Liberals policy dump

That Parking ‘Plan’ is amazingly pissweak. All sizzle, no steak.

Anyone lay their hands on polling, internal or otherwise?

Non-empirical consensus seems to be 7/7/3 Lib/Lab/Green, which means another candy-cane alliance and business as usual.

Having read parts of the Quinlan tax review that has been endorsed under labors budget I can see that over the next 5-10 years my rates will triple, I currently pay about $2400 do tripling that gives you about $7200 or about $140 per week, that’s $140 a week to live in a house that I (along with the Commbank) own. Seems like a lot of money. Couple that with new new land tax arrangements passed in the budget and you will be looking at landlords paying $200-250 per week in rates and tax. Luckily I can afford to pay my rates but god help rent payers when land lords costs go up. We all know who really pays all taxes on landlords.

housebound said :

Some of us have lofty ideals about what a policy actually is. Thanks to the defeat of Hewson (and possibly also of Mark Latham), no political party will present a genuine policy stance for a long time. Instead, the small target approach rules the day, especially for oppositions. After all, that is how Rudd got into power.

That is why we get the incumbent Labor party promising taps in schools, the Greens promising $ for the RSPCA and trams, and the Libs promising things like this.

I for one would like to see a real policy, in the old fashioned sense of the word, but why would anyone bother? No one will read it other than the other side, who will look for the smallest of flaws and inconsistencies and blow them out of proportion.

It is a sad state of affairs.

The last thing I want from our oversized local council is lofty policy ideas. The more bland and day to day their policy announcements are, the happier I would be.

$700m for roads + extra for parking, but nothing serious to fix public transport, which would reduce the need to spend money on roads.
The money would be much better invested in fixing public transport, which if we can build the demand it will lead to light rail being a justified expense.
Improved use of public transport will help meet our emissions targets, will save the community money as a whole, and will save lives with less accidents on the roads.
Short term thinking there Zed.

Hundreds of millions of extra spending commitments, millions in revenue reductions – what are they going to cut to pay for it?
Will Zed pull a Cambell Newman and start slashing basic services?

The slow phasing out of stamp duty was one of the few good Labor policies.
Stamp duty should have started to be phased out a decade ago after the GST was implemented, but instead he wants to subsidise first home buyers to compensate for stupidly high stamp duty instead.
Stamp duty disproportionally taxes a small section of the community instead of putting the load on everyone fairly, and without it you wouldn’t need inefficient kludges like the home buyer concession scheme.

The urgent care clinics sound awfully like the walk in centres that they love to criticize too…

Glen Takkenberg
Pirate Party ACT

rescuedg said :

Those are some pretty huge cuts to revenue streams for the ACT Government, as well as new spending. Where is the money coming from?

+1

The Libs are playing Canberra voters for fools, we know they wont cut their revenue streams.

They will give with one hand and take back with the other.

Truthiness said :

our political parties so bland and conventional. Do these people not have dreams or ideals? I thought leaders were meant to lead us somewhere, towards a goal or aspiration. Zeds only aspiration is to win the election, these policies are empty and non threatening, they don’t commit to any philosophy or outcome. What is the ideological difference here? Or are we all so resigned to neo-liberalist conservatism that we no longer even consider there might be other options?

If the liberals were extreme right wingers who wanted to kill all immigrants and can all public services, that at least would be some measure of commitment to a cause. I’d disagree, but at least there would be something to argue about.

This… this is wishy washy non committal nit picking about fairly inconsequential minutae. No substance, no stance, just the same old rehashed centrist populism both major parties have been mired in for decades.

Vote for us, everything will be exactly the same but slightly different!

Excellent post. That is (partly) why I’m voting Bullet Train Party. They don’t have any policies other than HSR but at least it is a vision. These days it is all ‘improvements to health’ or ‘extra schools funding.’

To be fair, I do like the idea of free shuttles in the suburbs to town centres. It would have to be done right though.

johnboy said :

My take is it’s a weak set of policies getting omnibused to lean against each other in the manner of a house of cards.

Wut?

Are you trying to impress a girl?

Motorsport commitments?

c_c said :

….Nothing would please me more than to have a competent and half inspired opposition in this town…..

Well, if we can’t have one federally……..

Some of us have lofty ideals about what a policy actually is. Thanks to the defeat of Hewson (and possibly also of Mark Latham), no political party will present a genuine policy stance for a long time. Instead, the small target approach rules the day, especially for oppositions. After all, that is how Rudd got into power.

That is why we get the incumbent Labor party promising taps in schools, the Greens promising $ for the RSPCA and trams, and the Libs promising things like this.

I for one would like to see a real policy, in the old fashioned sense of the word, but why would anyone bother? No one will read it other than the other side, who will look for the smallest of flaws and inconsistencies and blow them out of proportion.

It is a sad state of affairs.

johnboy said :

And it worked to the extent WIN and the CT have aped Zed’s language on it being a comprehensive plan (meaning they can’t be arsed reading it)

Suckers, that really is pitiful.
Nothing would please me more than to have a competent and half inspired opposition in this town. And if one of the ANUSA tickets could manage a 70 page policy book, Liberals should have something more.

our political parties so bland and conventional. Do these people not have dreams or ideals? I thought leaders were meant to lead us somewhere, towards a goal or aspiration. Zeds only aspiration is to win the election, these policies are empty and non threatening, they don’t commit to any philosophy or outcome. What is the ideological difference here? Or are we all so resigned to neo-liberalist conservatism that we no longer even consider there might be other options?

If the liberals were extreme right wingers who wanted to kill all immigrants and can all public services, that at least would be some measure of commitment to a cause. I’d disagree, but at least there would be something to argue about.

This… this is wishy washy non committal nit picking about fairly inconsequential minutae. No substance, no stance, just the same old rehashed centrist populism both major parties have been mired in for decades.

Vote for us, everything will be exactly the same but slightly different!

Didn’t Zed get the memo about the attention span of most voters, the column space in most papers, and how dumping like this is about as stupid as you can get?

Indeed doesn’t he know that most announcement dumps like this are done on purpose to get bad stuff out quickly and hide stuff?

Idiot.

Anyway, $340m for a new Northside sub-accute hospital – love to see the funding details for that.

Also love the sly announcement of $204 million for school upgrades, which when you read the announcement is really an extra $36m over what is already being allocated. Not such a fancy headline.
They did the same for roads, $700m, but it’s really only an extra $125m over the current allocation.

And ‘Tax Cuts’ which is simply a cut to stamp duty.

And an Education Tsar who will be an overworked, highly paid, under resourced bureaucrat.

So fear not, the dump is intended to hide that there isn’t that much substance to these policies, Threadbare, over hyped.

I think it’s a good thing that the public questions how policies will be funded. Maybe there’s hope for us yet.

cmdwedge said :

rosscoact said :

cmdwedge said :

Well, everyone WAS sooking that the Libs had no policies..,

still sooking. Is that it, after 11 years, isn’t there some pent up policy explosion that must burst forth like the sebaceous cyst on the back of a fat man?

That’s 17 policies in one hit.

True, but for example Cut the Lease Variation Charge by 10% isn’t really a policy now is it?

It’s not a numeric thing but rather I was hoping for something really impressive

rosscoact said :

cmdwedge said :

Well, everyone WAS sooking that the Libs had no policies..,

still sooking. Is that it, after 11 years, isn’t there some pent up policy explosion that must burst forth like the sebaceous cyst on the back of a fat man?

That’s 17 policies in one hit.

cmdwedge said :

Well, everyone WAS sooking that the Libs had no policies..,

still sooking. Is that it, after 11 years, isn’t there some pent up policy explosion that must burst forth like the sebaceous cyst on the back of a fat man?

DrKoresh said :

So the Libs plan to oust Labor by largely ape-ing their policies, kinda like Liberal-Lite I guess?

Don’t knock it – the reverse has been working like a charm for Labor for years.

I am finding it harder and harder to even tell the difference between labs and libs. Schools, education and public transport. I guess for both sides of our colonial overlords it remains Business as usual, maintain the status quo.

I really hope that isn’t the sum of the Liberals public transport policy for the election. Free shuttle bus trial and guided buses ?

Damien Haas
Chair, ACT Light Rail

So the Libs plan to oust Labor by largely ape-ing their policies, kinda like Liberal-Lite I guess? Good luck folks, but you won’t be getting my vote with slimy, smug wankers like Zed at the helm.

schools, hospitals, roads.. damn pinko socialists!

dpm said :

Lotsa stuff here.
I think they would do well (for simple people like me) to have a nice diagram or overview paper showing money in (from where, and what [estimated] amounts), and money out. That way i’d be able to understand if it was all designed to balance (within reason) or not….!

That should be required of all parties that could get near the purse strings – Liberal, Labor and Greens.

Not gonna happen.

PM said :

CrocodileGandhi said :

Ok, so we’ve got over a $1 billion of expenditure there. I wonder where they are going to find the money to pay for all that?

That $1 billion figure is probably out of a revenue stream of $20 billion or so.

This is $1 billion of new spending. In order for it to not cost the Territory money, there would either have to be an [i]additional[/i] $1 billion of revenue or an equivalent cut to spending.

BTW, in principle, the ‘urgent care clinics’ sound like a good idea to reduce ED load….

Lotsa stuff here.
I think they would do well (for simple people like me) to have a nice diagram or overview paper showing money in (from where, and what [estimated] amounts), and money out. That way i’d be able to understand if it was all designed to balance (within reason) or not….!
I’m sure it would also help others who don’t trust they’ve done their sums correctly.
From what i can see here it looks like they’ve promised a lot more stuff, while also promising to cut a lot of income (from rates, taxes etc)?

Green Bins?

CrocodileGandhi said :

Ok, so we’ve got over a $1 billion of expenditure there. I wonder where they are going to find the money to pay for all that?

That $1 billion figure is probably out of a revenue stream of $20 billion or so.

Didn’t see the policy pledge for $100 million for walking cycling, they must be announcing that later!

If they want my vote they will give an even longer list of things they will rescind.

Well, everyone WAS sooking that the Libs had no policies..,

Libs won’t triple your rates

Indeed. They’ll increase them by a factor of x but can guarantee x will not equal 3.

Those are some pretty huge cuts to revenue streams for the ACT Government, as well as new spending. Where is the money coming from?

Ok, so we’ve got over a $1 billion of expenditure there. I wonder where they are going to find the money to pay for all that?