Tag Archives: Tony Abbott

A new idea: helping the environment while not clobbering the economy

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lake superior ice bergs

It’s across the front page of The Age and presumably The SMH but it is also posted at Drudge under the heading, Aussie Prime Minister seeks alliance to ‘dismantle’ Obama’s climate policy…. On Drudge it comes with an accompanying story, about icebergs on Lake Superior in June! (see the picture above). This is from the SMH, editorially assisted by myself to balance the editorial charaterisation posted by Mark Kenny as part of his story:

Tony Abbott is seeking a conservative alliance among “like-minded” countries, aiming to dismantle global moves to introduce carbon pricing, and undermine a push by [far-left] US President Barack Obama to push the case for action through forums such as the G20.

It’s not as if ruining your economies through actions to contain global warming is necessarily a left-right thing, it just turned out that way. Helping the poor by creating so many more of them is not my idea of policy genius. This is more my sort of thing:

[Mr Abbott] said it was important that policies to address output did not “clobber the economy” while not helping the environment.
The comments were immediately backed up by Canada with Mr Harper declaring there was no chance of any country acting for the planet if it involved costs to its economy.

“It’s not that we don’t seek to deal with climate change,” he said.

“We seek to deal with it in a way that enhances our ability to create jobs and growth, this is their position.

“No country is going to take actions that are going to deliberately harm jobs and growth in their country, we are just a bit more frank about that than other countries.”

The uncompromising attitude of both leaders suggests neither is inclined to yield to pressure from the US to revive the issue of climate change ahead of next years’ climate summit, nor back any international coordination such as additional regulations or a trading scheme.

Politics is politics. Icebergs in June at the start of summer but half the world is worried about global warming so you gotta say what you gotta say. But you must also do what you must also do. One more reason why bringing Labor back would be a step into the dark ages, in more ways than one.

Following the path of most resistance

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Whenever I worry about the Government only getting it right about three-quarters of the time, I am reminded of just how bad things could be if the other mob took over again. As is said, for every problem there is a solution that is neat, plausible and wrong. Labor seems to have a lock on every one of these solutions as does its cheer squad in the media.

GDP rises more rapidly than expected. Good news, yes? Don’t you worry about that, there’s always a leaden cloud around on even the sunniest days. The first para from the Business Editor of the SMH:

The imbalance in the Australian economy was highlighted further on Wednesday, with the mining industry contributing around 80 per cent of the jump in growth.

Well if it’s imbalances you’re after, let me then suggest this:

The new national minimum will be $640.90 per week, or $16.87 per hour. It amounts to a 50 cents per hour increase to the hourly rate.

The 50 cents per hour is there no doubt to trivialise the amount. I-spit-on-your-50-cents-an-hour kind of thing. Really, why mention it unless you are trying to show how minimal the increase actually was. But 50 cents an hour or not, it comes to $33,333 per year. Do you see that? No one in this country, no matter how minimal their skills and experience, may by law be paid less that $33,333 per year. And then try to employ someone for the weekend or nights. Don’t forget the super and workers’ comp. We are a high wage economy trying to deal with low productivity growth.

This is a hard row to hoe for business. It’s not easy to find that kind of money. If you are running a coffee shop, you need to sell 9523 cups of coffee over the course of a year at $3.50 and that’s before the on-costs get counted in. What a good idea it must also have been to raise the cost of energy as well through the carbon tax.

Labor, and its Labor-lite supporters you can find in the oddest places, love the populist bits. But the reason Labor is not the permanent government of this country, in spite of all of the populist stuff they peddle, is because they drain the country of its economic energy. Tony and company are doing what they can in the face of massive resistance since in each person’s own world, there is no reason they can see why they can’t have more of what’s going for less effort in actually helping to produce.

I can only say I wish them well in trying to fix things up, because there really is a lot to fix.

“There will be no balanced budget under a government I lead”

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Suppose Gillard had said that, suppose she had said there would be no balanced budget under a government she led, and had then broken the promise. Suppose she had done that. You know what? It wouldn’t have bothered me a bit.

The problem with the broken promise on carbon taxes was not just that she had lied but that it was bad policy. The carbon tax has sent manufacturing industry out of this country, made Australia a very expensive place to live and do business, and raised government revenue which it was able to squander at every turn.

The carbon tax lie was a game changer. It brought the ALP into government in a hung Parliament. If she hadn’t said it, Tony Abbott would have been Prime Minister three years sooner than he was.

The last election did not turn on whether or not there would be tax increases as part of a package to balance the books. The last election turned on whether we could get a decent set of economic managers, along with a slew of other things such as stopping the boats.

The Government we now have looks set to deliver an adult government. I have plenty of bones to pick with what it is doing (or not doing) but nothing they do to taxation will make the slightest difference to my wish to seem them succeed as the government of this country which so far they are doing infinitely better than the mob they have replaced.

The GST will not be raised

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Good!

DEPUTY Liberal leader Julie Bishop has ruled out accepting Treasury advice to expand the GST or re-index the fuel excise, as former treasurer Chris Bowen claimed the department “never” advised him to increase the consumption tax.

Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson last night warned that Australia must be prepared for a recession in the next decade and cannot rely on rising income taxes to restore budget health.

Dr Parkinson, whose term as Treasury secretary has been extended by Tony Abbott for six months to the end of the year, also argued for increases in the GST to ease the burden on personal and company income taxes.

So the question remains, why is Martin Parkinson being kept around till November? Is there really no one the Coalition can think of to put in his place? It is a worry that Treasury, as in all departments, promote clones of the people at the top so where are they going to find someone who has a feel for the private sector. Still, Peter Costello was Treasurer as recently as 2007 so there must be some plant of his that has grown into the job and can be put into this slot

More news on the economy

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From The Oz today, Tony Abbott eyes $5bn for new road funding:

ROAD funding will surge again in the federal budget in May as the Abbott government casts an “eager eye” on new projects to lift faltering economic growth.

The budget plans include billions of dollars to upgrade old road and rail infrastructure in outer suburbs, on top of the Coalition’s existing $35.5 billion list of public works.

The new spending will come with tough conditions on the states to hasten construction after a federal audit revealed $3bn in cash sitting idle in state coffers.

I guess with the state of economic theory being what it is, the worst that the ALP can say is this:

The Coalition agenda is being criticised by Labor infrastructure spokesman Anthony Albanese on the ground it ignores public transport projects such as urban rail.

Meanwhile:

Investment spending will dive from $167bn this year to $125bn next year, according to figures released on Thursday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, adding to the case within the government for outlays on public works.

If these are projects that can show a net positive return, then there is a case to be made. Otherwise it’s just more waste.

The drumbeat is getting louder

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You know, if I were over at the ABC, I would be hearing the drumbeat getting louder. This is from an article in today’s Australian with the ominous title – ominous if you think you are an untouchable media organisation even though funded by a government you do everything you can to undermine – Tony Abbott says ABC ‘takes everyone’s side but our own’.

TONY Abbott says he is concerned the ABC takes an anti-Australian stance in its reporting and wants the broadcaster to stick to straight news-gathering.

The Prime Minister said the broadcaster was, like all media organisations, entitled to report “credible evidence”.

But “you shouldn’t leap to be critical of your own country”, he said, referring to reports of alleged mistreatment of asylum-seekers by naval personnel.

“It dismays Australians when the national broadcaster appears to take everyone’s side but our own and I think it is a problem,” Mr Abbott told radio station 2GB

“You would like the national broadcaster to have a rigorous commitment to truth and at least some basic affection for the home team, so to speak.”

He said the broadcaster should have given the navy and its personnel “the benefit of the doubt” in its reporting of the matter,

“I want the ABC to be a straight news-gathering and news-reporting organisation, and a lot of people feel at the moment that the ABC instinctively takes everybody’s side but Australia’s,” Mr Abbott said.

He said he was also concerned at the ABC’s reporting of leaks by the “traitor” Edward Snowden, saying it “seemed to delight” in broadcasting his allegations.

“And of course, the ABC didn’t just report what he said, they took the lead in advertising what he said. That was a deep concern.”

ABC spokesman Michael Millett said the public broadcaster would not be commenting on Mr Abbott’s statements.

This no longer feels like our ABC.

The Abbott Government had better wake up

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Andrew Bolt has added one more post after his Christmas farewell and just in case you might miss it, let me link to it. Titled, The two Tims: why the Abbott Government cannot compromise with those now savaging Tim Wilson, here is what I think is the core message:

The Abbott Government had better wake up. There is zero chance of it ever placating its intellectual enemies with any compromise to its agenda. It is in a cultural war, so it may as well be hated by its foes for following its principles than despised by its friends for offering compromises to those who will accept none.

For anyone with a sense of compromise and good will towards all, the left is hard to fathom. But for the left, politics is religion, not a pathway towards finding the best way to manage our collective affairs. There are hatreds there that no compromise will satisfy. It’s not like the cricket where you go off to the pub together after the match. This is tribal and unforgiving. I’m with Andrew Bolt on this. They represent little more than a hatred of success and achievement. If you want to understand Labor, just think of Craig Thomson and his HSU credit card and Julia with her slush fund. For many on the left, genuine concern for others seems to be the farthest thing from their minds.

Sharing my anger and filling in the blanks

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It’s all very well to have a turn the other cheek attitude when you are wronged personally but in politics this is an approach that has its limits.

I have just watched Tony Abbott on The Bolt Report and am afraid that I am dissatisfied with his response. Everything can be explained, and everything can be forgiven, but that is not what the other side is doing nor can ever be expected to do.

We over here want this government to succeed. But if the government does not share my anger with the things that make me angry or refuses to fill in the blanks about the details of policy so that we can see what is actually taking place, then they may feel very good about themselves internally but none of us out here will either feel very warm about what’s being done or have much in the way of arguments to defend what is going on.

Take Gonski, which is a policy I do not support so do not actually care one way or another about its fulfilment. But a promise was made during the election, Christopher Pyne has implied that the government was going to walk away from the full commitment, but the PM said today that what was promised will be delivered while also suggesting that what was promised may be different from what we think was promised. Very subtle, no doubt, but will not work as a political answer. The detail of why the Gonski commitment will be fulfilled as promised, and not in some casuistical way, has to be explained.

Even more so do I feel the anger with the ABC. It is not part of the free press. It has the stamp of government all over it and is 100% paid for by the government, that is, by us. What is said on Sky or in The Age people like myself might disagree with but no one argues they have no right to say what they say. With the ABC, it’s different. The ABC is supposed to be a reflection of Australia, and even if we know better here, they don’t know better in Indonesia.

This failure to take sides in political issues, to articulate and reflect the views of those who support this government, and therefore support good government, will end up with that support eroding. Perhaps we are looking at a new approach to politics that is more subtle than any we have seen before and that in the fullness of time will learn to appreciate its success. But in the meantime, people such as myself remain nervous and I must say a bit let down by the entire experience so far.

UPDATE: The transcript of the interview with Tony Abbott. It reads a lot better in print than it sounded when broadcast live.

Fixing messes

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Quiet diplomacy seems to work. The story deals with issues on two fronts, not just spying but the live cattle trade, both of which had been botched by Labor but are now on the road to being repaired by the Coalition. First the “spying” which is dated, please note, 2009:

INDONESIA has accepted Tony Abbott’s explanation of the 2009 spying scandal but says the bilateral relationship will not fully resume until a new ‘protocol and code of ethical conduct’ is agreed and implemented between the two countries.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono extended the olive branch to Australia last night after a special cabinet meeting, signalling the end of the worst diplomatic crisis between Australia and Indonesia since 1999.

However, Dr Yudhoyono made clear that the relationship would not be fully resumed – including military and police cooperation on people smuggling – until the code of conduct he and the Prime Minister had signed was ‘fully implemented’.

The boats aren’t coming anyway which I can tell because they are never mentioned in The Age or on the ABC. But the story goes onto another front in our relationship with Indonesia:

Indonesia was not considering any reimposition of quotas on Australian live cattle, citing ‘the need to maintain stability of prices’. Indonesia has issued permits for an additional 120,000 head of Australian cattle to be imported during the current quarter, as the government battles to drive down market prices for beef from near-record levels.

Maintaining the stability of prices is another way of saying that Australia is the cheapest and most reliable supplier of beef to the Indonesian economy.

It’s a worry

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I found this in Tony Abbott’s Battlelines which is a quote he took from John Howard:

A conservative is someone who doesn’t think he’s morally superior to his grandfather.

Very nice, very neat and in its own way sums up just how difficult it is to be a conservative these days. Because the sentiment will actually only appeal to a small proportion of the country. Most won’t know what it means and a majority will surely think their morals are superior because none of us live in the moral space of people fifty and a hundred years ago.

Which brings me to the latest polls. Is the Coalition behind? So says The Age, down 48-52. Although not as bad, it is to some degree echoed by The Australian:

TONY Abbott and the Coalition have lost their post-election glow, with voter support for the Prime Minister and the government continuing to fall as Bill Shorten and Labor climb back from the election loss.

I expect people who rise in the political process to know a thing or two about politics but they often don’t know how things look from our here. And the biggest issue from where I sit is the absence of good news stories, how things are being done and Labor is being raked over the coals for the harm the last six years have done. The fact that Julia Gillard feels capable of commenting shows just how little shame Labor feels about the damage they did.

Government is not admin. It is not just fixing things up behind the scenes. It is not only about doing, it is also about explaining. It is about maintaining your support. If you are going to govern against the grain of the zeitgeist, which every conservative government must do, there needs to rhetoric to go with the action.

The only stories I see really being carried in the media have been about rorting travel allowances and a major blue with Indonesia. We already knew about the NBN, the budget black holes, the deficits and the boats. But I worry that the government may think quiet competence will do the job, and people will notice.

If you build a better mousetrap, the reality is the world will not beat a path to your door. Being a better government is not enough. If you do not explain yourself and engage in the rhetoric of politics, if you do not have an agenda of your own but are merely at the mercy of the next revelation by The Age, Guardian or The ABC, you are inviting trouble.

Maybe it’s just nothing, it’s only early days, but I do worry.