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Why (this time) I am voting Labor.

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Don't know what you've got til it's gone

By: NickStanton (Registered ) on 13-10-2007 05:14

Richard,  
How sad it is that you have such a cynical view of the world, and seem to be oblivious to the great shape our country is in right now, compared not only to our past, but to the rest of the world. 
Climate change is a real and credible threat to our society. But at the moment we don't know enough about it to be able to declare that the sky is falling, and act accordingly. It needs to be addressed with a scientific and measured response. If Australia became completely carbon-neutral overnight, it would have a negligible impact on worldwide carbon emmisions, but a disastrous effect on our lives. Clean coal is a great theory, but it is ust that, an umproven theory, and after millions of dollars and years of research it may be the answer. It also may not. Hydro is great, but to use the tully-millstream example, environmentalists aren't even happy with that. Fact is renewable energies aren't good enough, and until we have the money to take the risk that we will be able to make them good enough, tried and tested methods such as nuclear are at least worth discussing. 
As a university student during the transition between compulsory and voluntary student unionism i can tell you now, i have lost nothing except the compulsory pleasure of donating money to pro-labor party demonstrations and advertising.

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Realistic

By: Joseph27 (Registered ) on 13-10-2007 08:06

First and foremost – what happened to the formatting? 
 
Nick, having a cynical view of politics is not something I can escape; I have been around too long and listened to too many lies to blindly swallow what our ‘leaders’ are telling us. Yes Australia is a lucky country and having lived for much of the past ten years in the developing world I can assure you that I am fully aware of how good it is but I won’t for a minute get caught up in all the rhetoric. Is it that much better than the past? Well that depends on where you are coming from; the economy is doing better but I would attribute a large amount of that to macro reforms taken in the 1980’s / 90’s – Howard has admittedly steered the ship but the course was set by better and more visionary leaders than he.  
 
The reason I made this initial post was because I am tired of election cycle politics without a longer term view of where we are taking this great country. Your sentiments on environment policy are wise but major reform can be achieved when the right environment is created and is more conducive to business interests; tax incentives, university grants, public private developments. Nuclear power can be discussed and that’s fine but it isn’t the long term solution we need, the world is on track to disaster and unless globally we can come up with viable alternatives there is a bleak future waiting for us. Nuclear can be part of our medium term power requirements and is especially viable in places like China and India with massive requirements however in Australia it isn’t as essential.  
 
Travel to the developing world; stopover in China, India and look around – this planet doesn’t have the resources available to meet the expectations being placed on it, so even if we disregard global warming, finite resources is becoming an issue. This isn’t meant to be a Chicken Little call out, this is happening but I am not advocating knee jerk reactions. I don’t espouse the views of the Greens, in fact I find most of what Bob Brown says to be ridiculous, as I mentioned I am generally a conservative voter, I simply lament the lack of longer term focus from John Howard. 
 
During my university days, student unionism was compulsory and I wasn’t active nor was I political, I spent my entire university life working to support myself and had little in common with your reactionary 18 year self proclaimed soci

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continued

By: Joseph27 (Registered ) on 13-10-2007 08:11

socialist. My comments on Howard removing compulsory unionism were more of a contrast with what he hasn’t achieved. Australians spend a large amount of money on university fees yet most of our universities rank lowly by world standards – our government has consistently stripped back funding whilst others are dramatically allocating more resources. I just find this indicative of the short term thinking of the Australian government.  
 
Yes Australia is a great place to live, one of my favorite pass times is to take my daughters to the Carlton gardens and enjoy the benefits of our society. Our country is clean, safe and rich and with my second home in the developing world I know how lucky we have it, I just want this to continue and for our country to follow other great countries by growing on the back of not only our hard work, but on our intelligence and understanding of tomorrow. I don’t know if Rudd is the right person to take us in that direction but I do know that Howard isn’t.

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Howard has been working for me

By: NickStanton (Registered ) on 13-10-2007 10:49

I'm sorry you feel that way. John Howard has done all the right things to win my vote. The following are standouts for me: 
1) The fact that our budget is in surplus and we aren't spending $10Bn/year on interest payments anymore. 
2) Tax reforms such as the GST which have made our tax system far more logical, and one envied by many foreigners i have spoken to about it. 
3) The governments policy of not giving illegal immigrants, who have been able to divert the internationally recognised systems simply bacause they have money, preference over those poor souls waiting in camps overseas because they cannot afford a boat ride. 
4) His industrial relations reforms which have brought us in line with the times. Having worked as an unskilled laborour for a civil contractor last year on an AWA i directly benefitted from the flexibility and raise in pay gained since the old system. My uncle who runs a small mechanical business and is having huge problems getting staff due to the mining boom, has been able to employ people he normally would not have risked, knowing that he will not be vulnerable to ridiculous unfair dismissal cases if they turn out to be unsuitable, as has happened to him before. 
5) The introduction of VSU has made university a much better place for me, knowing that i am no longer forced to associate myself with a group of radical, ill-informed, power-hungry students, for no gain to myself. 
Things like their spending on defense, the water plan, the IR reform, the future fund, the Higher education endowment fund, the $2Bn announced recently for the Bruce highway, their plan to re-instate the previously successful local hospital boards, the unprecedented levels of aid given to Indonesia after the tsunami, work in East Timor and the soloman Islands, and the free-trade agreements, are al strong, future-smart initiatives. They will contribute to our economy, our health services, and our regional relationships far into the future. What does Kevin Rudd's labor have to offer? I'm yet to see anything worthwhile.

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...

By: Joseph27 (Registered ) on 14-10-2007 01:40

A budgetary surplus in itself isn’t representative of efficient government, if we look the two components of that surplus we see earlier aggressive spending cuts that are only now being addressed coupled with a mining boom – it isn’t hard to see why we are in this situation. Had 1996 gone Keating’s way, I don’t believe that things would have been that different economically though he of course would have increased super contributions to 15% level and further reformed the work place though not to the extent of the Coalition.  
 
Though such an argument is purely academic, I raise it because I don’t feel that John Howard is as deserving of many of the praises bestowed on him. I will however agree that the GST was perhaps one of the ‘ballsiest’ moves that luckily off despite a lower base vote at the federal election. I used to be a fan of Howard and I voted for him many times, I wrote this initial piece because I feel that he wasted so many opportunities on further structural reform whilst manipulating the electorate with fear to stay in power.  
 
Now as for Rudd, he is an unknown entity though he can’t be pigeon holed as easily in the traditional labor liberal party politic paradigm. His family is successful and rich; he is intelligent and knows both the bureaucracy and foreign affairs. He brings a unique set of skills to the job – I am concerned by the role the unions think they will have post election however I believe that this election will bring us some surprises and distancing from unions.  
 
Howard looks like he is calling an election now, the campaign will be hard fought and full of dirty tricks – I will be interested to see how the party back rooms fight this one out.

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