“It’s like a husband being upset that their ex-wife went off and had a cup of coffee with some other man.”
It was a nice line from Treasurer Joe Hockey on Radio National this morning, speaking about Labor’s reaction to a deal struck by the Coalition with the Greens to scrap Australia’s debt ceiling.
It is just a coffee, after all, not the illicit affair Labor had with the minor party for the last three years. And for the Greens, it’s a rare bit of economic sense — most economists will tell you Australia doesn’t need a ceiling on debt levels, and we certainly don’t need the sort of bitter brinkmanship seen in America’s Congress on the issue. Greens leader Christine Milne successfully negotiated the right outcome.
The base might scream at Milne — a less electorally popular leader than her predecessor who’s on reasonably shaky ground after a poor performance in the September poll — for doing deals with Abbott. But if the Greens are fair dinkum about playing politics in the new Tony Abbott-led world, they need to work with the government on issues they care about and not just knee-jerk against them.
The marriage is over. The Greens must play the field a little.
Given the way the Coalition carried on every time the previous government ever negotiated something with the Greens, it’s a little more like the ex-husband getting annoyed because his ex-wife slipped off for the the weekend with the parish priest. It’s not the deal that annoys – its the #*@$ing hypocracy.
Perhap the Greens are more sensible and economically informed than you give them credit for? Too much time swallowing the Laberal propaganda I think
The last time they slept with fatso the wombat and his fiends we got the GST. This time, fatso and the vermin will subsidise health and schools for the rich, that the poor cannot afford for themselves, and the poor and the kids will pay for it; and thats the “right outcome” according to this thickhead. they will continue to make partisan ideological cuts to whatever they choose, and change laws to aid and abet their crimes; it has already started; and this thickhead still says its the “right outcome”.
The trick will be for the Greens not to appear aligned with any party.
They should play hard to get – but not have conversations on phones or in offices when discussing their tactics amongst themselves.
Absolutely. The Greens did the right thing. And Prof its not a question of “perhaps the Greens are more sensible and economically informed than you give them credit for”, they are but they think in the longer term and they think about whats good for society and not just for exploitation now.
All we have to do to see how badly flawed the current way of doing economics is is to look at the northern hemisphere debacle which, I fear has set their economies back decades.