What do you think is the most important issue at the next election?

Just interested

 

It would great to have a discussion about various policy DV, but unfortunately you get dragged into silly little pedantic games! Lets just hope this thread actually gets us discussing factual potential as opposed to blind cynical speculation!

Clear vision for Australia's future, which means investment proposals are essential. Optimum NBN speeds is an important issue for Australia's collective and productive job creating potential and global competitiveness. Gonski is another long term investment essential. Education is the basis for all productive societies, and obviously the better the education the better our job prospects and global competitiveness.

I think we need to drop our expectations of the economy and what we want from it......It is pretty obvious for the umpteenth time that the 'world' is struggling economically, which means we will go through some struggles. I certainly wouldn't be supportive of crazy all out austerity measures. From my perspective it is pretty obvious these measures are having 'LONG TERM' negative implications for European nations. We need the world to be healthy economically, but we can't do anything substantial with an economy that only makes of 1% of the worlds economy! We just have to ride it out as best we can and build for the future. That's my honest opinion DV!

 

So put forward an actual policy or issue pertaining to the election and we will discuss it. Your blind speculation and ramblings don't constitute policy or issues.

 

The economy.

 

I don’t know why you clowns even start topics for a rational debate, when you stick your heads in the sand of denial, upon reading the first sentence not compatible with your own agendas.

Stop being a forum toll!

 

If Ted Cruz can legally be President (he was born in a foreign country).

 

What about the economy?

 

It is simply staggering that the dumbarse and backward people of Australia have once again allowed politicians from both political parties to so easily deflect away from the REAL issues surrounding Australia and the Australian people future prosperity.

These backward dumbarse people are more interested in Kevin Rudd cutting himself shaving, than Kevin Rudd allowing hundreds of millions of prime agricultural Australian land to be sold off to foreign companies and foreign governments.

When these backward dumbarses are paying $15.00 for a loaf of bread made and imported from Indonesia or Malaysia, because Australia no longer owns any land to grow its own wheat to make its own bread, then these backward dumbarses will really have something to whinge and whine about.

As the old adage goes: not much point closing the gate after the horse has bolted.

There are massive internal problems within Australia that desperately need to be addressed, such as: manufacturing, sustainable agriculture for the Australian population, employment, Nation building projects, building and buying assets that will give the Australians people revenue.

The only industry that is keeping Australia from becoming bankrupt is its natural resource sector, and anyone to say different, is an absolute idiot.

 

They will probably import the bred premix into Australia rather than the bred loafs if they are not doing so already, not sure if there are any flour mills left operating in Australia.

 

Who is best at not leaving huge federal debt to be paid off by the grandchildren, who is least likely to stuff up the implementation of policies & how do we make structural changes to the nations economy to keep what is left of Australia's manufacturing industries.

As far as the manufacturing industries are concerned a Manufactured Goods Retail Tax, on top of the GST, to replace all taxes on local manufactures would give the local industries a leg up & help maintain tax receipts should Australian manufacturers disappear entirely.

 

Why the heck are we talking about the election?

 

Having a representative who was more interested in the people who voted for him than the money that will end up in his pocket.

 

This is the Australian sub-forum & a federal election has been called.

 

So I suppose on that basis, we need who is best at selling public assets!

 

Right, no use discussing the NBN with someone who thinks dial up is still an advance technology!

Yep, let's become complacent....exactly what the howard government did, despite the best opportunities to establish Australia's future ever in our history!

Not sure what you are trying to say, it's sort of vague. I can see what you are saying about less income.......less tax. What I'm saying is that while we are in the great position we are we need invest massively to ensure when the world economy sparks again, we'll be in the best position. This is exactly the current governments approach. Hawke, Keating were visionaries, now Gillard and Rudd are obviously embracing the same good economic management.

A quick glance at the last 2 liberal govenments. Howard as treasurer under the fraser government took over when debt was 0 under Whitlam, yep there was zero debt. Howard as treasurer left the following labor government with a 40 billion dollar debt, after overseeing Australia's highest ever interest rates and worst ever inflation. Labor after Hawke and Keating obviously increased this debt as a consequence of the other massive world recession in the early nineties that we all thought was localised to Australia. The Howard government took over in the greatest ever world economic upturn of all times and sold sh!t loads of assets but did absolutely ZIP for nation building! No one can tell us what howard did for our country "BUT".....KEEP OUT THE BOATS.....LMAO. His way of dealing with Australia's future was to cut the working conditions of working Australians.....Howard eat your heart out, here comes phony abbott!

 

Could our rising debt level be a hint?

 

How could anyone miss such an obvious point? The question was "Who is best at not leaving huge federal debt to be paid off by the grandchildren".

Why is that too hard?

 

What do you expect from people who have never done anything with their lives? The "mentality" of the dependent, has infected too much of the Australian community. How can a union lawyer be expected to properly fill positions that others study for a lifetime to qualify for? Holiding your hand out, or extortion / corruption, dosen`t take much talent, all it needs is a low moral code.

 

Another constructive post ...

 

So what you are saying is that around 50% of Australia, or more precisely around 100% of welfare recipients and around 40% of the others are mental deadbeats who do not deserve to live in Australia. What you are saying is if we don't vote LNP we are morons. It is people like you who turn me off conservatives, small minded bigoted people who are in my honest opinion are the ones who should be put on leaky boats and send out of this wonderful country they want to use, rape and abuse.
If I get booted, goodbye and good luck to you all............................................

 

Yeah. Now I look stupid. I keep forgetting the world doesn't revolve around the US.

 

Well for me it is paying down the debt.

We do not want to reach as point where the United States is and have adebt which is at least 4 times bigger than our federal budget, which means we can not pay the debt off.

I think the NBN is a waste of money at this point in time. I have no problem with the policy in general but at a time when we need to tighten our belts faster and more comprehensive internet access is a luxury we can not afford.

All elected officials should be seen to be involved in the burden of paying off the debt as well. A salary decrease and a elimination of perks would be a start.

And an elimination of the current foreign aid structure. If Australia is going to be isolated as a refugee sancturay by the UN then we should be able to forfeit our other foreign aid obligations, fold the asylum seeker/refugee policy into our foreign aid and initiateour resettlement option anywhere else but Papua New Guinea.

But to answer the question in the OP, paying down the debt!

 

I’m becoming more amused at the generalised stupidity of the Australian people who believe the utter garbage that comes out of the mouths of these rancid politicians.

Have these dim-wits ever considered for a moment, that Australians might not have been in debt for $200billion or even needed to borrow $200billion if the Australian people still owned their own assets that generate massive revenue like:

Commonwealth bank
Communications - Telstra
Airline - Qantas
Airports
Ports
Roads - tolls
Our own Natural resources

These dim-wit Australians have never considered that these scum-bad politicians have sold this country into debt to prove they can financially manage something they obviously cannot, because the country is always in debt and someone always gets slugged with a tax. If this country was operated as a private business in the private sector, these self-serving, leaching, scum-bag politicians would have all been sacked for incompetence decades ago, and new managers found to replace them.

The sheer wealth this country has generated in natural resource and agricultural exports over the past 40-50 years should have seen sidewalks paved in gold, but we now have a country almost bankrupt with $200billion debt, and not a asset to our name. To date, the NBN is a white elephant; generating nothing of significance, but these scum-bags have been squandering hundreds of billon over decades, and want us to believe a thirty billion investment in a rickety internet scheme is the best they can offer in five decades of nothing.

These scum-bags have NO intentions of building anything for Australia or the Australian peoples future prosperity, except future prosperity for their own bank accounts, and that has been proven over the decades, because they have not built a thing, only sold assets.

In Australia foreign sales are not noted unless they exceed $244m or in the case of the USA $1001m. last year Cargill, a privately owned US family company has bought the prized Billabong station near Wagga Wagga through its Hedge Fund, the Black River Asset Management Group (an unlisted Cargill family company). They paid around $9m for the property. Given that Cargill already dominates beyond the farm gate in our beef and wheat exports, the wealth created from these assets do not stay in Australia. If this was an Australian company the ACCC would limit its dominance in the local market place. Under the rules of withholding tax in Australia, foreign buyers who borrow off shore or use off shore consultants as expenses to purchase and run business here, pay only 10% withholding tax on expenses paid off shore. This means profits from these assets are not circulated within the Australian economy as they go off shore before profits are declared and tax paid on profits. Unlike public companies, private companies are not easily scrutinized and $millions in profits are siphoned off Australian shores before tax. When foreign companies/ countries buy our assets we do not have access to the profits derived from those assets.

The Greens party have known about this for the past 6 years, and they have advocated their continuing support for the ALP, because they care more about keeping themsleves in power, than the sale of prime Australian agricultural land to foreign companies and foreign governments. Don't ever tell me the Greens are a good group of people, they are a bunch of common mongrels with their own agendas to fill their own pockets with Australian tax payers gold.

 

Not sure who you are confusing me with, I have an ipstar satellite internet connection & it is very slow at some times of the day. The dial up we used to have would start running at 18k bits/second & slow down to 9k bits/second, the ipstar was a big advance but often not able to watch U-tube.

But the question remains how much more useful will fiber to the home be for most families than fiber to the node. And will that extra amount of usefulness be worth the extra cost??