Australia General Discussion

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Talk about anything to do with Australian politics right here.

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Out of interest, who elects the Leader?

Dave

The Liberal Party caucus will elect who succeed John Howard as leader of the Parliamentary Liberal Party either later this week or next week. Speaking of the Libs leadership race it's heating up! We now have three candidates, former Environment Minister and merchant banker Malcolm Turnbull, former Health Minister Tony Abbott and former Defence Minister Brendon Nelson.

At the moment the favourite is Malcolm Turnbull is the shortprice favourite at $1.10 according to the TAB. Brendon Nelson is the second favourite at around $4.00.

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Tony Abbott has dropped out of the Liberal Party Leadership race, just this afternoon. It's now a two-horse race between Malcolm Turnbull and Brendon Nelson. Most people are predicting a Turnbull win with Andrew Robb to be his likely Deputy.

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Should Baillieu be sent to Canberra, do you think? Imagine a Turnbull/Baillieu leadership team

You think Ted Baillieu's a good match for Malcolm, why not Robert Doyle. Didn't he have some success when he was leader of the Victorian Liberal Party

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They will probably lose in 2010, and then Turnbull might get a chance for 2013.

I concur with the statements of Hugh. But when will Abbott or Turnbull challenge Nelson for the leadership? Six months? 2 years? Who knows.

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Yesterday Kevin Rudd announced his Cabinet. I thought the Rudd Cabinet would have been a good one, considering he would be selecting it. I have been proven wrong.

He has kept Peter Garrett as Environment Minister, made Julia Gillard take on the responsibilities of being Education Minister as well as the important Industrial Relations portfolio and the worse mistake he made was selecting Stephen Smith to be the Foreign Minister. You think the new Opposition Leader and former Defence Minister was weak and ineffective wait until you see him in action. Brendon Nelson eat your heart out.

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Kevin Michael Rudd and his Cabinet will be officially sworn in as the new Government of Australia tomorrow, by the Governor-General Michael Jeffrey. It will be one day shy of the first anniversary of Kevin Rudd taking control of the Federal ALP, after he defeated Kim Beazley for the Leadership 49-39.

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Even though Kevin Rudd has only been Prime Minister of Australia for one day, he is thumping Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson in the polls. Nelson's opponent for the Liberal leadership, Malcolm Turnbull is also thumping Nelson too, with voters saying he's twice as popular than Nelson. Here's the results, from the Australian Poll conducted on the weekend.

Prefered Prime Minister:
Kevin Rudd (ALP)          61%
Brendan Nelson (LIB)   14%

Who should lead the Liberal Party?
Malcolm Turnbull        34%
Brendan Nelson         18%

Some interesting times lie ahead for the leadership of Brendan Nelson. 

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EL BUMPO

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also that Rudd's gloss has worn off.

I wouldn't be surprised if Rudd's gloss begins to wear off when his Government releases their first budget when Parliament resumes. However I highly doubt it. Even if the Budget is perceived as a bad one by some, the ALP will still have a commanding lead in the polls over the lackluster Liberals. This is reminding me of 1994 all over again (even though I was only 1). Hehe.

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Yay for Nelson! Into double-digits.

Did I just hear correctly? That's politically incorrect!

I wonder why the Coalition's support has gone up 4 points. Now it wouldn't just be about Rudd's plans to remove funds to carers and not leaving them in the lurch. I can't think of anything that the Libs have done right since the last poll.

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I never understand why they do polls so little time after the election of a majority government.

Nobody understands that young Skywalker. I wonder how big Prime Minister Rudd's ego is now. I'd say it's bigger than when he won in a Ruddslide. Damn Channel 7 and Kochie.

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EL BUMPO GRANDE

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I hope that the Australian media won't go nuts about Julia Gillard this time when Rudd's on his 17 day trip bonanza. It was terrible when the Australian media would not shut up about her because she was acting Prime Minister, when Rudd went to visit East Timor (I believe).

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I hope that the Australian media won't go nuts about Julia Gillard this time when Rudd's on his 17 day trip bonanza. It was terrible when the Australian media would not shut up about her because she was acting Prime Minister, when Rudd went to visit East Timor (I believe).

The novelty's worn off - it'll only be if something "big" happens.

I wouldn't be surprised if something big does happen. Has the Rudd Government introduced their new Industrial Relations Reform bill to Parliament yet? The only time I have heard Parliament mention the Governments new IR Reform bill was when Gillard would not shut up about Howard Government IR propoganda, which included mousepads ect. Though I have to admit that was quite amusing.

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The Preferred PM:

Rudd: 73% (+3)
Nelson: 9% (-1)

Poor Brendan. He's now back under 9% as preferred Prime Minister, should I be surprised? No. He's a terrible leader of the Liberal Party. Anybody who was leading the Libs at this time would be performing like Nelson in the Polls, though maybe slightly better.

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Absolutely, which is why I was and continue to be glad that Turnbull lost.

Looking back on it, it is good that Malcolm lost. Looks like the Nelson/Bishop team will be here to stay until the 2010 General. And I thought Downer/Costello was a bad mix for the Libs.

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Nelson to Fight for the Leadership

Federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson says he is determined to remain at the helm of the Liberal Party.

There has been increasing speculation about his leadership, which has been marked by poor opinion poll results.

There are reports of rising backbench discontent with his performance and a renewed push by treasury spokesman Malcolm Turnbull to unseat him.

Dr Nelson, in Melbourne for today's meeting of the Victorian Liberal Party, says he is here to stay.

"I am very determined and I will keep fighting and speaking up for everyday Australians, I assure you I'm going nowhere," he said.

He says he believes he can lead the party to an election victory.

"I've had people underestimating me for 20 years and it seems nothing has changed," Dr Nelson said.

He has been backed publicly by former deputy Liberal leader Peter Costello who says there is no backbench push against Dr Nelson.

"Not as far as I'm aware, I thought he put in a very good performance," Mr Costello said.


Sooner than I thought. Only time will tell if Turnbull does launch a challenge against Dr. Nelson. Either way it will be disastrous for the Liberal Party.

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He's like Stephane Dion.

Except Nelson is worse than Dion. I'm sure Stephane Dion does not get 9% in the polls as preferred Prime Minister, that's if in Canada they do have those sorts of polls.

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He's like Stephane Dion.

Except Nelson is worse than Dion. I'm sure Stephane Dion does not get 9% in the polls as preferred Prime Minister, that's if in Canada they do have those sorts of polls.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Canadian_federal_election#Opinion_polls

Dion's pulling pretty average, at 30%ish.

Thanks Xahar. Well there you go Brendan Nelson is worse than Stephane Dion. I wonder how long until Turnbull goes for the leadership? This will be worse than Peacock-Howard in the 1980's, nobody who takes over the Party will be able to swing 2.4% to win back Government.

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I heard Andrew Robb speak on the weekend. That man is a future PM.

Robb has a better chance at becoming Prime Minister than Brendan Nelson that's for sure, hell Tony Abbot has a better chance than Brendan .

The 2020 summit began today, thoughts?

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Nothing more than a PR stunt.

My thoughts exactly Smid. I don't think anything came out of the Summit, despite that we revisited some of the same ideas in previous years, like an Australian Republic.

Does anybody know how much the 2020 Summit cost? I cannot find figures for it anywhere .

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I think any accusations of wasteful spending from the Libs may backfire.

Oh it will backfire, anything the Liberal Party does from now until the next Election Day will backfire, even if they replace Brendan Nelson with Malcolm.

We're getting even closer to Budget Night! Bets that despite the Rudd Government stuffing it up thanks to Wayne Swan and Lindsay Tanner's fabulous monetary skills, they won't slide in the polls. Even if they do it won't be much.

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BUMP

Nelson fuels Budget Brawl

BRENDAN Nelson has vowed a Coalition government would slash fuel excise by 5c a litre and lift education standards by raising "embarrassingly low" entry requirements for teacher training courses.

And the Opposition Leader has also promised to reduce qualifying periods for capital gains tax exemptions for business owners planning retirement, to improve incentives for the small business sector.

Dr Nelson outlined the plans last night in his formal response to the Rudd Government's first budget, delivered by Wayne Swan on Tuesday and featuring $46.7billion in income tax cuts as well as tax increases on luxury cars and pre-mixed alcoholic drinks.

Dr Nelson savaged the economic blueprint as a fraud on the community that would increase taxes, put pressure on inflation and attack aspiration.

Dr Nelson said the Government had also ignored pensioners and retirees and masked its tax on so-called alcopop drinks as a health measure when it was, in fact, a $3.1billion tax grab. But the Treasurer, strenuously defending his budget, sought to inflame Liberal Party leadership tensions by attacking Opposition Treasury spokesman Malcolm Turnbull as "a pretend leader" who was trying to undermine his leader. Dr Nelson narrowly won the Liberal Party leadership from Mr Turnbull after Kevin Rudd won the November election. The former general practitioner has since struggled in opinion polls and attempted to use last night's speech to establish his policy credentials and bury speculation over his future as leader. In an impassioned speech in front of a gallery of supporters, Dr Nelson said Australians had elected Labor last year expecting it would keep its promise of new leadership, lower prices for fuel and groceries, and job security.

Instead, he said, the budget did nothing on prices of fuel and food and simply increased taxes for alcohol, cars and computer software, despite weeks of warnings from Mr Swan about the need to fight inflation.

"This is old Labor returning to haunt the Australian economic landscape," Dr Nelson said.

"This is an old-fashioned, high-taxing, high-spending Labor budget that seeks to punish those it does not like and discourage aspiration."

He said Labor put "spin ahead of substance", in contrast to the Coalition, which was able to make decisions. To underline the claim, Dr Nelson said Labor's move to deal with petrol prices now frequently above $1.50 a litre - appointing a petrol commissioner - was meaningless and that a Coalition government would act by spending $1.8billion to cut the 38.14c-a-litre excise on petrol by 5c. "By lowering the price of petrol and the cost of transporting goods, this 13 per cent reduction in petrol excise will also have a modest, but measurable, downward impact on inflation," Dr Nelson said.

The excise on petrol and diesel has been unchanged since February 2001, when John Howard scrapped six-monthly rises to reflect the rate of inflation.

Family First leader Steve Fielding, who for two years has been calling for a cut in fuel tax, said last night he was glad the Coalition agreed with him but that it should have acted when it was in government.

Assistant Treasurer Chris Bowen last night refused to say whether the Government would cut the fuel excise if its Fuelwatch scheme did not work to bring petrol prices down. But he said he expected the tax review being carried out by Treasury secretary Ken Henry to examine the fuel excise. It will also review the double taxation effect of applying the GST to petrol at the bowser, where it already carries the excise.

Insisting Labor was hammering aspiration, Dr Nelson said last night he would reduce from 15 years to five years the qualifying period for a waiver on capital gains tax on the sale of businesses by people about to retire.

And he attacked university teacher training departments as mediocre, promising to lift qualification scores for teacher training, boost teacher pay levels and require universities to appoint proven high-performing teachers as tutors. "All trainee teachers will be taught how to teach children using proven techniques including phonic-based instruction," Dr Nelson said. "They must also be taught and assessed in basic sciences, mathematics, English and history.

Dr Nelson said the Opposition would use its numbers in the Senate to oppose the higher taxes on pre-mixed drinks, known as alcopops, because it doubted Labor's claim that they were at the centre of a major binge-drinking crisis, particularly among teenage girls.

He said the Government's own National Drug Strategy Household Survey had found binge drinking among young women had declined since 2001. "This is nothing more than a tax binge falsely presented to Australians as something that it is not," Dr Nelson said. "We will oppose it."

The real answer to alcohol abuse was education, prevention and policing - not a massive increase in tax - and the Coalition would convene a summit of experts to discuss the issue.

Although Dr Nelson's office said on Wednesday night the alcopop tax was the only budget measure it was likely to attempt to block in the Senate, he last night added Labor's plan to lift the threshold at which people without private health insurance need to pay an extra Medicare surcharge worth 1 per cent of their income.

While Labor has insisted the threshold of $50,000 for singles and $100,000 for families was too low and proposes to lift it to $100,000 and $150,000, Dr Nelson said the move would encourage people to dump their insurance, leading to higher premiums.

He also said the Coalition would oppose Labor moves to tighten income tests for applicants for the Commonwealth Seniors health card.

Mr Bowen accused Dr Nelson of throwing money around like "confetti at a wedding". "The Australian people understand economic credibility," he said. "They understand that tonight Dr Nelson and Mr Turnbull threw around their money but didn't put forward one savings plan."


I must admit, I was quite surprised by Nelson's rebutal to the budget last night. For the first time in his ailing leadership, I saw Nelson passionatly rip into the Rudd Government about the taxation of "Alcohopops" (pre-mixed drinks) and the current teaching crisis.

I was also surprised to learn that Nelson can actually be funny. One point during his speech, Nelson said something along the lines of "We won't have another Summit, we won't have another Treaty (or something similar) in regard to Binge Drinking. Then he actually said, we'll block parts of the Budget in the Senate prior to the ALP taking control in June! Now that was the funniest part of his speech last night .

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Focus on pensioners or something...not the fact that Yellow is more alcoholic and will have less tax. Seriously...

Speaking of Pensioners Hugh, today at Flinders Street Station, a group of pensioners did what those taxi drivers did a few weeks back, took off their clothes protesting against their mistreatment by the Rudd Government's Budget. Apparently, a 69 year old man, did a striptease in the intersection between Swanston and Flinders Street.