It is a free market when things are going good.
When it turns to **** the government borrows some money to give to us to kick things off, puts the country into debt and pays it back through taxes at a high rate of interest.
Shame it does not work the other way around as well. Big business should be only to happy to give us a share of the mining boom profits.
The whole system is a rort and the average citizen is not on the receiving end of the goodies, we just underpin it with labour and taxes.
There is no intention of ever paying it off because it is not possible and everyone who knows anything about it knows that. All the dabate is just noise.
While ever our governments can be swayed by economics and decisions made by people are based on profit we will be having this debate. I just think that there is something so inherently wrong with segregation through wealth and whilst ever it occurs we can expect to live in a corrupt society.
As far as the mining companies go, so what if they have to pay through the nose. They are removing a countries resource and selling it at a profit which will be distributed among the few. That resource can never be replaced and is in effect the birthright of everyone who is a citizen of this country so it is only right that we should expect a large proportion of it to be plowed back into infrastructure.
Governments are not there to change things, they are there to keep them the same. Only the level of economic interference differs and mostly not at all. They are all corrupt with the exception of the very few.
There are a few ridiculously insecure blokes posting on this topic. A little more respect for women and our effing Prime Minister would do you credit. Complain about policy, but don't rat f@#$ 51% of the population and the highest office at the same time. Pathetic.
So if i work at a good or bad school and or im a good or bad school teacher I SHOULD BE EXPECTED to have a pay increases and lets remember what ..... pay taken from them (sure) ......whats say you remind teacher voters of that ..................
Righto Miss Gillard ...........as if you can do this efficiently, effectively
Teachers get slabs of holidays and you get payed well and sorry Miss Gillard, they get payed to do a job ,good bad or indifferent ,just like everyone else.
the wheel has turned ....full circle 
WE...The Serfs have everything surrendered to the Emperor
The Emperor and their entourage do all the spending and living ,
so work harder all you slaves. The Emperor wants to boogie! 
[}:)]
is that 40 000 000 hole anything like the 7 billion dollar difference in spending Hocky and Abbott cant seem to agree to. Costelo hit the proverbial nail on the head when he said Abbott has no idea on money spenditure
A farmer named Sid was overseeing his stock in a remote moorland
pasture in North Yorkshire when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced
toward him out of a cloud of dust.
The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan
sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the cowboy, "If
I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will
you give me a calf?"
Sid looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully
grazing stock and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?"
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer,
connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASApage
on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix
on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that
scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.
The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and
exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany .
Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image
has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL
database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his
Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.
Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech,
miniaturized HP LaserJet printer, turns to the cowboy and says, "You
have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."
"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says Sid.
He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on with
amusement as the young man stuffs it into the back of his car.
Then Sid says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what
your business is, will you give me back my calf?"
The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why
not?"
"You're a Member of Parliament for our Government", says Sid.
"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"
"No guessing required." answered the farmer. "You showed up here even
though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already
knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions of pounds worth of
equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you
don't know a thing about how working people make a living - or about
cows, for that matter. This is a herd of sheep. ...
Now give me back my dog
rofl...
rofl...
