Australia changes Government

[roaldin]

Hi Russ,

Neither Scott/5150 or yourself are anything to do with it, in fact I think that may have been a latter part of a joke I had some involvement in -drawing a really long bow with the number 5150 if I remember correctly. In fact I remember worrying at the time that my humour may not have gotten across to Scott - but I think it did, I hope so anyway (That joke was also founded on the scary posts I mentioned).
No I meant some posts written years ago. They were definitely no joke. They prompted me into joining discussions that I would have otherwise tried to avoid.
In fact your posts have been a great part of my considering moving to NZ. So no, definitely nothing to do with either Scott or yourself.

I guess I might be a bit sensitive about the drug thing but I was a little bewildered by something written before about my being "lonely" (for having made some light-hearted comment somewhere) and not to worry because I was southern-most and that made me "important". I felt it came from nowhere and I believe it had happened before. This last on top of that led me to believe that there was little humour intended and that I had somehow antagonised someone whose posts I had quite enjoyed on the whole.

Having for the last little while tried to avoid politics etc and stay on the light side I am disappointed that I have entangled myself in another murky thread and that I have managed to provoke such comment. This is really why I am dropping from the forum. Sometimes it's necessary to destroy bridges before you can move on.

FWIW my core philosophy is to allow others to do whatever makes them happy and to do the same. The only real condition is that no third party gets knowingly or negligently hurt.
As for the governing of Australia, I simply no longer believe a word that comes out of the recent Liberal parties mouths. This does not mean that I am a one-eyed Labour supporter.
As I thought I had indicated, I think it best if gov'ts are changed often and different levels should be mixed up so that power is distributed across the "representative" politicians not focused too heavily on the ideals of one, whether they be Liberal, Labour, Green or Party Party Party Party parties. A pity the democrats (Australian) imploded IMO.
I believe it is important to hold on to principals. There are some things this past gov't has done that have made me ashamed.

This is without doubt the best forum I have been a part of. It does sometimes seem to lean a little to the right IMO and it is tempting to try to balance that.
Anyway some highlights for me have been the much missed historical posts by Andre, and Adam the fluid dynamics modeler whose posts I found fascinating and who is yet another contributor to have disappeared. I hope they are well. I don't count myself as being as important to this forum as those guys were but I didn't want to disappear in the same way.

I believe we are all equal and none of us are more equal than others.

Pete,

Yeah maybe.
Anyway no hard feelings mate. Your's has always been a name whose posts I have made it a priority to read.

Tim.

Tim, Don't get your knickers in a twist. Are you referring to me calling Scott Satan?

Scott and I get along fine. He called himself Satan and I ran with it....

Quote from Scott's post....

"If my calculations are correct that would make me ......Satan. No wait.... the anti-christ. Must be the avatar.:flameon:"


It can be easy to see animosity where there is none sometimes. Always take everything with a grain of salt. I enjoy you contributions and hope to see more in the future.

Cheers,

 

[Doug Clark]

As I stepped out of the house this morning I ran a couple of quick tests:

1. Looked up at the sky and checked for cracks. None found, so the sky is not falling in on us.
2. Took a great big deep breath through the nose. Not even the faintest whiff of Marijuana on the air (Bugger). Same as usual then.

Now I just need to go down to the beach this arvo to see how many million "refugees" have set up camp down there.

 

[Malcolm]

Suggest Tim you try a few months off the forum instead of leave it altogether. If it has been one of the best forums you have experienced then it has a high standard to live up to in your mind. It won't always acheive those standards. Have a break, come back refreshed and you may see that even with this low point for you, it is still a worthwhile forum to be part of. Like building a car. I got fed up with the "burden" of thinking must work on the car when other things were tugging at my sleeve. Shut the garage door for three months and came back with fresh vigour and higher standards of workmanship.

Anyway, we all occaisionally say things that cause a response which upsets us when received, but email written humour/teasing is very hard to write so that in its reading, the recipient gets the point being made. Add in politics and..... flame war!






But on the politics front, and saying this form a neutral position, I seem to see a practice developing which scarily leads me to think the US system is about right! In the UK we had Maggie in power for a long time and she got the boot. Tony then had similar problems. Your Howard chap now has suffered the same fate albeit at the hands of party other than his own. I don't think it is the colour of their politics that is the issue but the time spent in office. Too long for an individual. Does the individual loose touch with reality after this length of time in power? The party can stay in power but not the individual.

The US system of two terms seems a good balance although sometimes the US population make enough noise sometimes to make an overseas guy think that this may be just a bit too long too.

Maybe democracy should limit the individual term in office but allow a party to hang in there as long as it can? After all, many dictators don't last over 10 years! And those that do tend to be very suppressive.

 

[flatchat(Chris)]

Whoops ! my jibe was to possibly encourage some topical light hearted banter -- guess I miss judged you Tim , however your passionate response at almost 2 am in the morning is a bit concerning and I do enjoy reading your posts.
So much for politics, now what about "religion"?

 

[Keith]

Well I really think we should send a gunboat to sort you colonials out but we haven't got any left due to savage defence cuts by socialist labour leftie Europhile pinko commie erstaz right wing politicos.

There! I feel better now....

 

[Dave]

Hey Tim
Don't go stealing my 'Club Racer" tag. That's mine and only I have the right to call someone it :. Stick around the forum as it takes all types to make it interesting.

Chris- I want to see some pics of that RCR instead of you pick'n fights in the Paddock. When can I come over and check her out??? Thats the RCR I'm talking about.epper:

 

[Ross Nicol]

There you go Tim just a misunderstanding, so no reason to take flight after all.I've been down the same road your on at the moment but you just have to pick yourself up and say bugger it, the people on this forum are a great bunch and I enjoy hanging around. We certainly enjoy having you as others have noted too.

Ross

 

[Bill Hara]

Tim

Personally, I'd hate to see you leave as I have always enjoyed your contributions on this forum, just as I enjoyed seeing your car at the RF factory coz it motivated me to get home and work on my car. I'll even admit to sitting in your car once at the old RF facility and imagining my car was completed too.
As one of the longer termed members here, I have seen many great contributors leave this forum, never to return and it makes this forum a poorer place. The names you mentioned plus others helped to make this the forum what it is today and your contributions are a part of that rich history.
I think maybe if you stayed away from the Paddock threads where the noise to signal ratio is high, then you might be able to find your enjoyment again or if that doesn't do it, take Malcolm's advice and have a 3 month break.
Politics is such a sh*t topic to argue about because the only places your voice can make a direct difference is either at the voting booth or in a demonstartion march. Okay, I know that your voice can also be used for propaganda/brainwashing/shaming etc people into thinking differently but that is nothing new, been happening for about 3-4000 years......:dead:

We all joined this forum because of our interest in GT40s and that is about the only common thing you can cast over everyone on this site. Opinions for all other topics will vary with every individual, as will their humour/"lack of humour"/spitefulness/crudeness/sophistication....blah blah. If someone bothers you, ignore them as there are plenty of other people here that value your words and insights.

Hang around

Regards
Your Bass Straight neightbour

Bill.

 

[ChrisL]

Tim, I echo that remark. I enjoy your comments on this forum too.

But just to try and get this thread back on track, I consider myself a swinging voter. All up, between federal and state, it's probably about a 50/50 split in the lower house, and the upper house has seen me vote for the minor parties regularly. I agree with Tim whole heartedly that we need to keep the governments on their toes by giving them the boot when they don't perform.

... and incidentally, I honestly believe that the parting government has performed very badly on the economic front. This may confuse some people so I shall explain.

The biggest error that they have made is to base economic policy on a combination of ideological and populist grounds rather than sound economic analysis. "But look at all the good figures" you might say.

OK lets look at them one at a time...

Government Debt:
We now have no public debt. Is that a good thing by economic standards or by populist consensus? Well its actually very easy to have no debt. For example, if you sell your house you can pay of your mortgage and you will have no debt, but then you will also have no house and no way of getting one. Responsible public debt is not only good for a country to prosper, its essential.

Interest rates:
Now this is definitely based on a populist rather than an economic argument. Interest rates that are too low are just as bad as interest rates that are too high. With very low rates, you reduce the income for those who rely on invested savings to fund their retirement. You also cause a situation where money becomes so cheap that housing prices go through the roof. You then end up with hoards of home buyers who suffer greatly when the rates go up slightly (a 1 point rise at 5% is 20% increase in payments, whereas a 1 point rise at 10% is a 10% increase in payments). So you see that the hype that low interest rates is good economic management is just that, hype.

Growth:
The economy has grown rapidly but, if you ignore for a moment the resources boom which was not of the government's doing, it was not because the gross domestic product has improved. The growth is primarily generated by that fact that the government has falsely convinced the general population that we have a strong economy. This results in people going to the shops with credit card in hand so boosting economic activity with money that they don't have. Consequently, we as a nation have the highest level of credit card use and private debt of all the western economies. This type of economy will live quite a long life but it is hollow because the economy is floating on a false floor of private debt. It is a bubble and it will burst.

Unemployment:
Well this IS an interesting one. What IS our employment level now compared to years gone by. Employment levels were calculated very differently 30 years ago. Today you are considered employed if you work one hour per fortnight. 30 years ago you were considered employed if you had a full-time job. The government does actually have the figures to perform a realistic comparison but they won't release them under our FOI laws. So on that basis I will assume that they have something to hide.

Average earnings:
There has been a large divide created between the wealthy and the battlers. Break down the statistics and you will see that the average salary of a company director has increased by close to 70% in the last financial year and expected to increase yet again this year. On the other end of the scale, the number of people below the poverty line has also increased significantly over the period of this government. So yes, average earnings have increased, but the few at the top have skewed the figures.

Average wealth:
The average wealth of each Australian has increased considerably. But this is primarily as a result of the booming house prices. This wealth is effectively useless. It is not wealth that can be accessed. You had the wealth equivalent of one house before the boom and you still have the wealth value of a single house now. You can't sell it and buy a house and a yaught.

Budget Surplus:
We have a deteriorating infrastructure, declining health services, declining education system and I can go on, but the government thinks that its a good idea to keep our billions of dollars in the bank so that they can count it each morning when they wake up. I think this is the final straw that shows that the parting government had lost the plot on why it is good to have a booming economy.

Finally, the parting government did not have a concept of value unless it had a dollar value. This created a moral vacuum that resulted in actions within our shores by our government that caused Australia to be branded by organizations such as Amnesty International as abusers of basic human rights.

A dark cloud has lifted.

Just my 2c worth.

 

[Russ Noble]

You Ozzies seem to be a sensitive touchy feely lot. First Ross, now Tim.

It must be the lanolin!

Stick around Tim, it's guys like you that make the forum what it is. And it's interesting to get differing perspectives such as yours, ChrisL's and Pete's on the same set of figures.

Cheers,

 

[Pete McCluskey.]

Well if this offends anyone. Guess what? I don't really give a sh#t.boomsmile



Well, what a fantastic result for we baby boomers. Those naive Gen Y and Gen Xers fell for the old pea and thimble trick again. We've duped 'em into voting Labor knowing that those Work Experience pollies in bad suits will screw the economy, like they do every time they get into power, sending interest rates sky high.



Then, with double digit interest rates, we wily boomers will make a windfall on our savings. And when those vacuous, starry-eyed young Labor cheer squads have to sell their mortgaged homes at fire-sale prices, cashed-up opportunists like us will be able to pounce.



No wonder the world hates baby boomers. We're just too clever.epper:epper:epper:epper:epper:

Smile ya bastards.

 

[ChrisL]

Fact: When the Fraser/Howard government left office, interest rates were on their way up.

Fact: The incoming Hawk/Keating government inherited an economy that encouraged this upward trend but managed to turn the trend around.

Fact: When the Keating government left office, the interest rates were on their way down.

Fact: The incoming Howard/Costello government inherited an economy that encouraged this downward trend but managed to turn the trend around.

Fact: When the Howard/Costello government left office, the interest rates were (are) on their way up.

Fact: The incoming Rudd/Swan government inherited an economy that encouraged (is encouraging) this upward trend...

Future projection: ...but will manage to turn the trend around.


...and I managed to write all this down without offending anyone

 

[roaldin]

Thanks guys and Chris,

Don't worry that I was offended too much, it wasn't really about that. Mad at myself more than anything.
I realise that this election result wasn't to the delight of everybody but to me it was the light at the end of a very long tunnel and in a moment of weakness I voiced my thoughts in what I thought at the time was a fairly harmless celebratory way.
Chris, as I said before, if any comment I have made in the past has created any ill feeling I have no memory of what it could be. Normally I'm pretty good humoured I think.
FWIW the drug thing just seemed to prove one side of a confusion that earlier comments had raised in me. I sometimes read too far between the lines I guess.

Anyway, thank's for your slaps on the shoulder and the PMs.

Bastard smiling as per orders.

Tim.

 

[hoppy]

Well if this offends anyone. Guess what? I don't really give a sh#t.boomsmile



Well, what a fantastic result for we baby boomers. Those naive Gen Y and Gen Xers fell for the old pea and thimble trick again. We've duped 'em into voting Labor knowing that those Work Experience pollies in bad suits will screw the economy, like they do every time they get into power, sending interest rates sky high.



Then, with double digit interest rates, we wily boomers will make a windfall on our savings. And when those vacuous, starry-eyed young Labor cheer squads have to sell their mortgaged homes at fire-sale prices, cashed-up opportunists like us will be able to pounce.



No wonder the world hates baby boomers. We're just too clever.epper:epper:epper:epper:epper:

Smile ya bastards.

Must agree with you.Personally,as I earn in US dollars but spend in OZ dollars I have watched my take home pay decrease substantialy,due to a climbing exchange rate,over the last 4 years.
Kevin gets in,the market reacts and already I have a reasonable pay rise with more to follow(hopefully).
My thanks to the voters,now for the important thing,I can finish my car.

 

[Mark Worthington]

Wow, Chris, you have an amazing outlook on all things economic. As a US citizen I don't really have a dog in this fight but your comments are so...so...leftist, that I just can't help myself. Let's take them in order, shall we?

But just to try and get this thread back on track, I consider myself a swinging voter.

In the US that would mean that you like to vote while you and your wife have sex with other people. You lefties really do know how to mix pleasure with politics!

Government Debt:
We now have no public debt. Is that a good thing by economic standards or by populist consensus? Well its actually very easy to have no debt. For example, if you sell your house you can pay of your mortgage and you will have no debt, but then you will also have no house and no way of getting one. Responsible public debt is not only good for a country to prosper, its essential.

The fact that your "populist economic analysis" begins by faulting the Howard government for eliminating Australia's national debt simply amazes me. Do you pick stocks? All other things being equal, would you want to invest your money in a highly leveraged company than one that is debt free? Your response, I imagine, will be that countries should not be run like greedy capitalist corporations. Presumably debt should be increased to fatten up Australia's welfare state?

Interest rates:
Now this is definitely based on a populist rather than an economic argument. Interest rates that are too low are just as bad as interest rates that are too high. With very low rates, you reduce the income for those who rely on invested savings to fund their retirement. You also cause a situation where money becomes so cheap that housing prices go through the roof. You then end up with hoards of home buyers who suffer greatly when the rates go up slightly (a 1 point rise at 5% is 20% increase in payments, whereas a 1 point rise at 10% is a 10% increase in payments). So you see that the hype that low interest rates is good economic management is just that, hype.

Wow. Just, wow. You should've been here in the US shortly after Reagan inherited Jimmy Carter's economic clusterfuck and home mortgage rates were around 20%. I'm sure you would have approved. You are correct in that low interest rates can cause an excess in the supply of money and that can cause inflation. The trick is to keep interest rates low along with inflation. What has Australia's inflation rate been during the Howard administration? I ask because I honmestly don't know. Have Aussies been using wheelbarrows to bring cash to the bank? Or has inflation stayed in check?

Growth:
The economy has grown rapidly but, if you ignore for a moment the resources boom which was not of the government's doing, it was not because the gross domestic product has improved. The growth is primarily generated by that fact that the government has falsely convinced the general population that we have a strong economy. This results in people going to the shops with credit card in hand so boosting economic activity with money that they don't have. Consequently, we as a nation have the highest level of credit card use and private debt of all the western economies. This type of economy will live quite a long life but it is hollow because the economy is floating on a false floor of private debt. It is a bubble and it will burst.

So strong economic growth has nothing to do with government fiscal policy (see points 1 and 2 above)? Are you going to say that if growth continues under the Labour party? But under the Howard government there was a vast right-wing conspiracy to trick all you poor Aussies into thinking things were OK. I agree with you on the consumer debt issue, but why doesn't that hold up for governments as well as consumers? Why is public debt good but private debt, and economic growth, bad?

Unemployment:
Well this IS an interesting one. What IS our employment level now compared to years gone by. Employment levels were calculated very differently 30 years ago. Today you are considered employed if you work one hour per fortnight. 30 years ago you were considered employed if you had a full-time job. The government does actually have the figures to perform a realistic comparison but they won't release them under our FOI laws. So on that basis I will assume that they have something to hide.

Ah, the vast right-wing conspiracy thing again. Very nice. I seem to recall reading elsewhere in this thread that getting a job in Australia didn't involve much more than the ability to fog a mirror. But you remain skeptical.

Average earnings:
There has been a large divide created between the wealthy and the battlers. Break down the statistics and you will see that the average salary of a company director has increased by close to 70% in the last financial year and expected to increase yet again this year. On the other end of the scale, the number of people below the poverty line has also increased significantly over the period of this government. So yes, average earnings have increased, but the few at the top have skewed the figures.

Translation: We need more redistribution of wealth. Now I understand why the word "socialist" precedes the term "labour party."

Average wealth:
The average wealth of each Australian has increased considerably. But this is primarily as a result of the booming house prices. This wealth is effectively useless. It is not wealth that can be accessed. You had the wealth equivalent of one house before the boom and you still have the wealth value of a single house now. You can't sell it and buy a house and a yaught.

Everyone's richer, but... There's always a but. House prices have risen world-wide, not just in Australia. It's that pesky old supply-and-demand thing again. Aussies still enjoy a remarkably high standard of living. Really, how can you possibly complain about increasing wealth, even if much of it is in increasing asset value?

Budget Surplus:
We have a deteriorating infrastructure, declining health services, declining education system and I can go on, but the government thinks that its a good idea to keep our billions of dollars in the bank so that they can count it each morning when they wake up. I think this is the final straw that shows that the parting government had lost the plot on why it is good to have a booming economy.

I am not familiar enough with the state of Australia's infrastructure, education and healthcare systems, but based on your other comments, you'll forgive me if I don't take your opinion as gospel. But your comment here does tie in nicely with your first comment, in that you want to see your country put itself in debt to fatten up the welfare state. That's not just socialism, it's socialism with really bad economics tossed in.

Finally, the parting government did not have a concept of value unless it had a dollar value. This created a moral vacuum that resulted in actions within our shores by our government that caused Australia to be branded by organizations such as Amnesty International as abusers of basic human rights.

Moral vacuum? Abuser of human rights? Australia? You Aussies seem like a good bunch of blokes to me. I expect some of your guys in Iraq have kicked a few terrorists in the nuts, and that's OK with me, but then again, I'm not really a sensitive new age guy.

A dark cloud has lifted.

Let's summarize. Your idea of a dark cloud is a debt-free government that fosters low interest rates and strong economic growth which results in increasing personal income and personal net worth. I can only hope that Australia can send a few such dark clouds our way. We need the rain.

 

[Pete McCluskey.]

:bow::bow:Mark, Well said. I wish I could put together my thoughts as logically and succinctly as you.

 

[Price Walton]

Tim,

Refer to page 5 of the F1 2008 thread for a lesson in how a lighthearted post attracts flame.

As for interpreting a comment about being a drug user, see Dave Morton's posts. I couldn't be bothered reporting it to Ron, but he lost my respect.

Keith Aitch aside, virtually nobody got the point, not helped by a somewhat delayed response to another post, but I didn't expect to be savaged.

I was never a prolific contributor and having had that experience am unlikely to become one, but I retain my interest in the overall topic, particularly P4's, and await a point where I can overcome a couple of setbacks. This will hopefully give Fran enough time for his "Brisbane lad" to get up to speed on ADR's.

Back to the thread -

While both sides of politics have their advantages and disadvantages, it's generally healthy to change occasionally. This government may have stayed longer than it deserved to, but it will be up to them to relieve the potential pain of the swinging economic cycle without inflicting other pain.

Freezing part of the mortgage might be a good idea, though I won't be making any moves until early next year, as I'd like to see if the reserve bank wants to make any other moves short-term. That said, I am part of the national addiction to personal and household debt, which is why we've been affected by the dramas in the US lately. The most prominent example of a maxim I haven't heard for years, "the US sneezes & we catch cold". The current robustness of our economy these days has mostly put this in the past, I hope.

Pete, a rise in interest rates will help baby-boomers live within their means!

Mark, my dog's pi55ing dust, so I'd prefer we kept any rain for ourselves!

 

[Scott Calabro]

Viewing from the sidelines, I must say this has been an amazing discussion.

S

 

[Keith]

Hey man, one thing I've learnt from this new fangly internet thang is that not many people read it all properly - just a few key words and it doesn't always come out right....

Keep the faith....

While I'm here, (not sure anyone will read all the way through this) but I'll tell the story anyway, just because it's relevant to Freewheels post.

I got caught in a major UK Motorway incident a few months ago. A tanker jumped the central divider - took some cars out (no serious injuries or deaths thank God) and we all stopped for 3 hours until they cleared stuff up. Everyone got out of their cars, and in that peculiar British (or maybe World) way, everyone got talking and laughing with each other until after 10 mins, it was like we knew each other for years. Just then, I somewhat ruined the party by saying: Do you realise, that a short time ago we would have probably been shaking our fists at each other driving at over 80 mph?

At that point it went quiet and the moment had gone....

 

[Bill Hara]

You are right Keith, as we sit in our cocooned spaces we feel we can say anything without consequence. There are so many shades of gray out there that no matter what one government does it will piss someone off and you can never please everybody.
Leaving the monetary policy debate to others more qualified, I will make a point of informing Mark about the violation of human rights within our domestic borders. The life expectancy (today) for the average Australian is above 76 years of age. The average life expectancy for Aboriginal Australians is in the mid 50s and is one of the worst in the world. Dig deeper and there are many sides to this debate also but the overriding point is that for the last 11 years the Howard Government hasn't improved this life expectancy, has refused to even say the words "Sorry" for their treatment in the past and when it has intervened in Aboriginal community life just 6 months ago, it sent in the ARMY to break up a community rife with child abusers in the most brazen political media hyped way possible. This caused a tidal wave of reporters to descend on a remote Aboriginal community to scrutinize these poor people. There are still countless communities that don't get funding for proper schooling, have little or no medical facilities, no job prospects, no housing etc.
The Human Rights abuses by the Howard Government extend to other groups as well, the most public being the Asylum Seekers that are being held in detention centers around the country. UN inspections have found "gross violations" of human rights in these centers. The (ex) government has also gone to the High Court of Australia to fight the Family Court for trying to remove 5 children from the detention centers, claiming that the Agreement signed by Australia in 1991 - Convention on the Rights of Children - is irrelevant!
The most basic tenet for Human Rights is the equity of treatment under the law, something that the Howard Government has failed dismally in for the past 11 years. Doesn't matter if the country is economically sound when you know that innocent children are locked away behind barbed fences without the everyday essentials you and I take for granted, whilst your Government is doing its utmost to keep things that way. As a new father, I feel a dark cloud has lifted too.