Swan v Hockey Debate

wayne starts off with a recounting of the govt. economic record. starts
in on the deficit, [which hockey will no doubt bang on at length].
[public speaking is not wayne's strong suit. fair enough, bloody good
treasurer though.] points out how coalition crap [repeated at length by
know-nothings] that we would be in deficit for decades!!!111 is in fact
crap. points out that debt level is equal to someone on a 100k salary
borrowing 6k. [good point, people seem to forget how to count when you
talk billions. wayne's hitting his stride.]

hockey starts off with some stuff about being positive about australia.
we've suffered by being far from the world [continental drift?]. asia is growing, world is
now divided into timezones not trading blocks [?]. internet. children. the world
wants what we have. the world wants our stability. they want to know we
are stable [geologically?] tony abbott robb and hockey have 20 years of
experience! they have put together budgets, labor debt. labor debt.
incompetence. australia's bounty. blah blah. [where is the point joe? are
you going to get to it?] work for welfare again. paid parental leave -
the one tony was ideolocially opposed to. over 50s off welfare and back
to work. [at 5.1% unemployment you might have to choose between young or
old welfare to work, where will these jobs come from if you cut the spending required to create them?]. tax reform - the libs are the party of tax reform. [other than the gst, what tax reform did the liberals deliver in 11.5 years of govt.?]

question time
chris uuuuuuuulmahn (moderator) - don't the world want our economic position?

Joe - it's because we had a surplus. our competion is asia, not the use. [er joe, do
you know what the OECD is?] asia has lower costs of production [they have
slaves joe, I don't think we can compete with them on that]. debt debt debt. interest rates, govt. will borrow all the available money! [lol.]

wayne - we are 6 v 96 percent debt compared to everyone else. joe pretends the gfc didn't happen.
won't tell us how he would have got through it without a debt. they
opposed the second stimulus package. [wayne wass a uni lecturer welcome to school joe.] hits him for raising company tax, how does that make us competitive?

aap - joe you said you are making truthy promises. economists say you lie
about paid maternity leave. can you guarantee it? wayne, do you think
it's crap?

joe - yes. guarantees it as it stands. blathers on about debt. still
won't submit policies for costing.

wayne - joe pretends there wouldn't be a deficit he he was in power.
where would the money have come from? their plan requires a tax on
groceries and magical thinking on un-costed promises

smh - wayne you say the coalition would have caused unemployment. can
you prove this? joe, if we did what you said we'd
still be in debt.

wayne - the libs opposed the second stimulus package. we had to go past
them to pass it. joe tries to have it both ways. quotes joe. 'the
stimulus package doesn't work!!!1111' he was wrong. occasionally they
pretended to support some stimulus. points out that small, ineffective
stimulus would be worse than none at all.

joe - [tries to have it both ways.] libs put in a bill to raise aged pension (whaaaa?) they then tried to reduce the stimulus. goes on about the now discredited waste campaign. pink batts. [sigh.] pink batts pink batts. shows he knows nothing about the reserve bank or interest rates. [dear god.]

wayne - tell us how much debt you'd accept joe? quotes reserve bank
gov. who agrees with with wayne

joe - govt. is addicted to tax. [I hear long term tax addiction can stunt growth and impair one's fashion sense, ask j-howard]

the opposition orifice [the australian] - uren? what else will you do re: tax reform in a
second term?

wayne - cut company tax, use resource tax to offset, spend on
infrastructure. libs want to jack up the company rate.

joe - accuses the govt. of thinking increasing tax equals efficiency
[whaa?] vote us in and we'll tell you what we'll do.

uuuuuuuuhlman - why no mining tax joe? big money! many shells!

joe - i love miners, they don't want to give us more money so they
shouldn't have to. They are delicate petals and if we hurt their feelings they may take to their yachts and sulk terribly. talks about fast runners and how everyone should be able to
run like in the field of our economy and we don't slow the fastest runner [bloody oath we do if they're making off with the silverware joe!] or some crap.

Question from someone - housing, you've crated a market only for investors, massive tax breaks
for landlords, nothing for first home buyers how will you fix this mess I pretend to care about despite probably having a few investment properties of my own?

wayne - dodges question, dances, pretending he worked to increase
housing supply. passes buck to previous govt. coag will fix everything
and you can rent for life. Studiously avoids henry review's findings on negative gearing. [long story short. till the speculators die, you're screwed, young folk!]

joe - blames the states. cost of supply for builders, can't get finance
and it's so expensive (joe, you know interest rates are at record
lows?). claims if you dich negative gearing rent will go up. [what the
fuuu? get out joe. just get right out.] claims that rates were lower
under coalition. [lol]

wayne - it's all bullshit. the rba agrees with me.

joe, blames labor for banks raising rates to cover liquidity crisis. [holy crap. this is your alternative treasurer australia!]

wayne - interest rates at record lows? tell me what it was when you left office? - forces joe to look up the figures

joe - looks it up 8.something. it's now 7. but it's going to go up! [really? does andrew robb read palms now? - epic fail.]

wayne - joe pretends the govt. controls interest rates.

joe - pretends inflation was low under libs. switches horses midstream and claims inflation was higher under labor instread [by a quarter percent I think. 11.5 year average vs 3.75 year average = statistics fail
]
their abc - what will australia be manufacturing?

wayne - talks about 2 speed economy and effects on currency rate. Talks about pro business stimulus already. talks about infrastructure, nbn. points out libs oppose it. [gee wayne, what if we had a renewable energy industry to talk about?] also tax cuts for business.

joe - in 2013 our company tax will be lower than labor. [someone should make them give that crystal ball to treasury] the world has 3 timezones. [WTF? this timezones crap is sounding like internet crankery] talks about how his govt. would get into currency hedging to help exporters [jesus christ]. how will the mining industry survive a minor tax hike on profits!? woe! woe!

chan ten - what will your debt reduction taskforce do joe?

joe - it will be run by me and andrew robb and will go through previous govt. programs and tell us all of labor are the dirty, stinky, poopy-head liars they really are. [it will be a political creature designed to provide cover for their cuts by means of an endless witch-hunt]

wayne - no costings, nyah nyah! hidden agenda. they will cut services.

joe - costings, we introduced charter of budget honesty [so why hide from it?] we will do it, sometime.

fin review - joe, your savings, you just said they've dropped to 2.8 billion from 40. what happens if this happens?

joe - keeps whining about submitting for costing. labor will never deliver a surplus, they never will. [WTF? So now they're ideologically opposed to budget surpluses?]. whinges about passport fee increase [this must be such a huge issue on sydney's north shore]. attacks states, it's all their fault.

wayne - we will too put into budget into surplus. pinky-swear

west australian - can you tax mining without damaging the industry? Joe your policies make no sense.

wayne - mining will be fine. They are advertising more than ever now and bringing new projects online [they know what demand is going to do, having ripped us off thanks to the mug punters those profits will disappear overseas and into yachts.]

joe - we have an australia first policy. welfare to work, blah blah. grow the productivity pie.

wayne sums up - good debate come on tony, debate julia again [you should have thought about that before adopting your stupid defensive crouch campaign]. we have a plan for the future. rba agrees with me. stimulus saved jobs and businesses. imagine the waste if businesses had failed and people lost jobs. building on strengths over last years. infrastructure, libs will take us backwards.

joe - wayne wants to stand on record. Debt. Waste. Boats. Pink batts pink batts. dumped kevin.
the coalition has experience, we are facing volatility [good of you to
notice]. bountiful future. we could lose our opportunity to be the best.
the govt. is bad. bad i tell you! vote liberal, give us back a grown up
govt. [we forgive you for voting us out, australia, but now it's time for some make up sex]

this wasn't really a contest. It was a debate between someone with a lot of knowledge and someone with just enough to be dangerous. If I were 20 years older i'd be perfectly happy with the idea of another couple of terms with wayne as treasurer, he'd be excellent for me. But i'm not. Joe on the other hand tries his hardest but is clearly out of his depth and ham-strung by the fact that the coalition have no economic policy to speak of. Cutting taxes is not policy. Politically motivated budget revenge inquisitions are not policy. It's a bit scary that voters are seriously thinking about putting robb and hockey in charge of treasury.