O.k so some are saying 400Billion is not even a lot of debt which I tend to disagree with.....What i'm trying to understand though is where and how did Labor get us into all that debt? Where exactly did the money go apart from all the gov. co and healthcare jobs in QLD that apparently doubled in size over 10 years?
very good question. If it's anything like the Qld State Labor Govt, we'll be finding out where the cash went for years to come... like this; a $6.1M winter olympics ski jump in Brisbane a tropical city which has 240 sunshine days per day. http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/...-government-axed/story-e6freoof-1226397650637 or this; a $700,000 dollar rock art sculpture that no one will ever see http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/...nd-national-park/story-e6freoof-1226459300134 or this; a $1M upside down elephant..paid to a New Zealand artist http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/ent...ammoth-makes-minister-mad-20121016-27pfs.html
In regards to the rock egg mentioned above... This acutally made me laugh out loud. "Labor placed this pile of artfully arranged rocks on an offshoot of a 56km walking track which takes experienced bushwalkers four days to cover," Mr Dickson said. "They spent well over half a million dollars of taxpayer funds on an international artist to 'enhance' a remote area with art that is designed to eventually disappear."
Are you really trying to justify spending $1m on an upside down elephant and $700k on a big granite egg 54km down a hiking track in the middle of nowhere? It would have been much better spent on arts programs etc.
The scary thing is that labour voters actually justifying this craziness. It just shows how in need of overhaul our education system is in.
Pfft. Of course not. W.r.t. William Blake quote, art is everywhere and millions of Australians do it all the time without needing to subsidise yet more of the stuff that noone wanted. People positively spew "art" out of every orifice constantly.
A fellow I used to know told me that every time there was a change from Liberal or ALP in government, the airforce would have to refurbish the PM's Jet . This would mean changing the seat and carpets from red to blue then back from blue to red and so on. Cost in the 90's, $50000 The question is not where the ALP spent the money but what have State Governments done with the super contributions paid in by their state public servants..It goes into to balance the state budgets to fund all their promises. In this election so far we have had promises to fund Brookvale oval, the Bondi Surf club, The Broncos training ground, Flood proofing Qld $500 million for a major road upgrade in the electorate of Boothy, a $7.5 million Leisure Centre in MP Pyne electorate. A hospital in the NT , $250 million for the car industry and $10 million for stroke victims and I am sure that there are plenty more to come with 2 weeks left in the election campaign. I'm just waiting to hear how much to SA to build some more inferior subs in SA. Where do they pull all this $$$ from? Oh! and I forgot to mention the $ to be spent on Manus and Naru and then we have to buy the Indonesian fishing boats. Peter Costello go tit right, now is not the time to be introducing some of these new social welfare schemes.. The Gonski and the NDIS should be implemented at a slower rate. If the Chinese economy goes down so will the revenue collected by the Australian Government be it red or blue, then the cuts begins along with the excuses. It wont be long now and when and if the blue team get in then it will be up to the supporters of the red team to rubbish the other side. Both the red and blue team leaders have to hide their dirty linen from all us voters whom they consider to be sheep. Regards Errol 43
It'd be cool if one party could say that they'll not introduce any new major spending policies and instead focus on getting back to surplus and paying down the debt. At the moment I reckon people would actually vote for that, I've noticed more people are worried about the economy these days. Not just us crazy people lol.
No more debts... but no more surpluses either. They shouldn't collect one more cent than what is needed.
I'm sure they'd argue they need more than what they currently get. EDIT: The problem isn't that they spend to much, it's that they don't tax enough :lol:
I still can't believve how retarded our "representatives" are :/ So much for an economics degree meaning anything lol.
Okay, no offence but: (a) $400 billion is not a lot of money when you compare it against out $1.4 (annual) GDP and our very low tax-to-GDP ratio of (about) 22% of GDP which is roughly the 5th lowest in the developed world (i.e. the 32 countries that have things like running water, electricity and indoor toilets). Anyone living in a major Australian city who "owns" their own house is more than likely in a much worse budgetary situation than our federal government is in terms of debt-to-income ratios, (b) Where the money went is a matter of public record and you can read the Treasury documents online if you really care that much about the subject, (c) The short version is that the money was spent on two things: (i) stuff that would prevent the country from slipping into a recession, and that only includes things that prevented the country slipping into recession and not things that would be of long term benefit to the nations such as roads, ports, broadband, railways, etc. The purpose of Recession Avoidance spending was to avoid a recession, nothing more, nothing less. The cost to the nation of a recession was more that we spent avoiding it. There are dozens of internationally respected economists and institutions who have endorsed our government's spending initiatives during the Global Financial Crisis as having a material effect on avoiding a recession or depression. (ii) Continuance of middle class welfare because the Babay Boomer generation make up nearly half of the registered voters in this country and they're nearing retirement so no political party then or since is game enough to wind back the tax benefits that are handed out to people who's circumstances just happen to match up with those of the typical Baby Boomer.