The Prospect of Tony Abbot As Prime Minister

[tcpip]

Recent opinion polls show Tony Abbot has a better-than-even chance of becoming Prime Minister. This possible requires some serious thought. If you are gay, you can absolutely forget about same-sex marriage rights. At least with Labor, all that's required is to get the matter tabled at cabinet and the vote will be won. His absolutely archiac and offensive attitudes towards women, climate change and indigenous people is infuriating.

He carries a dangerous attitude towards to industrial relations and his deep indifference and ignorance of economic matters. Abbot loved 'Workchoices', and will bring it back; especially targetting unfair dismissal laws, pay and conditions, and penalty rates. Opposing the economic stimulus package, which is considered among the best designed in the world, with excellent results, Abbott not only expressed opposition to it, but slept through the vote after a night on the sauce.

Absolutely reckless cuts are planned against nation-building IT and environmental infrastructure, in favour of handing back $10.5 billion of resource rents from our commonwealth, to mining companies; because Tony understands that billionaires are having tough times. Abbott's accounting has been slippery or stupid. [T]he Coalition asked the department the cost of giving the Productivity Commission an extra $4 million a year. Yesterday the department replied poker-faced that it would cost $4 million a year.. One can only echo the words of Craig Emerson; Australia has never had in the post-war era a more economically incompetent candidate for the prime ministership than Tony Abbott.

Update: Former Reserve Bank chief, Bernie Fraser, (hardly a radical) blasts the Coalition over their economic policies.

Comments

[zhenzhi.livejournal.com]

i don't even want to imagine what it would be like with him running the show. :-(

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

But it is quite possible at this stage.

I can certainly understand people wanting to give Labor a bit of a kick, but you know, after getting rid of workchoices, ratifying Kyoto, making a formal apology to indigenous people and getting us through the GFC unscathed, it hasn't been a bad three years.

(Heck, even the insulation programme wasn't as bad a people make out...)

The possibility of a Howard Mark II looms on the horizon. And it's not a pretty sight..

[ariaflame.livejournal.com]

I really don't understand people complaining about how bad the last 3 years were. Considering the Global Financial Crisis and so forth they could have been much much much worse. OK, apparently there are some states with really bad unemployment, but is this a federal or a state issue given that it is localised.

My main disappointments with the government currently (apart from the stupid filter) are less about what they have done, and more about what they couldn't do because they got blocked by Tony & his ilk and the more raving looney minorities.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

If we were in the US, the UK, or even Germany (let along Greece) we would really know what the GFC would have been like. As an export-orientated economy we would have been looking at 15%+ unemployment if it wasn't for the stimulus package.

[loic.livejournal.com]

Australia's housing bubble hasn't burst yet. When it does Australians will know how it felt.

[aquaplanage.livejournal.com]

And it will burst.

The question is, are the underlying demographics sufficient for a fairly soft landing (10-20%) or a Florida/Michigan/... hard landing.

My bet's on the former, not the latter due to the fairly weird urbanisation situation in Australia. However hearing "this time it's different" actually increases the chances of a painful pop ...

[loic.livejournal.com]

My money's on a soft-ish landing. They have room to move with interest rates and cash to subsidize housing purchases. Also there's that whole resources sector which can really help keep the country in the black.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I have circulated the Kavanagh-Putland index in the past a few times which warns of the seriousness of 'rent-seeking' that dominates real-estate investment; we are fortunate enough to be heavily protected by the resources sector, which was part of the reason why the mining resources tax was sought in the first place, to reclaim those economic benefits.

[angriest.livejournal.com]

I think Howard Mark II is an understatement. I found Howard morally repugnant and actively dislikable. I find the thought of PM Abbott positively terrifying.

[discordia13.livejournal.com]

I have the same feeling about this election that I did when Keating was ousted. Despite what people may think about the ALP's most recent cock ups I think they need at least another 3 years in power before we could say they have been a bad thing.

People also conveniently forget that everything the ALP have tried to do for the last year was blocked on principle because that's what the opposition seemed to think their job was. Oppose regardless of merit instead of offer an alternative.

I don't want to see any party in power that makes stuff up as it goes along and DENY is their default policy on things they haven't thought about.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The worst ALP cock-ups in the past three years are really quite insignificant to their successes. Because it's been more or less smooth sailing economically in Skippy-land many people have no concept on how bad it could have been. An export-orientated economy like ours could have very much gone belly-up.

You're very much right on how various measures were blocked by the opposition; like the voter registration issue...