We have become a nation of individuals with a sense of entitlement, and are prone to narcissism, jingoism and chauvinism. What's more, there's no political leadership of any colour to turn this around, writes Bruce Haigh.

Brace yourselves: things are not going to get better in Australia, at least not for some time.

It is to do with our collective moral fibre - or lack of it - as exhibited by our politicians, public servants, captains of business and industry, senior military officers and the media. And the reason is selfishness, greed and immaturity.

The last budget, roundly condemned and rejected by all but the top end of town, was a poorly disguised attack on low-income Australians and those on welfare. Talk of Joe Hockey introducing a "moderate" budget is an admission that Tony Abbott's scorched earth policy has failed. To compound matters, no real alternative vision has been offered to voters, either by the Coalition or Labor.

The collapse of Australia's mining exports will see the economy decline in the absence of other revenue streams developing to overcome the shortfall. Australia is moving into recession and there is nothing the Reserve Bank can do about it, armed with only the crude instrument of adjustments to the interest rate. Insufficient provision was made for the future by the populist Howard government.

The same lack of forethought and planning has given rise to the current crisis in health care and education. Enter any Medicare office in a major centre and witness the confusion and anger. Talk to the staff to see how services and payments are being reduced. It is nonsense to argue a case that costs are spiralling out of control compared to 10 years ago. Together the costs have risen along with the population and proportion of aged people needing care.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-24/haigh-if-we-were-ever-the-lucky-country-we-arent-now/6411240

See also:  if it quacks like a duck and poops like a duck, it could be a robot...

 

Bad policies and embarrassing behaviour have become so routine that they are able to hide in plain sight. The default rightwing settings of the political class see to it that dissent is massaged to the margins, writes Tim Dunlop.

The general dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Tony Abbott is palpable and this is reflected in the various opinion polls. It is even felt within his own party and, as we know, he only just survived a number of recent attempts to remove him from the job.

Dissatisfaction with the PM extends to the Government he leads, and again, this is reflected in opinion polling.

To even mention various ministers - Hockey, Pyne, Andrews, Dutton - has become a shorthand way of talking about incompetence, from issues to do with the budget, through to Pyne's bizarre designation of himself as "the fixer", to Dutton's mishandling of the Medicare co-payment.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-23/dunlop-winning-by-losing/6416020

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From Robert Manne:

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Abbott described his mission to destroy the Gillard carbon-pricing legislation as “a pledge in blood”.

When he was elected, Abbott proved true to his word. Tim Flannery’s Climate Commission was instantly dismantled. Without the necessary numbers in the Senate, the Climate Change Authority was marginalised. Protracted attacks were launched on the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Several denialists were appointed to key advisory posts. Maurice Newman, who had called for the “perpetrators” of the climate-change “madness” to be punished, and who thought we might be facing a new Ice Age, became the government’s chief business adviser. Dick Warburton, who had recently led an anti–carbon pricing business front and who described the conclusions of climate science as “unsettled”, was given the task of reviewing the Renewable Energy Target.

Almost unbelievably, the Abbott government now fought a bitter fight, on behalf of the coal-fired electricity corporations, to reduce the amount of renewable energy Australians would use in the future. It openly sabotaged the solar power industry. Abbott sang the praises of coal, as “good for humanity”. He was appalled by its “demonisation”. When he opened a new coalmine in Queensland, with his characteristically defiant, jovial, anti–political correctness verbal swagger, he called it a “great day for the world”. Most importantly, as soon as the government managed to corral a majority of votes in the new, rather feral, Senate, which convened in July 2014, Gillard’s carbon-pricing legislation was repealed.

The government’s anti–climate change action wrecking ball was not restricted to Australia. In Canada, Abbott advocated a fossil-fuel alliance. He refused to send a minister to Warsaw for a major United Nations climate-change conference. He personally declined an invitation to attend a major New York meeting on climate change convened by the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon. The Abbott government lobbied the OECD Export Credit Group, against the United States and the United Kingdom, in favour of financing new coal-fired power stations in the developing world. It sought to keep climate change off the G20 agenda in Brisbane. Abbott’s ministers and their cheerleaders in the Murdoch press were outraged when US president Barack Obama spoke to students at the University of Queensland about the dangers facing the Great Barrier Reef. Even British Conservatives now regarded Tony Abbott’s climate change views as “flat Earther”, “baffling” and “eccentric”. Australia was now not merely the developed world’s leading per capita carbon polluter. It was almost universally acknowledged to be the world’s most recklessly and brazenly irresponsible nation with regard to action on climate change. How many times must it be said? On this question the future wellbeing of humankind depends.

In October 2006 in the Monthly, Kevin Rudd outlined three international ambitions for his country – foreign-aid generosity, asylum-seeker humanity, climate-change responsibility. Rudd was not a hypocrite, or at least not in the ordinary meaning of the word. His government began by taking actions or making promises on all three fronts. All Rudd’s hopes, however, collapsed; beginning during his time in office, and afterwards spectacularly so. Why this has happened and whether the trajectory can be reversed are matters for reflection and debate. But the melancholy fact that the lucky country has in the past few years steadily and cheerfully forged its present character, and embraced without shame its present reputation, as the developed world’s most comfortable, complacent, privileged, self-absorbed and selfish nation, seems, to me at least, beyond serious dispute.

Read more: http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2015/may/1430402400/robert-manne/broken-faith-politics

 

And a morally broke nation, should be added to the list... All this is due to Turdy Abbott and his desire to fill the pockets of the rich. Though things have gone arse up a bit for him and his bunch of deceitful idiots, he still gets the support from the MMMM — the mediocre mass media de mierda, led by an unrepentant Uncle Rupe. 

If Faith in Politics was a generous trait of Rudd, Faith in Politics of the same kind (Catholic) under Turdy Abbott is showing the worst side of religious fervour, as well as massive intellectual deficiency in favour of greed. 

Note that NOT ALL THE PEOPLE of Australia are following Turdy Abbott's road to his selfish crapdom. At least 55 per cent of us want HIM GONE as soon as possible. 

 

The deterioration in Australia’s economy has been deeper and more rapid than even the most pessimistic forecasters predicted before the last election. The worst outcomes have been in those areas where Coalition attacks were most vicious in Opposition. As observers await Joe Hockey’s second attempt at a federal budget, Alan Austin assesses the damage.

TWO HIGHLY DISTURBING OBSERVATIONS can be made regarding Australia’s abysmal economic decline over the last 18 months:

First, the most monumental failures have been in those policy areas where Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey were most arrogant and most malicious before the last election.

Second, the mainstream media has failed utterly to report either the dire economic deterioration or the political hypocrisy.

A report in Crikey on Friday examined all 20 key indicators of economic health. Of these, seventeen have worsened since the last election.

Deficit and debt

Before the 2013 poll, both Abbott and Hockey took every opportunity to denigrate Australia’s relatively low budget deficits and modest borrowings as a “debt and deficit disaster”, or “debt ... spiralled out of control to a record level”, or Labor’s “six years of record deficits, record debt ...”

By April 2014 (according to ABC Fact Check) Abbott and Hockey doubled the deficits for the forward estimates period over the levels bequeathed by Labor. Since then, revenue losses and increased spending suggest the deficits may have deepened further — perhaps as high as three times Labor’s projected levels. We await confirmation of this in next week’s Budget.

Net debt in Australia left by Labor in 2013 was just $178.1 billion. At the end of March this year, less than 18 months later, it had blown out by 40.4% to $250.1 billion, with projections for more.

Debt is still nowhere near worrisome levels, but is moving swiftly in the opposite direction to that promised.

View image on Twitter

Infrastructure

Tony Abbott in Opposition repeatedly promised

“... to be an infrastructure prime minister who puts bulldozers on the ground and cranes into our skies.”

He denigrated “Labor’s mismanagement of infrastructure”, despite impressive achievements documented by Infrastructure Australia and other authorities at home and abroad.

So what has Abbott achieved so far?

According to Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data (Table 3, 'Data' sheet, column K), public sector engineering construction fell a staggering 19.46% in 2014 from 2013 levels. This is the greatest year on year decline since the ABS series began in 1986.

Infrastructure development is down more than a quarter from 2012 levels, the year Labor’s Anthony Albanese was awarded Infrastructure Minister of the Year by the London-based publication Infrastructure Investor.

Now let’s assess Abbott’s arrogant assertions here [IA emphasis]:

“The Coalition’s plan to restore our economy means lower spending, lower taxes and higher productivity to produce higher economic growth.”

Lower spending?

Outlays have in fact blown out enormously compared with the prudent years of Labor under Hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard. A recent IA analysis of the recent 40% debt blow-out listed 40 wasteful spending decisions.

The Washington-based Heritage Foundation downgraded Australia’s economic freedom score in 2015. Economic freedom was remarkably high in Australia throughout the Labor years, ranking top in the OECD and third in the world behind Hong Kong and Singapore.

The 2015 ranking, however, saw Australia slip 0.6 of a point and lose third spot to New Zealand.

The foundation highlighted declines through 2014 [IA emphasis]

'... in investment freedom, freedom from corruption, and the control of government spending.'

Lower taxes?

Finance Department figures for March show the Government is on track to collect $362 billion in tax revenue this financial year. That is 6% above the actual collection of $341.6 billion in 2013-14. That, in turn, was 4.7% higher than the $326.4 billion in the last full year under Labor, 2012-13.

Wages, in contrast, rose only 1.3% in 2014 and 3.0% in 2013. This is clearly not a low tax regime.

Economic growth?

Abbott repeatedly promised to

'... significantly boost economic growth, which is the foundation of a better life for everyone.'

The rate of gross domestic product growth through 2014 was in fact just 2.5 per cent. This is below 2.7% in 2013 and well below 3.1 in 2012.

Significantly, Australia has now – for the first time since the onset of the global financial crisis – fallen behind many comparable countries, including Canada (2.63), Sweden (2.7), USA (3.0) Norway (3.2) and New Zealand (3.5). And well behind regional trading partners, Indonesia (4.71), Malaysia (5.8), Philippines (6.9) and China (7.0).

Interest rates

By Hockey’s own rhetoric, this is a major fail.

He said in 2013:

“If interest rates come down today, it is because the economy is struggling, not because it's doing well.”

 

That was when the rate was cut from 2.75 to 2.5 per cent — where it remained for 19 months. Within six months of Hockey taking charge it fell to 2.25 and was cut again to 2.0 this week.

Hockey cannot have it both ways. If a cut from 2.75 to 2.5 signals a “struggling” economy, then two cuts in quick succession – down to 2.25 and then 2.0 – must signal disaster.

Unemployment

Shortly before the last election, Abbott told a Sydney press conference that “unemployment was marching towards 800,000” and

“.... we will tell you how much better than them [the Labor Government] we will do."

So how much better are they doing?

According to this week’s ABS figures, the number of unemployed people seasonally adjusted in April was 769,500. That is 81,200 more people than were jobless in the election month. It is closer to 800,000 than at any time during the Rudd/Gillard years — even during the depths of the global financial crisis.

Other economic indicators which have worsened woefully include real gross domestic income, job participation and economic freedom.

Those which have deteriorated disastrously include gross domestic product per capita, household savings, building activity, business confidence, terms of trade and value of the Australian dollar.

The only major variables to have maintained the trajectory of the Labor years are inflation, labour productivity and Australia’s credit ratings. The latter, however, have been maintained after stern warnings.

Can this hapless regime diminish even further the economy which until recently was the envy of the world? The answer, tragically, is almost certainly — yes. 

Next week’s budget will offer further data on how, how severely and how quickly this may happen.

But it is highly unlikely any accurate reporting of this continual decline will appear in mainstream news media. They don’t want to believe it is happening. And they don’t want readers to believe it is happening either.

Such is Australia’s doom.

read more: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-hypocrisy-of-joe-hockey-at-the-halfway-mark,7688

 

See toon at top.

 

It’s hard for the wealthy to mobilise around their declining living standards. Their options are limited. When so much of your wealth is spent avoiding the social structures on which solidarity is based – education, the health service, our crap dentistry of international renown – who do you complain to? Who are you going to stand shoulder to shoulder with? Your outrage at the world is limited in its expression to your power as a consumer. That’s why the incredibly angry, bright pink man yelling at a BT helpline is such a staple of modern British sitcoms; as a guardian angel against feelings of impotence and injustice, BT can’t really help – even if it does answer the phone.

So there’s the stain of self-interest barring entry to the language and power and solace of unity. There’s also a huge amount of shame involved in being in debt or struggling, especially against the backdrop of assumption that privilege is somehow the result of a lifetime’s sound financial decisions.

There’s a public pressure not to mention declining living standards, because that would be to insult people whose living standards have declined to the point of being unable to eat. There’s also a private pressure, since the status of the affluent is, of course, rooted in the affluence – and if one breaks ranks to say there’s actually quite a lot of anxiety involved, it makes everyone look bad.

Oh, and one other huge impediment: nobody wants you for an ally when your complaint is that health insurance has gone up three times as fast as wages. Had housing been added to the Telegraph’s basket of middle-class goods, they would have seen that, for the older homeowner with a mortgage, the rise in other prices is offset somewhat by the very low interest rates. But they would also have seen that the “middle-class” renter, or even the renter who actually is middle class, is suffering rent rises with no respect to wages, insecurity of tenancy, crummy conditions and life-changingly large proportions of income going on housing costs – very similar conditions, in other words, to everyone else.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/24/middle-class-living-standards

 

See toon at top.