With 31 days left to go:
• ReachTEL has published the results of an automated phone poll of 702 respondents in Kevin Rudd’s electorate of Griffith, and it points to a 4% swing to the Liberal National Party – enough to pare back his margin to 4.5%, and raise doubts about Labor’s prospects in Liberal National Party marginals. The primary votes from the poll are 45.6% for Kevin Rudd, 41.0% for LNP candidate Bill Glasson and 8.0% for the Greens.
• Jaymes Diaz, the Liberal candidate for the crucial western Sydney seat of Greenway, has been a big hit on social media over the past day or two, and not in a good way. Quizzed by a Ten Network reporter about the content of his party’s six-point plan to “stop the boats”, Diaz could manage only one, offering only the clumsiest of platitudes in place of the other five. He was eventually put out of his misery when a minder intervened to bring the interview to a close. Heath Aston of Fairfax offers some interesting background on the circumstances behind his endorsement.
• Also earning raspberries has been David Bradbury, Labor’s member for the equally important western suburbs seat of Lindsay, who queried a radio interviewer about being a Liberal Party member and ominously asked him to reveal what his surname was.
• Labor appears to be in a muddle over who it will run in Craig Thomson’s seat of Dobell. Former Gosford deputy mayor Trevor Drake emerged as the only nominee for preselection a month ago, but the party executive has declined to ratify his endorsement. However, Kevin Rudd has been rebuffed in his approach to one his youthful senior advisers from his first tenure as prime minister, current Coles executive Andrew Charlton, who says he is not available due to family reasons. Ean Higgins of The Australian reports the party had been alerted to a finding by Gosford council’s conduct committee that Drake had failed to disclose interests when council considered development applications from a firm for which he acted as a solicitor, although it cleared him of breaching its code of conduct. Higgins also reports concern over “presentational difficulties” relating to Drake’s status as a former Liberal Party member, and the fact that he doesn’t live in the electorate.
• Two agencies have moved their odds slightly in the Coalition’s favour in the wake of Monday’s poll results. Tom Waterhouse has the Coalition paying $1.24, down from $1.27, with Labor out from $3.50 to $4, while Centrebet has the Coalition in from $1.27 to $1.25 and Labor out from $3.60 to $4.
Has the UK made any decision on the ownership of murdoch papers in there as yet. Surely they must reconsider if the corporation is fit and proper to hold a newspaper licence when there was so much criminal activity, police bribing, phone tapping of the most despicable kind.
Despicable, a word that describes what many think of Murdoch as a human being.
Think about the growth years under Howard and the economic bonanza he gave us. John Howard was right – the times did suit him.
Rossmore
“Sean T it was a dream … He pissed away the bonanza on middle class welfare instead of investing in our future”
And worse, he embedded his handouts as a structural impost on all future budgets.
1651
The Uk does not have newspaper licences. It has not for centuries. It is the licence for BSkyB pay TV that may be revoked on “fit and proper person” grounds.
Rudd today: “The Australian Government that I lead will not increase the GST, nor will it expand its scope.”
Now, I actually don’t believe that either party will increase the GST; however, why SHOULD anyone believe this? We’ve all heard before about things that governments led by Labor politicians will not do. Let’s hope we aren’t talking about “Kevliar” in a few months 😉
just watched some of Hockey’s effort… good lord what a numpty
“Let’s hope we aren’t talking about “Kevliar” in a few months”
Better to be talking about Kevliar than to be stuck with Abbott
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/dropoff-in-boat-arrivals-20130807-2rgur.html
Music to my… eyes, I guess. Next poll with a “best suited to handle asylum seeker issue” question should be interesting.
New thread.
SeanTisme
[So you take out a $20,000 car loan, so are in debt. What to do? Well you head down to the bank and get a new credit card with a $30,000 limit… you pay off your car loan in full, now you are $10,000 ahead!]
You are almosty certainly ahead in cash flow terms. Whether the trade is advantageous is not discernible as your specification excludes relavant data.
If someone gives you the $30,000 over a much longer term than the car loan, then ceteris paribus the outlays for debt service per unit of time should fall and you will have more liquidity. Assuming you can use that liquidity for something more important than paying the car (e.g. another more expensive debt) then the trade makes sense.
Equally, if the interest on the $30k loan is lower than that on the car, and there are no early exit fees on the car loan equivalent to the differential, then you now have a chance to reduce the total cost of your debt by paying off the car and other debts up to $10k that are costing you more than the $30k loan.
Not all debt is bad. As always, it depends on what the debt is raised for, and the cost of the debt service, relative to all else.
As things stand, lenders (external and internal) see the Australian government as a great borrower, and so are lending the government money very cheaply. This underpins services and infrastructure that are both needed and can help us repay debt in the long run. I call that a good thing, even if vacuous touts for the LNP say otherwise.