Items Tagged With "Abbott"

The Liberal Party today demonstrated that its paid parental leave thought bubble is a sham with no detail, no costing and no timeframe.

Last week, Tony Abbott said it would take two years to implement.

      ABBOTT: We will do it as quickly as we reasonably can, should we win the next election. Now, I would be amazed if we cannot do this within two years. I would certainly anticipate that it would be ..." [Doorstop 10/3/10]

Today the timeframe has suddenly shrunk to an impossible few months.

Recent figures show that the mix of an ageing and growing population, rising levels of chronic disease and increasing cost of medical treatments is going to weigh heavily on our future health and hospital system.

Expenditure on chronic disease is expected to grow rapidly between 2002-03 to 2032-33, with the cost of treating diabetes alone projected to increase 436 per cent, from $1.6 billion to $8.6 billion.

The average health spending by the Commonwealth Government per person per year is projected to grow in real terms from $2,290 to $7,210 by 2050.

Tony Abbott has today revealed that that there is no real timeline for implementing his paid parental leave thought bubble but that he wants Australian families to wait at least until 2013:

ABBOTT: We will do it as quickly as we reasonably can should we win the next election. Now, I would be amazed if we cannot do this within two years. I would certainly anticipate that it would be ...

Mr Abbott has revealed he has done zero thinking on implementing his policy.

Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott needs to come clean on his secret plan to make older Australians work longer to pay for welfare payments for high-income families.

A report in today’s Sydney Morning Herald reveals that Mr Abbott has a secret plan to increase the pension age so that high-income families can receive generous family tax benefit payments for children under five years of age

Mr Abbott’s shadow cabinet proposal says:

The Leader of the Opposition is a risk to national superannuation and the savings pool that will plan an important part in dealing with the challenges of an ageing population.

In his book, Battlelines, Tony Abbott questions the value of the Government encouraging Australians to save through their superannuation.

He says:

“At some point, saving money by keeping people off the pension while forgoing revenue to encourage them to make alternative provision becomes counter-productive.” (p. 108)

He goes on:

The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Julia Gillard, today said no pay packet is safe after Mr Abbott refused yesterday to guarantee the penalty rates and overtime for millions of working Australians.

The Australian reports today that Opposition Workplace Relations spokesperson, Senator Eric Abetz, will remove penalty rates, reintroduce AWAs which stripped away basic conditions and exempt many businesses from unfair dismissal laws if the Opposition is elected.

The Leader of the Opposition has proven again today just what a straight talker he is.

While visiting a Perth Primary School today Mr Abbot re-iterated his position that he wants to wind back the Government’s stimulus, but also said he doesn’t want to cut funding to individual schools.

“I don’t begrudge any school the money that it’s got, but I do think that the size of the package was too big. I do think that the stimulus was too much too soon,” Mr Abbott said.

The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Julia Gillard, today called on the Leader of the Opposition to come clean with the Australian public and outline his plans for workplace relations.

Mr Abbott’s continued misleading attack on the Government’s workplace relations laws can only mean one thing – he’s softening up the electorate for a return to the hated Work Choices system.

Ms Gillard says he has to answer some simple questions:

Mr Abbott, will you reintroduce any part of Work Choices?

The Liberal Party has today revealed it plans to deny thousands of Australians the chance to be reunited with their spouses and children.

The Opposition’s immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, says he will “tighten up” on the family reunion component in the annual migration program.

Mr Morrison is so ignorant of the migration program that he obviously is not aware that of the 60 300 visas available under the family stream of the migration program for 2009-10, the vast majority will go to spouses, children and parents of Australians.