Treasurer Swan

[Jovial Monk]

"The salary component for each of the 11 board members. . ."

[Jubial Priest]

Clearly you did not read the context nor the rest of the article, but continue to attack the messenger rather than the message. It shows your duplicitousness.

[Rainbow Moonlight]

You think men are responsible for their wive's ethics and behaviour then mantra- not the women themselves?

[mantra.]

You think men are responsible for their wive's ethics and behaviour then mantra- not the women themselves?

Of course not Rainbow, but Rudd is our PM and he is pretending that he's outraged by executive salaries. Of course attention is going to be focussed on his wife. You would think at least before he starts spruiking about extreme capitalism - he would make sure his own backyard is clean. I agree with what he's saying, although I have never agreed with the outsourcing of the job network. It has been a huge rort right from the beginning and Rudd's wife made her millions from it. That's fine - but after all she's married to the PM who purports to have socialist leanings so long as it doesn't apply to his own family. If he was your typical bloke next door no-one would care what his wife did.

Monk - it makes no difference whether it's her company or not - she still accepts massive dividends as she owns 97% of the company. It might be split 11 ways - but she receives 97% of that split and the other 10 split the remaining 3%.

[Rainbow Moonlight]

It was Howard's legislation that made it possible for her.

We agree Rudd is not responsible for his wife's actions.

But I also point out to you that we do not know whether he approves or disapproves them. if he did disapprove them then would it really be appropriate for him to single her out publicly - doesn't he as a loving husband who respects her right to make her own choices owe her better than that? I don't agree at all that he should lose his right to comment generally on a situation in the economy that is topical because of recent events simply because you disapprove of his wife's past actions.

[mantra.]

if he did disapprove them then would it really be appropriate for him to single her out publicly - doesn't he as a loving husband who respects her right to make her own choices owe her better than that? I don't agree at all that he should lose his right to comment generally on a situation in the economy that is topical because of recent events simply because you disapprove of his wife's past actions.

Yes you have a point there Rainbow, but it's obvious that she's going to be targetted by the opposition for her capitalist leanings. I suppose you could look at Rudd at best as a new age man, but he's still making a lot of mistakes. When a country is in debt - it isn't a solution to create more debt and that's what this government is doing. It may not affect our generation too drastically but it's going to leave a huge burden for our children. Many of us assumed that he would be curtailing Howard's excesses in massive unaudited funding to elite & religious schools, millionaire super schemes and at least bring in some sort of means testing - but he's just adding onto Howard's porkbarrelling and creating deficits too quickly. We don't know how far this recession is going to take us and he should be exercising more caution.

It has been proven already that the Xmas handouts didn't work.

[Rainbow Moonlight]

No. It has been proven that they had a stimulative affect on demand in the pre christmas and post christmas period. His first home owner grant scheme has also been very effective. And under Howard our trade deficit grew massively higher than ever before in our history. Rudd is putting the federal government in to debt, in an appropriate manner, in order to stimulate the economy and try to secure as many jobs and companies as possible. The IMF has praised the approach in Australia and said Rudd got it right. They said tax cuts would have been much less effective. Hopefully the impact now will be cushioned sufficiently through these two stimulus packages to take us through to when the infrastructure spending starts to have an effect and recent improvements in the Chinese economy way wend their way through to our businesses.

[Jovial Monk]

Exactly. The bonuses, which go to people who missed out badly under our worst-ever PM Howard and so go to people who will spend it keep things going. Then there is the "quick" infrastructure which will see schools get some badly needed improvements then the big COAG infrastructure spending wil kick in.

Rudd/Swan/Tanner are much better than their predecessors if only because they listen to Treasury etc.

Now all this spending does mean the govt has to borrow money but it would have had to anyway as unemployment grows meaning tax receipts go down and social security payments grow! There is a lot of nonsense spoken by idiots like Sheepy about "our kids' kids' kids' grandkids" having to repay this debt. Crap!

As the world and Australia recovers and the middle class welfare is wound back the govt will repay the debt.

We are in a much better position than nearly every country. China will increase infrastructure spending as part of its stimulus package and so our miners can keep a good part of their workforce.

[Jovial Monk]

Swan acts on excessive executive pay.

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/s ... 21,00.html

In this case on golden handshakes. Despite what stupid UTurnbull said, it is hard to change legislation to let shareholders votes on exec pay be subject to compulsory shareholder vote.

[Hebe]

At least he's trying. What else would work, I wonder?

And will the Libs try and block this too? Bet they do.