Saturday, November 08, 2008

Liberal Messages Saturday 8th November

On behalf of the Federal Opposition I congratulate John Key and the National Party of New Zealand on their election win
John Key will bring not just political change to New Zealand, but also his considerable experience in the international financial markets – a background he will put to great use in these current challenging times.

Confused Labor scrambles to repair damage
Whilst the Coalition welcomes the belated bailout of ABC Learning Centres, there is still no certainty for parents post-Christmas.

Hockey Doorstop - Fiscal policy, interest rates, ABC Learning
Julia Gillard said today that the government takes into account the IMF projections for Australia when determining their own projections for the economy. The irony is that the IMF bases its projections for the Australian economy on the government’s own data. So if the government doesn’t understand its own figures, if the government doesn’t understand its own Budget projections how can Australians have confidence in Kevin Rudd and the government and its ability to deliver outcomes.

Murray drought report highlights the need for water infrastructure
Today’s Murray System Drought Update reinforces the need for major water infrastructure works to help farmers to save water.

Labor slashes Federal Police numbers
The Rudd Government has slashed the AFP’s budget by 2-3%. This will be crippling for the AFP which does such important work in countering serious and organised crime.

Environment Ministers must deal with landfill gas danger
Today’s meeting of Federal and State Environment Ministers in Adelaide must agree to a national strategy to deal with the potential ticking time-bomb of dangerous landfills.

Rudd government must hold states accountable for planning failures
Today’s report card prepared by the Planning Institute of Australia shows the urgent need for the Rudd government to hold poorly performing State governments to account for their planning policy failures.

Turnbull Doorstop - Unemployment rate, Australian economy, global financial crisis...
Well the focus for the Government has got to be squarely on jobs. We’ve got to make sure, the Government has to make sure that every decision it takes, whether it’s relating to fiscal policy or monetary policy, is focused on jobs, jobs, jobs.

Rudd Government's ABC Learning response embarrassingly hollow: Mirabella
Despite the Government promising that they had a ‘contingency plan’ for ABC Learning, Minister Gillard’s response to today’s announcement from ABC Learning has shown that their plan is disappointingly nothing more than hollow spin.

Rudd soft on serious crime
The Australian Crime Commission is Australia’s specialist law enforcement agency in fighting serious and organised crime but the Rudd Government is disabling it with cut backs.

iiNet delivers damning attack on Labor's National Broadband Network proposal
iiNet, Australia’s third largest Internet service provider, has delivered a damning attack on the Rudd Labor Government’s National Broadband Network (NBN) proposal in evidence to a Senate committee hearing in Perth today.

Opening of new CSIRO ICT centre
The Tasmanian ICT centre is an important addition to the research capacity of both the CSIRO and the broader Australian community.

Workplace relations legislation must create jobs
The Rudd Government must demonstrate how its new workplace relations legislation is going to create jobs.

Maxine must come out of hiding and outline the Government's ABC Learning Plan
The demise of ABC Learning today, the largest childcare provider in the country, is a devastating blow to thousands of parents, the 100,000 children who attend ABC Centres and the 12,000 employees of the company who make up a quarter of the country’s childcare workforce.

Education fund turns to slush
Universities already struggling in uncertain economic times are facing further funding shortfalls, as the Rudd Government is turning the Education Investment Fund (EIF) into an all-purpose education slush fund to bail out the states

Defence Minister lets down SAS soldiers - again
Serving SAS soldiers are still burdened with debts of tens of thousands of dollars from a pay bungle two weeks after the Defence Minister promised he would look after them.

Is $4.7 billion still on table for troubled National Broadband Network?
In light of revised economic forecasts predicting huge erosion of our nation's budget surplus the Rudd Government must clarify whether it still plans to spend up to $4.7 billion of taxpayers' money on its deeply troubled National Broadband Network (NBN) plan.

Burke fails to get banks to pass rate relief onto farmers and small business
Despite holding a summit last month with the big Banks and claiming “we will start to see farmers receiving benefits from that interest rate cut’, farmers and small businesses are still waiting for lenders to pass on any significant rate cuts.

Election of President of the United States
Senator Obama’s victory is, as he often said during the campaign, a defining moment in history. The idea that an African-American could be President would have been unthinkable only a few decades ago. Consider this: one of the millions of Americans who voted for Senator Obama was herself the daughter of a slave.

Julie Bishop Doorstop Interview - Mid-year economic and fiscal outlook
The Treasurer’s bumbling performance in the release of his own mid-year economic and fiscal outlook does not give Australians any confidence that this Government has the ability to manage the economy. It is clearly out of its depth. The Government has misread the economic conditions from the outset.

Turnbull interview with Leon Byner (Radio 5AA Adelaide) - Sub-prime crisis, Australian banks, interest rates, economic management
You know my single biggest concern Leon about their economic management is that they seem to always have a political strategy but not an economic strategy. And so they’re looking for the big headline without thinking through the consequences. All of the quarter of a million Australians whose assets and in many cases their life savings are frozen in mortgage funds and cash management trusts are feeling the consequences of a rushed and bungled decision on the 12th of October.

Senator the Hon Nick Minchin Address to the Broadband World Australia Conference 2008 - Labor's National Broadband Network Proposal
I want to emphasise up front that both sides of Federal politics are committed to ensuring Australians have universal, reliable and affordable access to broadband services. - Where we differ is how we get there. Liberals are naturally suspicious of “Government knows best” approaches based on central planning, big Government and huge dollops of taxpayers money – whether in the Communications portfolio or anywhere else.

Congratulations to President-Elect Obama
Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Helen Coonan today extended her congratulations to Democratic US President-Elect Barack Obama, welcoming his historic election to the White House.

Labor's broadband leaves regional Australia unconnected
Labor’s ill-considered National Broadband Network election promise is in ruins and people living in regional Australia are unlikely to see higher speed broadband for many years.

New economic numbers scuttles Rudd agenda
Today’s Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook figures show that the plans the Rudd Government had for their three major areas of reform have been scuttled.

Peter Dutton - Daily Telegraph Blog - How to improve the health system
We have a health system in this country with dedicated professionals who (sometimes despite the efforts of some State administrators) operate in public and private systems which are the envy of the World. We have a lot of improvements to make, and just tipping more money into the current arrangements will not improve patient outcomes.

Swan confirms road and rail spending to be cut
Road and rail spending under the Rudd Government will fall well below what the Coalition committed in government, revised Budget estimates released today have confirmed.

Housing sector needs real leadership from Rudd government
Figures released today showing yet another fall in the number of building approvals across Australia highlighted the Rudd Government’s continued failure to kick-start housing development.

Regional development to suffer as Labor builds bureaucracy
Local community groups and businesses will be disadvantaged if recommendations made by the Parliamentary Committee into the Government’s proposed regional development program are adopted.

Government must act to reassure families on ABC Learning
Reports today that the Board of ABC Learning are considering calling in administrators will be very concerning for the thousands of Australian families who rely on ABC for their childcare. The Government has taken a hands-off approach so far and essentially said they would wait for the company to collapse – now it appears that is about to happen.

Labor's National Broadband Network proposal - a cruel and cynical hoax
Labor has already broken its election campaign promise to select a network builder within six months and begin construction of the NBN before the end of 2008.

Julie Bishop Fairfax Blog - Bank guarantee a disaster
The Prime Minister said it was intended to provide more stability to the financial and banking sector.It has had the opposite effect.The extent of the negative consequences may have been unintended but they should certainly have been foreseen.

Ruthless killers test our forgiving nature (Opinion piece for the Daily Telegraph)
Australia maintains a strong and broad ranging relationship with Indonesia that reflects a shared commitment to advance and deepen co-operation on many bilateral and regional areas of mutual interest.

Rudd cannot hide behind Howard now
Almost a week after the leaked report was indeed denied by the White House, Mr Rudd has still not offered any explanation as to how and why this breach occurred.

Silent Shorten sits on fence
Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities, Bill Shorten has been silent on the appalling decision to deny Dr Bernhard Moeller and his family permanent residency on the basis of his son having Down syndrome.

Responsible leadership means injecting confidence into housing market
Australians are looking for stronger leadership from the Rudd Government to instil confidence in the Australian economy, following the release of ABS September quarter data on house prices yesterday.

Rudd dodging questions over damaging leak
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd risks further damage to Australia’s international standing by refusing to come clean with an explanation of how his private conversation with the US President leaked to the Australian media.

Opposition wary of compulsory uni fees
Despite Youth Minister, Kate Ellis, claiming that the Rudd government’s plan to re-introduce compulsory student service fees is not a return to compulsory student unionism, the Opposition will have a careful look at the details of the proposal.

Bowen misleads public over FuelWatch
The Rudd Government is misleading the public by blaming the Senate for its failure to get its FuelWatch legislation passed on time.

Turnbull Doorstop - A Foot in the Door, global financial crisis.
I think it is great. I think it is really well named, Opening the Door, it just underlines the importance of taking that extra step to make sure that Australians living in remote communities become involved with, connected to, the richness of the media which of course as we were discussing with the young people just a moment ago through the internet has the potential of being available to everybody regardless of where they live.

Broken promises and lipstick on pigs
The Rudd Government’s plan to introduce a compulsory fee for amenities at Universities is another in a growing list of broken promises.

Manufacturing crashes while Rudd Government procrastinates
Today’s Australian Industry Group-Price Waterhouse Coopers manufacturing survey shows that the Australian manufacturing sector has crashed to its worst result since 1992.

Australia must do more in The Congo
While Australia already contributes some $15 million toward peace-keeping activities to the Congo, clearly recent events have sparked the need for increased aid.

Compulsory student unionism through the back door
The Rudd Government’s re-establishment of a compulsory fee of $250 per student at universities as “a major blow to young students in Australia.”

More mixed messages from Labor on uranium
The Rudd Labor Government is risking more damage to Australia’s trading relationship with India as a result of its deepening confusion on uranium mining.

Turnbull Doorstop - President Bush and Kevin Rudd telephone conversation, budget, interest rates...
The Prime Minister should establish an AFP inquiry into this remarkable diplomatic gaffe that we have seen recently, where an account of his conversation with George Bush about the upcoming G20 Conference was briefed out to the media in a way that was clearly authoritative, that clearly came from the Prime Minister’s office. And this was briefed in a way that was designed both to embarrass the United States, and in particular the President, and of course to make Mr Rudd look particularly knowledgeable.

PM's leak must be investigated
The Prime Minister Kevin Rudd can no longer ignore the urgent need for an investigation into the damaging leaked conversation he had with US President George W. Bush.

Coalition's 3,000km Murray-Darling tour reaches the Murray mouth
After travelling 3,000km over six days, the Coalition’s journey along the length of the Murray-Darling Basin will end today at the mouth of the Murray River in South Australia.

Leader of the Opposition Address to the Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division)
It's been a case really with Mr Rudd of his political spin, his media focused approach failing to meet up, failing to come up to rise to the challenge of the economic crisis.

Government can't sweep Schools Bill problems under the carpet
Just today the Western Australian Education Minister, Liz Constable, highlighted the concerns of school principals in her state who are worried they’re being forced to sign up to a prescriptive national curriculum that won’t be completed until mid 2009, without having seen the content.

Turnbull Doorstop - Emissions trading scheme, bank deposit guarantee, Dr Bernhard Moeller...
It is pretty incredible that Mr Rudd and Mr Swan can say that the whole world has changed with the global financial crisis and that this is the biggest economic disruption since the Great Depression. And yet they have produced some modelling on the economic consequences of an emissions trading scheme which doesn’t take this global financial crisis into account at all.

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