"The Tourist Stations of the Nation"
This page was last updated on Saturday, 24 April 2010 12:59:30 PM
 

Cut A$200 million in TV license fees to the TV owners after Minister Lindsay Tanner spotted spending time at Aspen in Colorado with the owner of the 7 Network.

New Prime Minister Kevin Rudd promoted from Kev 07 to Kev 747 for his 2 year role where he was living and working outside Australia.

Organised two major Sorry Day parties with free travel to and from Canberra.
* One for the Aborigines
* One for UK children taken off their parents during world War 11 and sent to work camps in Australia

Got on board with the Kyoto agreement when it was about to expire (China, USA weren't onboard, so why us?)
 
Brought 1,000 Australian's from all walks of life to come to Canberra for a talkfest and bring forth all the ideas for a better Australia.
I don't know about you but I have yet to see a white paper, green paper, orange paper or even a white board. The deal was for the bright ideas for a better future to come out at the end of that calendar year and that was over 1 and 1/2 years ago it must be a yellow paper that aged and never saw the light of day.

Brought all of Australia's local Government Mayors together in Canberra for a talkfest and said there was A$800 million in the pot for local infrastructure. Only infrastructure i have seen is a sign that goes up saying this is a Federal Government Initiative. Perhaps you could email us and enlighten us as to where you have seen a building go up even if its an outdoor dunny, something.

Gave a Federal Government Bank Guarantee on funds in banks, then limited it to A$1 million but froze all the oldies superannuates monies that were in other investment portfolios so now these self funded retires had to get a Government pension to survive.

Set up a web based Fuel Watch program the fella in charge did the right thing, saw it was a non event, retired and went back to Perth. That cost how many millions.
 
Set up a web based Grocery Watch a A$50 million plus program, the major retailers basically said on your bike "bugger off". Government turned around and gave a bucket load of millions to Consumer group "Choice" to revamp the web site which was basically a hospital pass, waited for the heat to go off the front pages and 6 pm news bulletins and then starved the program of money, so the program withered and died.
 
Set up the Home Insulation program as an environmental best practice. Gave away a subsidy of A$1,600.00 per job then dropped it over night to A$1,200.00 which stimulated a mass import of Chinese imported insulation which was contaminated with chemicals. After 4 deaths and 90 odd house fires from dodgy business practices Minister of the Environment Peter Garrett gets moved sideways and keeps his salary and perks, new Minister Greg Combet former secretary of the A.C.T.U now asking Treasury to shell out multi - millions to rectify the problem. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd steps in and states he takes personal responsibility so he keeps his job whereas sporting coaches or Chief Executive Officer or Chairman of the Board when they make that statement they resign.

Established the Australian Social Inclusion Board. This rarely heard of bureaucracy was set up because "Every Australian should have an opportunity to be a full participant in the life of the nation. Unfortunately, too many Australians remain locked out of the benefits of work, education, community engagement and access to basic services. This social exclusion is a significant barrier to sustained prosperity and restricts Australia's future growth". If there is any evidence to support this argument it wasn't included in the announcement. The Board has been described as a "complete wank, .... the biggest waste of tax dollars imaginable. That was in May 2008, it probably did seem a big waste of tax dollars then, but it's been turned into a drop in the ocean by what's happened since. **
 
Set up the Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program. This program was initiated by a Memorandum of Understanding in September 2007. In July 2009 the ABC reported on its Lateline program that it was yet to build a single house. That was despite $45.54 million of its $672 million budget having been spent. A government report dated August 2009 said the program was being criticized as: too slow to deliver; its governance was overly bureaucratic; the program is too costly in terms of unit cost of housing and administration. The revised program budget is still $672m with each new house expected to cost $450,000 or $529,000 after factoring in a proportion of administration costs and "contingencies". As at 1st February 2010, 2 of target 750 houses and 70 of 2,500 refurbishments had been completed. **

Sent A$900.00 to all pensioners as stimulate package number 1 including those living overseas and those who had left this world (Died) so they could pay their electricity, gas bills and local government rates since they had all risen under this governments watch.

Sent A$900.00 to all taxpayers who had filled in a tax return as stimulate package number 2. Rumor had it that most Australian's paid off their credit card debt or went to a well known electrical chain stores and brought an overseas plasma television set.

Promised that every child in every school in Australia would get a computer. This program is moving so slowly that most of the people who were high school students at the time of the promise will have left school before they see a new computer. ** NSW Labour Government were the first State Government to reveal the capital outlay in putting additional power points, upgrading electricity mains in particular the amps, server networks and connection to the broadband backbone.

Set up the A$70m green loans mess - people gave up their jobs, paid $3,000 for qualifications and insurance to be trained as assessors, only to find the demand for green loans had been grossly exaggerated, many more assessors were trained than the program envisaged, and there was no work for most of them. Brisbane's daily newspaper The Courier-Mail reported on 2 Feb 2010 that: "The Federal Government predicted up to 200,000 homeowners would take up the loans and only 1,000 have done so ....instead of training 1,500 to 2,000 well-qualified assessors the Government permitted a blow-out and it is now estimated there will be up to 11,500 well-qualified assessors". The program has now been transferred to Penny Wong's department - that should fix it. **

After previous Liberal Government under Prime Minister John Howard tells everybody in the world we are in charge of our own borders and stops all the free loaders the new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd changes the name of Australian Customs to Australian Customs and Border Protection Service then tells everybody in the world you can have a free lunch on us (which means free housing, interest free loans, free medicare / health, free education, get a pension without working) meanwhile Australian get to see a weekly Border Patrol program on main stream TV showing how tough they are if you come through the front door at Australian airports whereas we have boat load after boat load of people coming through the back door who can't speak English turn up for the free lunch.

By changing the previous Liberal government's immigration laws so successfully that the exponential blow-out in illegal boat arrivals created a need for a lot more accommodation to be built on Christmas Island and in turn move them onto the main land.

Set up the Home Solar Hot Water Initiative which was abruptly ended three weeks early with eight hours notice. This caused chaos in the industry, and many people intending to lodge applications missed out. Minister Peter Garrett blamed a cost blow-out from the original estimate of A$150 million to A$750 million a year for the cut-back.

Disbanded "Work Choices" which had been set up by the previous Federal Liberal Government under Prime Minster John Howard which gave Australia the flexibility to move into mainstream competitiveness with our trading partners this enabled the Liberal Government to pay off A$100 billion debt racked up by the previous Hawke/Keating Federal Labour Governments and put money into the public servants superannuation fund as well as set aside A$35 Billion into a Future Fund for infrastructure projects. It's common knowledge that the unions' ran a self-funded campaign against "Work Choices" which got the Labour Party elected. The quid pro pro saw the newly elected Federal Labour Party dump "Work Choices" by giving back powers to the unions by setting up "Fair Work Australia" most observers realise this is over represented by people with union backgrounds.

Promised to take Japan to court on whaling, but now says that will not be until November, probably after the election. As time goes on, I find I'm becoming less convinced about who is really at fault here, Japan for fishing in international waters, or the protestors for disrupting a legitimate commercial operation. **

It would be fair to say that everyday Australian's would admire Captain Watson, Greenpeace & Sea Sheppard for doing a Gallipoli against the Japanese when their own Australian Federal Labour Government and previous Minister for Environment Peter Garrett are perceived as sitting down and having a cuppa tea with General Sir Ian Hamilton (The English General in charge of the overall Gallipoli campaign of 1915/16)

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd goes to Copenhagen in December 2009 taking 114 government free-loaders (one of the largest of the 190 delegations), at huge cost to the Australian taxpayer and the world's environment. I haven't seen any announcement of the cost of the junket (and I doubt I ever will), but I'm sure that whatever was going to be achieved, at least 100 of the free-loaders were superfluous to requirements.**

Attempted to railroad the Emission Trading Scheme through the Senate before Copenhagen for no other reason than a) it would have allowed Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to strut the world stage b) get a job after his political life in Australia c) collect A$140 Billion in ETS taxes d) set up a new family business. People throughout the world realised that the climate change was all smokes and mirrors essentially a system to milk the public purse.

Has opened one of 2,650 promised "trades training centres", one of 260 promised child care centres in schools and TAFEs, and 2 of 31 promised GP Super Clinics. **

Attracted 752 retired nurses back into the profession using a return-to-work bonus. When they announced this scheme Labor hoped 7,750 would take up the offer **

Last week Prime Minister Kevin Rudd trots out five senior ministers to criticize the Senate for being "obstructionist". The 5 were Jenny (SIHIP) Macklin, Penny (ETS) Wong, Lindsay (clean nose) Tanner, Nicola (new hospital system) Roxon, and Greg (Mr Fixit) Combet. I think Rudd is lucky the Senate has been obstructionist because if it wasn't he'd have more failures to add to his already impressive list. Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard was too smart and managed not to be associated with too many of the above "achievements" – actually lying low while the schools building fiasco and criminal activities are unfolding. **

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard given $16.7 billion to give building contractors, states and bureaucrats a feast in return for COLA.s and unwanted libraries and gyms – the insulation racket all over again in spades. ** Local communities reveal 4 major construction companies have been given the contracts to service their communities when local companies would have provided the infrastructure that was required for their micro climate. Shades of the Canberra bureaucrats who came to Queensland and told all the marriage celebrants what and how they should dress to do wedding in Queensland and parading an assortment of woolen clothing more suitable for a Canberra, Victorian, Tasmanian climate of minus 10 to plus 15 degrees celsius whereas Queensland been a tropical climate requires cotton for a temperatures ranging from plus 5 to plus 40 degrees celsius.

Editorial: I could say that the Current Australian Federal Labour Party is "All Show and no Substance" but the fact is money is slipping through their fingers like water and this has all taken place in less than 2 & 1/2 years. If this was a corporate business you would answer to your shareholders and be voted off the board or simply sacked or ASIC or ACC would have your company deregistered/delisted from trading and its directors stopped from ever holding a directorship for lack of governance, stewardship and dear i say it lack of commonsense.

* * Email sent to us on Friday 21st April entitled "Achievements of the Rudd Government" which stimulated us into action and made us think what kind of inheritance has the Federal Labour Government given us