Have to agree

Joe Hockey outclassed on Q&A, by an economist

Mind you, it's not hard for Joe to be "outclassed".   He's just a windbag who shows no consistency in painting an economic picture.  A poor ministerial performer out of a government full of them.

Update:  Ha!  Judith Sloan thinks Peter Martin is an idiot for saying Daley was more credible than Hockey, in a ranty, shouty, straw man and nonsense filled post at Catallaxy.  (Why is she never this ranty on TV?   Why won't she repeat some of her more ludicrous claims there, but adopt a pretence at being more moderate than she really is?)

Her argument that abolishing negative gearing would be "double taxation" is particularly hard to follow, and I had to search the internet to remind myself how she even comes up with it.  In this takedown of her arguments, we get this explanation from JS:

To eliminate negative gearing would be to introduce double taxation. The flip side of an investor taking a loan to buy an asset is a lender providing the loan. And that lender pays taxation on the associated profit.

As the article notes:

Sloan’s argument that “the flip side of an investor taking a loan to buy an asset is a lender providing the loan” and that to disallow the cost of borrowing by investors would amount to “double taxation” is ridiculous.

Using this logic, the private health insurance rebate is not really a cost to the budget, since it is income in the hands of health funds that in turn pay tax to the government. Using the same logic, childcare should be made tax deductible, since childcare centres would earn higher profits, part of which would also be remitted back to the government via company tax (not to mention the extra income taxes paid by childcare workers). To do otherwise would amount to double-taxation, according to Sloan’s twisted logic.

It is plainly nonsense, involving Sloan creating what amounts to her special meaning for the phrase "double taxation".

In other of the collection of her "Greatest Hits of Nonsense":  she won't read The Economist because it is "deeply Green, deeply Keynesian".   (Belief in climate change as a serious issue is an automatic disqualifier for 'seriousness' for dear Judith.)   And let's not forget, Australia's compulsory superannuation "is a tax".   (Again, a completely individual use of terminology, as far as I can tell.)