One cannot distinguish between Murdoch and Tony Abbott apart from the girls who stands like tall bookends either side of the dork-in-chief... Not only there are porkies flying around but most of Tony/Murdoch policies are DANGEROUS... AND I MEAN DANGEROUS. Saving money by the government does not mean anything if you have been sacked from your job and are unable to collect the pittance of the dole because the government is "saving" money... Saving money does not mean anything if your house is burned down by a bush-fire brought by a "climate change" event... Saving money actually is crazy if you stop the Clean Energy department to be stupid with your ideas... I know, Tony hates people who fart above their butt... In fact if one peels all the layers of the savings, there is NO SAVING AT ALL: only a cost to the social fabric and a "clever" mirror and smoke trick to take from the poor and give to the rich... Tell Murdoch to sod off and give Tony another "flunk"...

from politicoz …

The Coalition has been remarkably adept at avoiding scrutiny of its economic policies and rhetoric throughout the campaign, and this continues today.

It won't release official costings, and has no intention of releasing any before the election. Instead Hockey will present an isolated set of figures purporting to list policies that will marginally improve the budget position, reportedly by $6 billion over the next 4 years.

Nevertheless, voters around the country are today seeing headlines such as 'Coalition savings hit $40 billion,' and articles suggesting the Coalition's costings will all be revealed.

The people voting – and the 2 million who have already voted – are poorly served by ongoing coverage such as this.

The bottom line is that the Coalition is promising to make no major cuts to the budget. Ironically, after years of 'debt and deficit' talk, it is going to the election with a policy platform that entirely sidesteps the 'budget emergency' that it decried.

One final point: the Coalition's excuse for not releasing even these costings until the last days of the campaign was that it couldn't do so until it had announced all of its policies.

The Coalition hasn't announced any policies that would have any serious fiscal impact for over a week.

Voters are being played for mugs.

and, from Stephen Mayne ….

Rupert, Rupert, Rupert

First up on the political front in this final pre-election edition, check out Get-up's banned television ad on Rupert Murdoch's propaganda sheets which has now scored more than 420,000 views on Youtube and proved to be the internet success story of this election campaign.

It just goes to show that in the age of the internet, silly old media bans by the big free-to-air commercial networks only serve to create more attention for the message that is gagged.

Whilst the Murdoch press were typically partisan in their refusal to cover the Get-up gag story, The World Today and ABC radio's PM program both gave it a good burst.

The question I posed on PM was this: "If the Murdoch press treated Tony Abbott like they treated Kevin Rudd, would Labor win a third term?" In my view, Rupert could have delivered Rudd a win, such has been the ferocity and effectiveness of the political attacks co-ordinated by the New York-based billionaire who isn't even allowed to vote in this election.

And this is what makes the Get-up ad ban so outrageous. All they were doing was attacking someone who was ferally interfering in Australian politics from abroad. Doesn't this also highlight the joke which is Australia's cross-media laws where Lachlan Murdoch can sit there as chairman or Network Ten where his executives, naturally enough, decided to ban an ad bagging his family's main media vehicle.

Finally on the Murdoch issue, check out this first outing for The Guardian tracking the history of the Rudd-Rupert relationship. I really enjoyed writing a detailed 1600 word piece on this issue.

Interestingly, there's a protest planned at News Corp's HQ in Sydney tomorrow which is gathering momentum. Details are here. Participants should keep it civil, unlike the editorial content of the Murdoch tabloids this season. The Australian's journalists famously went on strike during the 1975 election claiming the company had become too partisan in its campaign to unseat Gough Whitlam. So far, we haven't heard a peep from anyone on the News Corp Australia payroll but Fairfax Media chairman Roger Corbett was absolutely right on Lateline two nights back when he said the following:

"To be as strongly biased as News have been in the last few months, I do think does a great damage to the credibility of press, at just the time when the press needs to be highly respected as we go through this digital transition."

Surprise, surprise, Roger found himself Cut & Pasted in The Australian today.

from politicoz ….

When you change the government, said Paul Keating, you change the country. Australians are preparing to change the country on a scale similar to 1996, when Keating was thrashed by Howard.

Australia has just experienced the hottest year in its recorded history, yet the nation will elect a man whose great mission as leader has been to reject the government’s effort to address climate change.

The Australian economy has seen steady economic growth through a global recession, has an unemployment rate the envy of the world, has rising wages, low interest rates, low inflation and low government debt. Yet voters will most likely vote out the government because of its apparent mishandling of the economy.

The Coalition has spent the past few years criticising government ‘debt and deficit,’ yet has put forward a policy program that makes almost no effort to address this (which is not to say that it won’t make radical changes when in government).

The Coalition claims to be the economically responsible party, but when it finally released its ‘costings’ these consisted of a mere 8-page list of one-line policy costs, with no explanations or details. The press conference where the Coalition was to lay out the full extent of its economic plan lasted 22 minutes and was the most shameful spectacle of the campaign.

Nevertheless, it is easy to understand why voters have deserted Labor. Australians elect leaders who can communicate a sense of stability, consistency and straightforward competence. Neither the Gillard nor Rudd government was able to project these things coherently, despite their substantial achievements.

It is clear, too, that Australians are voting to end the toxic politics of the past few years – even if the sense of chaos belonged as much to the efforts of the Opposition leader and the Murdoch press as it did to Labor.

Those voting for change will get it. The nature of that change may not be what they expect, but then again, it never is.

and ….

The Coalition has promised so much and delivered so little.

Throughout the campaign, the Opposition assured us that each of its policies had been independently costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office. It made much ado about the panel of experts who assessed its assumptions and methods.

If that's the case, why aren't we privy to it?

Not one of the Parliamentary Budget Office's assessments has been made public.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has warned a "mysterious Liberal policy that popped into existence" threatens the quality and future of child care.

The Coalition says its Policy for Better Child Care will make the system more flexible, affordable and accessible for Australian families.

The document flags a ministerial review of the Early Years Quality Fund (EYQF) - a pool of money that selected centres can draw on for wage increases.

"If elected, the Coalition will honour funds contracted from the EYQF but no further expenditure will be approved," it reads.

"Any increase to the salaries of child care employees will be a matter for the Fair Work Commission and their employers. However, all remaining funds in the EYQF will be retained in the child care portfolio."

Mr Rudd homed in on the paragraph in the policy, which he says was made public "in the dead of night" on the day before the vote.

"What that means is the bucket of money which we, the Australian Government, have out there to assist child care centres around the country to have qualified teachers at the centre ... to do the pre-literacy and pre-numeracy courses which are the absolute core of our early childhood education program, is, according to this statement, gone for the future," he said.

"In other words, they will accept any contract which exists up until now, but gone for the future."

Finance Minister Penny Wong says the document "confirms quite clearly the cuts that are coming to childcare should Tony Abbott be elected".

"[The EYQF] was set up by federal Labor to contribute to improving the wages of child care workers. Cutting it does two things.

"One it means child care workers around the country risk having their wages cut or stopping any wage increase they had already factored in.

"The second risk is to parents who use child care centres. Those centres have already provided these wage increases - the only way those centres can provide the funding for the wage increases now that Tony Abbott has made clear he will cut the funding is to push fees up."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-06/rudd-says-coalition-policy-threatens-child-care-sector/4940994

Concern that Tony Abbott could win control of the Senate has driven former cabinet minister Greg Combet to make a late entry to the election campaign to attack Coalition policies on workplace relations and climate change.
The former ACTU secretary and climate change minister lamented Mr Abbott's promise to bring the workplace relations pendulum back to the "sensible centre" as a "con" and described the Coalition's "direct action" approach to climate change as "absolute crap".

Mr Combet was considered a future Labor leader, but he resigned from Cabinet after Julia Gillard was toppled by Kevin Rudd in June and then announced his retirement from politics.

"Despite [workplace relations minister] Bill Shorten's and the government's best efforts, industrial relations hasn't been widely debated in the campaign and I remember the experience of Tony Abbott when he was minister for industrial relations in 2001-4," Mr Combet told Fairfax Media.

"I think this is one of the areas where people are going to find, if Abbott wins, he'll be pretty hard line.
"When he was IR minister he brought bills into the parliament to remove protection against unfair dismissal for millions of people, he tried to reduce compensation for people who were found to be unfairly dismissed, he made it much harder for us to try and get pay rises for low-paid people through the wage case, he was constantly bringing bills in to try and undermine collective bargaining and he brought legislation in to take basic entitlements out of the award system.
"All of these were precursors to WorkChoices, essentially. Not many of them got through the Senate, though he introduced them multiple times and created double dissolution triggers which weren't followed.
"He also set up the Cole Royal Commission into the building industry that ultimately cost $65 million and led to the Building and Construction Commission that made life very difficult for a lot of workers in the industry."
Mr Combet said that as someone who had been a union official for well over 20 years, and been ACTU secretary for eight years, "I'm concerned for people and what they'll confront under an Abbott government".
"The last time the Coalition gained control of the Senate was 2004 and it ended up with WorkChoices. That's the record and that's what you'd expect a Coalition government led by him to set out to do again.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/greg-combet-slams-tony-abbotts-climate-change-workplace-policies-20130906-2t8zm.html#ixzz2e6JAUk00

Beware... TONY IS A LYING MUDDLE-HEADED SNAKE IN THE GRASS...

The headline in the image at top is fraudulent... It's misinformation at its most repugnant and false. Now Joe — the head-bean counter at a penny-lavatory in town, who measures money with an elastic band — is actually wanting to SPEND an extra $200 billions without being bothered to tell you why... Sure, the "economists" in the right wing think tanks and the big wigs in charge of counting the money at the treasury are foaming at the mouth at the idea of more cash coming their way and they want to let their hair down... So, what was this problem with Swan spending a bit more here and there WITHIN OUR MEANS, while Joe is now reckless with the cash ON CREDIT. 

One could argue that The Australian took the figures at face value from the Coalition number-crappers, but The Australian has a duty to check the true value of the information THEY GET, which at the time even a drover's dog would have know to be completely fraudulent...