In 2008, Official Reserve Bank figures from APRA, revealed that Australian Banks' off-balance sheet derivative exposures totalled $13.8 trillion. Last year, Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens confirmed that efforts to control financial derivatives trading following the 2008 credit crisis have fallen behind.

Naturally, we don't know if the

'Government's guarantee package extends to offshore borrowings by banks to cover off-balance sheet derivatives, bad bets and the impact such exposures would have if forced onto banks' balance sheets.’ 

Is that why the Abbott Government funnelled $380 billion into the Committed Liquidity Facility in 2013?  Where did that money come from, given our allegedly parlous financial state, and how much is it costing us in interest payments? Even with low interest rates and the huge financial benefit of the falling Australian dollar the bank bailout fund remains in place. Why? If banks improve profits by setting aside less money for bad loans, why should the taxpayer have to cop the cost of making provision for a banking collapse rather than banks and their shareholders?

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/who-is-really-behind-the-headlong-rush-to-sell-off-public-assets-in-nsw,7493

There is a "No Land Tax Party" or such... Be careful, the dream is good... But single issue parties are the bane of not knowing where you go at one hundred miles an hour through fog... It is possible, such small single issue parties are created by LIBERAL STOOGES to distract you from voting Green or Labor... See, should a No Land Tax senator be elected, there could be a good change that they would vote with the government to sell the electricity supply network... Thus you get screwed... Vote for a party that CLEARLY states it will vote AGAINST privatisation... Be alert here as well, some parties may be windmilling against privatisation before the election, then CHANGE THEIR MIND when burning their trousers on the political benches of parliament...

Why did Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott remove all reference to inequality and income and wealth distribution in the Intergenerational Report? Warwick Smith investigates.

A search of the government’s recently released Intergenerational Report for the word “inequality” yields zero results. The same is true for “income distribution” and “wealth distribution”. This is not surprising because conservatives are basically forced by their other beliefs to play down the importance of inequality.

As many others have pointed out, the Intergenerational Report is an inherently political document and is much more informative about the current government than it is about the actual future of the country. The very short treatment of climate change in the report is a case in point. Another important element that was present in the 2010 report that is entirely absent from the 2015 version is any mention of wealth and income distribution. Instead, the 2015 report relies entirely on averages for reporting income and wealth.

Using the average (or mean) value for income and wealth can conceal very important information. Distributions can be measured and modelled just as averages can be measured and modelled. Not reporting on or modelling distributions is therefore a deliberate choice.

If you have 100 people in your economy and 99 are in abject poverty while one is a millionaire, average wealth is about $10,000. If that millionaire doubles their wealthy to $2 million the average wealth also doubles to $20,000. Based purely on averages it looks like things are going really well despite 99 percent of the population living in poverty and nothing improving for them. This is not an entirely unrealistic scenario. In the United States, since the 2008 financial crisis, a staggering 93% of income growth has gone to the top 1% of income earners. The average income has grown but the bottom 99% of income earners have mostly seen wages stagnate or fall. If we only heard about average incomes during that period we could be fooled into thinking US incomes are recovering from the financial crisis.

Equality of outcome is required for equality of opportunity

The negative consequences of extreme inequality have been very well documented by numerous studies in a variety of fields. Nations with high levels of inequality have poorer outcomes across a huge range of health and wellbeing measures, from teenage pregnancies to drug and alcohol problems.

read more: http://theaimn.com/conservative-ideology-and-the-intergenerational-report-why-hockey-had-to-remove-of-all-reference-to-inequality/

Along with the man who singly controls a larger chunk of Australia's energy assets than any other – Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing – the corporations likely to bid for the privatisation of NSW utilities share one thing in common: they are arch-exponents of aggressive tax minimisation.

Li Ka-shing and Spark Infrastructure – both big players in the Victorian and South Australian electricity markets – have been sued by the Australian Taxation Office. So avid a tax minimiser is Asia's richest man that he is now shifting his $30 billion business empire from Hong Kong to the Cayman Islands. The taxes are too high in Hong Kong apparently.

The convenor of the No Land Tax party, Peter Jones, has made explosive claims that the group is backed by people linked with the Liberal party.

The party is still in the running for a contested seat in the New South Wales upper house following last month’s state election.

Jones, a former member of the Labor party and self-professed union whistleblower, told ABC radio on Thursday his party was financed by “people with political pedigrees” from “the Liberal side” of politics.

“Almost all of them are on the Liberal side of politics,” Jones said. “I was told that under no circumstances were we to preference the Labor party or the Greens, that we had to preference the Liberal party, and that’s precisely what we did.”

The party said it would pay people $330 for handing out how-to-vote cards on election day, and offered them a $200 bonus if candidates in individual seats received more than 10% of the vote.

Jones said the “system of bonuses” was “quite legitimate”. He said the party had employed 3,600 people for the task, but not all of them showed up on the day. The cost of the wages alone amounted to more than $1m.......

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/apr/02/no-land-tax-party-bankrolled-by-liberal-side-of-politics-convenor-says

If you know how the voting for the senate works, you would know by now that the Liberal (CONservative) Party has been trying to do the dirty by splitting the votes, I guess with "little fragmented party" who will be appearing to be different to the libs (CONservatives) but are part of the fold...

I would suggest that It's a devious way to stop legitimate party such as the Greens and the Labor party get more seat in the senate... Do the sums... Why do the senate paper is about a metre and half long with about 32.4 different political parties? There are small parties with "legitimate" existence, but most of these small parties are stooges for the others —especially the conservative side of politics... all designed to reduce the vote for the left.

The Reserve Bank will be under pressure today to explain why interest rates on credit cards remain so high when the official cash rate is at an historic low.

Senior RBA officials including assistant governors Frank Campbell and Malcolm Edey will be grilled by a Senate estimates committee amid concerns that commercial banks are pocketing recent rate cuts.

While the RBA makes regular appearances before parliamentary committees, it is the first time the RBA has been summoned by a budget estimates committee.

The "spread" or margin between credit card rates and the RBA's official cash rate - now at a historic low of 2 per cent - is at its widest since 1990 when records began.

Australia's big four banks, which control half of the credit card market, face questions on whether they are "gouging" consumers with some credit cards charging around 20 per cent interest.

Labor Senator Sam Dastyari has warned that a wider inquiry into credit card rates could be initiated if the Reserve Bank is unable to justify the gap the cash rate and credit card rates.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-01/senate-to-grill-rba-on-high-credit-card-interest-rates/6510890