Hi Foxy, yes it shows how deceitful this government is. Not only in the fiscal area like the budget, where lies and hypocrisy are the order of the day. Since their election we have been subjected to all kinds of lies and deception from Abbott and his cohorts. Look at the unchristian Morrison, and his lies about asylum seekers, The bigot, Brandis and his attempts to trample human rights! This government is a total disgrace.

Abbott and company won't last long. Trouble is the replacement government will only be marginally better. There's no "real" choice in Australian politics these days.

Hey Jay, that’s almost a sensible post!

Its the first one I've ever seen from you. So it begs the question: if you can write stuff like that, then why do you carry on like and absolute porkchop expressing seething hatred and gross illogicality elsewhere on OLO?

Ok, let’s see if you are actually capable of a bit of sensible debate, which addresses the subject WITHOUT personal attacks:

<< Bring on the election. >>

Why?? Who’s there to vote for who’d be any better?

One of the very first things Hockey did after the election was to restore the Superannuation advantages for the very rich while removing them from the poor.

It's still the discredited trickle-down theory that suggests the poor live off the crumbs that fall from the tables of the rich and the best way to feed the poor is to give the rich larger meals.

Before we cry too many crocodile tears for the rich it's a historic and economic fact that economic growth (including job creation) comes from the consumption by the middle class and not from the very wealthy.

It was a well-paid workforce and it's rate of consumption that drove our post WW2 growth and continues to do so.

A corporate CEO may earn 3000 times as much as his average worker but he doesn't consume 3000 times as much but only accumulates more and more wealth, while outsourcing more and more jobs and attacking the conditions of his workers (and thereby cutting the purchasing power of his own customers).

As for the Mining Tax, why so much hysteria over something that allegedly raises so little? Could it be because the Mining Corporations have made all their deductions up front and will later be liable for more tax?

It would be better to just drop the $8.5 billion in subsidies we pay them to take our rocks away plus the road and rail infrastructure we provide on their behalf.

Like the stuff they dig up and ship out, the money goes overseas as well and eventually all we will have is a big empty hole in the ground.

That's right Wobbles. It's the consumption of products and services that drives our country's economic welfare, and the poor and middle class are the major consumers by FAR. The rich couldn't possibly be rich if it was not for their dependence on the poor and middle class.

This is a basic fact of life, that all the right wing spin in the world can't hide.

Yes Poirot, like a paid job, or a subsidized life. Who do you think pays these subsidies, certainly not the governments, as they simply redistribute the funds paid to them by the rich.

Jay123, do the figures take in to consideration the subsidies provided to the poor, by the rich, because if they don't, then they are not the true figures, are they!

Of you wish to compare apples with apples, you have to lay everything on the table.

While I'm not a high income earner at present, I still pay $60 to see my GP, while the poor pay zero. So just five or six visits to the doctor, by a poor family would balance the books, and that's not taking in to consideration the discounted, or even free meds.

As I say, you have to put it all on the table if you wish to make a fair comparison, not just the juicy bits.

Savings need to be made you say, yes well, why do you recon that is! The last time I saw a change of government we had some $20billion in the bank and ZERO DEBT.

So yes, thanks to labors incompetence, savings do have to be made and of cause, the rich, after having provided most of the wasted funds in the first place, are now left carrying the can. As usual!

Of cause we could go the other way and give the poor their $800 bucks or so a year back, then remove all subsidies.

At least then it's every man for himself with a perfect user pays system.

You conveniently forget that the ONLY WAY so many poor families have so many kids, is because the rich pay for them.

It would be nice if the poor respected that.

So I say to you all, how do you think the poor would be if the rich simply stopped being rich, sat on their hands and lived of their trust funds. No businesses, no job creation, nothing.