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Keywords: Budget 2014

  • CARTOON

    More political fairytales

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 20 May 2014
    5 Comments

    View this week's offering from Eureka Street's award winning political cartoonist.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Bill Shorten's WorkChoices moment

    • Fatima Measham
    • 19 May 2014
    16 Comments

    Notwithstanding Kevin Rudd's merit as a candidate, there is no doubt that the unions-led campaign against WorkChoices was pivotal to handing government to Labor. What Bill Shorten has been handed this week in the Federal Budget is several WorkChoices with which to galvanise people. He needed it. His Budget reply offered a glimpse of the sort of Opposition Leader that Australians deserve.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Blessed are the moneymakers

    • David James
    • 16 May 2014
    9 Comments

    The 2014 Federal Budget has created a new hierarchy of virtue in Australian society, with well off investors deemed to be good and the disadvantaged bad. It is not so much class war as a war between capital and the rest of society. Those wielding significant capital are useful, while those who can save little, and have little to invest, are considered a burden.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Cruelled by the Budget

    • John Falzon
    • 15 May 2014
    4 Comments

    'You don't help young people, or older people, or people with disabilities, or single mums, into jobs by making them poor. You don't build people up by putting them down. And as even the OECD acknowledges, you don't build a strong economy by increasing the level of inequality. You don't create a strong country on the backs of the already poor.' Statement by John Falzon

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Whose rule book is Abbott playing from?

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 15 May 2014
    48 Comments

    It took John Howard until his third term before he let his personal leanings completely off the leash. It led to his electoral demise. Abbott is doing much the same in his first term, over-reaching, thinking himself invulnerable to a political backlash. Whereas Machiavelli's prince could rule through force, Abbott must face an electorate whose trust in political promises has been completely eroded. Our political system will take a long time to recover.

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  • CARTOON

    Australians all let us lament

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 14 May 2014

    View this week's offering from Eureka Street's award winning political cartoonist.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Budget more slow-burn than big bang

    • Jackie Brady
    • 14 May 2014
    3 Comments

    The Budget does not signal an end to the 'age of entitlement', as there are still plenty of beneficiaries of government expenditure or foregone revenue. You don't need to be an economist to see that collectively the Budget measures will impact negatively on the income levels of the poor and disadvantaged. The discussion now must be who will pick up the pieces left behind by Government in developing a system with obvious gaps.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Whose liberty matters as Dickensian budget looms?

    • Fatima Measham
    • 07 May 2014
    16 Comments

    French economist Thomas Piketty argues that current conditions have set us on track for a return to 19th century-levels of inequality. The Commission of Audit proposals suggest that the auditors and the Government are keen to expedite this neo-Dickensian era. It's all done in the name of 'incentives' toward 'personal responsibility', but this cannot remain coherent in the face of those who will be hit hard by the proposed suite of cuts and co-payments.

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  • EDUCATION

    Audit Commission's Gonski landmines

    • Dean Ashenden
    • 06 May 2014
    9 Comments

    The Commission of Audit has planted so many landmines across the political landscape that two have been scarcely noticed. One is planted directly under Gonski, the other under the federal role in schooling. Christopher Pyne's brazen effort to get rid of Gonski served only to show that he is not to be trusted. Abbott must be wondering whether this minister could carry the day with the kind of scheme recommended by the Commission.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Abbott and Hockey more Prince John than Robin Hood

    • David James
    • 05 May 2014
    11 Comments

    In politics, one should never opt for a balanced and thoughtful description of the truth when wild exaggerations will do. Especially when you want to take from the poor and give to, if not exactly the rich, at least the investor class. The dire pronouncements from the Abbott Government in response to the Commission of Audit's 86 recommendations reflect not only the PM's relentless negativity, but also more than a whiff of class war.

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