What is required for electoral success, and money can't buy, not even Big Clive's money, is party supporters. To win Senate seats, and that's what minor parties like PUP are chasing, is the absolute necessity that the party stands a candidate in as many lower house seats as possible, preferably every seat. Why, it helps build a party profile locally and gives visability to voters, then on polling day and before, fully man pre- polls and all polling places on election day. Minor parties always loose a lot of votes by not being able to stand candidates, and in turn not manning polling stations.
Much of the success of The Greens in the Senate is down to running a candidate in every house of reps seat and in turn manning the polling stations to maximise the Senate vote in the state. PUP was able to achieve the above last election, but will have great difficulty next time around.

Aidan,

I have a degree in economics, so please spare me the 101 lecture especially when you have only the superficial labor amended version.

No one, even in the coalition denies that there needed to be some stimulus to keep the economy ticking, and the way to do this (as suggested by Andrew Robb) was to support businesses to expand to employ people and hopefully to provide lasting infrastructure that would continue reducing costs and generating employment in the long term.

Labor did exactly the opposite and the hamfisted incompetence of the programs they put in place was breathtaking. The $900 cash splash, the school halls, and the pink batts debacle are all prime examples of programs that spent vast amounts, mostly after the crisis, and left little or nothing in the form of income generating infrastructure.

Next labor went on an orgy of entrenched welfare handouts based on taxes that generated less than the handouts or close to nothing. So Labor's legacy is a huge debt, an interest bill of $14 p.a. and ruinous entrenched spending on welfare that left whingers scream merry hell about when the coalition tries to wind it back.

I too have a degree in Home Economic, majoring in scone making. LOL Come on Shadow, Labor had to act quickly to head off a rapidly developing financial crisis, triggered by the actions of Liberal Party mates in the US and Europe. What would have the conservatives done in such circumstance, what they have always done when faced with an economic crises, battened down the hatches and tried to ride out the storm, letting the worker carry the can, whilst trying to bail out big business. Ideas of spending on infrastructure would not be part of the equation from the likes of Abbott and Hockey. If it was, it would have taken far too long to implement and, unemployment would gone through the roof.

p/s Did you not once post you had a Degree in Engineering, how many degrees do you have? They will be calling you Professor Thermometer with all those degrees, Some of the 'Usual Suspects' on here are highly suspect of ACADEMICS! Equate them to being Lefties and ABC supporters! Are you "One of Them"!

Lol!, Mr "I have a degree in economics"...

This is what Stiglitz says:

"You were lucky to have, probably, the best designed stimulus package of any of the countries, advanced industrial countries, both in size and in design, timing and how it was spent - and I think it served Australia well," he said."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-08-06/stimulus-served-australia-well-despite-waste/935002

"A report today found there are some valid concerns about the poor value for money on the school spending part of the package.

However, Nobel Prize laureate and Professor at New York's Columbia University Joseph Stiglitz says there will always be some waste with such programs.

He says that is preferable to the waste of human and capital resources that would have resulted if there was no stimulus."

And..

"One of the reasons why the debate about ... Australia's stimulus ... is so important is not because we're historians and we're trying to grade but because we're trying to make a judgment about going forward who is likely to do a better job," Professor Stiglitz told AAP in Sydney today.
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"What are the economic theories, advisers, they are likely to draw upon? Labor's done a good job."

Professor Stiglitz said economic advisers who had been praised by "the other side" of politics were the ones who had designed America's "economic mess".

"To praise the people who were the architects of the global financial crisis suggests that your economic ideas might lead this country into difficulty," he added."

http://www.smh.com.au/business/labor-saved-australia-nobel-laureate-stiglitz-20100806-11lkq.html#ixzz3J4y0rUP2

Paul,

I have 3 degrees incl BComm (economics and QA) an MBA and a BSc Elec eng.

I have enough to call BS when I see neophytes trying to lecture me on a socialist sanitized version of economics.

Poirot,

Stiglitz above being an economist is an avowed socialist and has yet to be heard uttering a negative word about leftist governments, which is why he is wheeled out every time a left whinge government needs to justify its incompetence.