Author: Kev

LNP to win 90 to 100 seats is my gestimate based on reading opinion polls and trends. I sincerely hope it is in that order as the ALP need to be forced to go back to basics and work out whether they are for Australia or just the unions. Rudd needs to be sent to Coventry for his repeated lying about the Coalition’s $70…$10…$0 billion black hole, particularly after Treasury, Finance and the PBO said publicly that the whole thing was a lie. He still kept on repeating it. He repeatedly lied about cuts to health and education when the Coalition quite clearly stated that was’t the case. At no stage did he tell us how he was going to fix the huge debt he is about to leaves us with but every hour, on the hour he demanded Coalition costings. He insulted us Queenslanders by resurrecting Beattie to stand in Forde.  Beattie set the state up for bankruptcy and didn’t even have the guts to face the electorate but handed over to Bligh who worked harder on our debt levels nealy crippling the state. Rudd, we remember Beattie only to well and I trust the voters in Forde remember him as well. He’s not going to win and even if he  holds his seat of Griffith he will not be ALP leader for long. Watch Shorten and see if he is still standing after the inevitable night of the long knives. The ALP brought Rudd in because he was a ‘great campaigner” even if he wasn’t a great leader.  Well it is clear now that not only is he a poor leader but he is a poor campaigner as well. He has demonstarted that he has nothing going for him and the sooner gone from public life, the better. Anthony Green predicts 89 seats to 59 but I live in hope.

LABOR has declared victory over people-smugglers after the arrival of two lightly-loaded asylum boats in the past 24 hours.

“We have broken the back of the people-smuggling trade,” Immigration Minister Tony Burke said

Wow! Only two lighlty loaded asylum boats in the past 24 hours! Oh well, thats it then – fixed…back broken! No, hang on, I seem to recall during the six years of the Pacific Solution, just 24 boats arrived carrying 1129 asylum-seekers and that was too many. Long way to go Burkie but never mind it won’t be your problem next week. You can sit back and watch the problem solved by grown-ups.

Dan Harrison The Age’s Health and Indigenous Affairs Correspondent says;

The Coalition has backed away from a pledge to spend $1.5 billion on unmanned drone aircraft and has vowed to take advice from the top brass before going ahead with the purchase Joint Strike Fighter aircraft.

No they haven’t! Abbott said they would wait until forming government should they be elected on Saturday and then take Defence advice as to whether the Global Hawke was the best option. He said defence had told them that there may be better options and that it would be ill advised to make very expensive decisions whilst the Coalition were in still opposition. That’s adult talk Dan and might I suggest you stick to Health and indigenous affairs as you can’t seem to understand plain english or Defence. I note that Abbott clarified the sitiuation with DFRBF military superannaunts. For years our superannuation has been fixed at just CPI rises which has little bearing on the cost of living and some time ago gave me an increase of $1.12 a fotnight. The Coalition, on the other hand, have undertaken to adjust the pensions of all those ex-servicemen 55 and over to the more generous formulae based around growth in the CPI, Male Total Average Weekly Earnings (MATWE) and the Beneficiary and Pensioner Living Cost Index. The ALP, on the other hand, has undertaken to do something similar, but only for members over 65 and in doing so Rudd warned Air Vice Marshal Peter Criss; “Don’t bag us. If you do, we’ll pull up the drawbridge and you’ll get nothing.” Five and a wakey!

Rudd on LNP Costings

‘There is an error of $10 billion in the claimed $30 billion of savings the opposition released yesterday,” he said. ”This is based on advice from the departments of Treasury and Finance and the Parliamentary Budget Office.’

Ms Wong adds

”$1 in every $3 that [the Coalition] counted as savings doesn’t exist”.

Rudd again

”What we’re doing today is calling Mr Abbott on his truthfulness. This is a $10 billion fraud on the Australian people.”

But no, it wasn’t. In an unprecedented rebuke to their ministers, late on Thursday, Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson and Finance secretary David Tune issued a joint statement disowning the figures released in their name.

”At no stage … has either department costed opposition policies,” they said, implying that their costings were based on assumptions supplied by the government.

”Different costing assumptions, such as the start date of a policy, take-up assumptions, indexation and the coverage that applies, will inevitably generate different financial outcomes.”

So, the government gave the Treasury figures it wanted the Coalition to present and ask for costings.  They did this before the election campaign even started and the figures given Treasury had no bearing on what the Coalition has now tabled. The moment Rudd said there is a $1o billion dollar hole he lied.  He knew it, Wong knew it and Bowen knew it. They all lied and it has blown up in their faces. All this from a government that has given us a $30 billion deficit and hundreds of billions of debt and all they can find is $10 billion dollar hole that they themselves created. As Abbott says  “They’ve got all their figures wrong and now they are doing the same with ours”