You know you're getting old when......

....your doctor, dentist and local pollie are all younger than you and tall tales like this tickle your fancy....

You'll know senility is closing in when Malcolm Turnbull and Joe Hockey appear to make sense.

Image source is unknown.

Is Malcolm Turnbull chanelling the ghost from Wollstonecraft?

The Australian reported on 15 May 2009:

MALCOLM Turnbull declared today that Kevin Rudd would be a one-term prime minister, in a powerful speech to rally the Liberal faithful in Sydney.

The same day Possum Comitatus over at Pollytics ran this graph:

Somehow I think it will take more ammunition than Liberal Party and Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull has in his locker to turn this scenario around by 2010-11.

Especially as all this ex-merchant banker silvertail is really offering as a counter-measure to the Rudd Government's 2009-10 Budget is a proposal to impose an additional level of taxation, on a group which is predominately composed of working class people who co-incidentally are mostly found in age bands which are not strong Liberal Party or Nationals supporters.

Turnbull's tactic is right out of the John Winston Howard manual of dirty tricks and, if he is not careful it will rebound on him the way such tactics eventually did on the former Liberal prime minister.

A smidgen of Mad Max trivia

If online polls are anything to go by, then Women's Day readers think Mel Gibson should lose half his fortune to his wife.

Shock, horror! Aussies drink less booze than the Irish, Scots, Brits and possibly even the Kiwis

Wikimedia has this World Health Organisation map from 2008 on display along with a ranked table of world alcohol consumption based on sales.

According to a The Herald report earlier this year; "Statistics show that nearly 50 million litres of pure alcohol were consumed in Scotland in 2007 - the equivalent of 11.8 litres for every person aged over 16 - putting the nation above Spain, Italy and France in the World Health Organisation's (WHO) league table of alcohol sales.
The figure is equal to every Scot over 16 drinking 570 pints of normal-strength beer, 125 bottles of wine or 42 bottles of vodka, and enough for every adult to exceed the sensible drinking guidelines for men of 21 units of alcohol per week."

Will all Nationals and Liberal MPs blindly follow the leader and block certain budget measures

The carer supplement promised in the Budget is now before the House of Representatives as Social Security and Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (2009 Budget Measures) Bill 2009.

Likewise the financial assistance to local government to be brought forward into this financial year is presented as Financial Assistance Legislation Amendment Bill 2009.

The appropriations bills which will allow government to progress the September increase in pensions and other measures are also before our parliamentarians.

There are at least 400,000 North Coast residents waiting to see funding from the 2009-10 Commonwealth Budget flow to local government and households.

Coalition MPs should take note of that fact, particularly Nationals Member for Cowper Luke Hartsuyker who has become notorious for blindly following the leader and attempting to thwart government expenditure and whose latest effort on record on 12 May 2009 could only rely on political tripe:

I certainly welcome the opportunity to speak on this matter of public importance, because we have a government in this country that is hostage to the 24-hour news cycle. We have a government that is hostage to the 10-second sound bite and its media spin doctors. We will see handed down in this chamber tonight what the Australian people will know as a traditional Labor budget on steroids. It is going to be a budget that will usher in the era of big deficits. It will be a budget that will usher in the high level of unemployment that we are expecting in the months ahead. It is a budget that will burden the Australian people with massive debt and burden their children with massive debt.

It is time for all our parliamentarians to leave the rhetoric behind and remember the welfare of their own electorates, which are set to benefit from this budget.

Update:

Since placing this post on NCV's publication schedule the Leader of the Opposition's Budget Reply speech has been delivered with its classic dog whistle:

But tonight I will make one suggestion of a suitable offset for the Prime Minister’s consideration. One that would make for a healthier Australia and lessen the burden on public hospitals rather than increase it. The Government could comfortably afford to retain the current private health insurance rebate without any cost to the published Budget outcome by increasing the amount of excise collected on tobacco by 12.5 per cent (or about three cents extra per cigarette).

Members of parliament of all persuasions need to think carefully about the economics of such a move, when in the past taxation increases on tobacco have seen a decrease in consumption and sales of tobacco products (which form a significant income stream for many small businesses).

If this were to occur after a Turnbull-inspired tobacco taxation hike then a decrease in taxation revenue available to government is possible (eating into the optimistically projected $120 million increase in tobacco excise predicted for 2009-10 in last year's MYEFO) and, any immediate benefits from this increased taxation are likely to flow to the states rather than the Commonwealth through the GST and FAG relativities.

It is no accident that the Coalition has chosen tobacco as their political smokescreen for mindless resistance for the sake of resistance - it is rather a good distraction as the debate can quickly degenerate from discussing revenue raising measures to vilifying smokers. However, even non-smokers can do the maths.

Whale migration: It's the trooping of the flukes on the NSW North Coast

Photograph from The Far North Coaster

The Far North Coaster online magazine this week reminds us that now is the time to look seaward for spouts on the horizon, fluke slapping displays and whales moving close to shore :

The annual northern migration of humpback whales along the east coast of Australia is under way, with the first sightings reported off the North Coast over the last few weeks.
Wally Franklin, a researcher with Southern Cross University’s Whale Research Centre and co-director of The Oceania Project, said the northern migration usually began around the start of May.
“About this time we begin to see one or two whales and now we are into May the flow will start to pick up. The peak of the northward migration past Byron Bay occurs in June and July. There is evidence that the timing of the migration can vary between years, but generally the whales are incredibly regular,” Mr Franklin said.

Want to read one of the better Budget overviews? Go to Gans

After delving into the 2009-10 Commonwealth Budget papers and listening to some of the doom and gloom coming from sections of the mainstream media, I was beginning to doubt my first impressions of that which I was reading.

Then I clicked onto The Age and Joshua Gans' Going boldly backwards.

Joshua can also be found at Core Economics

Post-Budget thoughts on things economic from around the traps

The Howard years were basically a time of the economy falling off a skyscraper, enjoying the thrill, and yelling "I've fallen 20 floors and feeling fine".

Balneus blog on 14th May 2009

Swan's trick of not even mentioning the size of the deficit/surplus is a first, well almost.
As for the forecasts, they may well turn out to be right, or not. What will happen as the economy recovers is fairly forecastable. When that will happen is pretty unforcastable.
It could be next month, it could be next year, it could be in three years' time.
Your guess is good as Treasury's - probably better.
Peter Martin on his blog, 13th May 2009

The Panel's key finding is that the three-pillar architecture of Australia's retirement income system — consisting of the means tested Age Pension, compulsory saving through the superannuation guarantee and voluntary saving for retirement — should be retained. The retirement income system is facing increasing challenges as the 21st century unfolds which will test the sustainability, adequacy, acceptability and coherence of the system. The three‑pillar architecture is well suited for a balanced and flexible response to these challenges. and

However, there is some need for adaptive change to calibrate the three pillars so that the retirement income system serves its purposes and retains its strengths.

From the media release and cover letter to the Henry Report initial findings released on Budget night 2009.

Kevin Rudd on ABC radio this morning stated that the budget would protect Australia's AAA rating, according to Standard and Poors. Read here Standard and Poor's own admission as to why they rated Lehmann Brothers as A at the time they went bust, and make up your mind as to whether S&P AAA ratings are worth a cracker.

Mark Crosby over at Core Economics blog on 13th May 2009

LAST night the Australian Government handed down its budget for the coming financial year. The centre piece of planned spending on the environment is $4.5 billion for "clean energy". This is defined as energy that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and boost employment.Most of the money, $2.4 billion, will be used for the development of low-emissions coal technologies. This announcement could be interpreted as an attempt to appease the coal industry and unions – it is certainly unlikely to benefit the environment.

Jennifer Marohasy at her blog of the same name on 13th May 2009

If you judged by press releases, you'd reckon this was the greenest budget ever. And it is indeed good in parts, though not nearly as good as you might think. The first thing to note is that the CPRS targets and the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target haven't changed, so emissions won't change at all (though it may mean we buy fewer permits overseas), nor will the fraction of our electricity generated from renewable sources. What the funding in this budget might do is change the technology mix available to us to achieve those targets.

Robert Merkel over at Larvatus Prodeo on 13th May 2009.

KEVIN Rudd's silent war on the NSW Government has moved to open hostility, with Treasurer Wayne Swan yesterday effectively blaming the Rees Government for Sydney's infrastructure snub. And the Prime Minister warned he was not prepared to invest "billions" of dollars in Sydney projects until the NSW Government got the planning right.

The Daily Telegraph, 14th May 2009

The Federal Government has been warned that it will need to rethink some elements of its Budget superannuation package in circumstances where long-serving politicians and senior public servants appear to have emerged unaffected by changes to the contribution caps for high-income earners.

The apparent oversight was acknowledged by Deloitte superannuation partner John Rayner, who said that in the interests of equity among higher income earners, the burden needed to be shared by everyone.

The only acknowledgement of the problem in the Budget is to grandfathering arrangements that apply "to certain members with defined benefit interests as at 12 May, 2009, whose notional taxed contributions would otherwise exceed the reduced cap".

The problem confronting the Government is that public servants and others are enjoying contributions of as much as 22 per cent to their superannuation, compared to the standard 9 per cent provided by the superannuation guarantee and then topped up by people in defined contribution schemes.

Mike Taylor at Money Management on 13th May 2009

THE ABC will produce edgier TV drama and invest in more feature films, but will have to abandon plans to establish more digital radio stations as a result of the 2009-10 budget. "We're delighted with this outcome -- in this economic climate, it's a good outcome," said ABC managing director Mark Scott.

According to The Australian on 14th May 2009

The rural health care sector has applauded Budget measures aimed at improving access to medical services in the bush.
The Government has made changes to the pharmaceutical and medical benefits schemes to allow nurse practitioners and midwives to prescribe subsidised drugs and let their patients claim back services under Medicare.
Helen Gosby from the Australian College of Nurse Practitioners says it is great news for patients in remote areas.
"Now we'll be able to give them the full range of care so they don't have to wait for the flying doctor to come back into town," she said.
The Government will also spend $134 million boosting payments to lure medical staff to the bush.

ABC News on 13th May 2009