butcher,

".....and only a DD election can get rid of them.

So, for the betterment of the nation, and our future with China, I say, bring it on."

Yep...bring it on!

(You are joking, of course - even though I'd love them to call a DD - the polls are about 56% ALP - t0- 44% LNP - and have been steady around that mark for yonks)

Do you really think Abbott and his puppet masters are "that" stupid? We haven't even reached the stage yet - usually about a year out from election - where they start to pork-barrel...they're still at the pain inflicting stage.

Oh, and rehctub,

"BUT!, almost as if providing a get out of jail free card to the libs, your faithful leader, Bill Shortonideas, has cooked his proverbial goose by promising to bring back the worlds largest, ineffective, carbon tax."

You might enjoy this article...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/20/crisis-what-crisis-asks-coalition-spinning-as-the-budget-wheels-come-off?CMP=twt_gu

"That screeching sound is the government’s budget rhetoric doing a u-turn.

Having spent the last three months insisting the budget emergency meant there would be dire consequences if the budget did not pass, it appears the government is now facing the reality that key budget policies may indeed not pass – despite its best negotiating efforts over the winter break.

Lest anyone then try to assert that by the government’s own arguments we were facing some kind of emergency or crisis, the government has dramatically shifted its rhetoric, insisting there is in fact no crisis or emergency at all."

Lol!....perhaps you can ring up and offer to write their next script?

Yes Poirot, I wonder if the libs ever dream about gaining office with no debt, and money in the bank, because as long as I have had an interest in politics, about thirty odd years, labor are the only ones to have had that luxury.

It's hard to justify how you can throw mud when your lot have created the mess the libs have ONCE AGAIN inherited.

As for the polls, I'm guessing you would have been sucked in by them when K Rudd regained the reins.

rehctub,

There's always an argument for structural reform.

However, hacking the gizzards out of Australian relative social equity probably isn't what's called for.

You appear to think that a AAA credit rating from three agencies and an economy that is the envy of Western industrial nations in the wake of the GFC is somehow "terrible".

Would you have preferred we'd gone into a post GFC recession like most of Europe did?

They practiced post GFC austerity - and slid straight into the recession downpipe.

You're all in favour of Capitalism...well guess what?...if that's the system, it depends on "growth".

Poirot, there's obviously a huge variance in how a so called AAA rating is determined. I say this because when labor gained office we had some $20 billion in the bank and, we had zero debt. How can this be explained and, more importunely, just how bader shape do we have to be in to loose that AAA rating?

Now as for labors, or should say, Kevin Rudds ideas for stimulating the economy go, few would argue they were worthwhile ideas, it's just like the overwhelming majority of projects labor administered, they failed. They did so through sheer incompetence.

Then, when Rudd got knifed, Julia took over from where he left off, turning everything she touched in to mud. From live cattle exports to cash for clunkers and everything in between.

Of cause, who will ever forget the unfixable asylum debacle, the one labor couldn't fix, that took only months for the libs to fix.

History can be a bitch.

rehctub,

"History can be a bitch."

Lol!..yes it can.

Shame this mob of half-baked pollies calling themselves the LNP have made such a dog's dinner of their long-cherished shot in govt.

Have you ever witnessed such a debacle - in such a short time!

(It'll be interesting to see what history makes of their mega-botch)