Out of the mouths of babes.

A neighbors high teens son wants to know why we don't reclock the economy, & the country

He reckons that is what fixed his computer when some of his data became contaminated. He simply reclocked the thing to 6 months ago, & all was restored.

He reckons we should reclock the country to mid 2007, when we still had Howard, the budget was in surplus, & the economy going gangbusters, & all was be well.

Sure we might have to sack thousands of bureaucrats, & close many new Labor NGOs, & wipe 6 years of stuff ups from the history books.

God the place would be so much better if we not only wiped the policies of the Rudd/Gillard catastrophe, but all memory of their existence, & our stupidity in ever electing them.

Perhaps some of these kids aren't so dumb after all.

there is a lot of drift in the topic
but then i guess it is about why cut pensions/not offense spending on the de-fence

thing is govt own papers state//there will be onn ly dRones flying around in 6 years/automated DRONES..not pLANES..JUST THINK AGAIN WHY WE ARE CUTTING PENSIONS..TO BUY BUGGY WHIPS?..TO BUY PLANES OBSOLETE BEFORE DELIVERY DAY?

EXPENSIVE TOYS THAT CANT FLY
CANT DELIVER
THAT SIT FROM DAY ONE IN THE HANGER..hanger ornimentation
WHY?..WHO CARES..

govt isnt cost affective..we need no leaders..
we lead leadership SRERVICE NOT THIS ONGOING BULL shhh it.

** Treasurer Joe Hockey says Australians need to 'work as long as they can' **

UNLESS you are a blood sucking politician.

579, balance the books you say. Do you mean lime Howard did back when Keating left such a mess.

Of only we hadnt had that Rudd experiment, who knows where we might be today.

We will see if we have a pack of bumbling idiots or not running this country. Maybe it's all to politically sensitive to abide by the crap we have been fed.
This budget could end up like the red tape cutting exercise. All talk and no action.
Keating set the stage for Howard, remember his opinion of Costello.
The states have been ordered to sell everything they have but no money is to go for debt reduction. That won't go down to well in QLD, they are running at 85 billion behind go.
Hockey is pulling all sorts of faces but Abbott is cautious.
Ten billion per month going on the national debt an all-time record, can anyone see it.

579, dear, sweet boy,

Previous government commitments, like the BER, the NBN, the NDIS, have expenditure flows into the distant future, which any incoming government has to either honour or cut back or ditch, which may not be easy, or even possible. Meanwhile, other expenditure commitments keep growing, like those for servicing the old-age pension.

Meanwhile, fewer and fewer people are working in physical jobs - well, of course, except many women. On average, we all live longer by about one year in every four years that go by. So average life expectancy can be expected to increase by five years in the next twenty.

And more and more people are working in relatively comfortable conditions, even with air-conditioning (who would have thought ?). People at sixty and seventy are, on average, much healthier now than their parents were at the same age, and live five or six years longer. And twelve to fifteen years longer than their grandparents.

So they reach later years in better health, and with much better prospects of cure and treatment, and so can expect to live far longer in retirement than their parents did (or are), and certainly much longer than their grandparents. Yes, yes, poor sweet boy, many grandparents that you hear of live into their nineties. And so, certainly, will you, if you are an average person. And there will be many, many more of you too.

So how does any government- neoliberal, wishy-washy Labor, or a deep Green/Red proper one - fund all of that necessary expenditure ? Compulsory euthanasia of the post-60s may seem attractive to many young people for whom 60 is some time off towards eternity. But voters won't go for it. Solent Green, likewise.

So why not peg the retirement age to expected life-spans, as someone suggested ? Yes, gradually extend the number of years on publicly-funded retirement, but also why not, in step - slightly more gradually - increase the retirement age ?

Good luck in your adult life :)

Joe