16 thoughts on “Great minds think alike, fools seldom differ”

  1. There isa similarity between Peacock and Costello.
    Peacock went to the bankbench and no-one noticed.
    He was known for not doing a lot of work except on his tan and was a policy free zone.
    His challenge was the begining of the end for the government and no-one knew what he stood for.

    similarly no-one knows what costello stands for. He is equaly known for his lack of work ethic nor is he known for championing and ensuring economic reform as Keating was.

    Just remember Keating only succeeded because Hawke had no idea of how to counter fightback.

  3. Yes. My name is John Quiggins. Seriously. I have no comment on the topics. It’s just that….well, my name is John Quiggin(s). I thought that was wierd enough that i had to make mention of it. Or, maybe i just forgot to take my medication. I am John Quiggin(s).

    signed ,
    John Quiggin(s) ….seriously. I’m not kidding. really.

  4. Well he is known to be more progressives than Howard on issues such as the Rebublic. He is also less likely than Howard too hand out bribes at election time. He is also not Tony Abbott.

  5. Arriving at Parliament House, Mr Costello signalled his intention to stay in politics for the long haul.

    “I promise you I’m going to be around for a long time,” Mr Costello told reporters.

    “I’ve been in politics a long time and there’s still so much work to be done that I want to make a contribution.”

    So are you all saying he hasn’t learned something very valuable from Howard and also contributed some very valuable things to Howard’s success? Sheesh! Where have you all been this past decade?

    One thing about politics you need to understand is you’re dead the moment the punters stop talking about you. That’s the really scary thing for the ALP at present. It might be even scarier once the Howard/Costello leadership question is settled next year and the spotlihgt swings back to the Beazer. In the meantime the electorate is left focussed on the Govt and its embarassment of riches. What more could the Govt ask for?

  6. Arriving at Parliament House, Mr Costello signalled his intention to stay in politics for the long haul.

    “I promise you I’m going to be around for a long time,” Mr Costello told reporters.

    “I’ve been in politics a long time and there’s still so much work to be done that I want to make a contribution.”

    So are you all saying he hasn’t learned something very valuable from Howard and also contributed some very valuable things to Howard’s success? Sheesh! Where have you all been this past decade?

    One thing about politics you need to understand is you’re dead the moment the punters stop talking about you. That’s the really scary thing for the ALP at present. It might be even scarier once the Howard/Costello leadership question is settled next year and the spotlihgt swings back to the Beazer. In the meantime the electorate is left focussed on the Govt and its embarassment of riches. What more could the Govt ask for?

  7. Oops! WordPress had an comment error and the quotes from Costello are here http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=50016

    Also note Warren Entsch’s comments:

    “Peter Costello has never made a phone call or approached me in the corridors and said `look, Warren, I want to do this or I want to do that’.

    “Everything I see is speculation in the media.”

    This speculation basically means they’re still talking about the Govt. Who needs press releases?

  8. to amplify my argument the inter-generational report is a beauty.
    Hree is simply regurgitated information from previous RIMU reports and collated.
    Little new information is there.
    What has happened since then?
    Has the SGC been increased? perhsps the taxinf of Super is only at the benefit stage and at the person’s MTR so to trying and match the aging population and get some equality between super and income?
    Will the pension age be raised in the future?
    What has the Government done inregards to an aging workforce somethingthe OECD has been harping on for a decade.

    Well diddly squat is the correct answer.

  9. Homer, you’ve swallowed Peter Costello’s line too much. Population aging as a public policy problem in Australia is massively overblown – partly because its convenient for Treasurers to posture on it and to use it to say “no” to further spending, and partly because there are private sector players with a vested interest in scaring people into giving them more superannuation money.

    Australia simply does not have a retirement income problem, because we don’t have unfunded earnings-related social security. If we have a long term public finance problem it’s in health – but aging is (counterintuitively) not the most important long-run driver of increased spending there.

    Falling labour force participation due to population aging is an issue, but there are some powerful counter-trends (notably the education levels and earning power of newer cohorts of older workers) that should partly or perhaps even wholly offset it. In any case, policy measures to raise participation are useful for the good they do for individuals but have little effect on GDP (and hence the tax base), because you’re only inducing new participation by the marginal (ie least productive) worker.

    The OECD has certainly been harping on about an aging workforce, but this is a combination of their notorious Eurocentricity (where aging *is* a really big deal) and of our Treasury whispering in their shell-like, rather than a result of independent study by them of Australian prospects.

  10. dd, fully agree that retirement incomes are not the issue; and to be fair to the Treasurer, the problem has always been expressed more in terms of the cost to the health budget. I don’t understand however why you think health costs are not being driven upwards by aging. The factors that interact are (to summarise crudely): the biggest cost drivers from the supply side are new technologies, ie more and more expensive drugs and treatments; but from the demand side, I think the evidence suggests that babies and old people are the biggest consumers of health services, and that the elderly are by far and away the largest users of our taxpayer subsidised pharmaceuticals. It may be that you consider the first the driver and the second an inevitable consequence? Or alternatively, there is an argument that the main reason the elderly show up as heavy health consumers in dollar terms is because of the high cost of death. Death is inevitable anyway and not really amenable (so far) to policy solutions. I have seen some evidence cited that the elderly, up to near death, are in fact much healthier now than historically they have been. So, this argument suggests, unless someone finds a cure for death there’s not much point worrying about the issue.

    in any case, none of this is really a long term problem, it all flushes its way out of the system by around 2040 to 2050 when the baby boomer population bulge finally works its way out of the demographics.

  12. Yes, aging is one thing driving up health costs – but if you look at pp81-82 of the IGR you’ll find that the real age-specific cost per person (ie the amount spent on a person *of a given age*) was projected to grow at 5.64% pa idefinitely (implausibly high IMO, but there you are). It is this, not demographic change, that drives health from the current 4% of GDP to the projected 9% My own calculations are that aging accounts for less than 30% of this increase.

    And this is without any assumptions about compression of morbity (ie that it’s dying, not aging, that costs).

  13. DD you are the first person I know who doesn’t believe Health costs are NOT part of the Retirement Income area.

    I agree pensions are not a problem. THey NEVER have been as any amount of RIMU papers have shown.
    Neither would health if the SGS was at 15% as the LAW tax cuts and the rest envisaged by Keating had have been allowed to go on.
    It is a problem now becuse people will be relying part on pensions to supplement their super. They won’t have the money for health.

  15. I’m not a personal admirer of Costello by any means – and I’m a rusted-on Labour supporter.

    But given the performance of the Australian economy over Costello’s term as Treasurer, if he’s “not doing very much” all I can say is “All Hail King Log”.

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