Political snobs risk turning Barnaby into a martyr

Harry says:

11:35am | 09/02/10

I know this guy down at the local train station who has an unfortunate intellectual disability. He is a lovely person who loves to chat and tells you what is on his mind. In that regard he is identical to Barnaby Joyce, but I don’t want him running the countries finances.
I don’t think Mr Tanner needs to elaborate on Mr Joyce’ s stupidity, Mr Joyce is doing a fine job of advertising this all by himself.

Anthony says:

03:05pm | 09/02/10

Harry, I’d love to hear your traveling companion’s opinion of you?

Macca says:

04:51pm | 09/02/10

He might say what he thinks but the trouble is Barnaby doesn’t think intelligently.
He is the epitome of the redneck fundie and if he was a Labor politician the media would be merciless in their destruction of him.
Neither he nor Abbot ‘tell it like it is’ and the biggest spin I can see comes from the conservative side of politics.

Jack Thomas says:

09:23pm | 09/02/10

Be honest Eric, somewhere there is a village looking to get its idiot back, and that idiot is Barnaby.

Even a rusted on Lib like me can admit seeing stupidity when it dribbles on my screen most nights. 

Doesn’t mean Tanner isn’t your typical Leftard smarmy tossbag, with a pelthora of simpering policy wonks and other grey cardigan brigage loving him for repeating the message the Spinsters gave him this morning.

But at the end of it all, if Barnaby is in charge of Finance we’re all in trouble. Admit it, the guy’s a retard.

Macca says:

09:40am | 09/02/10

@Iansand, then why read the article and comment?

Adam says:

09:00am | 09/02/10

Perfect Timing, plus I was thinking the same thing:)

T.Chong says:

12:10pm | 09/02/10

Thanks for keeping me in yur thoughts and prayers.
Incredible fact folks, but I work. Those lentils, mung beans and turnips wont harvest themselves.
Now obviosly I need to get to work here, providing witty, erudite ripostes to gob smack you Righters back into place.
Get back to yous soon.

Gerard says:

09:36am | 09/02/10

There is a difference between calling someone a lightweight and demonstrating it. Perhaps such a difference is lost on you Matt.

persephone says:

09:36am | 09/02/10

I agree. Barnaby speaks his mind, and we get to see how little there is of it.

AJ says:

09:37am | 09/02/10

I’ll abandon my thoroughly biased, ABC-influenced, eco-fundamentalist, idiotic, suckered-in-by-climate-gate tendencies and speak briefly on conservatism.

One of the biggest concerns I have with the Right in Australian politics is that, similar to their Republican colleagues in the US, their supporters are fleeing wholesale from the intellectual basis of their ideologies.  The rabid anti-intellectualism, the preference for ‘straight-shooters’ fails to understand the rationale behind representative democracy.  Gone are those who can effectively mount a defence on the basis of free-market principles, those who can enlighten us as to why individuals striving for their own ends produce better communal outcomes.  Conservatives now, in an effort to ‘be like us’ don’t promote on merit, but on likeability.

The point of representative democracy is not to pick the person most like yourself.  It is to pick the person who best espouses and represents your values.  That means not picking ol’ Barny from down the local pub, but finding someone who believes what you believe, but can pursue it with intellectual rigour and leadership.

Picking folksiness over genuine leadership and credibility may make for good media coverage, but it leads to a deficit in leadership.  And I think that, deep down, a lot of Liberals who wish Barnaby would just shut up know it

Phil says:

09:51am | 09/02/10

Don

What would you call our debt. Most people recognise a credit card or piggy bank in terms of debt or savings? I believe this accurately tells the story. Perhaps you could enlighten us to your theories here.

Are you suggesting that as they predicted a 300B debt they have done a good job by keeping it to just 120B in just 2 years in power?

If the debt as you acknowledge is 120B, and not racing upwards, are you saying that say by June 20 2011 it will be less? I would like a wager that the current debt will rise and rise substantially by this date.

Debt not large? You are kidding I hope. I wonder if you are a high achiever who actually pays/paid a reasonable amount of personal or company taxes. As its these individuals who will end up repaying this money, not those on 50K per year. Even f they increased personal tax by 5% someone on 50K will only contribute an additional $2,500 per annum, barely the interest on the amount of borrowings per person that will exist.

Like or loath him Barnaby is making some good comments. America and UK and many other countries are effectively broke. A big hit could happen. It may not, but he is making some good points.

Colin says:

01:33pm | 09/02/10

I’m amazed that so many are so blase about Debt.  “It’s ONLY $120B” they bleat.  “No worries, she’ll be right mate”.

Please think again.  Even a “mere” $120 Billion must be repaid.  Think that’s gonna be easy? Think that WON’T be a huge drag on the economy in future?

Think again.

Currently 5 year Commonwealth Govt Bonds are running at 4.9%.  So, using a very broad estimate, if we have to repay $120B at 4.9% that would be $6B a year… in interest alone.  Look up the historical charts for Australian Government annual surplus/deficit.  We’ve rarely had a TOTAL surplus that large!  From memory, the biggest ever annual surplus the Commonwealth Govt has had is about $14B, at the height of the mining boom, and (again, from memory) boosted by some big privatisations (Telstra?).

Anyone who thinks paying off this Govt’s massive, useless, unnecessary, totally non-productive Debt will be easy and will not involve LOTS of pain… is living in la la land.

Tom says:

04:07pm | 09/02/10

Net public debt is 15.9% of GDP. That is not historically high. The absolute figure is meaningless in isolation. When most of Europe and the US all have public debt to GDP ratios of 80 - 90%, you will see why our current debt level isn’t a problem. $120 billion sounds a lot, but when our GDP is close enough to $1 trillion, it puts it into perspective somewhat.

The budget should be in surplus during good economic times, yes, but the flipside is that it will be in deficit during downturns, due to both stimulus spending, and automatic stabilisers - the combined effects of decreased tax collection and increased welfare spending during recessions.

Joe says:

04:45pm | 09/02/10

Tom I am sure all the US home owners said similar things before their debt bubble exploded. “When you compare our debt with other neighbors we aren’t that bad off.” It is hardly a very good argument. When have we taken the worst figures as our comparison? Crime rates, education rates? “Compared to the US we aren’t that dumb so get over bettering education in Australia”. No.

Tom says:

06:01pm | 09/02/10

Joe, let’s just be clear here - The US has government debt levels approximately 6 times higher than ours. We have a long way to go before we should be concerned.

Certainly we shouldn’t be complacent, and stimulus spending should be wound back as soon as the threat of recession has passed, but to argue that our current debt levels are dangerous is simply wrong.

persephone says:

11:38am | 09/02/10

Yep, that’s why even his own leader (scarcely one to let a populist position sail past unboarded) backs away from him.

AJ says:

10:00am | 09/02/10

Then explain how, in a year where the market collapsed and practically nobody anywhere made a taxable cent of capital gain, where income tax revenues collapsed, when demand for social services increased, where the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, the Fin Review and other conservative pro-market papers of note all agreed that stimulus was necessary, how you balance the books?

Keep in mind that the Lib/Nats tentatively agreed a stimulus was necessary at the time when our stock market HALVED IN VALUE, but were too chicken to outline what they would do instead.

vicki sanderson says:

11:10am | 09/02/10

You are right on foreign aid. Why all the tremulous responses to Barnaby’s suggestion that we should rethink our foreign aid program? There are actually compelling reasons why this is sensible and overdue. In her recent book “Dead Aid”, the african writer Dambiso Mogo argued that 50 years and billions of dollars in aid had done nothing to alleviate poverty in Africa, and should be halted. It is also becoming increasingly apparent that, even putting aside the issue of effective delivery, the bureaucratisation of NGOs is leeching huge amounts of money into administration. Even so, much of the money donated to causes such as the Pacific tsunami damage, remained undistributed years after the event. And finally, in the wash up of the GFC it was revealed in the financial press that many Australian and international charities had lost millions in the stock market crash. A reexamination of our poilcy towards international aid is a perfectly legitimate and important pursuit.

soultrader says:

10:50am | 09/02/10

Smart ? Yes !
Smart Arse ? No Thanks !
No need for put downs and insults to try and make your point.
Hard evidence would be sufficient.

Chewy says:

10:52am | 09/02/10

Jen, Barnaby is a CPA you know. Just because he doesnt try to impress us all with a vocabulary of words that does not exist unlike our PM, does not make him a bunny.

persephone says:

11:42am | 09/02/10

Just heard Barnaby at Senate estimates using very long words very intelligently.

He knows how to do it, it just doesn’t play well to his constituency.

Which makes the blunders less forgiveable, because it suggests they’re either deliberate or he’s just being lazy.

Both are dangerous when we’re talking about a pollie who is asking us to let him hold the pursestrings.

Carl Palmet says:

11:43am | 09/02/10

”……even string an intelligible sentence together”. Go back a number of months and watch a speech delivered by Anthony Albanese. It made Barnaby Joyce look like the world’s leading orator.  What’s more the ALP’s frontbench were laughing embarrassing to say the least.

Chewy says:

01:30pm | 09/02/10

Albanese also has the Elmer Fudd thang going on..
hunting wabbits…

Brian says:

12:12pm | 09/02/10

I agree - Tanner is a pounce - to be honest I am struggling to think of one Labor pollie who you could describe as a “real” man?

Colin says:

01:21pm | 09/02/10

Hi Rappo… good onya mate, it’s great to see people who try to think for themselves, work through the issues thoughtfully, and all with a humility to not think too highly of themselves. Quite unlike Mr Tanner, whose childish personal insults against Mr Joyce say far more about him than they do about Barnaby.

You’re on the right track there crunching the GDP calcs.  Just one rather big problem though. Your basic assumption… that GDP is “a measure of our income as a country”... is incorrect.  GDP is actually the total value of all goods and services produced in a country in a year, and is equal to total consumer, investment and government SPENDING, plus the value of exports, minus the value of imports. If you pause to think that through, you’ll see that GDP is definitely not a measure of Income at all. Far from it.

For all those who would like to believe that we have no debt problem, and/or choose to believe spendthrift Tanner’s arrogant, ad hominem, dishonest mischaracterisations of Barnaby’s intellectual abilities… all prompted by one overhyped slipup… take a look at the REST of what Barnaby had to say in the same speech -

http://www.barnabyjoyce.com.au/Newsroom/Speeches/PublicSpeeches/tabid/73/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1041/National-Press-Club-Speech-3rd-February-2010.aspx

Sounds like he has a perfectly good handle on the numbers to me.  FWIW, on the simplest possible level, I’d far rather have someone managing the nation’s purse whose basic underlying worldview is that Debt is BAD and best avoided, than to leave it in the hands of those who think Debt (and spending it like drunken sailors) is Good and should be encouraged (eg, First Home Owners Boost).

Rappo says:

02:47pm | 09/02/10

Sorry Colin, I must have been mistaken by the definition that GDP = GDI….it seems that according to you, the vast amounts of money spent on my poor country education was indeed a complete waste of tax payers money…....so getting back to my example, how is a country supposed to operate if a 10% debt to income ratio is considered “massive”.

Just because $120 Billion is a big scary number doesnt get away from the fact that the national debt that we are talking about is “massively minor”

I agree that debt is bad in theory, but in reality debt is essential in economic survival, albeit in a responsible manner

How many successfully run businesses have zero debt, ie, no overdraft, no employee credit cards, no HP’s or leases?

By all means, carry on with this childish an inmature name calling and character assasinations (by both sides of the fence, it bloody stinks), but please do me a favour, stop this uneducated and bullshit angle that those on the conservative side of politics keep pedalling that Australia is swimming in a torrent of federal government red ink, its just not true in any metholodgy used by any economically responsible organisation

Colin says:

04:01pm | 09/02/10

Hi again Rappo,

“so getting back to my example, how is a country supposed to operate if a 10% debt to income ratio is considered “massive”

You’ve basically just repeated your question… including the same (incorrect) assumption, it seems.  Our national debt-to-Income ratio is not 10%.. by definition it obviously must be higher than that.  So you’re asking the wrong question, I fear.  GDP (remember, GDP is NOT gross Income) is around $1.02 Trillion.  A debt of $120 Billion would be around 11.8% of GDP.  Again, that’s NOT 11.8% of Income, but of GDP. So it tells you nothing about debt-to-Income.

What is our real Income-only figure?  No idea.  A quick look here -

http://www.indexmundi.com/australia/current_account_balance.html

... at our 2008 Current Account, suggests that the net result of our total trade with the rest of the world had us (then) in the hole by $40-odd Billion.  So no positive Income figure from trade.. we’re buying more than we’re selling.

The key term you’ve used in regard to debt is “responsible”.  IMO, “responsible” Government borrowing involves only borrowing what you genuinely NEED to, and, spending it on projects that will pay for themselves (ie) productive investment.

Cash handouts (blown on consumption), (imported) pink batts, school halls, and the like, do not generate any income to repay their cost.  I understand the much mooted “multiplier effect” for the government’s spending is around 0.6. In other words, they (may) get back 60 cents for every dollar (of borrowed money) wasted.  So no return on the money - a pure lossmaker.  Therefore all the repayments of interest and principal will have to be drawn out of the rest of the productive economy. In other words, a dead-weight drag on the economy.

Brilliant

Carl Palmer says:

04:59pm | 09/02/10

My wife also came off a dairy farm and her dad impressed upon her that it was better to have cash in the bank than to owe the bank money.

Can ‘t help you with the GDP stuff, too technical for me.

SD says:

11:27pm | 09/02/10

Colin -

The Current Account isn’t really what you are looking for.

If you want to discuss Government Income - then you need Total Taxation Revenue.

For the 09-10 year it is expected to be 291 billion.

http://www.budget.gov.au/2009-10/content/overview/html/overview_40.htm

Colin says:

09:16am | 10/02/10

Thanks SD.

So returning to Rappo’s debt-to-Income question, we can see that, on the basis of the Government’s budget numbers, our debt-to-Income is around $120B / $291B = 41.3%

Of course, if we look even further at those budget numbers, we see that while Income is projected as $291B for 09/10, Expenses are projected as $338.2B .. a loss of $47 Billion for 09/10.

In other words, to again use Rappo’s analogy, our “household” has (currently) a $120B debt ... or 41.3% of annual Income ... but, is presently spending itself even deeper into the hole… by $47B per annum.

No wonder there are calls to “stop spending”.  If a real household had 41.3% debt-to-Income, and more importantly, was going even further into the hole by spending 16.5% (ie, 47B / 291B) more than it earned, the bank would be calling in the repossessors quick smart.

persephone says:

01:29pm | 09/02/10

Unfortunately, Tony Abbott has to draw his Shadow Ministers from the talent available amongst Coalition MPs, so the chances of finding someone professional sounding is pretty slim.

persephone says:

01:32pm | 09/02/10

Nope, they wouldn’t. They would be very clever and astute financial managers who know how to listen advice, take risks where necessary and spend money in a targetted and effective way.

(My English teacher said never to ask rhetorical questions, because people might answer in a way you didn’t expect).

Anthony S says:

02:07pm | 09/02/10

> Wouldn’t they be arrogant, incompetent, self-serving lightweights?

Yes they would, actually. And they are.

David C says:

02:46pm | 09/02/10

The issue of debt is only relevant if you include private sector debt as well, probably running at about 100% of GDP Id say.

soultrader says:

03:19pm | 09/02/10

And look where Media Mike ended up. He has his own little empire. Surrounded by the very people who backed up that claim way back then.
How stupis are we in SA ?

Chewy says:

03:18pm | 09/02/10

Indifference, nothing special. I think Homer Simpson started it.

Fog Badger says:

05:47pm | 09/02/10

From Blackadder Goes Forth? Stephen Fry’s character, maybe.

I’d have thought ‘nonsense’ or ‘rubbish’ or ‘shut-up’

6clegs says:

07:00pm | 09/02/10

um - pardon?

I read your post twice, and i still don’t understand what it was about - are you Senator Joyce - just taking an internet break during afternoon tea??

To “Don Clarke” 9.01am - excellent and articulated post!
It’s a bit of a worry when the ‘contributors’ Don Clark/AJ/Rappo/AdamC can submit more informed posts than the (paid) journos submit as original copy. Tory, were you in between coffees when you wrote that? Or have you been told to ‘tone down the intellect’?

mcdazz says:

11:30pm | 09/02/10

Why just Rudd?  I keep asking myself that same question about Tony Abbott and I still haven’t come up with a good reason to vote for him.

I’ve read my copy of Battlelines and I’ve also read my copy of Latham and Abbott - and yet, the more I find out about Abbott, and the more he opens his mouth, the more inclined I am to vote for anyone EXCEPT Abbott.

persephone says:

09:53am | 10/02/10

Jan

don’t worry, this time vote Labor.

WKH says:

08:13am | 10/02/10

Well said Mikko!

persephone says:

09:49am | 10/02/10

Love the logic - Labor is spending money unsustainably therefore the Coalition shouldn’t have to explain how its spending money.

Rudd doesn’t want to explain the pain his debt will cause, therefore we don’t have to explain the pain our unfunded spending will cause (and you can’t raise $3.2 billion without borrowing or raising taxes and NOT cause pain somewhere, Senator).

Saskia says:

04:52pm | 10/02/10

Sharp as a bowling ball more like it!  Did you here his interview yesterday where he could not answer a basic question about the stimulus package?

Tanner is a union official with no professional financial qualifications - like 99% of the ALP,  Given that economics is the biggest imperative in Govt - how on earth would anyone vote Labor?  Joyce is a CPA and had his own successful practice.

Although he is a ‘freak’ Barnaby would obliterate Tanner in any form of financial duel one could name.

Eric says:

08:49pm | 09/02/10

Well said! If you are too lazy and stupid to think about the issues, vote Labor.