The Budget: All cruelty springs from weakness
Image source: laberal.blogspot.com
It can’t be denied any longer, conservatives really do believe they have no responsibility to the vulnerable, and it is perfectly acceptable to the Abbott government that those who can least afford it endure the most harsh of financial limitations.
This piece in the Sydney Morning Herald reveals that while high income couples stand to lose scarcely at all, families on benefits may lose up to 10% of their income. Known as “Detailed family outcomes,” this information was withheld from the budget, contrary to custom, by Joe Hockey, obviously because it reveals the Abbott government lie that everyone will be doing their fair share of the heavy lifting allegedly required to get the budget back on track.
Abbott also stated in an interview with Alison Carabine on Radio National Breakfast this morning that the highly paid, such as politicians, judges and senior public servants, will suffer a pay freeze for twelve months, costing Abbott something like a $6000 addition to his $500,000 plus benefits salary package. Not even the most witless among us could possibly believe this can be in any way comparable to the situation of a young person without resources denied Newstart benefits, and low-income families and pensioners having to choose between a middy, a treat for the kids, the doctor’s bill, and medicine, for which they will also have to pay more.
Pensioners also stand to lose extras such as free car registration, and reductions in rates, water and electricity. These concessions were made available to the people in the community who were recognised as vulnerable and needing assistance by governments unlike this one, governments who were capable of making such acknowledgements.
The question I am waiting for a journalist to ask the Prime Minister and the Treasurer is, why are they placing an intolerable burden on the most vulnerable while the wealthy are called upon to do comparatively very little?
What is it in the conservative psychology that makes such unfairness acceptable to them?
No country can afford to be governed by people who hate and fear vulnerability, as do these Australian conservatives. Far from being adult such people are dangerously immature, incapable of understanding any life experience other than their own. Convinced of its superiority, this government asks little or nothing of those best placed to contribute to the country’s needs, while demanding that those least able, relinquish what little they already have. In other words, the Abbott government is determined to punish the vulnerable for their vulnerability.
All cruelty springs from weakness, declared the philosopher Seneca. Wealth and power do not guarantee strength of character, and it’s hard to detect that quality in Abbott and Hockey. Strength of character requires the ability to identify vulnerability and refrain from taking advantage of it. Hockey and Abbott have indeed identified the vulnerable, and have proceeded to take the most appalling advantage, of the kind they would never dream of imposing on the wealthy and comfortable.
Conservatives are, in general, weak and cruel. Our government is weak and cruel. We are in dangerous times, with this weak and cruel government. As we have seen with the treatment of asylum seekers in this country, (and this has been demonstrated by both major parties) once the bar has been lowered for the treatment of a particular group of human beings, it is very easy to escalate ill-treatment.
This budget is devastating for the vulnerable, and pays no mind to their survival. This budget will lower the bar on the treatment of vulnerable people in our society. It will become easier to treat them even more harshly, to consider them even less worthy, to demonise them as threats and parasites, just as has been done to asylum seekers in the last fourteen years. And in the way of things, as history has demonstrated over and over again, ill-treatment becomes normalised, and scapegoats become the bitter focus of a community’s fears and discontents.
Beware of cruel governments. They will only become more cruel. Because they are, at their heart, cowardly and weak, and when the cowardly and weak attain power, the vulnerable will be the first they destroy.
This article was first posted on Jennifer’s blog “No Place For Sheep” and reproduced with permission.
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Return to home pageThanks for describing this gov perfectly
But its too late now for me, and thousands and thousands of good aussies
he is still in power to day, will be tomorrow, and next week,
and in 12 months, I am chucking all my jobs in tomorrow
the rich and gov can clean their own dunnies, floors, windows, dishes etc etc
I am not going to play the game,
I will not be any ones slave and live in a car with me kids
like a lot of single mums are already
I am looking to getting out of this almost Chinese/American country
I said to my sons when phony got in,
“you will need to build us an ark,
we will need it in a few months they said “are you serious” I said “YES”
Abbott is firmly super glued into power by Gina,
Rupert and the multi corporates, and many more by the looks
They are as corrupt and sadistic and very dangerous to mankind
I can not see any future here,
But anyways, thanks for a great place to come
to be able to comment and not get called
“a bleeding heart, lefty luvvie, socialist, muslim lover”,and even worse sadly
Its a civil war here now, supporters against supporters…
pick your corner,RED V BLUE, that’s the message we have been getting for ages,
cos that’s what the Libs want, they have staked everything on it seems
Its the new boxing ring as far as Tone’s is concerned,
knock em down, then go in for the fatal deadly blow to the head
and then go for their kids. they are vultures really
And its not going to get better, lies and more lies, propaganda,
till we cant see the trees for he forest from the maggots now,
Keep up great work AIMN,
I got a house to sell, as quick as I can….
DanDark I’m with you. I got a redundancy from a state owned enterprise in December, so the writing was already on the wall back then. With a husband who was made redundant last May and now to get a knee replacement (recovery time means he won’t be able to work for at least two years, and since he’s 54 now it’s highly unlikely he’ll get another job when he’s 56) and three teens to support, my stress levels are high and my confidence is low. Just over a year ago we were both working and had the most comfortable two years of our lives with both on decent incomes. Now we’re fast running out of money and I’m looking for jobs that bring a drop of $50k compared to my previous income. Glad we enjoyed ‘easy street’ while we could.
I’m scared of what our country has become. Most of my effort now goes into helping refugees and the homeless because it makes my own problems seem insignificant and I get pleasure from doing something decent for others. This won’t be easy soon though because I’ll need to get a job and the pressure of that and trying to cope financially, as well as take care of my husband, means less time for others. That saddens me because thanks to this government the only ones who will support and care for those less fortunate are people like myself, many of who are barely getting by themselves.
I don’t want to go back into the system because I don’t want to contribute tax to this corrupt, heartless, murdering government. Murdering not just because of Reza Berati, but because of all the pensioners, disabled, students, single mothers and struggling families who are going to lose not just financial support but thanks to cuts to support services, emotional and social support. We can no longer get on with our own lives because we have to worry about and try to stop what this despicable mob are doing. Hope is sparse these days, and the safety net that provided a buffer during difficult times has massive holes in it.
The ramifications won’t just be on the less fortunate, I think. The economy is already grinding to a halt because of this loss of hope and increasing uncertainty, so eventually even the wealthy will have something to complain about. Maybe like you we should all sell our houses and get out of the system – I have a goal now to set up an off grid community where we all take care of each other and the government can go screw itself. Only we can’t wait, we need it now. Guess it’s back into the system in order to achieve that one goal that I now aspire to. No point in having any others, everything is being ripped away by Abbott.
Sorry to see Australia go. I hope things work out for you, and for so many millions of others who are sharing our despair.
http://jenniferann1970.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/capture.jpg
Reblogged this on THE VIEW FROM MY GARDEN and commented:
Pensioners also stand to lose extras such as free car registration, and reductions in rates, water and electricity. These concessions were made available to the people in the community who were recognised as vulnerable and needing assistance by governments unlike this one, governments who were capable of making such acknowledgements.
“As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
~H. L. Mencken
I know it’s a reference to American politics… But, considering the type of people infesting OUR ruling class, it was bound to happen…
Thatcherism, which is what we are getting, provides for the rich and the corporate sector and the middle classes, but the benefits become scarce when you reach the lower-middle class.
How do you elevate the lower-middle class without any providing for actual financial improvement?
Simple! Make the lives of those directly beneath them a living hell.
The Conservative Viewpoint: 1: I earn more because I’m worth more. 2: I pay more tax because I earn more and so I should get a bigger share of what taxes provide. 3: Because I earn more, I’m worth more to the economy and therefore deserve to be protected from financial inconvenience. 4: If you earn less, you contribute less; therefore you deserve less. 5: If you earn nothing, you contribute nothing; therefore you will get nothing.6: Because I’m so important, I’ll decide what you are worth and will see that you are paid only what is acceptable to me.7: Once you have reached the end of your useful life, as determined by me, you will receive only that which I feel is enough to survive.8: You must look after your own health and the education of your offspring because these things are a burden on my well-being and I am not responsible for you and yours.9: If you cannot earn enough to provide for a decent life, that is your fault and I should not be penalised for your shortcomings.10: I hold my position over you by right of birth and no argument you can make will alter that fact.11: All progressive governments are illegitimate because they don’t reflect what I know to be true.
Well said Kaye given the chance they will become more cruel. Humility is not their style.
It is appalling watching Hockey’s anger and rage at the democratic rights of his fellow Australians as if he has no right to be held to account for such gross inequity and injustice. His anger is a reflection of a disturbed mind that cannot deal calmly with the facts recoiling into abuse of those who would legitimately seek redress for injustice in a democracy. That they would lose public opinion so quickly reflects a complete lack of insight into the people of this country they were elected to serve – the citizens they blatantly deceived and lied too.
This is no doubt a very serious situation that we cannot afford to let run to the next election because of the unnecessary suffering they will cause. What to do? It is now not a matter of if, but when, and the sooner the it comes the better. It is now up to the independents and the mass of disillusioned Australians to stop this farce in its tracks before their cruelty gets out of hand. Their reactive nature worries me and is more likely to produce belligerence than compromise.
The driving compulsion to dictate to the masses leads down a path of oligarchic totalitarianism and unbridled corptocracy. Thank heavens they have blown their cover this early in their tenure. Also thank heavens for AIMN and its contributors vigilance in confronting corruption and injustice.
We live in dangerous times.
I agree with the above comments. There is a regression back to the archaic past with this Government. We are now returning to the 19th century-An era that saw the awakening of the philosphy of Karl Marx simply because of the dire poverty and inequality he witnessed! It was the time of a wealthy ruling class that was seen as entitled to be rich and -as the owners of the means of production etc- should not in anyway be hindered -whilst the working classes must bow their heads and accept all! The poor were to be exploited and the wealthy exalted!-I think that Workers and Unions will be made illegal. Howard tried to do this and came close to succeeding –some leading unionists were jailed .Howard’s Work Choices plan was notorious -and-Howard is Abbott’s mentor!.Nothing will surprise me anymore re this current government -It is Backwards to The Past with them !!
Last night’s QandA revealed to me that Hockey “The Hypocrite” failed to fully explain in an honest and truthful manner the implications of his horror budget that suppresses the “not so well off” folk of Australia …
1. He did say that pensioners will be paying the $7 co-payment towards the cost of Medicare for 10 visits … However, he purposely avoided the 3 year freeze on pension payments which was indexed at the CPI … After those 3 years the pensions will be indexed at the inflation rate which is lower than the CPI …. Pensioners will fork out extra that they really can’t … And don’t forget that pensioners’ concessions such as discounted payments in electricity, water and land rates will be scrapped along with the free vehicle registrations which will all put extra stress into the pensioners’ household budget …
2. Students who cannot afford to pay upfront for tertiary education, must resort to borrow from the HECS scheme, but must pay interest immediately when given the loan … By the time they finish paying the loan off the interest charge will have more than doubled the initial loan amount … If students reach the $50k p.a. after a number of years at a job where they usually start with income that falls well short of the $50k, they will have added years to their loans that increases at compounding interest rates … Mr. Hockey, as treasurer you have turned the ATO into a finance company …
3. The $20 Billion that will be given by the LibNat-zi government for medical research (highest level on world standards) and funded from the the Medicare co-payment is a waste … The CSIRO that will soon be dismantled was sufficient and efficient enough to carry out research in this field …
If the LibNat-zi government are fair dinkum enough, wouldn’t it be better to invest that amount into eliminating toxic emissions and chemicals from our atmosphere, water resources, the marine environment and our soil to prevent an increase in serious illnesses caused by this high level pollution that our nation encounters … Pollution is the main cause for cancers and I’ll-health …
4. There are heaps more questions to be answered by this lunkhead treasurer, and I invite further discussion by subscribers of this excellent network to pose the questions and suggestions that I have missed … After all, we Australians are entitled to make the policies while governments should just be administering and managing the will of the majority of the Australian people’s decisions ….
Ciobo, Bernardi, Pyne, Cashin, Abetz, Brandis, Brough, O’Dwyer, Mirabella, … expect a sensitive humane response from this rabble and their colleagues? The whole tenor of the Liarbril Party is IPA directed Tea-Party economic rationalism .
I still have sheet music copies of the “Horst Wessel” if anyone wants to beat the rush.
The depths of cruelty goes even further to sending refugees to one of the most corrupt countries in the world Cambodia. Hun Sen is is a criminal of epic proportions whom our prime-minister has embraced in a deal of immoral and cynical proportions making Abbott and his government complicit in corruption and denial of human rights.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/its-time-to-name-and-shame-cambodias-corrupt-hun-sen-regime/story-e6frg6ux-1226842978727#
I doubt if Abbott could stoop any lower than this. It is time to call a spade a spade. Abbott is the most inhumane and corrupt prime-mister this country has ever seen. What more proof is needed.
It just gets worse day by day.
Australians be warned continue with this policy and we will become intentional pariahs. We are in complete contravention of the UN Charter on Refugees and Human Rights.
Do we really want to be found complicit in slavery.
margaret Millar, agreed,mostly.
I think experiencing our own traitor assisted offshore driven regime of Geoff Whitlam put a latent fear in the ALP that never went away. Globally the evidence is jaw dropping on what happens to nation govts not complying with cooperative oligarchy wishes. Keating going all right wing on Australia was prime example of regime change fear. Delivering billions to the Locheed corporate welfare fund is another conditioning we’re supposed to accept with no discussion.
Yes it is truth that Howard, removed to right to compensation when good people brake body parts doing dangerous work. Safety conscious programs have helped less people dying buy construction and farming will always be high risk and will always brake body parts. The lnp shifted responsibility from the cooperative corporate sector to the public funded disability pension. Alp did nothing to change that shifting of consequences from corporate to the public.
Now the very same halfwits are whining our public funded health system is under load. No kidding. Our democracy is a very bad joke. Even more hysterical is the insular approach of msm in pretending the lnp are not just amateur corporate jackals taking their orders directly from offshore.
That we have reached a point where govts have very little control over anything, is discussion we’re not having.
In an excellent article, this for me was a stand-out paragraph:
This lot are nothing but a bunch of private schoolboy bullies and thugs. I’ve seen this type throughout my entire life.
Born into privilege with an overdeveloped sense of their own self-worth and entitlement. They live in an insular little bubble, surrounded by people just like them who complain incessantly that the stereotypical “welfare cheats”, “dole bludgers” and “whining disabled” are sucking away at their hard-earned tax money.
These people live in an entirely different plane of existence from you and me.
They live in big houses on tree-lined streets in suburbs where hired help are paid to tend the lawns and gardens because they are too busy attending the kid’s rugby game, chatting about their investments and how they were luckily to follow Geoffrey’s advice and buy those ComBank shares at the right time.
They don’t go to the shops like you and me, they have groceries delivered, their affairs arranged by personal assistants who collect their dry-cleaning and coordinate their busy calendar of events they “simply must attend”.
They live in echo chambers where the same mantra of “individual freedom + small government + low taxes” are repeated ad-infinitum until they become entrenched dogma in their minds.
Their sole purpose for existing is to gain personal wealth because wealth equals power and power garners even more wealth.
The very circles in which they live, work and move reinforce this dogma and anyone who isn’t an adherent to their ideological in-crowd is an outsider to be ridiculed and shunned. The poor especially and those forced to live on welfare are particularly despised because it is these people and their constant harping, along with the insipid bleeding-heart lefties that suck away their tax money, which is deeply offensive because, in their eyes, they firmly believe they all worked so hard for it.
Work – perhaps. Hard – not on your life! Their families never had to struggle to pay bills or decide between food or electricity. No they had wealthy parents and family trusts setup to help them along. Private schools reinforced the messages of class and money and most of them waltzed into university and it was Free – paid fro by the government and everyone else’s tax dollars – all now conveniently forgotten as they want to deny everyone else the same chances.
Then they have their multiple investment properties, their leased cars, the investment loans – all cleverly designed to minimise the tax they pay and ensure they are able to offset their losses to gain government subsidies or write-offs. Again, using public money to fuel and mitigate their risks, but not recognising this is the same as government welfare – no, it is them being clever and not wanting to return the favour in paying the appropriate amount of tax, like everyone else.
In their mind anyone not doing what they are doing is stupid and beneath their contempt – and doesn’t that attitude show clearly in their speech and their manner of governing – they actually believe they are better than the rest of us.
In truth, people like Hockey, Abbott and the class to which they belong are like vampires – they use their position, they wealth, their influence to suck more out of our society that 1000 welfare cheats ever will.
Grab your torches and pitchforks, some garlic, a mallet and some wooden stakes – it’s time we exorcised their evil bastards from power over us.
Dan Rowden:
“This budget will lower the bar on the treatment of vulnerable people in our society. It will become easier to treat them even more harshly, to consider them even less worthy…
That passage from the original post mirrors something that has been bothering me since the Tampa fiasco.
For over a decade, politicians have been poisoning soul of this nation with fear and ignorance. Cruelty towards a small, powerless and isolated group was hailed as being “tough”. Their treatment was justified as protecting ourselves against an existential threat. Anyone wanting a more humane policy was dismissed as “bleeding-heart”, muddle-headed traitor. Good grief….! They were blamed for causing traffic jams in western Sydney!
It was only a matter of time before other vulnerable groups became fair game. Ahhh…. but who could have seen that coming? I mean, it’s not something that’s ever happened before, is it? I doubt that the bogots ever heard of Martin Niemoller…..
Vaccination blow from a baffling budget
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-20/kaufman-vaccination-blow-from-a-baffling-budget/5463830
A pay-rise freeze for 12 months??? How many do they get each year anyway?
Dan:
Now that is just frigging unbelievable. This mob really have gone berserk right at a time when declining vaccination is a critical problem. One sometimes needs to show decorum but my decorum has hit the floorum.
It is getting close to padded cell time for these intellectually bereft archaic troglodytes. There ain’t no words for this type of utter stupidity. They really have crossed the boundary of sanity stepping straight into the arms of madness and psychiatric illness.
We now know anything is possible when sane and rational strategies for health care are thrown to the wind.
The irresponsibility of such a move is mind-boggling.
I was not going to bother but I acknowledge the absolute weakness of Abbott and his father (who would not stay in the U.K. for fear of conscription into the U.K. forces) and now we have his protege lining up everyone else to do his fighting. Typical of the L.N.P. get the drones to look after us, after all we think we are hi-calibre! What an absolute joke! I think we can make that “crystal clear”. Have a look at the frontline, Abbott, “Fatso”, Prissy Pyne, Bishop (both) Morriscum, Andrews, Turncoat. one could go on forever, however, I feel sure that any forceful resistance such as Indonesia would love to face up to the above shemozzle, which could only be described as fodder, although fodder has some benefits.
Brian, the ‘Conservative Viewpoint’ was brilliant. All you ever needed to know about the buggers, compressed into a series of punchy epigrams written with barely controlled fury. Already printed off, laminated and on the dunny wall. I dips me lid.
Many of the comments above have hit the nail on the head about the sociopath type. The one thing that distinguishes those people from most others on this planet, is that they have no empathy with other human beings. Other people are just cattle to them. They have no connect between what they do to others and their own feelings. This is why people like the Bushes and the Cheneys and the Rumsfelds , and those running the CIA and the NSA and the Rothchild Zionists, can ,without a backward glance set in train horrors like the 9/11 false flag event, the war on Iraq, the takeover of Libya, Going back in history, the killing of President Kennedy because he was about to expose the secret plans and controls of the Global Elite.
Make no mistake, the mindset of Abbot and his cronies, is exactly the same as all those other pathetic excuses for human beings. Who got Abbott into power/ Why Murdoch with his Goebbels-like tactics of lies, hate and propaganda. And who does Murdoch speak and act for? That same Global Elite, the Illuminati.
What a misnomer the term Illuminati is , for those people are so surrounded by darkness they are the complete inverse of Illumination. Abbott and Co is the local arm of the Elitists, the Corporatists ,the Rothchild banksters,,the Zionists. (Please don’t confuse the Jewish people with the Zionists for they are as much a victim of them as we are) Their proper description is Rothchild Zionists.
Now the knowledge is all out there, the dots have already been connected by millions of people . All that remains to remove their stranglehold on the World and its people are two things. One, dispel the ignorance about who they are and what they do and what they plan. Two: cease complying with them.
There are so few of them and so many of us, that once their actions and plans become common knowledge, their power is finished.
So its OK to be angry at Abbott and Co, but you have to know who and what your enemy is before you can defeat him.
Rick5591
I thought I’d share something I posted on anothrer blog concerning the Abbott government and the disgusting behaviour of the Daily Telegraph in portraying those of us with disabilities as rorters and parasites – including their alarmism over 2,500 new DSP applications a week.
Before I get into the deeper issues themselves, let’s respond to figures with figures. The Telegraph claims that 2,500 people apply for the disability pension each week. Seems high? Well let’s put this in comparison with another figure – the rate of alcohol fueled violence in the community. The Thomas Kelly Youth Foundations has stated on their site that more than 70,000 people are either hospitalised or kille from alcohol fueled violence each year in NSW alone. Dividing that number by 52, you reach a figure of 1,346.15 people who are the victims of severe alcohol fueled violence. That of course ignores those who have fallen through the cracks after being traumatised by some form of abuse, quite possibly prolonged child abuse, and have now wound up with Depression, an Anxiety Disorder and PTSD from it. When you consider those factors, in addition to those who may be reapplying, 2,500 applications a week is hardly that surprising.
However the response of the media and the Abbott Government in the past 2 weeks, has quite simply demonstrated that when it comes to attitudes towards the disabled, we are quite literally a nation of Nazis.
Since such a comment will seem like an anathema and hyperbole to many and as many people don’t even know that the disabled were specifically targeted for extermination by the Nazis before the Jews were, a history lesson is needed here.
As people may or may not be aware, it was the disabled who were first specifically targeted for extermination and exterminated by the Nazis. The first genocidal think tank, the Wilhelm Kaiser Institute, was formd in 1927 with the exclusive purpose of deteriming the best method of wiping out the disabled. In 1933, one of Hitler’s first acts, more than a year before the Nuremberg Laws were passed, was to pass “The Law for The Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring”, which resulted in the mandatory sterilisation and forced abortions of the disabled and women pregnant with disabled children. In that time, they also passed laws equatring disability with criminality and closed every possible “loophole” they could find with them – resulting the vast majority of the disabled in Germany being unjustly incarcerated.
Between 1935-1938, Hitler developed the propaganda later used to justify and sanitise the “Final Solution” through propaganda which thoroughly convinced the Nazis that the disabled were a worthless burden- parasites on the system – or “worthless eaters” and through the usage of 2 child murder cases where children were disabled, set the precedent for the butchering of those deemed “undesireable”.
From 1939-1942, the disabled were rounded up and used as guinea pigs in detrmining the best methods possible to wipe out a group deemed “undesirable” through the programs AKTIONT4 and AKTION14. They started with children under the age of 3 (although primary sources claim children up to the age of 5 were among them) – rounding them up in “research hospitals” and slowly torturing them to death through starvation and exposure. The “stubborn ones” got a lethal injection to the heart. They then expanded the program to include adolescents up to the age of 17.
From there they rounded up the rest of the disabled and used them as guinea pigs in determining optimal approaches to extermination. Their initial attempts involved tying 30-40 disabled people together and blowing them up with dynamite- a method soon abandoned after being deemed “too messy”. Soon the mehtod of gas chambers were developed anbd perfected and the disabled were systematically and continuously put through the gas chambers at these “research hospitals”. By the time the first cattle car ful of Jews arrived at the first death camp, more than 1 million disabled people had been either murdered or sterilised against their will.
We say “never again” to the Holocaust as a nation, yet our track record shows that we are no better than the Nazis. Up until 1992 we were still mandatorily sterilising the disabled and even now the practice largely goes on hidden. Furthermore draft legislation was put before the Western Australian Parliament in the past couple of years which would have resulted in the forced sterilisation, psychosurgery, institutionalisation and psychotherapy of minors as young as 12, without parental knowledge or consent.
A report released earlier this year stated that 20-30% of disabled people were found to be behind bars because they were deemed unfit to give a plea to a crime they were accused of. Only 54% of us are in employment due to entrenched bigotry which sees us as nothing more than worthless liabilities and a drain on productivity.
Our record on child abuse where the disabled are concerned is equally as shocking. The standard school experience for a disabled child is to be denied the services they need, while being persecued, bullied and abused by the teachers and students alike. Many disabled children, in place of love and compassion from their families, instead are forced to endure a broken childhood filled with abuse as the family attempts to “discipline the disability out of them”. Small wonder that in 2008, a federal government report found that 46% of people with severe disabilities were at high risk of suicide or had committed suicide.
Of course that is only dealing with those disabled children who are “given permission to be” born. The disabled are the only group in society who are subjected to legalised pre-birth screenings for the specific purpose of child murder when they are detected.
Of course such attitudes are hardly surprising. When Adam Goods was sledged as “a gorilla” Australia was rightly outraged, yet the disabled equivalent of that revolting slur, namely “retard/ed” and “spaz/spasdtic” get a free pass in our society – the truth of those terms often being met with laughter.
Of course this ignores things like “the little things” like the blind being allowed on taxis when they have assistence dogs, or the wheelchair bound being allowed to board planes.
Yet all of the above, just as with the Nazis, is driven by the barbaric and revolting belief that having a disability makes you a “worthless burden” and that if we’re murdered, it’s “a kindness”, because “would you want to live if you were like that?”
Things appear to be set to only worsen. It would seem that now that assylum seekers can no longer be used as a bogeyman, we the disabled are the next in line to be targetted.
The Abbott government has made it apparent that they are determined to remove the only major avenues to justice and having a voice for the disabled in the community. Despite it being incredibly difficult to qualify for a Disability Support Pension, even when you are a genuine case (as I discovered firsthand a few years back), the governemnt has decided to demonise the disabled by claiming that those on DSP, despite having leapt through countless hoops, are being demonised as “rorters”. The Murdoch Press has even crossed over to the rhetoric of the Nazis by literally describing the disabled as “a burden” in an editorial in the Daily Telegraph.
In addition and despite the fact that the largest number of discrimination complaints heard by the Australian Human Rights Commission are disability discrimination based, at 37%, we are axing the position of federal Disability Discrimination Comissioner and Ramp Up which uniquely provides a voice for the disabled. Apparently we don’t have $1.7 Million over four years to give the most vulnerable and marginalised in our society a voice, but we do have $4 Million over 4 years to spend on ballet classes.
Disability has already proven to be criminalised in many cases. Hitler’s anti-disability abortion policies are the defacto state policies. Mandatory sterilisation still goes on behind closed doors and there are moves afoot by bureaucrats in some states to make it openly the official line. Now the propaganda sets in where we’re treated like “worthless eaters” – just like under Hitler in the 1930s. What’s next – people like myself being rounded up and forcibly sterilised, along with our wives? Where to after that, cases where the government intervenes and legalises the murder of the disabled as a pretext to rounding us up and massacring us in gas chambers?
Considering what has transpired and what happened the last time such events transpired, such questions are entirely reasonable to ask.
A while back, Tony Abbott was lambasted when he claimed of Julia Gillard that “No, clearly doesn’t mean no”; yet as a nation our track record proves that “never again, clearly doesn’t mean never again”. How many more disabled people such as myself, have to face persecution and bigotry – quite possibly to the point of forced sterilisaation and being massacred – until that actually changes?