The Down Under Lounge

[jaz'a]

I would love not to have a car but I can't afford to live in the suburbs of Brisbane (or even in Brisbane) that allow for that. I spend almost 3 hrs a day getting to and from work and getting around my area without a car wouldn't work. It's a somewhat dodgy area and walking home from the train station isn't exactly wise. Unfortunately it's where I can afford and I count myself lucky for what I do have.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

You can buy a three bedroom house on Tassie's west coast for $60,000-$80,000 if you were willing to cope with all the rain, the lack of employment and services, and also to put up with the locals.

That's the final frontier in cheap housing. Could never do it.

 

[Botany Bay]

And we're off...a 56 day campaign, the longest since Whitlam and Gorton slugged it out for two months in 1969 (that, at least would have been fun to watch seeing those two characters go at it for so long -- Shorten and Turnbull...hmmm...we'll see).

Polling has things 50/50 TPP. Betting (the one to watch) signals a comfortable Coalition win. If any election could go the way of 1993 and see momentum change dramatically one way or the other, it's this one. Two untried leaders. A grueling canpaign. I think anything could happen. That includes a hung parliament.

 

[Marc]

And we're off...a 56 day campaign, the longest since Whitlam and Gorton slugged it out for two months in 1969 (that, at least would have been fun to watch seeing those two characters go at it for so long -- Shorten and Turnbull...hmmm...we'll see).

Polling has things 50/50 TPP. Betting (the one to watch) signals a comfortable Coalition win. If any election could go the way of 1993 and see momentum change dramatically one way or the other, it's this one. Two untried leaders. A grueling canpaign. I think anything could happen. That includes a hung parliament.

It will be fun to see a a LNP minority government. After all the shit conservatives dumped on Gillard and the rants it wasn't a legitimate government, the continual attempts by abbott for motion of no-confidence and the sheer bastardry of the LNP between 2010 and 2013, the back flips and hypocrisy should be something to behold!!

 

[Botany Bay]

Senate-wise, we just did see a coalition minority government. It was far from pretty. Populist senators -- some of whom didn't even know which party they represented --blocked everything in sight because Abbott, pig headedly, refused to court them. At least whoever wins this time will only have to deal with the Greens and/or Xenophon.

There's a lot of Independents in the reps still, and I think Labor, with a Primary Vote of 33%, probably only gets into government with the likes of Bandt, Wilkie, and, who knows, even Windsor, getting them over the line. A lot can happen between now and July though.

 

[Marc]

Senate-wise, we just did see a coalition minority government. It was far from pretty. Populist senators -- some of whom didn't even know which party they represented --blocked everything in sight because Abbott, pig headedly, refused to court them. At least whoever wins this time will only have to deal with the Greens and/or Xenophon.

There's a lot of Independents in the reps still, and I think Labor, with a Primary Vote of 33%, probably only gets into government with the likes of Bandt, Wilkie, and, who knows, even Windsor, getting them over the line. A lot can happen between now and July though.

Not you didn't see a minority government. There have only been to minority federal governments in Australian history one was the Gillard labor governmetn and the other was Labor in 1942 iirc (S.A had one from 2003 till 2007 and the current ALP government in QLD is a minority).

A minority government is one where in which the party with the largest number of seats in the house of reps does not hold a majority of seats in it's own right so relies on the support of other MPs (minor parties to govern).

The senate situation is the norm. Over the past 45 odd years the government has only controlled the senate twice 78 - 81 and 2005 - 2008). The ALP has not had a senate majority since the 1940s.

On top of that since Don Chipp formed the Australian Democrats in 1977 the number of minor parties and independents in the Senate has increased so that government of the day has had to deal with them. The only reason why the GST got passed was Meg Lees screwed her own party over (they then booted her our and she sat as an independant). The sale of Telstra only went through with the support of Tasmanian conservative independent Senator Brian Harradine who was promised pork barrel and internet censorship to get his vote.

 

[Botany Bay]

Thanks but I am aware of all that. I was just agreeing with your point that the Coalition did not handle high stakes negotiations all that well last term.

 

[Botany Bay]

A rough start for Labor you'd have to say yesterday, with a Melbourne candidate breaking ranks with the party's policy on asylum seekers. Like the policy or not, it's political poison in the ring of seats Shorten needs to pick up in Western Sydney. Voters have made it abundantly clear what they think about border protection in these swing seats.

It seems former Deputy PM Anthony Albanese is in trouble in the inner Sydney seat of Grayndler. Notably the Greens were there campaigning hard on Day 1. It wouldn't surprise to see this one go Green, the new map of the seat takes in Balmain and what looks like half of Newtown, which both are Greens seats in the state parliament. Albanese is likely the next Labor PM (if Shorten flames out in this campaign). Losing him would be a blow.

Then last night I couldn't believe my eyes when on the ABC's Q and A show, Greens MP Adam Bandt started chatting away about coalitions with Labor after the election. The ALP representative Andrew Leigh put in a dismal performance, refusing to slap him down. Liberal Kelly O'Dwyer didn't exactly cover herself in glory either, fumbling a very good question from a disabled minimum wage worker about why he's paying so much tax. Luckily Q and A isn't the TV show of choice in voter-land. The show laid bare what's going to be a battle for both majors -- Labor need to stay away from Chardonnay left issues that have little relevance to anyone outside three suburbs in the inner city, and the Libs need to explain why company tax cuts were prioritised over some relief at the lower end of the personal income tax scale.

There's talk in two absolute plum bellweather seats -- Eden-Monaro and Lindsay -- that the anti-Turnbull forces are trying to sabotage the campaigns of the incumbent members because they backed Turnbull last year over Abbott.

Two days in, and spot-fires everywhere for both parties.

The biggest torpedo of the campaign may be incoming. There are whispers another ratings agency is running the ruler over our government debt level and don't like what they see. Both majors are equally to blame, but it won't be a good look for the Liberals if there's a mid-campaign politically explosive downgrade.

 

[Marc]

There's talk in two absolute plum bellweather seats -- Eden-Monaro and Lindsay -- that the anti-Turnbull forces are trying to sabotage the campaigns of the incumbent members because they backed Turnbull last year over Abbott.

I'm sure you'd be hard pressed to find a bigger case of poltiical fuckwitery in the Australian electoral history than that one. The party is trying to win an election and this sort of bullshit does on?

The Liberal Party doesn't need the ALP to defeat it, it's capable of doing that it's self.

 

[Miss Chicken]

Q and A this week - $6000 toaster!!! Everyone is searching for it.

 

[Botany Bay]

Ahh the infamous Toorak Toaster...a gaffe for the ages. You have to feel for the token Liberal politician that gets thrown into the Lions' den on that show. They must dread it. Unfortunately O'Dwyer wasn't up to it. Few would be.

Labor had another bad day yesterday with more of Adam Bandt across the airwaves spruiking Greens/Labor coalitions, and another candidate, this time in Queensland, out of line on the party's asylum seeker policy. This stuff is killing Labor. They wasted the whole of last night with Shorten, Bowen and Albanese all over the TV reinforcing their commitment to border protection and ruling out coalitions with the Greens. If I were Shorten, I'd disendorse the next candidate who refused to back the party's policy on anything.

As I suspected the other day, Anthony Albansese is in trouble in Grayndler, with the Greens rumoured to be in front in the seat. Bizzarely, the Daily Telegraph has Albo plastered all over the front page with headlines screaming "SAVE ALBO". Politics makes strange bedfellows indeed.

Peta Credlin, the infamous ex-chief of staff to Tony Abbott, is now doing media commentary. Strange to see this person we've heard so much about finally speak. She seems a formidable person to say the least. She's very sharp, extraordinarily bright and knows campaigning inside out. But there's something about her that gives me the chills. You get the feeling her bad side would be a very bad place to be. Her insights are very sharp though. Last night she revealed that during the seventeen days of tortured negotiations to form government in 2010, that Tony Windsor didn't engage with the Liberals at all, but instead was committed to Labor from the start. He spent the time trying to woo his fellow independents across to Labor with him, and only Katter was holding things up. In the end he gave up on Katter and the deal was done to give Gillard the Prime Ministership.

 

[Miss Chicken]

Over $15000 have been raised so that Duncan Storrar (the disabled minimum wage worker) can buy himself one of those wonderous toasters.

 

[Botany Bay]

Duncan hopefully will sell the thing and buy some blue chip shares for his daughters. Should grow to about $100k by the time they're at Uni. Now if only we could get some tax cuts for lower paid workers we could help all the Duncans of Australia. Your income is your defence against poverty. Anyone under $45k in modern Australia is battling hard and has no business paying a cent of income tax.

One issue you're not going to hear about in this campaign is overpopulation. Wandering through the southern part of the city last night I saw a busload of Chinese investors looking at a display centre for a development of four giant towers basically being built on top of each other. The future residents will have no view other than of each other's laundry, there's not a sliver of natural light for blocks in this neighborhood even before these towers are constructed, and the nearest green grass is two kilometers away. Is this desirable? With both majors committed to adding a million people every three years, we better get used to it I suppose.

 

[Miss Chicken]

The Duncan fundraiser had now raised over $50,000. There is some debate whether it will affect his payments or not, whether it is taxable or nor, but as I see it, it should be treated the same as an inheritance and only the interest on it should be taxable. It isn't as if Duncan has any assets worth speaking of.

I thought that Australia's ideal population size is only 8 million. Why would the major parties want to increase it so much?

 

[Marc]

The Duncan fundraiser had now raised over $50,000. There is some debate whether it will affect his payments or not, whether it is taxable or nor, but as I see it, it should be treated the same as an inheritance and only the interest on it should be taxable. It isn't as if Duncan has any assets worth speaking of.

I thought that Australia's ideal population size is only 8 million. Why would the major parties want to increase it so much?

Does centrelink have asset limits in terms of how much money you can have in your bank account?

In terms of taxation it would probably comes under the category of gifts so he may have to declare it anyway but wouldn't be the same as an inheritance or being a beneficiary of a life insurance payout.

 

[Botany Bay]

It would be a gift most likely. It was one off, unexpected and given freely so shouldn't be assessable income.

His Centrelink would be certainly be affected though.

 

[Miss Chicken]

My Centrelink,payments weren't affected when I inherited $67000 a few years ago as that is will below the assets I am allowed to have.

 

[Botany Bay]

I am just assuming he's at least getting FBT-A if he cares for those two kids he wanted to take to the movies, and doing the right thing and investing the $x,000 he ends up with. FTB-A shades out the higher your income (as calculated by them as opposed to the taxman) is.

Just on Duncan, I want to see this end happily with a nice windfall for his kids. I sure hope this wasn't another Q and A stitch up, like a few people have suggested to me.

 

[SPCTRE]

 

[Australis]

This election is going to be long and slow.