The Rudd -vrs-Abbott Debate

[Jovial_Monk]

The 50m was just something Rudd said after someone made a population prediction for 2050—there has been no discussion as to what an ideal population is. That gives the Greens a chance to talk about sustainability. But their fly them all in non policy is open ended and that is not sustainable!

No, everyody was NOT against the Malaysian Solution, only the refugee industry and the two conservative parties of the LNP and the Greens! The UNHCR, for example, was FOR the Malaysian Solution.

Yes, some would be returned to Malaysia—there does need to be a deterence to getting on a boat!

[Rorschach]

Face it The Greens are hopeless when it comes to border protection and boat people.
Hanson-Young, Bandt and Milne are absolutely clueless.
Let's flood their suburbs with these people if that's what they want.
Bleeding heart morons.

[Rorschach]

One of the most popular lies labor says about Abbott one that they rerun year after year after year... is that Abbott ripped $1b out of hospitals when he was in government?
KRuddy brought it up again at the election debate. but then we all know he is a pathological liar.
So here we go with... Liar liar pants on fire... yet again.

Kevin Rudd's claim is false. It is just another Labor lie.

They claim that Tony Abbott will cut "to the bone" spending on health and education.
Kevin Rudd in the debate said: "That's what Mr Abbott did when he was health minister, when he took $1 billion out of hospital funding for the states at a time when he had responsibility to oversee that expenditure," Rudd said.
they are in fact weasel words, twisted in an attempt to smear and misconstrue what really happened. It's a lie with a long, long lineage. Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan, Penny Wong, Nicola Roxon, Tanya Plibersek, Lindsay Tanner, and Kevin Rudd have all repeated it.

Labor campaign leaflets have read:. "Tony Abbott cut $1 billion from health and hospitals. Don't let Abbott cut health funding again."

Yet the facts are... in the 2003 budget.

The government delivered not a cut in hospital funding (as Rudd says) or a cut in health and hospital funding (as Labor says) but an increase in hospital funding for the next five-year intergovernmental agreement, because health, after all, is a State responsibility too. The increase was around $1 billion less than foreshadowed a year earlier, but it was an increase nonetheless.

The 2003 budget papers explained the increase in funding for public hospitals was less than had been foreshadowed partly because "more services are being provided in private hospitals following the introduction of the government's 30 per cent private health insurance rebate".

Soooo... it was an increase, not a cut. Under the new agreement, states were offered “up to an additional $10 billion to help run public hospitals,” but instead of receiving up to $43 billion as had been foreshadowed over the five years they were offered up to $42 billion.

Another point Labor dodge, is that Abbott wasn't the health minister at the time. He was the minister for employment and workplace relations.

Abbott became health and ageing minister on October 7 2003, five months after the 2003 budget and one month after the last of the state and territory health ministers signed up to the new agreement.

Kay Patterson was the health minister who stared down the states in the bitter and protracted dispute, a fact Rudd tacitly acknowledged on Sunday night debate. As I said he used convoluted language to say Abbott took "$1 billion out of hospital funding for the states at a time when he had responsibility to oversee that expenditure".

Abbott didn't set up the agreement that was worth $1 billion less than expected. He merely presided over it.

In fact under Abbott there were increases in the health budget. Statistics compiled by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show that under Abbott, commonwealth funding of public hospitals climbed 4 per cent in 2003-4, 7 per cent in 2004-5, 4 per cent in 2005-6 and 6 per cent in 2006-7.

Tony Abbott neither “took $1 billion out of hospital funding for the states” nor presided over a cut.

Even Politifact rates this claim as FALSE. It is a huge lie and a personal slur aimed at abbot. I hope Labor gets their butts kicked over it.

[Neferti]

The sooner the Greens go, the better. Bob Brown was the only one who had any interest in the Environment, initially. Kate Da Costa (Robertson) looks very Butch to me, Mantra. Are the majority of the Greens Pollies Gay? Not that there is anything wrong with that! Why not just vote Labor? At least that way your vote will count.

[Rorschach]

Smile, you're on candidate camera
August 26, 2013
Paul Sheehan
Sydney Morning Herald columnist



Critics of the federal government say it has achieved little in six years, but it has achieved much. Yet in the 2013 election campaign it is not talking about this central, defining achievement - the extension, expansion and reinvigoration of union power - even though a large section of the electorate, the unions and the public service, supports this shift in the balance of economic power and will vote for Labor or the Greens.

The silence about this achievement is part of a much larger pattern. The government is not running on its record. The Prime Minister is not focused on his achievements. He is running a campaign built on fabrications and future glory. He has been caught lying, without compunction, on multiple occasions. This is not even the most insidious mischief.

Then there are the outright lies by Rudd, which he keeps repeating even after they have been discredited.

The government has manipulated the official statistics. It has compromised the reputation of the Treasury. An example of the endless spin cycle is the manipulation of the unemployment rate, a basic measure of the economy and thus, indirectly, a measure of the government's performance. The official rate is 5.7 per cent. It has been trending up for a year, from 5.2 per cent, a 10 per cent rise in 12 months. The real unemployment rate is higher, about 6.2 per cent according to a study by Andrew Baker of the Centre for Independent Studies. And higher still if you really wanted to look at it.

Baker found that more than 100,000 job-seekers had been moved out of the unemployment ranks by shifting them into training schemes. ''An astonishing 360,000 unemployed people are classified as non-job-seekers,'' Baker wrote in his centre's monograph. ''The number [in training schemes has] skyrocketed from 62,500 in 2009 to 150,000 in 2012 … People on welfare who are not required to look for work will stay on welfare longer.'' He estimates that if the unemployed who are classified as ''non-job-seekers'' was included in the unemployment baseline number, the rate would be 6.2 per cent.

Even the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) finds something is amiss with Australia's unemployment data, noting recently: ''The non job-seeker population is so large that it needs more analysis and attention.''

Not good, considering that when Rudd came to power in 2007 the official, uncooked, unemployment rate was 4.5 per cent. Despite a resources boom and $300 billion in government deficit spending, the unemployment rate has risen about 37 per cent under Labor.

Manipulating the unemployment rate is a subtle lie. There are unsubtle lies, also funded by taxpayers. The government has spent $30 million in the run-up to the election on a saturation ad campaign stating that boat people who destroy their documents will never be settled permanently in Australia. It is a fantasy. Since Rudd announced that boat people will be sent to Papua New Guinea and never see Australia, his ploy has collapsed. Three thousand boat people have arrived since then and most are being warehoused in Australia. Based on Labor's policies, they will spend years in the Australian legal system at an average cost to taxpayers of roughly $200,000 a person. Madness.

Then there are the outright lies by Rudd, which he keeps repeating even after they have been discredited: the Coalition does not have a secret plan to increase the GST. Tony Abbott did not strip $1 billion out of the hospital system. The opposition does not have a $70 billion deficit in its costings. The Liberals did not do a secret deal with News Corporation over the national broadband network. Those arriving by people smugglers' boats will not be sent to Papua New Guinea and never reach Australia. Millionaires will not be the primary beneficiaries of Tony Abbott's paid parental leave scheme. The price of Vegemite is not going up 50¢ a jar.

And the woman in the Labor TV ads saying she does not trust Abbott is not a concerned citizen. She is a professional actress working off a script, another cog in the giant spin cycle. Unfortunately for Rudd and Labor, the millions of dollars spent on that TV campaign has been more than offset by a real civilian making a real protest about Rudd's conduct and character. A classic ordinary Australian, Brisbane make-up artist Lily Fontana, used her Facebook account to make a spontaneous personal observation which emphatically confirmed the hundreds of media reports about Rudd's private personality. Wanker...

If you missed her words it is worth reading them because they are so telling and they have gone viral: ''Just finished doing Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott for the leadership forum at Broncos Leagues Club. One of them was absolutely lovely, engaged in genuine conversation with me, acknowledge that I had a job to do and was very appreciative. The other did the exact opposite! Oh boy, I have ever [sic] had anyone treat me so badly whilst trying to do my job. Political opinions aside … from one human being to another … Mr Abbott, you win hands down.''

Embarrassed by the attention her comments received, Fontana removed them from Facebook, but not before another make-up artist, Abigael Johnston, added this: ''I second that Lily. I have had a very similar experience.'' These are real political civilians, not paid actors. The truth will out...

Call it blowback, call it karma, but in Australia's longest-running election campaign, Julia Gillard and then Rudd both sought to make Tony Abbott's character the central issue and both saw their own reputations wilt instead. Rudd, with his distinct combination of owlish face, preachy persona, punctilious speech and negative tactics, is in danger of becoming what politicians most dread, a joke.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/smile-you ... z2d20Gy1tV" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Rorschach]

The Rooty Hill debate....

CH72 Abbott 67 Rudd 33

Who will you vote form this election result...
Coalition 64%
Labor 28%
Greens 3%
Other 3%
Undecided 2%

[iron monkey]

See that Rudd took over the position of moderator and was interrupting Mr Abbott's replies to the audience's questions with his own questions and statements.
"Does this guy ever shut up!"

[Rorschach]

See that Rudd took over the position of moderator and was interrupting Mr Abbott's replies to the audience's questions with his own questions and statements.
"Does this guy ever shut up!"

No... sigh.

[Rorschach]

Rudd fails to rally voters in his home state
September 3, 2013
Mark Kenny
Chief political correspondent

Kevin Rudd's return to the Labor leadership has failed to lift the party's fortunes in the crucial state of Queensland, according to exclusive polling that also shows Clive Palmer has made inroads into the primary vote of the main parties in his home state.

The Fairfax-Nielsen poll shows more voters now trust Mr Abbott more than Mr Rudd and seven out of 10 think Mr Abbott will be the next prime minister. The survey of 1014 respondents in Queensland between August 31 and September 1 suggests the ALP is unlikely to pick up the number of seats needed to compensate for big losses expected in other states.

But while Labor's primary vote is languishing at 31 per cent, mining magnate Clive Palmer's Palmer United Party is polling as strongly as the Greens on 8 per cent. Which basically shows how desperate some people are.

While this means it is almost certain PUP will not win a seat in the House of Representatives, it is in with a chance of gaining a spot in the Senate.

Along with Katter's Australian Party on 4 per cent, preferences from PUP could determine the outcome in some close seats in Queensland with the poll showing voters intending to support the newcomers PUP and KAP, opting mostly to direct preferences to the ALP before the Liberal National Party. Asked how they would allocate second preferences, 86 per cent of Greens voters nominated Labor, with a surprisingly high 62 per cent of PUP backers favouring Labor and even KAP voters mostly leaning towards the ALP with 55 per cent.

Primary support for the Coalition in Queensland is also slightly down at 45 per cent - it was 47.4 per cent at the 2010 election - reflecting the fact that a quarter of Queenslanders are looking at options other than the major parties. told you so...

According to preferences as indicated by respondents, Labor trails in Queensland with 47 per cent of the overall vote, to the LNP (known as the Coalition outside Queensland) on 53 per cent.

That is a small improvement of 2 percentage points since 2010 but is unlikely to be enough in a sufficient number of seats to change the result.

More Queenslanders now disapprove of Mr Rudd's performance (50 per cent) than approve (45 per cent), giving him a net approval rating of minus 5.

However, Mr Abbott has crossed into positive territory with a net approval rating of 1 per cent. His 49 per cent approval result just shaded the 48 per cent who disapprove. The two leaders tied on 46 all when voters were asked who they preferred as prime minister.

Voter anxiety over the economy continues to provide fertile ground for the Coalition with 58 per cent of Queenslanders rating the LNP ahead of Labor on economic prowess. This is despite a spirited Labor assault on Mr Abbott's ''hidden'' public spending cuts, citing the harsh austerity moves by the Newman LNP government in Queensland.

Labor insiders say the theme for the rest of the campaign is based on two main arguments - job security and Mr Abbott's character. So what is new it's been all about Abbott, Abbott, Abbott from day one with personal attack, you only have to look here at some of the foul personal attacks from the left.

But the poll suggests neither has bitten in voter-land with the Coalition strongly ahead on economic prowess and Mr Abbott trusted by more voters than Mr Rudd, 46-39.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/ ... z2dmJp7Hoa" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[mellie]

See that Rudd took over the position of moderator and was interrupting Mr Abbott's replies to the audience's questions with his own questions and statements.
"Does this guy ever shut up!"

No... sigh.

No really, does this guy ever shut-up?


It's become the catchcry of this 2013 federal election.