Comments for The Conscience Vote

Comment on Carbon price a certainty, but the campaign rolls on by agencja detektywistyczna

agencja detektywistyczna — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:26:14 +0000

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Comment on Paid parental leave – the policies side-by-side by Leora

Leora — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:49:29 +0000

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Comment on Hockey fumbles the ball – again – on Coalition economic policy by Robbie

Robbie — Wed, 22 May 2013 06:11:03 +0000

Why is ‘buffoonery’ so richly rewarded by the media? Surely some one will have to ask this man to ‘please explain!’ Calling all sane people out there: keep this man away from Government & Treasury!

Comment on Hockey fumbles the ball – again – on Coalition economic policy by angie_b

angie_b — Wed, 22 May 2013 00:48:38 +0000

One minor correction:

Compulsory superannuation contributions do not come out of your take-home pay. They are paid by the employer on top of your salary or wage. Delaying the increase to 12% will have no effect whatsoever on the ‘money in the pocket’.

This isn’t necessarily true for everyone. Most professional services firms pay salaries on a ‘package’ basis, which means that for us an increase in superannuation does in fact decrease our take-home pay.

Of course, based on the figures my employer has sent around, the first 0.25% increase will cost me the princely sum of a few dollars per month once tax is taken into account. So it’s hardly a huge impost even for those of us that it will affect.

Comment on Hockey fumbles the ball – again – on Coalition economic policy by Megpie71

Megpie71 — Tue, 21 May 2013 00:17:17 +0000

I can remember Joe Hockey as inaguaral Minister for Human Services (departmental motto: “do you feel adequately serviced[1] yet?”) and he was just as disorganised, inarticulate, and incoherent. I still have copies of a couple of pieces of workplace satire I wrote, translating his departmental missives into plain English. If you want to know why there’s huge queues at every single Centrelink office in the country, and why the staff at Centrelink are doing double or triple workloads as a matter of course, you need look no further than Joe Hockey’s tenure. He was the one who kicked off his time there by making it a point of policy that as much business as possible should be shifted to the phone system (in order to avoid the appearance of queues) and then didn’t provide sufficient infrastructure and (trained) staffing for a phone system which could deal with the workload. End result: huge queues on the Centrelink phone system – but they aren’t in the offices, so they don’t count.

Except these days they *are* in the offices, as the vast majority of people who deal with Centrelink aren’t completely daft, and realise the easiest way of actually getting issues resolved is to see someone in the office. So they’ll go to the office with their issue, and get sent to the phone system, which will send them back to the office staff again.

If Joe Hockey can manage to stuff up one of the more tried and true systems of customer handling out there inside one term as Minister for Human Services, just imagine what he can do with the entire economy of Australia in his hands…

[1] In the farmyard sense of the word…

Comment on Hockey fumbles the ball – again – on Coalition economic policy by Honestpuck

Honestpuck — Mon, 20 May 2013 08:43:08 +0000

The problem is that the sort of grilling Hockey got from Cassidy is in stark contrast to the performance from the News and commercial TV and radio. Most people only see the soft interviews where Abbott, Hockey and company *can* just trot out the talking points and sound bites.

Comment on Hockey fumbles the ball – again – on Coalition economic policy by stavr0s

stavr0s — Mon, 20 May 2013 06:54:48 +0000

Thanks for putting it all in perspective. I wish MSM would do just a little more scrutiny of LNP. You may be right – they may just start asking the right questions of the Opposition.

Comment on The Budget Reply, 2013 (via Storify) by Fed up

Fed up — Mon, 20 May 2013 06:37:21 +0000

Did not see much criticism in the MSM. In fact, he seemed to be praised as a hero and statesman. Hard to buy.

Comment on The Budget Reply, 2013 (via Storify) by Fed up

Fed up — Mon, 20 May 2013 06:35:33 +0000

Spot on. One has to have a little pity for the man. Selling Abbott’s message is a little impossible.

Comment on Hockey fumbles the ball – again – on Coalition economic policy by vfmarky

vfmarky — Mon, 20 May 2013 05:04:37 +0000

Thanks again for some clarity. Liked it a lot. I watched this ‘performance’ and thought for a change lately that Cassidy held someone to account…