I was at the BCA dinner when the Prime Minister lectured the attendees about the excellence of her government. Everyone was very respectful – it would have been bad manners to laugh, I figured.
But just check out some of these howlers:
Australia’s budget is one of the seven economic wonders of the modern world. (Droll or not?) (And if there is anything wondrous about it, we should thank Howard and Costello because this lot has simply spent the surpluses and more.)
We will maintain the stable macro-economic framework – a floating currency, independent monetary policy and a strong fiscal framework. (Que? Is anyone talking about fixing the currency or removing independent monetary policy? And we should be grateful for these deeply embedded features continuing or somethink (Thomson pronunication, please)?)
Private sector engagement is vital to the success of our plan. (Stalin, eat your heart out.)
Give Sachin Tendulkar the AM and make the front and back page in the biggest newspaper market on earth. (Hmmm, that would be the Sachin Tendulkar who says nothing when he comes to Australia and has no love for the country?)
This is a time when you only win if you do the work, when you only succeed if you shape your own future. (Drumroll required, really.)
Consider this: in just ten years, Apple’s market value has increased from US$6bn to around US$500bn. Nokia’s market value has declined from US$70bn to under US$10bn. I know which path I want us to be on – that’s why we have a plan. (What is the point of this story, I wondered?)
In total around sixty per cent of the world’s GDP is either subject to a carbon price today, or has one legislated or planned for implementation in the two or three years ahead. (Figures completely wrong according to Henry Ergas.)
International carbon markets will cover billions of consumers this decade. Ask the bankers at your table whether they want Australia to clip that ticket. We’re going to help them get their share.
This last one would have to be the clanger of all clangers. The transaction costs of running emissions trading schemes are deadweight losses that reduce national income. And the Prime Minister is extolling their virtues as a means of enriching bankers, who according to the Wayne Swan view of the world, are thieving, useless pieces of work. Go figure.
Who does write this drivel?, is a question I really would like answered.
The bachelor John McTernan writes for the spinster Gillard. So nonsense it is.
stackja
17 Nov 12 at 12:06 pm
She actually said that?
C.L.
17 Nov 12 at 12:12 pm
What else can we expect from our home-grown bogan politician?
I’m not qualified to comment on matters economic. But that does not preclude me from asking some somewhat obvious questions.
One. Who benefits from the lauded floating currency. The only Australian who benefit from a high dollar are those wealthy enough to take our value overseas and give it to other countries by way of outgoing tourism. Money lost for ever. The Losers? Manufacturing, Pensioners, incoming overseas students and exporters in general. Not a good swap I’d say.
Two. About the performance of Australian Companies. If everything is going so swimmingly, howcome our All Ords languishes at 0nly 66% of it’s high point in 2007/8? Compare and contrast with the Dow Jones (about 95% of the 2008 high) and the FTSE at 85% of it’s 2007/8 high point.As Pauline would say….Please explain?
Dexter Rous
17 Nov 12 at 12:14 pm
Perhaps it’s not just directed at the BCA but to find its way to voters as an impressive speech.
candy
17 Nov 12 at 12:16 pm
More to the point … who reads this drivel out loud where people can hear it?
Cranky Old Crow
17 Nov 12 at 12:19 pm
Looks like Gillard removed the option for Labor to copy Obama and frame the Coalition as selling out the country to rich bankers. Indeed she has made the perfect commercial for the Coalition.
Oh, is that right Ms Gillard, what is it you said you say the Carbin Tax really is for again?
Que the film clip:
Token
17 Nov 12 at 12:19 pm
@Candy…the voters would not recognise an impressive speech such is its rarity.
Sycophantic press…certainly, and their dumb as dogshit readers.
And as always that was the true audience aimed for.
Mission accomplished.
Unfortunately.
John Williams
17 Nov 12 at 12:28 pm
Thanks for your contributions today Judith Sloan – spurred me to check the full PM’s speech and it is just so banal – buzzwords and spin.
Well worth a few minutes to speed-read through.
For me one of the highlights was this awful ref to “open door” as in -
[We have an ally in Washington, respect in Beijing, an open door in Delhi and Jakarta, Tokyo and Seoul.]
Warwick Hughes
17 Nov 12 at 12:38 pm
It’s so vacuously stupid it’s entirely possible she wrote it herself.
Megan
17 Nov 12 at 12:41 pm
It’s so vacuously stupid it’s entirely possible she wrote it herself.
Megan
17 Nov 12 at 12:41 pm
Touch screens are my downfall.
Megan
17 Nov 12 at 12:43 pm
The ‘clip the ticket’ thing is something that everyone understands, and the Opposition should latch onto it and keep repeating it until the next election.
Unbelievable.
Was she a bit tired and emotional?
johanna
17 Nov 12 at 12:55 pm
When no one is allowed to question or criticize the Dear Leader (lest Pinkie Finkie and the media storm-troopers be dispatched for a spot of re-education) I guess she can make breathtakingly moronic speeches; and then sleep soundly knowing that there is no danger that the cheer squads at Fairfax or the ALPBC will call her out.
Brett
17 Nov 12 at 1:05 pm
Not lying there. How a structural deficit becomes a projected surplus year after year makes me wonder about their economics.
nic
17 Nov 12 at 1:06 pm
Its a new economic model, its called the lemon.
nic
17 Nov 12 at 1:08 pm
Silly Nokia! If only they ha a plan like Apple or Gillard… Fancy running a big business without a plan!
michael
17 Nov 12 at 1:10 pm
I think she actually believes that a government mandated carbon dioxide emission license trading scheme and making subsidised windmills and solar panels, are productive activities.
manalive
17 Nov 12 at 1:27 pm
… and not one of the gutless bastards rose to their feet and called her a lying bitch. She warrants none of that tosh about “can’t do that, respect for the office ‘n all” either because she has tossed that traditional practice out as well.
Mick Gold Coast QLD
17 Nov 12 at 1:51 pm
You’re a better woman than I am, Judith.
Megan
17 Nov 12 at 2:06 pm
Clip that ticket.
Greed is Good
Septimus
17 Nov 12 at 2:41 pm
True.
New Lib/Nat radio ad.
Clip the ticket, clip your salary, clip your quality of life.
Clip the ALP over the ears this election.
.
17 Nov 12 at 2:56 pm
As if that is the only problem.
For Matt Ridley:
“A climate fetish has sucked all the oxygen from the real threats to species and habitats – indeed it has actually begun to make those threats worse. Remember, climate change has extinguished no species in modern times, not one. For a while the scientists thought they had one – the golden toad of Costa Rica, supposedly extinguished by the loss of cloud to moisten its cloud-forest habitat. Climate alarmists like Tim Flannery made much of this pitiful and beautiful harbinger in their books.
But the awkward fact was that the temperature had not changed in Costa Rica. The forests were drier, true, but only because so many of the trees had been cut down on the lower slopes of the mountains. And in any case, the golden toad actually succumbed, like so many other amphibians, to a fungus brought in perhaps on the boots of conservationists. I have lived long enough to see the great amphibian decline blamed on acid rain, ozone depletion, climate change and all sorts of other red herrings. Those in the know now admit that the true culprit was probably the international laboratory trade in African clawed toads carrying a chytrid fungus. Was that conclusion delayed by the other obsessions? I think so.
As an ardent champion of free trade, by the way, I make one exception: we are far too free in trading live creatures that can carry diseases or smuggled pests. We need to get more serious about this issue.
Instead, the perpetual urge to elevate climate change as an ecological threat has distracted the world from the truth that the greatest cause of species extinction is the invasion of alien exotic species: fungi, weeds, snakes, rats, cats, goats, mink, grey squirrels. No other cause even comes close to this one. Of the 181 species of bird and mammal that have died out since 1500, just nine were on continents. The rest were on islands (Australia counts as an island in this respect, having an isolated and vulnerable fauna).
The carbon fetish is not just distracting us from real conservation problems; it is actually making some worse. In the name of supposedly fixing the climate at some imaginary equilibrium, we are dashing for biomass. On current plans, by 2020 Britain will be burning 60 million tonnes of wood in power stations, 10 per cent of our transport fuel will be biofuel and large areas of the countryside will be producing crops of anaerobic digesters to make gas for electricity.”
Anyone who puts E10 in their car is an utter moron.
Will
17 Nov 12 at 2:59 pm
love some of the comments:
“People who were greedy for knowledge, wealth, and power have made humans the most successful species in mankind’s history.”
Will
17 Nov 12 at 3:05 pm
Lets see whos wanting to “clip that ticket” so far.
The UN
The bankers
The government
Environmental NGO’s
Boy, Im convinced they are the best possible people to be “clipping my ticket”, some of them couldnt clip a turd off unless their ass is on semi automatic..
Gee all we need is the member for Goldman Sachs (Mr Turbull) back and an orgy of ticket clipping will spread like a strange fungal disease.
thefrollickingmole
17 Nov 12 at 3:10 pm
That would be the one that turns us from a surplus machine with no debt into a 200 billion debtor?
blogstrop
17 Nov 12 at 3:46 pm
Judith Sloan obviously.
1735099
17 Nov 12 at 3:47 pm
The fact that no one had the balls to call this crazy arsed bitch out in public for such blatant error also says a lot about the ethical state of the listening audience.
Michael
17 Nov 12 at 3:47 pm
Gordon Gekko
Erich Fromm
Viva
17 Nov 12 at 3:55 pm
Who does write this drivel?
Who responds with a vacuous reply like that?
Fucktard Agent orange obviously
Splatacrobat
17 Nov 12 at 4:00 pm
Great one-word description of Sloan’s article.
1735099
17 Nov 12 at 4:15 pm
And also a great one-word description of your skull.
Dangph
17 Nov 12 at 4:20 pm
Try harder, numbers. You’re regressing.
blogstrop
17 Nov 12 at 4:25 pm
You can’t argue the points in the article spud peeler so you slag the writer.
Tosser.
Splatacrobat
17 Nov 12 at 4:38 pm
The wealthy appear very well satisfied to me.
So you think poverty is satisfying?
You think lack of resources and money allows you to life a rich, fulfilling life?
It’s only through greed as a primary motivator that just about anything gets done, and human wants are satisfied.
Will
17 Nov 12 at 4:45 pm
The wealthy appear very well satisfied to me.
So you think poverty is satisfying?
You think lack of resources and money allows you to live a rich, fulfilling life?
It’s only through greed as a primary motivator that just about anything gets done, and human wants are satisfied.
Will
17 Nov 12 at 4:45 pm
The wealthy appear very well satisfied to me.
So you think poverty is satisfying?
You think lack of resources and money allows you to live a rich, fulfilling life?
It’s only through greed as a primary motivator that just about anything gets done, and human wants are satisfied.
Will
17 Nov 12 at 4:46 pm
You need to get that stutter looked at Will
Splatacrobat
17 Nov 12 at 4:58 pm
Ms Julia Eilean Gillard appears to have clipped quite a few tickets via Bruce and the AWU-WRA.
James of the Glens
17 Nov 12 at 5:14 pm
People actually pay good money to listen to this stuff?
Everyone who attended should have their head read.
boy on a bike
17 Nov 12 at 5:34 pm
Sounds a bit like Campbell Newman’s “Four Pillar’s” speech. It the only one he has, so we hear it a bit.
1735099
17 Nov 12 at 5:38 pm
.
His well worn and outdated modus operand,i Splat. No working brain cells. Ignore.
Megan
17 Nov 12 at 5:45 pm
Come on numbers you can do better than that. Run out of bile again? Losing the faith with the continuing revelations about the corruption ingrained in your beloved party and assorted camp followers? Harden up remember the party motto – ‘what ever it takes’.
Bronson
17 Nov 12 at 5:49 pm
There aren’t any. It’s pure spleen. Typical sour Sloan. Those who can’t – write. Those who can’t write submit to Catallaxy.
1735099
17 Nov 12 at 5:58 pm
So why do you come here?
Sinclair Davidson
17 Nov 12 at 5:59 pm
“I think a lot of times it’s not money that’s the primary motivation factor; it’s the passion for your job and the professional and personal satisfaction that you get out of doing what you do that motivates you.”
Martin Yan
“Classic economic theory, based as it is on an inadequate theory of human motivation, could be revolutionized by accepting the reality of higher human needs, including the impulse to self actualization and the love for the highest values.”
Abraham Maslow
Viva
17 Nov 12 at 6:00 pm
It provides endless amusement.
1735099
17 Nov 12 at 6:02 pm
Go reminisce and peel a few spuds, numbers you objectionable moocher.
JC
17 Nov 12 at 6:10 pm
Private latrine! Snap to attention! and listen very carefully as I will say this only once:
Those who can’t provide an argument – snark and sneer like you.
Gab
17 Nov 12 at 6:18 pm
Why do Australian bankers need an Australian emissions trading scheme to “clip a ticket”? Answer: they don’t. They can simply buy and sell permits issued by other countries. If that’s the main reason the PM says we need a carbon tax, it’s a non-reason.
Milton von Smith
17 Nov 12 at 6:21 pm
So if you thought it was “drivel”, why did you sit through it and then go away sulking to write a snarky snobbish piece which has no analysis, no substance, and no style.
Very very ordinary……
1735099
17 Nov 12 at 6:23 pm
She forgot her crystal ball that day, and reporters are supposed to attend such things. Idiot.
blogstrop
17 Nov 12 at 6:26 pm
Fond of pointing out to all and sundry his chequered career as a failed rifleman he brilliantly demonstrates his skill to shoot himself in the foot. That little gem just reminds everyone here of the original… those who can’t, teach. Numerically Challenged is a teacher. QED.
Megan
17 Nov 12 at 6:33 pm
‘clip that ticket’: Who uses this sort of archaic expression in contemporay Australia? It’s something you’d expect to hear in a ‘Sandy Stone’ monologue; it considerably enhances ones impression of this woman’s overall weirdness, like she’s a changeling or some sort of badly programmed cyborg!
Des Deskperson
17 Nov 12 at 6:38 pm
International carbon markets will cover billions of consumers this decade. Ask the bankers at your table whether they want Australia to clip that ticket. We’re going to help them get their share.
I have read Catallaxy over the past few days and have not understood the meaning of the term ‘clip the ticket’.
This blog brought to mind my grandfather, a banker. In the late 1930s while working in the Bank of NSW he raised funds for the Broken Hill Hospital. He did this through the production of community plays/theatre. Much to our continued amusement as youngsters, he recited much of his work, including
“Conductor, when you receive a fare,
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare,
A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare,
A pink trip slip for a three-cent fare,
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
CHORUS
Punch, brothers! punch with care!
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!”
The story of this ditty, which I found today, is here.
Jessie
17 Nov 12 at 6:43 pm
I find Numbers vigour in defending Gillard amusing.
The battler from outback QLD is endorsing crony capitalism whereby the low income earners in his community will have their energy prices raised so Gillard & Labor can ensure bankers get their share.
Token
17 Nov 12 at 6:44 pm
Reminding bankers that their business model consists of clipping tickets probably isn’t going to go down well. Better to save those lines for index-hugging fund managers after your compulsory superannuation disappears into their black hole.
Personally I prefer Tom Wolfe’s line in Bonfire of the Vanities that bond traders make their living collecting the crumbs that fall from other peoples’ tables. Nice work if you can get it.
H B Bear
17 Nov 12 at 6:50 pm
I very much doubt he’s a battler of any sort – rather a middle class socialist brat – and it appears he’s spent most of his life on the public teet in one form or another.
As I’ve said before: can you imagine anyone with a character forged through hard rural sector work blogging under his service number? Especially when he hasn’t done anything military for thirty years appart from reminisce how hard he did it?
John Mc
17 Nov 12 at 6:52 pm
John Mc, we have so many fruit bats around here, that wouldn’t surprise me. Many of the newest are extremely creepy & unstable.
Given that, he has put many hours in that very boring blog and has a lot pictures of outback Qld.
Token
17 Nov 12 at 6:58 pm
Agent orange is so used to being treated as only a number by his champion of the proletariat party that it has just become second nature to the poor brain washed git.
Your only a number to them
Splatacrobat
17 Nov 12 at 7:09 pm
Given it’s completely incoherent, top of the list of suspects must be M0nty.
Jack Lacton
17 Nov 12 at 7:15 pm
Jessie @ 6.43pm
Here you go. Cipping the Ticket = Taking a commission / adding a margin.
See Julia’s (sorry) Watch
Sort of explains it, if a little exaggerated.
Septimus
17 Nov 12 at 7:25 pm
That would be ‘Clipping’
Septimus
17 Nov 12 at 7:29 pm
Clipping the ticket means taking a cut from someone else’s production.
It may enrich the clipper but it’s a wasteful, unproductive activity overall.
In this case, doubly wasteful, since the ticket itself does not represent production either, but an artificial currency (carbon credits) created by restricting production.
David Brewer
17 Nov 12 at 7:49 pm
One for numbers..http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100099194/seven-types-of-troll-a-spotters-guide/
Still debating if numbers is a 5 or a 7
Steve of Glasshouse
17 Nov 12 at 7:56 pm
Thanks for the replies Septimus & David Brewer, greatly appreciated.
I am reminded of the history of guilds.
Jessie
17 Nov 12 at 8:08 pm
He could be either but he is most definitely a 4 along with it. And he’s very often in need of severe pedant attention of his own incoherent ramblings. As a one man experiment in Artificial Intelligence he is completely unaware that the authentically intelligent (a) never need to point this out to others and (b) are always willing to learn.
Megan
17 Nov 12 at 8:15 pm
Note to Gail Kelly:
You may be thinking that after years of carrying water for this government on global warming, by this statement you may be imagining that Julia is about to give Westpac a helping hand to milk the carbon market.
When a lifelong Fabian socialist says they want Australian bankers to ‘get their share’, what she means is to get ‘Our’ share.
Ask your boet Marius Kloppers how all the circle of love with the government worked out when Shane Wand and Treasury thought that rivers of mining gold would flow forever ?
Bank Super Profits Tax – baking in the oven right now.
Myrddin Seren
17 Nov 12 at 8:32 pm
The economic agenda (if you can use that phrase to describe the chaos) at PM&C is run by Dr Gordon de Brouwer.
Add this to two following list:
* “What’s the G20?”
* Home Insulation Scheme
* Australia suggesting at the G20 that Eurozone “undertake reform”, but providing no advice about what that reform should be, or how it should differ from what they’ve done already.
We are in safe hands.
Econocrat
17 Nov 12 at 8:53 pm
I’m no economist, but I think a handy small scale model of an ETS is the taxi licensing systems in some (most) states.
Taxi licences trade for the equivalent of the cost of a modest house but add nothing to the industry, on the contrary ” … increases costs, reduces quality of service, and is rigged to favour just a few wealthy licence holders at the expense of drivers and consumers …”.
I would add the licence brokers as well.
Imagine that scaled up to cover every productive activity.
manalive
17 Nov 12 at 8:59 pm
I think you’re right on that one Myrddin. The goose will do anything to be able to stand up in Parliament and have a shot back at the young bloke who said that Labor hadn’t delivered a surplus in his lifetime.
Ego driven, and doesn’t care about the damage to Australia.
Winston Smith
17 Nov 12 at 9:29 pm
Heterodox Economics
Is one of Dr de Brouwer’s areas of expertise.
Basically, that means he is a communist.
.
17 Nov 12 at 10:32 pm
Jessie,
Clipping the ticket is what the bus conductors used to do. I don’t know why, perhaps to ensure you weren’t taking a sixpenny trip on a threepenny ticket. I’d like to see my bank manager doing that, wearing that strange uniform and hat with a leather bag hanging around his neck.
Where did the bus conductors go to? They seemed to have disappeared around the same time as the service station attendant.
old bloke
18 Nov 12 at 4:28 am
Sort of yes, sort of no.
Yes for bat-shit crazy central economic planning, no for the emancipation of the workers of the world. It also means he can talk shit, and then just say he’s a heterodox economist and you are too stupid to understand. He’s destroyed PM&C .
The real indictment of Gillard is that she reads this crap out. Judgement?
Econocrat
18 Nov 12 at 6:29 am
Re numbers at 6.23pm, the explanation is civility or politeness or good manners. Strange that has to be explained!
Rafe Champion
18 Nov 12 at 6:51 am
Judith
You should give credit to Hawke and Keating also. They may not have been perfect but did improve things significantly in the right direction. 20 years of great government (not perfect) in Australia did wonders and it has only taken 5 to undo a lot.
kelly liddle
18 Nov 12 at 7:19 am
Is there any question but that Patio Boy is just a low-rent wrecker?
No-one reads HIS blog, so all he can do is try to hijack those which people actually DO read.
Also, he seems to have quite a thing for our Judith. Proving that the appeal of smart, hot conservative women reaches far beyond just their conservative brethren.
Sad that he’s still in the “pulls pigtails then runs away giggling” stage, but. Most of my nephews were over that by fourth grade.
sdog
18 Nov 12 at 7:27 am
On this site?
ROFL
1735099
18 Nov 12 at 8:49 am
Well no – although I write only for myself, there’s been 46,064 unique browser hits this year….
1735099
18 Nov 12 at 8:53 am
““Classic economic theory, based as it is on an inadequate theory of human motivation, could be revolutionized by accepting the reality of higher human needs, including the impulse to self actualization and the love for the highest values.””
Wow, I didn’t realise Maslow didn’t even understand his own work! Self-actualisation can only be achieved when needs lower in the hierarchy are met. We need money to survive. Oh, that’s right, it’s only greedy when “other” people want it.
The Beer Whisperer
18 Nov 12 at 9:56 am
I don’t know, but the person who read it out rather than send it back for a drastic rewrite is even stupider than the author.
Mother Hubbard's Dog
18 Nov 12 at 11:34 am
sound like indexing bots, not real people
as long as you only ‘write for yourself’ – perhaps you should stay away from here
Will
18 Nov 12 at 1:04 pm
+1/2 for me.
.
19 Nov 12 at 8:41 am
And Dr Gordon de Brouwer was held in high regard by his academic colleagues.
Econocrat
22 Nov 12 at 7:15 pm