I agree that the $950 will either be used to pay off debt, buy a plasma or some other imported useless piece of consumerism (except of course exercise equipment

), seriously though I can't see much of the $950 being spent in my stores. Although I agree in general with the buy Australian drive, as nothing in my stores is made in Australia, everything is made in China, except one brand of rowers made in the USA (retail $2,500 plus) so if people want to buy fitness equipment they cannot buy Australian.
Due to now being a self employed lower income earner I will get the $950 (how does it work for those with kids in a joint custody arrangement?), I didn't get any of the last lot. This one will only be spent on credit card debt, although now will be spent on fixing the R1 after my little tumble last week.
Infrastructure spending needs to spent on big ticket items, hospitals, schools, water projects, some decent roads and spent as private businesses would spend capital funds, on a quality product at a reasonable price, not contracted to some fucking labour party hack or party contributor with their hand in krudds or swans pocket. I read of some school wanting to spend $300,000 on shade cloth cover, what are they covering the whole damn school. Also, any large construction infrastructure should be managed on a break even basis by a project manager and not contracted out to some private enterprise who is going to gouge the govt and made huge profit margins. For example, I had a client when I was in banking who did major electrical projects for the state govt on a cost plus 15% basis, so he didn't care what the cost was as the more the cost was the more he made. Also, krudd and his buddies need to tell the unions to pull their fucking heads in and restrict their bullshit demands and do whats best for their members by getting more of them employed.
Something I haven't seen mentioned is the size of the govt deficit needed to fund this spending, at this stage its estimated at $100 billion which equates to $115 million a week in interest (at 5%). It took Costello 10 years to pay off the $100 billion debt he inherited and that was during times of great growth in the economy fuelled by huge demand from China for raw materials which was in turn driven by consumer demand in the US. The recovery of Australia's economy (and in particular the growth of the economy) is highly dependent upon the demand of the US (and Europe) for the products of China (although China does have a high internal demand, the demand for high ticket items is limited by the low average wealth of their individuals) and this reduced demand for commodities coupled with the reduced demand (ie competitiveness) of Australian exports (mainly agriculture) due to the level of the $A leads to a huge reduction in tax income for the govt which in turn inhibits its ability to reduce debt. Hope I remembered by economic theory from uni correctly
