Essential on the money

John Thompson writes: Re. “Don’t write him off just yet” (yesterday). Perhaps it’s the circles I move in, but I find Essential’s 50/50 much more believable than Newspoll’s 54/46. I don’t move in particularly party-committed circles, but I find far more reservations regarding an Abbott government than a continuation of the Rudd government. It’s hard to reconcile that with the print media polls. Where does Essential get its, from my point of view, more credible figures?

GST a tax on the poor

Les Heimann writes: Re. “GST lost to online imports isn’t the problem. This is …” (yesterday). What — increase the cost of food! Yeah, three cheers for exploiting the poor and hungry. Stamp down the proletariat, grind down the those that have to spend with a tax that everyone hates and a tax that hits the lower classes. Business pays GST and gets it back, middle classes eat too, but their contribution — on food, electricity and so on — is a fraction of the meagre take-home of pensioners and the lower paid.

How anyone can extol the benefit of any aspect of the GST is beyond my comprehension. Unless of course you’re of a type who appreciated Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, John Howard, Tony Abbott …

Bah; humbug.

The stain of Murdoch

Peter Matters writes: Re. “Campaign scorecard: parental leave trips up Abbott” (yesterday). We, the voters, have plenty of time plenty to work out that we are being conned by Rupert Murdoch and his baying hounds. Murdoch is a man of the past pushing for another man of the past. While he has not been charged with any offence in Australia, he has been discredited here as much as in the US and the UK — so much so that his favouring the opposition reflects badly on them and in particular on Tony Abbott, Murdoch’s bosom pal.