The media should come down like a ton of bricks on Tony Abbott for accusing the Labor government of "class warfare"... It's a cheap inaccurate jibe...

Someone should ask Tony Abbott why it's a ''class war'' when a government provides support to those on middle or lower incomes but, not a ''class war'' when the Howard government allowed wealthy individuals to deposit a million dollars into their superannuation funds (''Abbott's vow: I can save $50 billion'', May 11)? Not a ''class war'' when the gap between rich and poor increases ad nauseam? Are these ''classy wars''?

Ted Keating Tallai (Qld)


A ''class war''? How precisely does this ''class war'' manifest itself? Hordes of the unemployed and low-income workers storming the streets of Vaucluse armed with flaming torches and pitchforks, hurling petrol bombs through the dainty, stained-glass windows of random mansions? What utter nonsense.

Ross Sharp Toowong (Qld)


Tony Abbott's cry of ''class war'' will resonate with anyone who has made the most cursory examination of US politics. It is the inevitable battle cry of the political right in the US, whenever anyone proposes a progressive political reform requiring taxpayer money. The cry of ''socialism'' is never far behind. I hope that the nationalist in Tony Abbott will inhibit further use of the Karl Rove playbook.

Joe Weller Lewisham



I held my breath waiting to hear the roll out of policies that would deliver economic growth. Teaching foreign languages in schools? The opposition certainly has redefined the art of making itself into a small target.

Deirdre Mason Balmain


Mr Abbott promises us that under a government he leads, 40 per cent of year 12 students will speak a second language within 10 years.
However, if 10 years ago the government of which he was formerly a prominent member had not abolished the Keating government's Asian languages programs, we already might have reached that target. Back to the future with Tony Abbott?

Geoff Saunders Jamberoo

Tony Abbott has announced plans to have 40 per cent of year 12 students speaking a second language within a decade.
Has he thought about the cost of training the thousands of graduate teachers needed to teach these languages, let alone providing lecturers to teach the university students?
And that's not even getting on to preschoolers being exposed to a foreign language.

Joan Brown Orange


Tony Abbott is forever trapped in the white, middle-class image of an Australia of the 1950s.
There are millions of Australians who, because of their backgrounds, speak just about every language.
We need to improve the teaching of English to these people and make such classes free.
Ted Hemmens Dee Why


Tony Abbott may need to become bilingual himself.
He has exhausted every hyperbole available to him in the English language.

Maureen Moss Beecroft


While I applaud any move to increase the abysmal number of enrolments in foreign languages at the HSC, I would like to remind readers of the even more appalling state of mathematics enrolments in this country.
According to the most recent figures from the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute, only 10.1 per cent of students are taking advanced level mathematics at year 12 - essential for engineering, computer science, actuarial studies and physical sciences, while only a further 19.6 per cent are taking intermediate level mathematics - essential for biological and other sciences.
And 20.3 per cent are doing no mathematics at all.
This is not a spike but the result of a long-term downward trend that is showing no sign of improving.
We are preparing fewer people for a technological career than we are for multilingualism.

Peter Brown Director of first year mathematics,school of mathematics and statistics,University of NSW


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/abbott-does-not-speak-our-language-20120511-1yidf.html#ixzz1uceYzstP


Gus: as a linguistic and a mathematic expert I can vouch that Tony Abbott is an idiot... May I say that in regard to the appalling rates of students taking up mathematics and engineering, the commercial TeeVees are at fault by creating the concept that "having a better voice" is the  crap we all need... Very few of these prime time shows give an inclination of scientific endeavours... Even that appalling new Andrew denton show is hell bent on "creativity with words, with little substance, mathematically or otherwise... Loopydom awaits us and the North Shore is a leafy illusion of heaven...



Harry Mansson (Letters, May 11) suggests that the Prime Minister this week has made the choice at the next federal election ''much easier'' for those who live north of the Harbour Bridge.
There are six electorates that stretch across the north of Sydney. Only three times in history have any of these elected a Labor candidate. These representatives held their seats for a grand total of seven years. It is quite clear that the voters in these electorates made up their mind decades ago. Pretending anything the Prime Minister does, good or bad, is going to sway these electorates in any direction is quite absurd.

Wayne Lawson Glenwood


It seems that Julia Gillard's poke at Tony Abbott's ''north shore-ism'' has brought out another north shore characteristic, that of having ''thin skins'', if the reaction by your correspondents is anything to go by (Letters, May 11). As a left-leaning, Green-voting, basket-weaving, chardonnay-sipping
resident of the inner west, I'd say ''get over it'' and wear the label with pride. Although with tongue firmly in cheek, my sip resembles more of a slurp.

Michael Knapp Camperdown


I love living on the north shore.
I love the trees. I love the hills and valleys. And I particularly love being close to the sea. I always like to remind myself - and my children, but they never listen - how lucky we are to live here. And I try not to kid myself, this is not the real world.

Phil Bradshaw Naremburn


Aren't we a sensitive lot? I grew up on the north shore, at a time when it was probably more egalitarian than it is now, and I remember constant references to ''westies'' and ''rubbernecks''.
I also remember pointed specific criticisms of certain western Sydney schools and their students. As ugly as it is, I think ''class warfare'' has been practised by many for a long time.

Brenton McGeachie Queanbeyan West


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/abbott-does-not-speak-our-language-20120511-1yidf.html#ixzz1uch7gwWf

See toon at top... And by the way, this government as well as the previous "Liberal" (conservative) government, is giving welfare to the mining companies to the tune of 2 billion dollars a year with a discounted tax on the diesel fuel they use... Go figure...

...

However, on the whole, Swan has managed a very difficult balancing act far better than most people expected: the long-promised surplus is there (on paper at least) and it has been achieved with a minimum of pain and quite a useful reforms thrown in: the initiatives for disability insurance and the new dental scheme are especially worthwhile. So he, and the government which propelled him to it, deserve credit.

But of course they won't get it. It is an iron rule of politics that once you have got yourself into a deep hole, anything you do, no matter how well intentioned, is only ever seen as a desperate attempt to dig your way out of it. Hence, the budget has already become, in the eyes of the majority who have already abandoned Labor, just another cynical ploy to buy back votes with taxpayers' money.

It's playing the class war card, an impression reinforced by Julia Gillard's silly and unnecessary reference to Sydney's North Shore. It's setting the billionaires against the battlers, when everyone knows that they are normally absolute bosom buddies. And no one has ever done it before, claims The Australian, lying through its fangs. And so on and on. If Swan and his colleagues had hoped that with this one bound they might be free, they were kidding themselves: there are an awful lot of hoops to jump through yet.

But they can take some brief comfort from the fact that Tony Abbott's vacuous diatribe in reply has generally been dismissed with even less enthusiasm. Yes, it included one good, if recycled, idea: get more Australians to learn Asian languages, a promise of Kevin Rudd's made in 2007 but never implemented. But apart from that it was little more than sustained abuse occasionally interspersed with voodoo economics.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4010030.html?WT.svl=theDrum

From Noam Chomsky

The developments that took place during the 1970s set off a vicious cycle. It led to the concentration of wealth increasingly in the hands of the financial sector. This doesn't benefit the economy - it probably harms it and society - but it did lead to a tremendous concentration of wealth.

On politics and money

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle. The legislation, essentially bipartisan, drives new fiscal policies and tax changes, as well as the rules of corporate governance and deregulation. Alongside this began a sharp rise in the costs of elections, which drove the political parties even deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector.

The parties dissolved in many ways. It used to be that if a person in Congress hoped for a position such as a committee chair, he or she got it mainly through seniority and service. Within a couple of years, they started having to put money into the party coffers in order to get ahead, a topic studied mainly by Tom Ferguson. That just drove the whole system even deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector (increasingly the financial sector).

This cycle resulted in a tremendous concentration of wealth, mainly in the top tenth of one per cent of the population.

Meanwhile, it opened a period of stagnation or even decline for the majority of the population. People got by, but by artificial means such as longer working hours, high rates of borrowing and debt and reliance on asset inflation like the recent housing bubble. Pretty soon those working hours were much higher in the United States than in other industrial countries like Japan and various places in Europe. So there was a period of stagnation and decline for the majority alongside a period of sharp concentration of wealth. The political system began to dissolve.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/201251114163762922.html

'Publicly, their leader talks mining stocks down, privately, they snap up the investments,'' Mr Combet said.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/hypocrisy-call-over-carbon-tax-20120531-1zkt7.html#ixzz1wUfr6qiD

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It's obvious that the opposition members want to loose money to bring themselves down a couple of rungs on the class ladder and join the real battlers... yeah pull the other leg...

See toon at top...

Washington, DC - There is a renewed drum beat in the media about the coming crisis in both the United States and elsewhere of an ageing population. The story goes that we will have too few workers to support a growing population of retirees - scary stuff. While this is probably good grist for the Washington cocktail party circuit, it is not the kind of thing that normal people need take seriously.

The idea that we should be troubled by the prospect of a stagnant or declining population is almost laughable. This is like an overweight person being worried over the fact that they have lost 20 pounds. Under most circumstances this is good news.

At the most basic level, the demography gang is trying to tell us that we are running out of workers. Really? Is that the problem we see in the United States with our 8.2 per cent unemployment, in France with 10.0 per cent unemployment, or in Spain with an unemployment rate of more than 24.0 per cent? Regardless of where we look, the problem is too many workers for too few jobs. If many of these workers suddenly chose to retire, what exactly would be the problem?

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/06/201261393935318924.html