1. Spend your whole time in opposition harping on about a broken promise by your opponent, and the sneakily attempt to break one yourself in the first three months of office, only to be forced to backflip on your backflip. Furthermore, this comes after promising that there would be 'no surpises' in government.
If you have read the Gonski report and you did not believe in centralising government you would not support the whole package. The point is the coalition has agreed to meet the funding commitments of Gonski. I support that. I don't support the centralisation model. Get the report. Read it and lets talk.
2. Spend your whole time in opposition banging on about debt and how the Labor is in bed with the Greens, and then do a deal with the Greens to remove the debt ceiling, allowing you to raise debt even further.
Labour/Green are currently holding up $15B in Coalition cuts and $5B in Labor cuts which were put in play before the election. I for one want the cuts. Paying interest in bad debt shits me to tears. Some of Labor's spending was okay. A lot was wasted. I want the debt cut. The boat is turning the rudder is at full lock and Labor and the Greens are largely in the way. As to increasing debt, let's wait and see where it is at the end of the Govt's term. If it is not less than say this PEFO the Coalition should get its arse kicked.
3. Talking about how your foreign policy would be aligned to Jakarta and not Geneva, and then make a a diplomatic crisis with Indonesia worse through clumsy diplomacy.
The diplomatic crisis was caused by another Government's act of incompetence and arrogance. It was also caused by one man's treachery against his own country and the data seems to be suiting his own agenda.
When there are 250M people living in poverty north of Australia I want to help them financially/intellectually but I want to keep on eye on them. It seems it would have been stupid to promise not to do it again. In the good old days diplomacy took time. In this post MTV era the younger generations want it all now in the 24hr news cycle. That's not how it works. If you could go behind closed doors you might learn that the dealing going on will traverse a number of topics and will ultimately save face for the Indonesians and Australia. Sadly the media here and overseas is a rabid do that must be fed. the Indo media and its Australian contributors have made a story out of a scrap. Good luck to them.
4. Convince voters you will turn back the boats, and then get rejected by Indonesia when you try to do so.
I don't know that too much turning back has happened. Both sides of the political divide are claiming the number of boats has declined. Both attributing it to offshore processing. Rudd's backflip helped. But do not forget he dismantled something that was being managed acceptably well. During the Coalitions last term in Government we had an orderly migration of refugees from camps because there were fewer arriving by boat. The people at the front of the queue were being processed. I support that and would like to see an orderly process again. Wouldn't you?
5. Launch a military operation to stop people getting to Australia by boat, only to have a boat reach Christmas Island undetected by Australian authorities. Then claim that the ocean is big and the boat is small. And the boats are still coming.
the ocean is about 75% of the Earth's surface. It is a big place. The people who protect our shores are looking for all sorts of boats and planes. Not all of it is human cargo. We still have a big illegal drug problem.
Further, boats have always slipped under the radar. I remember a couple landing on the Queensland coast a few years ago.
6. Claim Australia is open for business, and then reject a takeover offer by a foreign firm.
I had concerns about the GrainCorp deal. ADM has had its problems overseas. There was a lot of information to digest there. But Queensland objected to the sale unless some control of a few ports was cut out of the deal. The logic behind this seems to go to out Sovereignty.
One deal being refused out of 131 is about 0.7% refusal rate. If I wanted to buy into Australia I would take those odds. Anyway, increasing the percentage holding is not such a bad resolution. The real issue to be revealed is whther GrainCorp needed to be sold because there is something the company has hidden from the market.
Finally, why don't Holden and Qantas so a capital raising from the market. I don't want to pay more taxes. I want to pay less. I want my hard earned in my pocket. Yes a few thousand might find it hard to find another job. Fortunately we have an army of older workers who are retiring. Holden might close in 2016 but the workers have about 3 years to retrain/re-skill (maybe go to night school like I and many other have done) with government assistance and move on.
This government is new. Your complaints are trite. Politics is not about winging and on this forum it should be a battle of ideas. Not a battle of wit/flames or moans.
I am happy to discuss again if the thread pushes on and I have time.
