Voting intentions

[hypnodoc]

Politics, always an interesting one.

All Of The Politicians Lie To All Of The People All Of The Time

I don't think it matters who gets in now, they've sold the joint down the creek anyway. It will however be very interesting to see if the next liars and cheats can lie and cheat and steal and fudge statistics and crawl up yanks bums any better than the present mob if they lose power. Australian politics what an absolute complete and total joke, similiar to this apparent democracy we are supposed to live in.

What I want to know is where did all the vast uncountable wealth of this mighty nation of ours go, I didn't spend it, and yet on paper we are now statistically worse off than Argentina was in 1974, and guess who Argentinas best friends were back then. But I guess the little people will keep copping reduced services and lower incomes just as they always do. I'm a bit more fortunate than they are but man I feel sorry for them sometimes

[tongueboy]

....lot of right wingers here!!

[Turbo6man]

  sharkey said:

  Mondie said:

Many things Howards does and the lies that come out of his government, misleading parlimaent etc sh*t me to tears.

BUT

There is no disputing their record of economic management over the past 7 years or so. Low unemployemnet and one of the healthiest econmies in the world has been maintained through the rise of global terrorisim, SARS, 9/11, Afghanistan & Iraq wars, Asian currency crisis etc. (l am sure l have missed a few)

Can labour keep it up?

Yep. As much as I think they are a bunch of d!cks, I think we would be worse off under the so-called opposition.

Mondie> luv your work :o

Sharkey> Hope you are one of those too young to vote in the next election - or any election :o:k24t:

[3rdTurbo]

  Lumpen Proletariat said:

I sincerely didn't think it would be this high either.

Just one thing on those 'Low Unemployment' figures that we have now. If you work 5 hours per week on "work for the Dole" you are no longer unemployed in the governments eyes. Even pensioners HAVE to do it, so if you take that into account, the unemployment rate is almost double at about 10% and youth unemployment is through the roof!

There are lies, damned lies and statistics.

Fair call Lumpen - employment stats.

I'm in the Finance game, and I have immense difficulty finding suitably qualified beancounters in my team. There seems to be a lot of jobs for the incompetant ones and a grad with 3+ year experience salaries are now 30-40% higher than 5 years ago (Sydney mkt). So I agree with Turbodewds view on unemployment.

The current level of unemployment should be compared to that of 1991-93 when we had the "recession we had to have". This is about the time when I started my career, and I do not forget how hard it was to get a good job opportunity. University entrance points were also at all time highs during this time as well, due to the limited employment prospects.

Obviously, this account should not be taken as being reflective of the whole labour force.

Keep putting forward your views guys.

[plonky]

A lot of people have either forgotton, of are too young to remember how the Whitlam Govt started the whole decline in this country.

Apart from sending us broke and taking years to recover economically, his Government (and I use that term very loosely for that imbecile) ushered in a whole new era of 'My Rights' and 'Ima Whinger' which sounded the death knell of Common Sense.

Hawke and Keating did wonders.....18% upwards interest rates, mass unemployment, massive welfare spending etc etc On the international arena, Keating acknowledged the dictatorship in Indonesia as legitimate, allowed the East Timorise to be subjugated etc etc

Man Boobs Latham and Square Bob Brown Pants would be a disastrous alliance if they toppled a Government (that has its faults) that has sound economic management and is not run by ideologues within it's Party. Common Sense has gained a reprieve under this Government.

[DallasQLD]

Plonky:

This is some of your best work! :lol: :lol: :lol:

Your right though. I have a very good memory - When we got married we were paying $1600 a month for our mortgage and we had only borowed 70k.

Dont ever forget 18%.........................

BTW most of you would have XRT's with rates like that. You would all be driving corollas and old ones at that!

[jetute]

  plonky said:

A lot of people have either forgotton, of are too young to remember how the Whitlam Govt started the whole decline in this country.

Apart from sending us broke and taking years to recover economically, his Government (and I use that term very loosely for that imbecile) ushered in a whole new era of 'My Rights' and 'Ima Whinger' which sounded the death knell of Common Sense.

Hawke and Keating did wonders.....18% upwards interest rates, mass unemployment, massive welfare spending etc etc On the international arena, Keating acknowledged the dictatorship in Indonesia as legitimate, allowed the East Timorise to be subjugated etc etc

Man Boobs Latham and Square Bob Brown Pants would be a disastrous alliance if they toppled a Government (that has its faults) that has sound economic management and is not run by ideologues within it's Party. Common Sense has gained a reprieve under this Government.

agreed, started going downhill early to mid eighties (hawke) and kept on declining... in the early eighties we were ranked top 5 in the world for standard of living. After hawke and keating we toppled down to (if remeber corretly 18) and coming back from that is difficult.

All parties have their faults, that said I think that the opposition would have to bend over backwards to get my vote.

[plonky]

Ideology strikes again

Hawke" By 1990 No child in Australia will be living in poverty"

Yeah, just send the economy into freefall, jack up the interest rates, have a doctrine of "politics of envy" so people don;t feel bad about maligning those that are successful from hard work and Hakes' statements starts to make sense

He sent virtually everyone into economic poverty!

[siccar]

  3rdTurbo said:

It's no accident that unemployment is at near record lows and that Australia has been resilient to the global economic downturn. Without economic prosperity (not greed), funding will never be adequate to support services, support the arts and the underprivilaged.

3rdTurbo,

It's suprising that the Liberal website would give themselves a big pat on the back.

"It's no accident that unemployment is at near record lows".

This is true but a sad truth at that. There is less Full time employment now than there was when Labor was in. There is however markedly higher Casuals in the workforce and because they work more than 10 hrs a week they are classified as employed. Unfortunetly the sad fact is that casuals do not acrue benifets and a large number are grossly underpaid which brings their standards of living down.

Many casuals tend to miss out on Sickness and Super benifets. Casual wage rises over the last 6 years has failed to even stay on par with the CPI.

In terms of finances, well. We only needs to look at our current account defecit performance over the last 10 years.

John Howard has failed to protect Australian companys from being purchased by foreign investors. ( I assume I do not need to draw up a list of companys)

John Howards power has only come off the backs of the wealthy and old who are in general are out of touch with society.(not all though, ooh I'm gonna regret saying that one me thinks!).

Please do not get me wrong though I have little to no faith in Labor and the greens are gonna be in bed with Mark Latham now as well.(Peter Garret)

[Lumpen]

Hawke and Keating? Greed got them, they forgot who they were and who they were meant to represent. Theres been no real big Labour man since Ben Chifley all those years ago. Even Whitlam was a paper tiger. It ended with the Catholic Rats of Beazley Senior breaking away for fear of commies....

I will not defend Hawke and Keating because I do not believe they can be defended: privatisation, floating of our dollar, deregulation of banks, all economistic ideals, not for 'TRUE' labour men.

Italian FineWool suits? Bah.