Where’s Hawke or Keating in the current Government.
Here is an honest question.
Can someone point to me one large or small market friendly policy the Rudd Government’s 10 months in power has produced? I can’t think of one and would like to see if other people know of any. I’m leaving aside the tax cuts.
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Making sure that 3 middle aged women of various races are in the frame, in whole or in part, when Kevin Rudd is sitting down in parliamentary broadcasts, rather than the viagra chewers that the Lib-Nats put on show.
That way making Australia seem like a multicultural land of opportunity, and motivating all to get out there and try an outback safari like Alby Mangels. Thereby inceasing the sales of didgerdoos at Darwin night markets..
Where are you now, Parkos? Last time we heard your dulcet tones you were in Eastern europe?
They ended the 60-year-old monopoly system of selling wheat overseas.
Where’s Hawke or Keating in the current Government.
Hey, you forgot to mention Fraser… Wasnt he one of the great labor leaders???… wasnt he in fact Labor not liberal???? Has there ever been another ex Prime Minister who before every election has gone to the media and downed anything that his own party is doing.. No one can tell me that he wasnt a wolf in sheeps clothing.. a white ant..
Dude is that a trick question?
Rudd’s whole *identity* is based off the notion that Howard was far too friendly to “big business” (who along with paedophiles, are the new witches/communists). He won’t do anything to stimulate economic growth, unless he can frame it first-and-foremost as a wanky feel-good policy.
Apart from the wheat export single desk, which Terje mentioned, there’s nothing significant. Some of the rural drought relief and other pork programs are under review. If reviews and inquiries were a market, they’d totally dominate it.
DavidL has it – everything’s being reviewed and inquired right now. When they start reporting back we’ll be in a better position to judge whether Rudd is reformist or not.
Well, although it technically reduces the number of people buying private health, kevin rudd did actually lessen the medicare surcharge tax by lifting the income threshold from 50k to 100k.
Its small stuff though.
Yesterday’s summary of Kevin Rudd’s address to the CIS in the Australian was very depressing IMO.
I would have hoped he’d abandon his meaningless cliches and floating abstractions for this audience.
His weak attempts at paying lip service to free markets were immediately contradicted by his un-substantiated and ill-defined assertions about market failure.
He also implied that Australia’s prosperity was due to our regulatory structure! with no mention of property rights or low crime rates that are the true government functions necessary for prosperity.
And he obviously doesn’t grasp the simple idea that either you have economic freedom (a free-market) or you don’t. Only once freedom is gone does it becomes a matter of by how much (ie: a scale). So his ignorance was quite insulting considering his dishonest attempt to pretend he supports the free market.
His assertion that economic theorists were “not needed” shows he believes in a theory-practise type dichotomy and is a subjectivist ideologically. This is disturbing because it means his approach to economics is non-objective and will reduce to populism or emotional whims.
Kevin Rudd has definitely given me the impression that he’s a moron economically and has trouble with logic and thinking.
Someone should lock Kevin Rudd in a room and force him to listen to his own mind numbing, ill-defined speeches played back to him as some kind of torture.
Tim, the Geneva Convention against torture is broad. KRudd might take you to court for hate-speeches like that!
Mr Funk – witches and communists are far better than paedophiles. The fear of paedophiles may be over played but they are not the victims and public opinion is right to give them low regard. Whilst some sympathy for big business in relation to pubic opinion may be justified I don’t know why you feel paedophiles are in need of any. What they inflict is selfish and horrible.
I didn’t know Ayaan Hirsi Ali was at the speech yesterday.
I’ve read her book about escaping a brutal repressive life in Africa and studying political science in the Netherlands, and from reading her book, I didn’t realise she actually knew her stuff.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24123063-5013871,00.html
“We explicitly reject Hayek’s view that society has no obligation to others who are unknown to us, and Hayek’s preparedness to allow fundamental social institutions like the family to fend entirely for themselves against unrestrained market forces. That is why, for example, we have a different approach to industrial relations, because we believe families need certain fundamental protections in the workplace.”
After the dinner, the Somalian-born Hirsi Ali said she would send Mr Rudd a copy of Hayek’s seminal 1944 work The Road to Serfdom. “I know he’s a busy man, so I’ll highlight the relevant sections,” she said.
….
….
Hirsi Ali’s next book, Shortcut to the Enlightenment, will examine the philosophy of Hayek, John Stuart Mill and Karl Popper through imagined conversations between the philosophers and the Prophet Mohammed.
Hirsi Ali will speak tonight at the Centre for Independent Studies Big Ideas Forum, at the Sydney Opera House.
her new book sounds like an interesting idea. Hopefully she executes it well.
Great to hear she’s back in Aus
After the dinner, the Somalian-born Hirsi Ali said she would send Mr Rudd a copy of Hayek’s seminal 1944 work The Road to Serfdom. “I know he’s a busy man, so I’ll highlight the relevant sections,” she said.
What a great put down. This gal’s got ‘balls’ or what?
Small potatoes, but they cut public service spending by an extra %2 for 08/09.
I read somewhere that was crap, Greego. Head count hasn’t fallen at all.
Jono – Ayaan studies political science in the Netherlands. She says so in “Infidel”. A great book by the way.
Greego – it is not quite the “meat axe” that Kevin 07 promised us. Perhaps it was a none core promise.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/federal-election-2007-news/meat-axe-to-public-service/2007/11/21/1195321867004.html
TerjeP – I rest my case. Paedophiles are criminals. As such they deserve to be punished, and when their punishment is finished, they need to be given the same rights as any other criminal who’s served his sentence. When you say “Paedophiles” you mean dirty old evil men who prey on young children. But when the law says “Paedophiles” they mean people who have consensual relationships with their partner who happens to be 2 years younger than they are, too. They mean children who like to look at naked children. The 16 year old who’s attracted to 13 year olds. When I was 16 I was attracted to every good looking girl old enough to have boobs and (at least a little) younger than my mother, no matter what was on her birth certificate. And I’d wager you were the same.
Mr Funk is right. Current laws make criminals of thousands of teenage boys every year.
The laws don’t match the reality. A majority of kids are sexually active by age 15. Does a 17 year old who has sex with a 15 year old really belong in jail? And does he deserve to be labelled a “sex offender” for the rest of his life as a result?
Age of consent laws set to 16 have been relevant for about 20 years in tens of thousands of years of human history – from about 1945 to 1965. Previous to that, people got married at 15. Since the sexual revolution, pre-marital sex by people younger than 16 is extremely common. The age of consent still being set to 16 is quite frankly, ridiculous.
There was a widely publicised case here in Perth not long ago when 2 13 year old girls (from an exclusive private school) made a lesbian video and sold it to some boys they knew for $5. The boys then showed it to all the other kids in their school.
The kids who watched that video probably got away with it. But what if they showed it to their 18 year old brother? He’d be a paedophile. It’s unjust and unnecessary.
I wrote a critique of the Rudd’s speech, (via the Australian) because it pissed me off so much.
If anyone is interested:
http://robits.wordpress.com/
Funk,
Your childhood attraction to every girl that had boobs isn’t the issue. Sex with a 15 year old does not automatically make you a paedophile even if it is against the law. A 15 year old is not generally prepubescent. And the status of the law was not what was in question but rather the status of public opinion. The public is right to have a low regard for those that rape young children. Where crowds have gathered to protest about a paedophile being in residence it is not about 17 year old kids that had sex with 15 year old kids.
let’s stick to the thread please. Enough about having sex/kids.
moderated out
sorry, lets stick to the topic, Jarrah, as I asked. Not interested in continuing this. Feel free to ask to start a thread on that if you really want to talk about it.
Hey, my last line WAS on topic.
But anyway: Anyone read the tax reform discussion paper?
moderated again :
Jarrah, will you please stick to the thread.
Yes, dear Andrea.
While it may be true that the Rudd government plans to cut taxes what it gives up it gets back with its planned carbon tax to be introduced after the next national election. The Prime Minister sees himself as international diplomat while the world sees him as a clown making pronouncements on world policy on behalf of a nation of 22 million people. Like a scene out of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in the backroom the labor union bosses decide with their ALP power brokers how the country will be run for the benefit of the labor union bosses and the ALP power brokers. This should be a void into which the Liberal Party could extend itself if it could decide what it wants to be when it grows up. The Liberal Party should take a radical step and become a strong advocate for classical liberal philosophy – individual freedom, free markets, free trade, freedom for employees and employers to contract for terms of employment, asset backed currency, abolishment of the the Reserve Bank, reduction in taxes and no new taxes, elimination of government regulation, strong private property rights, no climate change laws, no government sponsored or supported cartels just to provide a few ideas to the Liberal Party.
That would be tiptop if the Libs did do all those things, Jacob.
The problem is getting elected on radical ideas. Rudd proved, and Obarma is proving it, people LOVE ambiguous drivel. Stuff that sounds good to the ear but has no real substance is what wins vote. The best hope we have is Rudd arse-ing it up to the point where people think and demand better from their public servants.