Here we go again.
Sunday saw Tony Abbott unveil his Paid Parental Leave Scheme. Women will get up to 26 weeks leave at their current wage with super. If you were on the higher end of the income spectrum, you could get seven times the amount you would under Labor. However, it seems that some Liberals, not to mention most of the Nationals, do not like this plan. Joe Hockey said something along the lines of ‘I’m following Tony’s beliefs’ – which makes me think that he doesn’t like it.
Kevin Rudd says it will damage the economy, and people from the country aren’t happy about it either. Not only that, but the Business Council and the ACTU don’t like it either. It appears that the Greens might like it – although they think it needs fine tuning.
There were also some strange preferences going on – it’s a bit tough to explain, so if you want to look at how it works you can look at what Antony Green has to say about it here – he makes way more sense than I ever will.
On Monday, the opinion polls came out again. Despite dropping to a new low poll result for Kevin Rudd, he is still technically ahead. He was told by one old bloke “Them polls are a bunch of wombats!” – you can watch that here.
It’s come to the point in the election where repetition is constant and the trend is key words repeated three times – e.g. “cut, cut, cut”, “build, build, build” – and I feel like yelling, yelling, yelling.
CEOs have made their position on Abbott’s Paid Parental Leave Scheme clear – they don’t like it. Neither do economists – and when the economists think it isn’t a good idea because it may blow out the budget, you should be concerned. The experts have spoken. In related economical news, Joe Hockey didn’t do to well when interviewed about his budget recently.
On Tuesday, Abbott’s Paid Parental Leave was being criticised again. That was the least of his worries though, given that his candidate for the seat of Charlton (Greg Combet’s seat) has pulled out of the running after a website was unearthed. As the ballots are already printed, his name will still be on there, but he will not be campaigning and will essentially give the seat to Labor.
We are now halfway there.
Kara L 