#1
Post rating: ~
Australia has a new budget, and it is good and cool. Budget also sounds like bud, get, like getting bud.

He denied his budget was the start of an “age of austerity”, saying he was in fact ushering in a new “age of opportunity”.

But for unemployed people under 30, this “age of opportunity” means waiting six months to get the dole, then receiving a payment only for six months and only if they work for it, and then losing the payment again for the next six months, during which a potential employers may get a wage subsidy.

For sick people it means paying $7 for every visit to the doctor and every medical test – $5 of which will be invested in a new “medical research future fund” and $2 will be kept by the doctor or test provider, in part to help them waive the payment in cases of “genuine need”. The co-payment will stop after 10 medical payments for concession holders and children. The co-payment for medicines will also increase by $5.

Hockey said the aim of the health changes was to “get the nation to invest in its own healthcare … and for people to accept personal responsibility for their own physical health.”



my girlfriend and lots of other people will have literally no income lol. looking forward to mild, easily dispersed protests in response.

#2
Poronto
Post rating: ~
looks like you shoulda had higher standards OP
#3
Poronto
Post rating: +
otoh i applaud the government finally trying to close the social investment gap between whites and aborigines
#4
Post rating: +
Ausfailia
#5
Zinovievist-Trotskyist gang
Post rating: ~

Gibbonstrength posted:

He denied his budget was the start of an “age of austerity”, saying he was in fact ushering in a new “age of opportunity”.



Don't you feel empowered?

#6
Post rating: +
the proime minister deleted Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and took over the department personally "I'm a prime minister for aboriginal affairs" and people were like wow what a noble soul
#7
Post rating: +
on the plus side, all those welfare recipients getting their income completely cut will surely have the time and motive to turn up to anti austerity prothahahahahahahahaha
#8
Post rating: ~
have u considered simply getting a job what with all this opportunity floating around
#9
Post rating: +
I was considering a job inheriting a mining fortune
#10
Post rating: ~
why cant poor people just WORK HARDER
#11
Post rating: ~
they also just need to STOP GETTING SICK
#12
[account deactivated]
#13
Post rating: +
this thread just wont be the same without tpaine around ;_;
#14
Post rating: ~

Earlier in the day, politicians from all sides were out arguing their respective cases over the budget, which has divided opinion like few in recent years.
Treasurer Joe Hockey hit back at critics of the proposed $7 per visit GP payment, likening it to the daily costs met by smokers and drinkers.
‘‘Some people are screaming about a $7 co-payment,” he said. “One packet of cigarettes costs $22. That gives you three visits to the doctor. You can spend just over $3 on a middy of beer, so that’s two middies of beer to go to the doctor.



sharpen up you lazy cunts, stop wasting money on smokes and beer and you'll be fine

#15
Post rating: ~
Joe Hockey. Joe Hockey

the treasurer of the australian government is named joe hockey
#16
Post rating: +
in canada, Hockey is a sport we play with ice skates. in the backwards upside down world of australia, Hockey drafts your fucking budget
#17
Post rating: +
yes, this man called Mikey Baseball seems like a cool and appropriate person to direct the financial affairs of our country, and not at all a made up joke name
#18
mt.real
Post rating: +
in australia everything is a made up joke. it's very different from here
#19
Post rating: ~
It was so easy to get Australians to support each other as socialists because they're mostly white and could sympathize with each other but now $AmeriKKKan$ values have seeped in across that red dusty land and so they love driving cars and fucking people over by class a lot more. Welcome to TEAMUSA, m8s
#20
Poronto
Post rating: ~
how old is senorah :-s
#21
Poronto
Post rating: +
has she ever demonstrated suspiciously detailed knowledge of the 1891 woolshearers strike or hinted at the scatological content of the eight lost verses of waltzing matilda that noone but banjo patersen ever saw :-s
#22
Post rating: +
The last Australian socialist? Tamam Shud Man. Wiki it. Asdfghjkl.
#23
Post rating: ~
Australia was the country I planned to skip out on my student loan debt to. I hope they still have enough of a welfare system for me to luxuriate in.

Also, TIL Canada's first finance minister was named Galt.
#24
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~
australian socialism died in 1901 when the labor party backed the white australian policy and the socialist league backed the labor party anyway
#25
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~
rip
#26
Post rating: ~
it didn't die until chifley failed to nationalise the banks obvs daddyholes
#27
Post rating: ~
so i guess there's been a relatively big reaction to this stuff. protests etc. people seem to care on my facebook which is new.

Edited by Chthonic_Goat_666 ()

#28
Post rating: ~
transitional demands....transition right into fascism lmao fuckin trots
#29
Post rating: +
The thing is, they're not really cutting the deficit much at all and they don't seem particularly interested in doing so, as evidenced by 'or sick people it means paying $7 for every visit to the doctor and every medical test – $5 of which will be invested in a new “medical research future fund” and $2 will be kept by the doctor or test provider, in part to help them waive the payment in cases of “genuine need”..

How does creating a giant new medical research bureaucracy show a commitment to austerity? It's largely just realligning government largesse and jobs for the boys according to their ideology....so moving from labor's green schemes to this medical thing, from labor's suburban health centres to new suburban freeways, cutting the ABC funding to put it towards cushy middle class maternity leave.

The Labor govt that got kicked out in September was the most hated in my lifetime and yet 8 months later the ALP (now lead by a greasy party powerbroker who orchestrated not only Rudd's replacement by Gillard, but Gillard's replacement by Rudd) have a ten point lead over Abbot's Liberals.

This isn't a serious attempt at austerity in the slightest which makes it all the more nauseating that the funds that ARE being shaved are those that will most affect the vulnerable.

We've had 23 years of continuous growth, we've got low unemployment, a debt profile that anyone in Europe would empty and unlike barren old Greece and Ireland, an entire continent worth of agriculture and minerals to somewhat underpin our economy. Lots of australian's were worried about the ALP's profligate spending but they don't seem convinced that cutting health and education budgets is warranted, the libs have a real struggle on their hands trying to sell this.







oh yeah we're also about to spend 25 billion for these pos planes because howard got schmoozed by lockheed execs in the 90s
#30
Post rating: ~
thats a lot of effort to say dont buy a plane. is the govt going to get confused and go "hmm, which one was the f-35 again, oh, its right there, i remember now. we'll not buy that one then"
#31
Post rating: ~

stegosaurus posted:

thats a lot of effort to say dont buy a plane. is the govt going to get confused and go "hmm, which one was the f-35 again, oh, its right there, i remember now. we'll not buy that one then"



the back of it says '....buy the Chengdu J-20!'

#32
Post rating: +

shriekingviolet posted:

in canada, Hockey is a sport we play with ice skates. in the backwards upside down world of australia, Hockey drafts your fucking budget



He's Armenian, it's the anglicized version of Hozerkasarian or whatever it was, he also looks a lot like Shrek



#33
political car tune
Post rating: ~
shrek is dreck
#34
Post rating: +
Shrek is love dude

#35
Post rating: ~
joe hockey is suing fairfax ha ha
#36
Post rating: ~
Minister for education Christopher pyne aka living caricature of a private school debater said that he wouldn't be turning up to a public event due to fears that students from the "socialist front" would kill him