Sunday, September 14, 2008

Liberal Messages Sunday 14th September

More reason to release the air combat capability review
The dangers of having an indecisive Defence Minister became more apparent last night when Mr Fitzgibbon validated the flimsiest of rumours about the Joint Strike Fighter.

Kerr's dental scare campaign lacks teeth
The Labor MP for Denison has proven himself astoundingly ill-informed about his own Government’s legislative activities by claiming the Tasmanian Liberal Senate Team is blocking the Commonwealth Dental Health Program.

Nelson interview with Tony Briscoe and Nelly McKenzie (Macquarie Regional Radio) - Single aged pension, Peter Costello, trucking industry...
Your caller Tony, that is the desperate situation in which many of these people find themselves and they not only lack dignity, they lack the basic resources that you need to live. And Mr Rudd has said, you know, that he’s got this big surplus – by the way which we gave him and he opposed everything we had to do to get it in – but he’s got a $22 billion surplus...

Brendan Nelson: Questions and Answers at the Queensland Media Club (10 September)
As we go through the next two years in the lead-up to the next federal election we will develop a comprehensive policy in relation to all kinds of pensions and benefits that are paid to people who are in need of it.

Southcott interview with Richard Perno (2AY, Albury Wodonga)
The most important thing is for a Federal Government to have an environment which allows job creation and that’s something that we had - the former Howard Government did have. We were creating 250,000 jobs per year. Now it looks like on the Government’s own forecast that will fall to about less than 1/3 of that - only about 80,000 jobs will be created.

Coalition's economic record: History re-written
Today’s article in the Australian Financial Review titled ‘Revealed: how Costello fanned flames of inflation’ fails to outline the exceptional economy that was Peter Costello’s legacy from his 11 years in Government.

Rural Australia sacrificed
The purchase of Toorale Station in the Bourke Shire will do nothing to improve the current drought induced crisis in the Murray Darling Basin.

Peter Dutton Daily Telegraph Blog - Sarah Palin’s X-Factor hurts Gillard’s chances (9 September)
Who will be better for Aust? Qldr, my view is whatever the outcome, their focus will be largely on rebuilding reputation and relationships, and in that regard we wont be a priority because ours is one of the strongest in existence.

Time to act to help Australia’s pensioners
I will move to introduce legislation when parliament sits next week to give Mr Rudd the opportunity to deliver an extra $30 a week to around 860,000 Australians who need it and deserve it.

Brendan Nelson: Address to Queensland Media Club - Putting the budget into perspective
The first is our opposition to Kevin Rudd’s $20 billion in tax increases in the May budget this year. The second is pensioners and the plight of age pensioners in Australia and what should be done to assist them. And the third is what the Government would have you believe are infrastructure funds, but which I will argue and am increasingly concerned are in fact slush funds.

Coalition moves to increase single pension; Labor sits on its wallet
The Leader of The Nationals, Warren Truss, said the Coalition was moving on pensions because Rudd Labor will not... I would hope and expect this legislation will spur an uncaring Prime Minister and his team into action now rather than at some undefined time in the future.

Nelson interview with Gary Hardgrave (Radio 4BC, Brisbane) - Pension...
We’re looking at about a $96 billion surplus over the next five years, or in the order of $90 billion. That’s a lot of money. Mr Rudd’s proposing to put about $40 billion of that into slush funds which he intends to use to prop up failing state governments, and my view is we can at least use some of that to support our pensioners...

Extend today's Emissions Trading Scheme deadline
The Rudd Government should extend the deadline for businesses and stakeholders responding to the draft emissions trading scheme to enable them to consider Treasury modelling.

Nelson interview with Madonna King (ABC Radio, Brisbane) - Peter Costello, republic debate, Liberal-National Party, single aged pension, defence, ADH.
Mr Rudd sounds like the chief bureaucrat running a huge bureaucracy. He says he can’t live on $273 a week along with half a dozen of his senior ministers, but he then says ‘I’ve got a committee that’s looking at; I’ll wait until I get a report before I do something about it’. So he says he can’t live on $273 a week. He expects about 900,000 single aged pensioners to live on it until he gets a committee that gives him a report. And he’s sitting on a $21 billion surplus.

Rudd goes awol on pensioners
Mr Rudd has finally joined the chorus line of Labor MPs who have been telling him the single aged pension of $273-a-week is impossible to survive on. Unfortunately for Australia’s pensioners, Mr Rudd offers sympathy, but no solution.

Another hypocritical Rudd government statement on India
The Rudd Government’s position against Australian uranium exports for India has opened up another front of hypocrisy with the Foreign Minister saying in an overnight speech in India that the two nations need to work together on climate change.

Rudd endorses coalition defence policy but where's the fourth air warfare destroyer?
Mr Rudd’s speech to the RSL last night represents a welcome endorsement of the previous Coalition Government’s defence policy. But the true test for Mr Rudd will be whether he delivers on his rhetoric by committing to a fourth air warfare destroyer.

Statistics that tell Kevin what he wants to hear
The decision made by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to drastically curtail the sample size of its monthly employment survey at a time when the Reserve Bank is predicting 100,000 Australians will lose their jobs in the coming 12 months is one of remarkably poor judgement.

Shadow water Ministers meet in Sydney to discuss MDB reform
Shadow Ministers from the Murray Darling Basin States of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria met with the Federal Shadow Minister for Water Security, John Cobb in Sydney to discuss the current reform of the Murray Darling Basin (MDB).

Consumer Confidence
Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan (Australia’s worst ever Treasurer), who for the past nine months have talked up inflation as "a monster" that is "out of control", and who declared that the “Genie is out of the bottle”, have shattered consumer confidence.

More job cuts
Reports that the Child Support Agency is set to lose up to half of it’s West Australian staff have today attracted criticism from the Federal Opposition.

Nelson Doorstop - Townsville - Defence white paper, Vietnam veterans, single rate pension, Liberal-National Party merger, Steve Irwin Memori...
This is one of the most important meetings in the most important organisation in Australia. The RSL represents more than 400,000 Australians who have worn or wear the uniform of the Navy, Army and Air Force.

Nelson interview with Paula Tapiolas (ABC, North Queensland) - Townsville Hospital, Queensland health care... ABC NORTH QLD
It is an extraordinary situation to think that we’re in Australia, we’ve got a significant hospital servicing a rapidly growing population and we have 29 people having their elective surgery cancelled; as you know it had 60 people in the emergency department and 24 people that couldn’t get beds...

Greg Hunt: Address to the New Zealand National Party - The Global Challenge: Liberalism, Climate Change and the Clean Energy Revolution (6 September)
The essential Liberal philosophy of an open society and open economy also provides the most effective base for addressing this century’s great environmental challenge - climate change.

Cutler recommends the reintroduction of Commercial Ready
In a humiliating slap to Innovation Minister Kim Carr and the Prime Minister, Dr Terry Cutler has today recommended the reintroduction of a Commercial Ready style grants program in his review of the National Innovation System.

Time for some positive action by Mr Rudd on the economy
Today’s economic surveys and retail spending and housing figures are a vote of no confidence in the economic mismanagement of the Rudd Labor Government.

Rudd's quick fix on petrol misses the point
As bowser prices fail to match the fall in world oil prices, it was becoming increasingly obvious that the Rudd Government’s FuelWatch scheme completely missed the point.

Rudd's India insult to cost Australia billions
Australia’s relationship with India will be severely damaged if the Rudd Government does not commit to selling Australian uranium to India, costing Australia billions of dollars.

Uranium - Rudd and Carpenter just don't get it
A devastating fall from grace for Labor in Western Australia was partly because of Labor’s confused and muddled position on the mining of uranium in Australia... Just in allowing the export of uranium to the major developing economies in South Asia, including India, would in the period from now and up to 2030 avoid the emission of 1.5 billion tonnes of greenhouses gases.

Julie Bishop Fairfax Blog - New ministry should provide job opportunities
Business and particularly small and medium business should be encouraged to employ people, through every policy option available to government.

Nelson interview with Jason Morrison (Radio 2GB) - Mayo and Lyne by-election result, WA election, New South Wales Government, Peter Costello...
There was a change of government in November last year. Kevin Rudd to his great credit I’ve got to say won government in a very strong economy... but in the same way that the government changed last year in a strong economy, so too it can change again in two years if Mr Rudd keeps going the way he is.

Hunt interview with Helen Dalley (Sky TV Business Channel) - Release of the Garnaut Supplementary Draft Report
There’s been no explanation of the impacts on particular resource sectors of the economy; no explanation of the impacts on any of Australia’s industrial sectors, and therefore on jobs. So we need that modelling in terms of what will be the impact on jobs, and that will allow Australian community groups, Australian mums and dads, Australian employers to understand exactly what will be the impact of different targets on them.

No basin plan- Don't waste $400 million
The fact that the Minister for Water, Ms Wong has admitted there is no silver bullet to return water to the Murray Darling Basin to ease the current crisis and the Basin plan will not be in place until at least 2011 she should not be buying any water entitlements at this time.

Time for action to help Australia's pensioners
Wayne Swan confirmed today that he would not be able to live on $273 a week – the rate of the single aged pension. The Government has delivered no relief for Australia’s pensioners who have struggled as groceries, petrol and rent have gone through the roof.

Wayne Swan lacks economic credibility – Again!
In Wayne Swan's most embarrassing moment to date as Treasurer, he suggested on national television this morning that the Labor Party’s trashing of the NSW economy was due to a rise in interest rates, not poor economic management.

India visit is the time for Smith to back down on Australian uranium exports
Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, should use his visit to India next week to announce that the Rudd Government will be reversing their policy of not exporting Australian uranium to India.

Labor's hypocrisy on uranium reaches breaking point
The Rudd Labor Government must now resolve its untenable position on its refusal to sell Australian uranium to India, following the decision of the Nuclear Suppliers Group to overturn the longstanding ban on nuclear trade with India, Shadow Minister for Trade Ian Macfarlane said today.

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