Banjo,

"Aidan,
Poirot is wrong, I think the catastrophe Hasbeen refers to is the enormous government debt that labor ran up."

That would be the debt from the stimulus that gave us the AAA rating from three agencies and one of the lowest debt to GDP ratios of economies in the OECD.

Not to mention that most the countries (especially European) that opted for austerity in the wake of the GFC ended up in recession....that would be the recession that Australia didn't have.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/linkableblob/3727694/data/possum-graph-8-government-debt-as-gdp-data.jpg

Yep catastrophe spelt debt.

Beattie/Bly up here left us 10 times more debt than we had ever had.

They were fool enough to actually believe the global warming scam, & the prediction it would never rain again. They spent 2 Billion on a desalination plant, & 6 Billion on a piping system to pump water to Brisbane, but only to Brisbane, from anywhere that had any. Of course it can not deliver water anywhere else, just Brisbane

Neither has ever been used, but there were some great high paying jobs for union labour while it lasted.

Then there was the health care payroll fiasco. They bought a payroll system with no guarantee it would work. Great management skills there.

When it didn't work in 2 years, & $200 million expenditure, they still hadn't fixed it. It took Newman & co to sort it.

Fair dinkum, if they took over a school tuckshop, the school would not survive a month.

Dear ConservativeHippie,

's as an ending on a word indicates the possessive case. It is incorrect to use it for plurals in general.

"..the inability of the major political party's..." should be: "..the inability of the major political parties..."

"Abbott has to go; no if's, and's or but's about it!" should be "Abbott has to go; no ifs, ands or buts about it!"

Be conservative about grammar.

Hasbeen, I read on another site that Queensland's debt to GSP ratio had actually risen under Campbell Newman. So is he really fixing anything?

The reason, "I think", the government is going on about the debt is
because they do understand what is about to happen to not just our
economy but that of the developed world as a whole.
The politicians, perhaps even Labour, understand it but do not want to
say it out loud in case they scare the horses.

Australia is at very great risk of a disaster. It only requires two
factors to come into play at the same time;

First, an international financial crash of some sort.
Second, some event, in the middle east, a very significant accident at
the Saudi or Singapore refineries, a clash at sea between belligerent
powers placing oil tankers at risk, and Australia's inability to
raise enough money to buy petrol & diesel in competition with other countries.

Read the NRMA's report, the super markets will be empty in three days
and we will be starving in three weeks

I know that the government has been warned of this scenario but will
not acknowledge it.
I raised this matter to the NSW Emergency Management, to which I have
an official connection, but from on high, it is not a risk for consideration.
Quote; "We have good commercial arrangements."

Famous last words !

Bazz,

Crisis or no crisis, we're a rich country. When there's a tanker at sea we can pay its owners to divert it here. Our debt does not alter this fact.