Grant

Magazine managing editor and Tiger tragic.

[GBC @GBC_Press]

🚨 BREAKING:

Lady Gaga said: “This is our opportunity to vote against Donald Trump,” and her video was removed from Facebook and Instagram. This is what Republican fascism calls “freedom.”

[John Cusack @johncusack]

The US and ISRAEL have dropped almost 7 Hiroshima’s on Gaza
You can look it up .

[Tamer Nahed @Tamer_Alnoaizy]

To this day, I cannot understand how the world watched this scene without being moved!!

More than 500 people disappeared after this strike in Gaza City, as if they were erased from existence in a single moment.

History will never forget what we lived through here.

[Martin Flanagan @Martin_Flanagan]

The idea that the spike in antisemitism in Australia over the past two years is unrelated to Israel’s conduct in Gaza is simply not real. Like the idea that the earth is flat is simply unreal.

[Ed Krassenstein @EdKrassen]

I can’t stop laughing at Trump’s new wig. Or whatever the F$&k that creature on his head is.

[Paul Freid @PaulFreid5]

An American hero. Retweet if you agree.

[Quds News Network @QudsNen]

Watch | Israeli settler militias attack Palestinians and foreign solidarity activists in the village of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank.

[Mohamad Safa @mhdksafa]

The genocide of Jewish people called “holocaust”

The genocide of the Irish people called “famine”

The genocide of Native Americans called “discovery”

The genocide of Africans called “colonization”

The genocide of Palestinian called “self-defense”

The genocide of Lebanese called “security threat”

Language matters. A genocide is unjustifiable wherever happens. Never again

[Swagman @swagman4020]

Another shout out to OneNation who have Sharia Law towards the top of their Hate, Division and Fear This - in their stack of worthless cooker cards.

[Ruqaiya @ruqaiya_h]

I’m so over it. Why can’t Palestinian kids have childhoods

[Dr Rhonda Garad Difficult by Design @RhondaGarad]

An unelected, unaccountable shadow government is spending public money without democratic oversight. Jillian Segal and her gravy train must go.

[Wendy Bacon @Wendy_Bacon]

Adelaide University’s cancellation of @FranceskAlbs provides a perfect example of how political censorship morphs into ‘risk management’ - with help from @Newscorp bullies https://t.co/9r8XvcX6OT

[𝓙𝓲𝓶𝓶𝔂 𝓙 @JimmyJ4thewin]

I just checked who covered the historic mass funeral of 112 Palestinians in Gaza killed by Israel.

CNN? Nowhere.
MSNBC? Silent.
Fox News? Crickets.
BBC? Radio silence.

112 bodies. One mass funeral. Zero Western media coverage.

Journalism didn’t die. It just decided some mass funerals aren’t newsworthy.

[Sarah Wilkinson @swilkinsonbc]

Gaza’s famine isn’t caused by crop failure or weather but by the israelis using starvation as a weapon, says Australian senator | via @100_alpha

[Grant @Quackleberry]

This cause is close to my heart - please sign: https://t.co/dGAnQtCF7R via @getup

[stranger @strangerous10]

Tim Costello shocks the Senate after revealing a young man in prison who had his life turned upside down from gambling was being offered drugs & escorts by TAB & SportsBet as inducements
“He was given escorts” & “asked, ‘what drugs you like?’”

And we’re still just debating ads?

[Tuğberk @tugberk37]

İspanya Gazze’yi desteklediği için hedef alınıyor.

Siyonistlerin İspanya’yı karıştırmasına izin verilmemeli!

İspanya’yı destekleyenler bu tweeti beğensin ve paylaşsın.

[Bob Carr @bobjcarr]

ABC report yesterday about chicken pox raging among wretched Palestinian kids living in heat wave, under tents, full of mice and fleas, not enough water for daily baths with IDF blocking imports of chicken pox vaccine https://t.co/nDjestqjk1

[Aaron Smith @aaronsmith]

Thank you, Dave. I appreciate you reaching out to ask what you got wrong.

The clip we’re discussing is less than 90 seconds long. What I’m about to do demonstrates Brandolini's Law: where the amount of energy required to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude greater than that required to produce it. Or, in this case, it takes around 600 words to correct 90 seconds of your economic fan fiction.

1⃣ Between 0 and 30 seconds

You begin by confusing government debt with the Future Fund and appear to suggest that the Future Fund can't exist along side Govt debt.

They’re different things. One can exist without the other, and in Australia they do.

Australia's Future Fund was established in 2006 with an initial govt investment of about $60B. Its first annual report, in 2008, showed assets of around $64 billion - not the $100B you suggested.

Then, at around 27 seconds, you talk about the Future Fund as though it ceased to exist (you used the word 'had' as in past tense).

It still very much exists Dave. In fact, it's grown every single year since it was created. Today it's worth around $270 billion, or over $330 billion once the other funds under management are included (eg Medical Research / Housing Australia / Drought).

So before we're even 30 seconds into the clip you've managed to confuse government debt, the Future Fund, its size, and whether it still exists.

That’s a lot of economic history to get wrong in under 30 seconds.

2⃣ Around 32 seconds

You then claim Kevin Rudd used the Future Fund to "flush money through the economy".

Again, that’s simply false. The Future Fund wasn't used to fund the stimulus. It wasn't used to build school halls. It wasn’t used for any of the things you’re describing. In your defence, you do briefly flirt with the possibility that you don’t actually know what you’re talking about. Sadly, it was a very short-lived relationship.

The GFC stimulus was funded through government borrowing.

For context, construction approvals were collapsing, more than a million Australians worked in construction, and the objective was to stop unemployment exploding during the worst global financial crisis in generations.

You're welcome to argue that was the wrong policy (but you didn't). You’re not entitled to rewrite where the money came from.

3⃣ At about 44 seconds

You say, "I might be wrong".

I concede you were correct during this part of the video.

4⃣ From 44 seconds onwards

You make a series of broad claims about the GFC response.

Yes, government debt increased. That's true.

What you omit is that Australia's stimulus largely went directly to households rather than primarily rescuing financial institutions, as happened in many other countries.

The aim was simple: keep people spending, businesses operating and Australians employed while global demand collapsed. It's known as counter-cyclical fiscal policy.

Whether you agree with it politically is your business.

The specific outcome for Australia isn't contested though - Australia was one of only two economies in the OECD to avoid recession during the Global Financial Crisis. There's no reality where that wasn’t a comparatively impressive outcome.

The money didn’t need to "trickle down". The entire point was that it started at the bottom.

5⃣ Government debt

Throughout the clip (and in life generally) you repeatedly return to the theme Labor is responsible for Australia’s debt (which btw is comparatively low).

Here are the actual numbers of net debt added by each Govt since 2007.

> Rudd/Gillard: about $190 billion over six years.
> Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison: about $366 billion over nine years, around two-thirds of which pre-dated COVID.
> Albanese: about $75 billion over four years.

Those figures don’t support the story you've been telling people. And that’s really the issue.

This isn't about getting one date wrong or misremembering one statistic. Nearly every claim in your 90-second clip turns out to be either wrong or misleading.

If you're going to publicly lecture Australians about economic history, the bare minimum expectation is that you’ve first acquainted yourself with it.

Because once the errors have been pointed out, as they have been to you multiple times, every repetition stops looking like an accident and starts looking like a strategy.

Given your very public coffee with Angus Taylor last week, perhaps people are entitled to ask what that strategy might be.

[Sarah Wilkinson @swilkinsonbc]

Palestinians race to evacuate homes & businesses in Anza, near Jenin, after the israelis give them just an hour before the village is demolished