggested many times over that a transaction tax of just 2% is sufficient to do away with every other tax we pay.

As for foreign aid, I say cut it to any country that is either in surplus, or ignores our needs. Indonesia ticks both boxes.