Rudd Govt Performance so far.
From Bolt's blog. Thought it worth reprinting here. Thanks to BBP of Omnipresent.
Here’s my list (mostly my own work, but some cut and pastes from other on here too).
1. Grocery Watch
2. Fuel Watch
3. Never taking Japan to Court over whaling as promised. We have now re-issued our threat. Guess when our “deadline” for Japan to stop it is? After the next election.
4. Talking up inflation in early 2008 leading to two rate rises just before the GFC, making it worse.
5. Wasting $900 cheques on dead people and people who live overseas.
6. Unlimited Bank Guarantees freezes people’s cash in non-deposit taking institutions.
7. Stimulus spending totally out of proportion to Australia’s situation during the GFC. Now we are paying for it with rising interest rates. Not to mention taxes will never be cut until the debt is cleared, in say ... 10yrs, 20yrs ? Who knows.
8. Green Loans Scheme shelved and Wong announces an audit into frauds. A tiny number of loans were granted at a cost of how many millions of dollars to set up the scheme?
9. Prior to 2007 he was a “fiscal conservative”. After election and after GFC, he wrote a ludicrous essay claiming that “neo-capitalism” was evil. You can’t have it both ways. If you were a fiscal conservative in 2007, then you were a neo-capitalist too !
10. Pink bats - people die, electrified houses, houses burn down, fake insulations get paid. Garrett demoted after Rudd said he was a “first class minister” and that Rudd would “take responsibility” for the scheme’s failure! No compensation for industry yet.
11. BER - Building the Education Revolution (or Builder’s Early Retirement) fund rorts. Eg. $900,000 for a single new class room. And it was a pre-fabricated.
12. Crazy boat people policy. When Howard left Christmas Island was a ghost town. There are now over 2500 I think. They are building more beds there too, and others have been transported to Villwood and some air force base in the outback.
13. Child care centres at schools broken promise. 38 will be built, not 260.
14. Failed ETS/Copenhagen debacle. 143 were taken to Copenhagen. Count ‘em ... However, as soon as public opinion shifted, the great moral challenge of our time became no urgent problem at all.
15. Promise not to means test the private health insurance rebate broken.
16. Means testing the baby bonus sucks the big one.
17. Promise to “take over” the health system by “mid-2009”
18. New health policy to “stop the blame game” actually means a 60/40 Fed/State funding split and management of hospitals to be by state controlled Local Boards. So when waiting times don’t come down or someone dies because they are sent home early from hospital, does that mean it is because the Feds aren’t putting in enough cash, or the State isn’t? Or is it because the State isn’t properly controlling the Local Boards, or is it because the Local Boards aren’t doing a good job. What a complete joke.
19. Former Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, basically admitted being bribed by female Chinese government official. Fitzgibbon forced to resign.
20. National Broadband Network. Initial cost was under $10b I think. Now $43b. The only player capable of handling it, Telstra, was rejected, then accepted back, and now is in limbo. The NBN does not have a business plan. That means no one knows whether it will add value to the ecomony, and if it does, no one knows when that might be.
21. Spent the last 10 years criticising Costello’s ability. Then appoints him to control the Future Fund.
22. Tantrums because he doesn’t have a hair dryer or because he got the wrong meal on a plane.
23. Lies about Abbott taking $1b out of health when he was minister.
24. Lies about those boat people who were taken to Indonesia on Oceanic Viking not receiving a “special deal” to get them off the boat. They were all processed in 4wks weren’t they (and granted visas)? What’s the usual timeframe? 3-4 months?
25. He appoints a former Labor member, and family friend, Quentin Bryce, as GG - the most important apolitical, impartial, position in Australia. Then has her travel to Africa to promote his politicial agenda and personal ambitions - 10 nations, 19 day lobbying tour to drum up support for Rudd’s push to gain a non-permanent seat for Australia on the UN Security Council.
26. All time record levels of public debt and annual budget deficits, with the economic wizard, Wayne Swan, in control of managing it.
27. Every primary school child gets a laptop. Bugger all have. And most of them can’t connect to the internet with it.
28. Playing politics with the Henry Tax Review. Not releasing it until very close to the May budget, no doubt in the hope that the Budget news will drown out anything nasty in the HTR.
29. Giving Toyota Aust $15m to help build a hybrid Camry, that even Toyota said they didn’t need because they had already started building it.
30. Industrial laws that prevent teenagers working after school because if they work less than a 3 hour shift, Gillard’s laws say they are being exploited !
31. Industrial laws that give Unions a statutory right to enter any employer’s site. That is, even if the employer owns the land or has a right to exclusive possession, they cannot prevent them from entering. On their own land !
32. Insane levels of expensive trips overseas for the PM.
33. 2020 Summit in Canberra. Countless ideas were produced. PM said everyone of them would be the subject of consideration and a written response by the government. A paltry amount have got their written response - since January 2008. To my knowledge, none of the ideas have been implemented.
Every morning I pass a newsstand on the way to work and no matter how early I walk by, there is a chap sitting there selling the papers. And then at night, on the way home, I pass that same newsstand and that same chap is still sitting there, just as he is if I happen to walk past during lunch.
It is this fellow, along with the millions of other working people in this country, who pay the taxes that are being so disgracefully wasted in harebrained schemes of almost nil social utility and zero net value added.
[url=http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2010/04/the-economics-of-rorting]Source[/url]
.
.
.
.
.
.
From Rudd's campaign speech, 2007
Today I am saying loud and clear that this sort of reckless spending must stop. I am determined that any commitments I make are first and foremost economically responsible