Bill Shorten and Brendan O’Connor say no Australian working full-time should be living in poverty, …
Source: SMH
In 1987, Bob Hawke boldly stated:
‘By 1990, no Australian child will be living in poverty’
In 2017 (27 years later),
according to ACOSS, 17.4% of children were living in poverty – that is, 731,000 children.
Comment: It won’t take 27 years for Bill Shorten’s Venezuela-down-under to reach “50% Left-behinds” to match his “50% Renewables” policy. The picture shows inflation in Venezuela.
Venezuela ranked in the top spot with the highest misery index in 2013.
In 2014, Venezuela entered an economic recession with a GDP growth decline of -3.0%. Venezuela topped the misery index for the second year in a row [beating Zimbabwe]. The Economist said Venezuela was ‘probably the world’s worst-managed economy’. The Heritage Foundation ranked Venezuela 175th out of 178 countries in economic freedom for 2014, classifying it as a ‘repressed’ economy according to the principles the foundation advocates. Many companies such as Toyota, Ford Motor Co., General Motors Company, Air Canada, Air Europa, American Airlines, Copa Airlines, TAME, TAP Airlines and United Airlines slowed or stopped operation due to the lack of hard currency.
Venezuela topped the misery index again in 2015. The IMF predicted an inflation rate of 159% for the year 2015 — the highest rate in Venezuelan history and the highest rate in the world — and that the economy would contract by 10%.
President Nicolás Maduro reorganized his economic cabinet in 2016 with the group mainly consisting of leftist Venezuelan academics. By 2016, media outlets said that Venezuela was suffering an economic collapse with the IMF estimating a 500% inflation rate and 10% contraction in the GDP.
The country was heading for a selective default in 2017 [and] in early 2018, the country was in default.
The ‘Big End of Town’
Under the tenures of Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolás Maduro, many businesses abandoned Venezuela. In 1999, there were 13,000 companies in the country. By 2016, less than a third of companies remained in Venezuela, with only 4,000 companies operating in the nation.
Source: Wikipedia
28 May 2018, The Australian
“Bill Shorten’s class-war attack on the ‘Big End of town’ has been blunted, with an overwhelming majority of voters supporting company tax cuts”