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Keywords: Joe Hockey

  • AUSTRALIA

    Joe Hockey's 'better bang' foreign aid cut delusion

    • Michael Mullins
    • 18 May 2015
    38 Comments

    As a nation, we have demonstrated to the world that we have no shame when it comes to the treatment of asylum seekers. Now it's as if the aid cuts are being worn as a badge of honour. Joe Hockey talks about the 'targeted outcomes' philosophy of the cuts, 'build[iing] the prosperity and assist[ing] with poverty alleviation in our region', in order to get 'better bang for our buck in foreign aid'. But leading aid economist Stephen Howse argues the opposite.

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  • CARTOON

    Joe's Barbershop

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 13 May 2015
    1 Comment

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

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Federal Budget a lost opportunity

    • Marcelle Mogg
    • 13 May 2015
    8 Comments

    Is this the Budget you have when you're not having a Budget? The most remarkable thing about this Budget, in contrast with Prime Minister Abbott's promise of a fair Budget, is that so much of it relies on the re-election of a Coalition Government in 2016. Is it fair to make vulnerable Australians wait that long?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Budget must move beyond political fetish

    • Fatima Measham
    • 12 May 2015
    3 Comments

    The practice of presenting the budget to parliament came out of a crisis. In 1733,  British Prime Minister Robert Walpole's announced plan to impose an excise tax on wine and tobacco was met with outrage. It reflects the reality that budget presentation did not start out as a neutral exercise in transparency but rather a mishandled piece of political communication.

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  • CARTOON

    Budget avengers

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 06 May 2015

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

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Increasing retirement age will cost the budget

    • Michele Gierck
    • 06 May 2015
    6 Comments

    Treasurer Joe Hockey is keen for us to work as long as possible. The government’s aim is to keep the hands of ageing workers and would be retirees out of its pension pot. There are many benefits associated with maintaining older people in the workforce, but it can be expensive to take, for example, the reality of dementia into account when designing jobs and workplaces.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    'Single person household' slight on working poor

    • Brian Lawrence
    • 14 April 2015
    6 Comments

    A fair minimum wage has to be fair to workers with family responsibilities, many of whom are currently working poor and living in poverty. But in its 2014 Annual Wage Review decision, the Fair Work Commission  decided that the 'appropriate reference household for the purposes of setting minimum wages is the single person household'. This was the first time in more than a century of minimum wage setting that an industrial tribunal has decided that minimum wages should exclude the needs of the low paid with families.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Joe Hockey's crystal ball

    • David James
    • 06 March 2015
    8 Comments

    The 2015 Intergenerational Report is reminiscent of a comment by that great 20th century philosopher and baseball player Yogi Berra: 'It’s tough to make predictions – especially about the future.' Many economic commentators have pointed out, rightly enough, that Treasury cannot even get its one year predictions right. Nevertheless, it is worth looking at how the 40 year forecasts are constructed to see the kind of thinking involved.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Intergenerational fairness goes beyond economic competition

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 05 March 2015
    14 Comments

    'Intergenerational' goings on are stirring public consciousness. On Thursday, Federal Treasury publishes its five-yearly Intergenerational Report. It provides a framework within which legitimate questions about winners and losers can be addressed, by including action on climate and narrowing wealth and international cooperation, rather than viewing society as merely the playground of competing individuals.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    State elections the biggest opinion poll of all

    • John Warhurst
    • 04 March 2015
    6 Comments

    The Victorian state election that ushered out the Napthine Coalition government last November was a wake-up call for the Federal government. The amazing Queensland state defeat for Campbell Newman in late January brought on on the Spill against Tony Abbott. But the NSW election at the end of this month is an ambiguous marker.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Libs take some image advice from Mad Men's Don Draper

    • Jim McDermott
    • 02 March 2015

    The inner sanctum of the Prime Minister’s office, filled with smoke. DON DRAPER sits in a chair, cigarette in one hand, tumbler of Scotch in the other. Across, Prime Minister TONY ABBOTT. Around them, members of his cabinet. GREG HUNT (coughing weakly): We really don't allow smoking in here. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Plus, how do you still look so good? It’s 2015. Draper turns Pyne's way. His eyes glitter like steel. DON: Really, that's what you want to talk about right now, my looks? TONY: Now listen, Don, I did it all just like you said. Pushed up the spill motion to keep the momentum from building, said I would be more consultative, got on with the business of governing. And yet two weeks later ... Read more

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The financial crisis the Government wants us to have

    • Colin Long
    • 09 February 2015
    19 Comments

    The Coalition Government falsely claims that Medicare co-payments and cuts to welfare and publicly funded institutions such as the CSIRO and the ABC are necessary to 'fix Labor's mess'. There are indeed structural problems with the economy, but essentially the plan is to strip the public sector by cutting universal access to a range of services that also includes tertiary education, to create a dominant free market that marginalises Australians on low incomes.

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