Yep, the Carbon “Tax” was a great big tax on everything, but raising the GST, as well as possibly broadening its reach, is just the sort of thing you’d expect from the Liberals because they’re “responsible economic managers” so this GST thing isn’t going to be as costly as the carbon tax. After all, they’re fond of telling us that they’re the party who doesn’t raise taxes.
Of course, there’s always been a bit of woolly logic from all sides of politics, but recently the Australian government has raised it to a whole new level. So I found Mr Turnbull’s justification for keeping the diesel rebate rather interesting. I’m only quoting from memory so I may not get it word perfect, but it went something like this:
“Well, the diesel rebate isn’t a subsidy because, well, it’s a rebate on diesel and it’s … ah, not a subsidy because it.. just isn’t!”
For a few seconds, I thought that he was channelling Mr Abbott who informed us yesterday that if he’d died on the day he was replaced as PM, he would have died a happy man, but then I realised that as he wasn’t dead there was no way that Malcolm was acting as a medium. Malcolm’s days in the middle seem a long time ago now!
I infer from what Tony said that having lived on from that day, he isn’t a happy man.
Further evidence that my inference is correct is Mr Abbott’s insistence that Julie Bishop is lying when she says that she told him of dissatisfaction. He also insists that she never suggested that he appoint more women to Cabinet.
Before you suggest that this could be considered “sniping” – something Tony promised not to do on that day when he could have died a happy man – I’d like to point out that “sniping” is something that snipers do and snipers are well hidden. This, on the other hand, was more an artillery attack.
However, It wasn’t Mr Abbott that prompted me to write this. After all, he’s no longer Prime Minister and if he wants to run around pretending that his opinion actually counts for something, then we should all just nod and perhaps consider sending him one of those mindfulness colouring books for Christmas.
It wasn’t even Mr Turnbull’s insistence that fossil fuels still need subsidies just a few months after telling us that solar and wind shouldn’t be eligible for loans from the climate funds because they’re well established and should be able to stand on their own two feet.
No, I wasn’t even going to write about the front page in “The Herald-Sun” yesterday, devoted to “war hero” Andrew Hastie’s opinion that Islam must change and modernise. I’m not going to comment on the weirdness that someone who didn’t want to talk about his views on creationism during his election campaign because religion isn’t something that should be part of the political conversation, should tell another religion that it needs to modernise. Of course, that’s what Islam needs, an outsider telling them what to do. Christians are always willing to listen to feedback on where they’re going wrong. Why just the other day, I pointed out to a couple of Mormons who came to the door that all they needed to do was lift their restriction on alcohol and coffee and I’d be joining them without a second thought. They took this on board and any day now, I expect to receive some literature where they explain how they got it wrong and it’s only a non-Mormon who could see that.
And I certainly wasn’t going to bring up Mr Morrison’s idea that we couldn’t count on the pension any more and we should all start funding our own retirements, because then I’d have been asking a lot of silly questions like why don’t the Liberals want to have penalties for employers who don’t pay workers superannuation? I certainly would have been bogged down wondering why every time they get into power they freeze the superannuation guarantee.
I was actually going to write a long piece on the notion of money and try to explain for the twentieth time that money doesn’t actually exist and that it’s just a concept and a way of measuring value. One only has to consider Bitcoin for a nanosecond to get what I’m on about. I was then going to ponder about the whole notion of unemployment and wonder why some people have to work hours of overtime that they don’t necessarily want, why we can’t organise things so that more people are employed for less hours.
But on reflection, I’ve decided that there’s been enough people challenging other people’s religions lately, so if people want to go on believing in money, then who am I to challenge their beliefs?
