AU jobless rate at 6.3 and no doubt will g higher as christmas sales finish. The figures are starting to look grim compared to much of the world.
We desperately need govt leadership, to pull out of this bog. Can we find that leadership or will there be more of the same.

Not got the msg 579 ?
There will not be more business as usual.

The United States is back, and ready to drive global growth in 2015.
After long struggling to claw its way out of the Great Recession, the world's biggest economy is on an extended win streak that is edging it closer to full health. But the new year doesn't look quite so bright in other major countries.
China is slowing as it transitions from investment to consumption. Japan has slid into a recession. Russia appears headed for one. Europe is barely growing
Six years after its financial system nearly sank and nearly that long since the recession ended, the United States is expected to grow in 2015 at its fastest pace in a decade. Its expansion from July through September—a 5 percent annual rate—was the swiftest for any quarter since 2003.
That pace will likely ease a bit. Still, the economy is expected to expand 3.1 percent next year, according to a survey by the National Association for Business Economics. It would be the first year of 3 percent growth since 2005.
The acceleration of U.S. growth is a key reason the global economy is also expected to grow faster, at about 3 percent, up from 2.5 percent in 2014, according to economists at JPMorgan Chase and IHS Global Insight.
So much for Abbott backing China to run a world bank.

Yes 579, you definately have not heard the message.
It was expected that the US GDP surge would end around 2017/2020 with
the decline of tight oil production.
The fall in oil prices has changed that scene.
It will now end by the end of 2015, ie this year if the low prices
continue and the tight oil companies wind up their drilling.
Note the number of lease approvals fell 40% in October and by 60% in November.

The US has generated their growth thanks to tight oil but at current prices it must end.
That will push the price up again and the US economy will wind back again.
Try your local library for a copy of Kenneth Deffreys book "Beyond Oil".
He describes exactly what is happening now with the volatile oil prices.
We will get a small number of these cycles and it will then end as will growth, permanently.

Bazz with all of this 'factual' information getting around, it gives plenty of notice for deviation from what is supposed to be.
The world is full of people with crystal balls that allow them to predict the future.
With Abbotts bombastic approach to unemployment, is exactly the wrong direction to be in. We should have been riding that same wave instead.
Twelve months does not last long Bazz, that is an astonishing prediction , and not one i would follow.
Cheap oil can end as quick as it started, but i think it is serving a purpose at the moment.
Russia, middle east, will be on their knees, and maybe think it's time to behave themselves.

Well yes 579 it is complex but the part of it to which I was referring
is really quite simple.
Tight oil drilling will come to a grinding halt as the price of oil
is now about US$30 below the break even level. Some dispute there,
a few have a break even about US$65.
At present many drilling contracts have already started and the money
spent so those wells will produce even at a loss.
The general annual decline rate of 40 to 60% will apply this year and
will not be replaced by new drilling.
That is why the opinion, not mine, is that the price will rise about
the end of this year.
Of course anything could happen ISIS could attack Israel and that would
change everything.

I agree the government AND the opposition are tackling unemployment
in exactly the wrong way, when unemployment is a result of the problem
not the problem itself.
There is a need for a new approach for national economics and only
a small number of economists have studied it and seem to be considered
a fringe group and not taken seriously.