BigBlog

Dams are around one third full, farmers are abandoning farms, the lower Murray lakes are going acidic, the Murray entrance is silting over.

And now thanks to Labor, we can now waste water again in Melbourne with the reduction of water restrictions in the lead up to a state election.

I think minority governments have advantages and challenges.

In a minority government policies will get greater scrutiny so there is minimal change of bad policies eg. Work Choices without a "no disadvantage" test.  

But the downfall is that any reforming policy will be much harder to implement. Look what happens to the Democrats after supporting the GST.

It is easy being independent when you are irrelevant, but say the government introduces a Carbon Tax which increases cost of living the independents would share the repercussion.   

The Greens will demand greener policies for their support, but now Labor will also require the support of independents and the greener policies may not be in their interest.

In many respects the coalition would offer less risk to the independents in the lower house and thus create a more stable government, but they would face increased challenges getting policies through a Senate where they would also need support of the greens.

The issue Labor has is what to do with KRudd.  Would KRudd micromanage his portfolio and would he leak if Labor did anything he did not agree. Would he try to work his way to the top again.

I think politics in this term will be way different then the last term irrespective of whether it is Gillard or Abbott who becomes PM.

I voted informal as I did not think either major party deserved to win government, it seems Australia has agreed with a record high informal vote and neither major party winning a majority.

I think this is the most appropriate outcome given the negative uninspired campaign. Now neither side can claim that they have a "mandate" and the most pleasing for me parties have not benefited for being dishonest, safe and poll driven.

Now with a minority government (of which-ever flavour) they will have to deal with independents and the Greens to get policy through.

I'm hoping parties have learnt that they should be offering policies, vision and hope like KRudd did in 2007.

While not a KRudd fan, and chickens were coming home to roost for him, I think KRudd approval rating would have bounced on resolving the resource tax and that KRudd would have performed better in the election especially in Qld.

I am so pleased that a populist, shallow, non-conviction government focused on spin and polls have reaped what they deserved.

Gillard has repeatedly stated that if Abbott is elected, then Work Choices will be re-introduced.

If we put aside Abbott absolutely denials, the coalition cannot get the majority in the senate and The Greens who will have the balance of power have ruled out Work Choices, the only possibility that Work Choices would get legislated is if Labor was to pass Work Choices in the senate.

So either Gillard is a blatant liar or she supports Work Choices.

"Abbott is a risk to the economy. " Labor.

It seems voters have a choice between Labor who has mismanaged programs and wasted Billions (not millions) and the coalition who according to their opponent may be a risk.

Lower House: Informal

Senate: Independents, minor parties then The Greens

Labor

. More talented team then Coalition

. Some good policies. NBN, Maternity

. Values spin more than substance

. Mismanaged economy, BER

. By far the leader in dishonesty

. Failure on Climate Change

. Turned off by negative ads.

Coalition

. Abbott is more honest, less spin and more a conviction politician

. I don`t agree with Abbott`s convictions

. Too old school conservative

. Failure on Climate Change

. Better on the economy then Labor, but that says nothing.

The Greens

. Have moved from being radicals to a more serious party with improving policies.

. Best policies on Climate Change as you would expect.

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I had intended to vote for the Independents, The Greens and put Labor/Libs last.

But there is no way I want my vote to end up with the dishonest and mismanaging Labor, nor the regressive policies of the coalition not ready or deserving of government. Had I been still in Deakin I may have voted for the local Liberal candidate, but in Menzies I prefer to vote out Kevin Andrews who makes Abbott look like a radical lefty. So the only logical vote, is Informal ie. No-one.

In the Senate, I would like to see independents like Nick Xenophon to scrutinise government legislation, but I would then preference The Green, over Liberals over Labor.

No matter whether Gillard or Abbott wins we will have one of the least inspiring governments. At least if The Greens gets the balance of power in the senate they can inspire the government to do more for the environment.

This week has not been about substance, policies or vision, but window dressing.

Gillard wants a debate on economics because she can spin a line that Labor saved Australia from recession. But she does not want to have a debate on Batts, Climate Change, BER, Boat people etc.

Abbott originally wanted a debate to be seen on par with Gillard, but now that he is in the run for PM he does not want a debate as the worm tends to favour Labor. Abbott wants more hall Q&A sessions which he is comfortable doing and where he hopes Gillard will cop criticism for dumping KRudd.

Bob Brown would like to get involved in any debate, but the major parties are resisting as they do not want people to consider The Greens as a major party.

Public debates serve a purpose, but I think it far more important that parties release full policies early into the campaign so that journalists and "experts" can also compare and debate.

When it comes to debates, I prefer the Town Hall type as the politician tend to tone down their slogans, negativity and spin in this forum.

 I find it ironic that the first lower house seat for The Greens is likely to be seat of Melbourne which of all seats in Victoria would have the least greenery.

You would think that a tree hugger or greenie would live somewhere green were there were actual trees to hug and where they could put their green thumbs to use.

It seems to me that The Green supporters are no longer just the environmentalist tree hugger type greenie, but now include the hypocritical greenies, those who "believe" in Climate Change as long as they don't need to pay for it and who love the consumer lifestyle. Then there are the young who think they are too modern and progressive for the boring major parties, well at least until they settle down with a mortgage and rug rats. Then there is the protest vote because you real party has upset you.

In the next parliament the Greens will have the balance of power, but with that stick there could also be a sting. When Howard had the power he introduced Work Choice mark 1 without safety net. The Democrats supported the GST, and despite the GST be responsible for our strong economy and now fully supported by all side of government, the Democrats were crucified, buried and cremated. (As Abbott would say). But maybe in a period where parties are visionless and lacking credibility the green ‘The Green' can add some direction and vision, not to mention add more colour to parliament.

The timing of the Labor launch speaks more of Labor then what was said.

Labor is strategizing that the launch will enthuse and bolster support and that they can surf this to the election.  This strategy has the added benefit that the public pays for 86% of Labor's staff rather than the ALP party.

If Labor had a good record and vision they should be espousing their policies and vision at the beginning of the campaign, not have a campaign of childish putdowns.

The only new policy was a Medicare rebate for rural GP's to use the internet for patients to consult with specialists. This is not a bad idea and is to be applauded, but then came the lies that this could only be done with the NBN. Rubbish. Gillard said GPs would use the Internet now and the NBN later. Hello!!,  the NBN is the internet. One does not have to connect every house to optical fibre at $5000 per house to enable a GP to communicate via the internet to a specialist. This is just deceitful. I communicate to colleagues over the net now using existing Wireless broadband.

Both major political parties are seeking new lows. What we have seen is government running party political advertising at public expense, then use campaign not to express their policies but the deride the opponent. Neither major party deserve to be elected.

Mr Swan says at every opportunity "We will get the budget into surplus 3 years early".

This is a very clever and tricky bit of politics. It implies the government is taking the hard measure to get the budget into surplus earlier then otherwise and that they are good economic managers.

But Mr Swan in coming to office, inherited a $20 billion surplus and no debt.

Now after 2.5 years, we have a $100,000,000,000 debt which is getting bigger and it will only in 3 years that the government will start to reduce the debt. It took the Howard government 10 years to pay off the Hawke/Keating debt of $120 billion including selling Telstra.

Australia did need limited stimulus for a quarter or two, but the vast majority of the wasteful spending was after the recovery.

I prefer the Labor broadband policy and to get a fast communication across the country, but I also see merit in the opposition model of competition after all the NBN was originally going to only be 8-12MBps in 8 years until a competing Telstra started to install 100MBps making the government NBN a joke.

It should be noted that the NBN is only beneficial to those NOT on the move. The oppositions policy would likely provide better wireless coverage and sooner.

Keating said we had the recession we had to have, now KRudd/Gillard spent up big saving us from a recession we were not going to have.

Gillard likes to compare us to USA/Europe, but we are Australia and thanks to previous governments have a strong banking, a booming economy and a booming China after our resources.

Labor having wasted money left right and centre, having racked up a huge debt and Gillard saying she would do it all again are claiming to be the better economic managers. As if!

If Swan can pull this off he should sell ice-cream to the Eskimos.

It was Abbott's opposition of the mining tax that help the coalition to get into a competitive electoral position, but he has not cornered himself into opposing even the compromised tax the big miners will accept. This means Labor has an extra $10 billion to pay off their debt and fund promises.

Abbott should have accepted the compromised mining tax and called it a "Labor Debt Reduction tax" to be reviewed once the debt was paid off.

KRudd was axed because of a drop in the polls. Labor admitted they had gone off track and KRudd was bagged for not consulting, poor decisions, loosing popularity.

Now that Gillard also suffered a drop in the polls after leaks, who has Labor gone to, but the likely leaker Super Kev.

Is this a case of keep your friends close and enemies' closer?

If KRudd was leaking against Gillard last week, who is he helping now? To show that Labor needs KRudd or may be bargain for a ministry of choice or a UN post.

You did!

Gillard is obfuscating the BER Waste by claiming that one 1-2% of the schools have complained.

If you manage a school that has been neglected by state (Labor) governments for 10+ years, then if you are then given a new building, would you be grateful? Would you care it was built at double the cost?

The questions Gillard is not answering:

• Would the school be better off if they controlled the $800k?
• If the school was happy with the $400k building, could they make use of the extra $400k? More teachers, resources?
• Ask voters if they would spend $800k for a $400k building and ask if they are happy that Gillard did with their money
• Would the school spending the $800k locally been a better stimulus then the money going into the big pockets of government contractors and prefab building factory?

Gillard has said a little waste is to be expected in the rush to save jobs. But the waste was in the BILLIONS not millions. Because the building was not done locally only the government contractors benefited. (Private schools were able to control their money and got greater value).

Possible Gillard has presided over the biggest waste in Australia's history.

The government has asked Medibank Private to pay hundreds of millions in dividends to pay for ALP spending.

In this term of government the rates have increased significantly.  The Health minister has to authorise any rate increase to ensure that the increases are necessary. The government and Medibank Private always says that the cost of medical insurance has increased. Now we find that Medibank Private, a government enterprise, has made huge profits on the back of largely the elderly.

I believe the government charged with ensuring we get value has been ensuring Medibank Private is profitable to gain a higher resale value and in the meantime to spending the profits for political gain.

Electronic health records sounds good in the 21st century, but the Abbott want to dump them for more hospital beds. Having electronic records without beds may mean hospitals can more efficiently tell you need treatment but you have to wait longer to get the treatment.

Having Super clinics with various services in the one centre seems a good idea, but when the services are already available nearby I like Abbott and doctors question whether the funds would be far better off boosting the existing services then competing with them.

The ALP is wearing out the slur that Abbott took money out of Health as Health minister. nbsp;To my understanding Abbott increased federal spending by at least CPI but he did not match the states who with the GST provided by the Howard government could afford to increase their spend on hospitals. Abbott should be given credit for enabling the states to spend more on Health and the ALP should be demonised for opposing the GST at 3 elections.

KRudd promised to take over hospitals, but reneged and ended up proposing to increase spending to hospitals by extorting 15% of the GST the states use to fund hospitals. ALP we didn#39;t want the GST is now extorting the states to get the GST so they take credit for spending more on hospitals.

The KRudd plan would have 3 levels of government managing health, Abbott plans to streamline this by given even more power to local hospitals.

While KRudd failed on his promise to take over hospitals, Abbott is now planning to take over 100% of hospital funding without taking the states GST. I would like to see where he is going to get the money for this.

It seems the coalition has trumped KRudd#39;s Health plan, but KRudd announcement to join the federal campaign sucked much of today#39;s air time.

Abbott says he changed his view maternity leave, this may be true, but his Maternity Leave policy seemed more about getting into the good books of the female voters after his objections to the abortion pill while Health minister. I still have many concerns about a Maternity Leave.

I see the benefit for the new parent to continue getting paid and being able to go back to their job when they are ready. For the employer, they cannot employ a fulltime employee because the mother could return, so they need to train someone parttime/casuel telling them they will lose their job not because of Work Choices but because they need to re-employ the parent. Employers may make do with existing staff working more hours just to find out the parent does not want to return back to work anyway. This must lead to hardship on other employees and a reduction in full time jobs.

I also do not understand why someone on a salary of $150k should get maternity leave paid at way higher rates than someone on $40k when their costs one would expect to be similar. Employers prefer to retain productive skilled employees, legislating maternity will not improve productivity as Abbott suggests.

Ironically, there is an inverse relationship between the number of babies and ones standard of living.

Who's benefit is it for an employee to have children. The parents get to live on by propagating their genes to another generation. The government wants new tax payers to fund our future pensions and to provide growth, but this growth will then add to climate change, diminish resources etc.

If the goal is growth, Australia could accept more of the tens of thousands of people in refugees camps. Chinese would love to come here so they can have multiple children. Is paying maternity leave for someone on $150k salary somewhat indulgent and dare I say a tad racist.

What of the parents who focus children before career. They may be in greater need of the funds then someone on $150k, they actually raise the children rather than child care centres.

If we are to have a Maternity Leave scheme, I prefer the governments model which basically pays everyone equally.

Who would have believed 12 months ago when a smug KRudd with high approval and gloating over Coalition turmoil that we would now find the ALP panicking and Abbott starting to look Prime Minister material. Not me.