From Ross Gittins

Don’t be too alarmed by the startling proposals by the National Commission of Audit. Few of its recommendations will make it into the budget on Tuesday week. They were never intended to.

Ostensibly, the commission wants to reverse the tide of a century of federal-state relations, substantially dismantle Medicare, crack down on the age pension while leaving superannuation tax concessions unscathed, reduce Medicare to something mainly for the poor, hit middle-income families and make the treatment of welfare recipients much harsher.

Don’t believe it. Truth is, almost all incoming Coalition governments have commissioned commissions of audit since Nick Greiner used the tactic in 1988. What all the federal and state audit reports since then have in common is that only a handful of their recommendations are ever acted on.

That’s not their purpose. Rather, it’s to claim that the previous, Labor government left the books in a terrible mess, thereby justifying an initial, horror budget – all Labor’s fault – and the breaking of any election promises now found to be inconvenient.

In this case, the audit report is softening us up for the budget by raising the spectre of a much tougher budget than we’re likely to get. It’s Joe Hockey getting ready to leave unsaid: See, I let you off lightly.

I could be wrong...

As Joe tells us that "some recommendations are common sense" and that some "are courageous", most of them are plain crazy and most inefficient in the long run...

The commission of audit is the most inefficient and wasteful waste of tax payers' money. It's the worst example of low productivity and of course, plagiarism... Most of the recommendations are recycled from that of the report commissioned by John Howard in 1997 (?)— a report that Costello placed in the rubbish bin, with a grin... For Costello, it would have been too much hard work... It was easier for him to coast along. As Keating said, Costello was a lazy treasurer.

But this time around, with the crazy brats running Canberra, we have so far no clue as to which "recommendations" are coming to hit us in the gonads... Be prepared for some REAL pain even if Joe claims "see, we did not hit you as hard as we could have..." Adult government? Pissy rascals, devilish kids and stupid punks. They make Denis the Menace look like a choir boy and A Clockwork Orange closer to our shivering skin...

The full enormity of Joe Hockey's comments about the poor and cars has not registered with the wider public, says Bob Ellis, who calls the Treasurer's career "cactus".

IT IS POSSIBLE, I think, that nobody much yet understands the enormity of what Joe did when he said what he said about the poor not having cars, or driving them very far.

For Joe is the man deciding the nation’s priorities in the coming decade. And he has no idea, it seems, of what the nation is like. What they care about. What they think is important. What they need. What they would like to have, and own, and keep.

Many, many single supporting mothers drive, in the regions, their child ten miles to school, then turn around and drive fifteen miles to their place of work, in a filling station, or a dentist’s surgery. Many, many young men in the regions live with their working class parents, and drive thirty miles to the university. Many other young men deliver fruit from a farm to a marketplace, or bread from a bakery to shops in three or four towns.

The last Federal treasurer not to have brought down a single Budget was Jim Cairns in 1974-5. Thirty-nine years later, Joe will join him in fiscal oblivion.

Every Palmer cross-bencher senses they can win hugely any double dissolution held before Christmas. Labor senses this too. And, as more and more Liberal MPs head for gaol in New South Wales — nine so far, including Sinodinos – it seems more and more that the Liberal Party is just a racket. More and more like it is nothing more an ATM that rewards developers for dodgy donations of sums as small as $20,000 — some of which went to Joe for his North Sydney lunches.

And as this realisation develops, the more the Labor party will be tempted to join, ‘in the national interest’, Palmer’s plan for Supply be blocked and an election brought on. Or that the Senate simply advise an election. Or that the Leader of the Opposition does, as he did in 1975.

Joe suffers from what may be called the ‘funnily enough’ syndrome.

It comes from the lifelong schoolboy debater’s desire to never lose an exchange. Funnily enough, the poor are better off when they pay more taxes. Let me tell you why.

He cannot lose any encounter. He mustn’t lose any exchange. He has to win every move, every skirmish, every small battle, bugger the war.

Though very effective on the floor of the House for his first eight months as Treasurer, he is now, I think, the worst politician, tactically, since Snedden, who famously said, funnily enough, we won the election. We just didn’t get enough votes to form government.

He couldn’t surrender, he couldn’t yield, a basic, simple point — that some costs fall heavily on the poor. A tax on food. A tax on petrol. A tax on petrol that raises, thereby, the price of food.

He didn’t get that. He didn’t even get that.

And he has no future now.

He’s cactus.

see more : http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-last-days-of-joe-hockey,6775

The only thing the Liberals (CONservatives) were good at was LYING. Now even on this one they have lost their mojo... They still tell shit but don't know how to wrap it up... See cactuses at top...