Alleged Costello comeback sparks infighting
By Heather Ewart
Updated May 09, 2012 21:00:56/ABC News
Peter Costello Photo: It is alleged Mr Costello demanded a young MP step aside. (AAP: Dean Lewins)
The ABC has learnt the Federal Coalition is being rocked by claims former treasurer Peter Costello made a bid to return to the political stage late last year.
The ABC's 7.30 program has found bitter factional in-fighting was triggered by the purported move by Mr Costello, who demanded a young MP step aside to accommodate him.
It is a claim Mr Costello steadfastly denies, but many of his former colleagues believe it, with Victorian MPs privately saying he has become bored and frustrated that Tony Abbott looks headed for the top job.
The dispute has laid bare the deep divisions in the Liberal Party’s Victorian branch, which threaten the Coalition at a time when it believes government is within its grasp. .... <cont>
Pyne slams door on Costello comeback claims
Updated May 10, 2012 11:36:40
Senior Liberals moved to close the door on the chance of a Peter Costello comeback this morning after the party was rocked by claims about the former treasurer's revived political ambitions. ...<cont>
The ABC has learnt the Federal Coalition is being rocked by claims former treasurer Peter Costello made a bid to return to the political stage late last year.
) ... I guess the suggestion being that he could do better?Party Brawl
Former Liberal powerbroker Michael Kroger launches an intensely personal attack on former treasurer Peter Costello as tensions boil over within the Party.
), for having a big bum, for being "childless" ( so unlike the deputy Liberal leader, Julie Bishop, who is apparently merely child-free, which is different? ), for installing Peter Slipper ( unlike the Libs who put up with the man for 13 years (?), while apparently dubious about him the whole time? Whose casting vote Abbott accepted, without the slightest reservation, to become Liberal leader over Turnbull), for the Libs conveniently forgetting about using that rat bag , Mal Colston, for their own political purposes, for Labor having to count on Thomson's vote (as if the Libs wouldn't do exactly the same, the same boat?) ...
I think partly it was the way Rudd was ousted. Sigh
but I do think it has helped to poison Julia's leadership.
Spreading the love to buy votes? So what, it was about time
May 16, 2012/the AGE
Despite its critics, this budget is the most redistributive in years.
SO, HAS the budget led to an outbreak of class warfare? Only if Julia Gillard's a lot luckier than she's been so far. That is, I doubt it. What I don't doubt is that her disparaging remark about Sydney's North Shore was a calculated attempt to get a bit of class consciousness going to accompany her give-and-take budget.
But loyalty to parties on the basis of class is long gone. These days people's vote is as likely to be guided by the party divide on social issues as economic ones. Then there's the rise of the ''aspirational'' voter: people who don't mind seeing the better-off favoured by the government because they hope to be better off themselves one day.
If the public's reaction to this budget is any guide, we have either all become aspirationals or, more likely, a lot of people don't know which side their bread is buttered on. Wayne Swan brings down a Robin Hood budget and, according to last week's Age poll, 43 per cent of respondents think it will leave them personally worse off and only 27 per cent expect to be better off. Talk about living in a fog.
Be in no doubt: this budget is the most highly redistributive in years. Whether out of desire to awaken class loyalties, to soften the blow of the carbon tax, or just to buy votes, it gives quite a bit of money to low and middle-income families. The discretionary rise in the means-tested family benefit, to take effect from July next year, is well targeted to families in greater need.
The schoolchildren's bonus, the first payment of which will be made within a few weeks, goes only to parents eligible for the family benefit. It's a big improvement on the education tax refund, which mainly benefited those parents able to spend big on eligible equipment and savvy enough to keep receipts and make the claim.
The new income-support supplement, to take effect next March, will give people on the dole a princely 57¢ a week extra, reducing by a sliver the extent to which we require them to subsist below the poverty line. It is, nevertheless, the first real increase in the dole for more than 20 years.
The budget plans increased spending on dental health for the needy and a start to the National Disability Insurance Scheme in July next year.
But though these measures are welcome, they hardly represent the big increase in welfare their critics claim.
According to the calculations of Professor Peter Whiteford, of the University of New South Wales, their cost of $8 billion over four years represents an increase of less than 1 per cent of total budget spending on health and social security.
Helping to pay for these increases are cuts aimed squarely at the better-off. The top 1 per cent of taxpayers, earning more than $300,000 a year, will have the tax break on their superannuation contributions cut from 31.5¢ in the dollar to 16.5¢.
The provision allowing workers over 50 to make low-taxed super contributions up to $50,000 a year will be cut to $25,000 from July. Those with super balances under $500,000 were to have been given an exemption from the cut, but this has been deferred for two years, thus largely closing the salary sacrifice loophole. Despite the hard-luck stories we're hearing, workers on less than high incomes can't afford to sacrifice salary in this way.
The capped 50 per cent discount on the tax on interest income, which now won't happen, would have benefited the better-off, as does the tax offset on net medical expenses, which is to be virtually eliminated.
Almost everyone - whether on the right or the left - automatically assumes company tax is a tax on the rich. So, those excitable souls claiming the budget was a plan to ''smash the rich'', list as Exhibit A the decision not to cut the rate of company tax by 1 per cent, as had been promised.
But Australian shareholders - including Australian super funds - get tax credits for the company tax paid on their behalf. And tax economists argue that, in the end, the burden of company tax is borne mainly by wage-earners.
So it's not at all clear to me that company tax is a tax on business or on the rich. Business was never terribly enthusiastic about the 1 per cent cut; I'm unimpressed by the bitter tears it's shedding now.
When you combine this Robin Hood budget with the way the tax cuts linked to the carbon tax are limited to individuals earning less than $80,000, with the way the temporary flood levy was aimed at the better-off, with the various previous measures to reduce upper-middle class welfare and with the 2009 discretionary increase in the age pension, you do have to conclude this Labor government, particularly under Julia Gillard, is very redistributive - though its record isn't unblemished.
And unless you're happy to see the gap between rich and poor widening - as it has been - that redistribution is not unwarranted.
According to figures from the Bureau of Statistics, between 2003-04 and 2009-10, average household disposable income rose by 26 per cent in real terms. But the income of the bottom fifth of households rose by 17 per cent, whereas the income of the top fifth rose by 32 per cent.
Remember that the next time you hear highly paid business people banging on about the budget being ''more about how we carve the pie, rather than how we grow the pie''. It was about time.
Ross Gittins is a senior columnist.
)...... Tony Abbott, meanwhile, got blasted for saying nothing meaningful during the budget period - which was mostly but not completely true.
Joe Hockey furrowed his brow and critiqued the government like a good soldier - but his most cut-through observation was about the Coalition.
Hockey implied something startling in a speech last Wednesday: the opposition was in danger of over-promising and under-delivering. It's obvious really, given the Coalition faces the truly mind-bending tasks of axing the mining and carbon taxes, providing income tax cuts, funding a paid parental leave scheme, and coming up with billions and billions in savings. But to my knowledge, no one had really gone there before.
To my ear, Hockey's remarks were a reflection on this period in politics. We can't be slippery or break promises, he was saying. Not after this 43rd Parliament, not after nailing Labor to the carbon-tax cross. Truth is, we may not be able to afford Labor's National Disability Insurance Scheme, even if my boss is out implying we are fully on board. You, voters, need to look at this more closely.
We journalists tend to construe these things in crude terms - as splits. But it wasn't really, not a clean break. Hockey was saying we, the Coalition, are on board with the NDIS, this great and long overdue idea - but only if we can fund it. .....
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