Sorry 579, you really do not know what is going on.
No blame on you for that as you have a majority in company.
As far as I am aware there is only one politician in Canberra that
understands what is happening, that is Barnaby Joyce.
Because he is only one in cabinet he cannot get them pointed in the
right direction. Martin Ferguson also understood which way was up but
he is now persona non grata in the Labour Party.

The carbon tax would have collapsed under its own weight sooner or later.
That tax was no more than a distraction and a nuisance. It would have
stood in the way of what has to be done.

A sustainable zero growth economy will be very hard to implement and I
am not able to make detailed suggestions.
I know that a number of infrastructure projects should be done now
while we have the money, but they are really poking around the edges
of the problem.

It would require enlightened economists and engineers to move in that direction.
The only suggestion we hear are more wind and solar farms.
Unfortunately they cannot do the job.

Like a comedian timing the punchline to a joke, Joe Hockey saved his best line about wages until the end.
"The government's income has fallen below expectations," he told a bleak December national accounts press conference. "We have falling commodity prices and we have weaker wage growth."
Wage growth is slow.
Yet low wage growth is what Hockey's colleagues have been pushing for all year.

Wages are growing at their lowest pace in 16 years, and they're growing far more slowly than they were during the global financial crisis. At just 2.6 per cent a year, the pace is way down on the 4 per cent-plus enjoyed during the crisis and the mining boom that preceded it, and is neck and neck with the consumer price index. That's right, real wages are stagnant. They are barely increasing and the consumer price index is barely increasing. For the first time since the late 1990s, the buying power of the Australian pay packet is holding steady.

For the budget it means less income than expected from taxing wages ($2.3 billion less this year, the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook said) and bigger-than-expected government payouts

We were having hard times when labor was in office, but nothing like it is now. Instead of having one problem now we have problems on multiple fronts, at the same time.
This is the result of Abbott’s outrageous budget measures. It not only has hit the workers it has hit business, to the extent of confidence has flown out the window.
When a nation loses confidence in its government, turmoil will prevail, and no amount of changes will rectify the problem, only compound it. All of this in twelve months.
We are hemorrhaging 3.3 billion per month, with no end date.
This is not what we were promised, and not what we voted on.

No 579, you misinterpret what is happening.
The low growth in wages and the stagnant real wages and the price
index not changing is exactly what will be needed.
It is happening despite governments trying to stir it up.

This is what zero growth is about. This is the new economy to which we
will have to adapt. At present it is being imposed on the government
whether they like it or not.
What the politicians do not understand is that they cannot change it.
What they need to do is to adapt to it.

Our politicians, like those in Europe have not fully grasped what has
happened. As soon as the tight oil in the US finishes they will
realise they are in a new boat with the rest of us.

The endless pleadings of self-interest, there is a second main factor that spawns new economic fallacies every day. This is the persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups. It is the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.
Abbott just can’t help himself, how many times has someone had to try and smooth the torrents of his misogynistic speech for him.

Bob Baldwin, a man who once compared the impact of Australia’s man-made greenhouse gas emissions to that of a single strand of human hair on a 1km bridge, has been appointed parliamentary secretary to the minister of the environment.

baldwin The announcement was made as part of Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s ministerial reshuffle. Baldwin will assist Greg Hunt, after previously being assistant to the Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane. It comes just a few weeks after Abbott sent Trade Minister Andrew Robb, another climate skeptic, to chaperone foreign minister Julie Bishop at the Lima climate talks.

In a speech in China in 2010, at the APEC SME summit, Baldwin said that the climate had been changing for millions of years – a favourite meme of the climate denier community – and even praised Rupert Murdoch as “the starting point for green innovation”. This is what he told the Chinese:

The monk is out to wreak havock on au.