Albanese’s House Purchase And Labor’s Plagiarism!
A few days ago, my wife and I had lunch in a Fitzroy pub. She happened to comment that the problem with living in a place like that would be that you’d never get a park. In spite of the fact that we had – in fact – just got a park, I agreed. Then, in a strangely serendipitous moment, we walked past a two-storey terrace house with parking for two cars. Naturally I looked up the price and it was only a touch over two million…
“Let’s buy it,” I suggested.
“We haven’t got two million,” my wife pointed out, leading me to do some quick calculations and point out that, after selling our home, we’d only need to borrow a figure significantly less than a million dollars. And, while my wife was of the opinion that having recently paid off our mortgage, she didn’t want to go into to debt in order to buy a house which had more room than we needed.
Anyway, we did a list of pros and cons:
I suggested the following pros:
- It had off-street parking
- It was only a matter of metres from the pub.
She suggested the following cons:
- It added thirty minutes to her journey to work every day.
- It added thirty years to her working life in order to pay off the mortgage.
- It was only a matter of metres from the pub.
In any event, we’re not buying the house even though compared to Mr Albanese’s it was very cheap at less than half the price. I mean, what was he thinking? At $4.3 million his purchase may be more than Malcolm Turnbull paid for his house… although Malcolm purchase his some years ago. Anyway, it’s worth more than the apartment that Peter Dutton sold for $3.7 million last year, so while we can praise Mr Dutton for selling such an expensive property, Albanese stands condemned because…
Well, it’s not that he’d done anything corrupt. It’s just the optics, isn’t it? When people are suffering because of a cost of living crisis, then it doesn’t look good for the PM to be splashing money around and it’s all about how things look, isn’t it? Phil Coorey even went as far as to suggest that this was Albo’s “Hawaii moment”, comparing the house purchase to an attempt to hide the fact that Morrison was on holiday while Australia was burning… Ok, maybe just the east coast but that’s the important bit that contains the Canberra bubble, Sydney and Melbourne…
Take the recent budget surpluses. Labor have been using them to retire debt. This has attracted a certain amount of criticism because they shouldn’t have a surplus when so many people are struggling… Of course, if they were to spend the surplus helping with the cost of living, they’d attract criticism because the spending is putting pressure on inflation thanks to more people being actually able to afford things and the RBA has been raising interest rates in order to discourage people from buying things due to higher house repayments and not having a job any more.
While I do think that Labor could be using the money more effectively, I am aware of the conundrum that Labor always face. If they have a deficit, then it’s because they can’t manage money while any Coalition deficit is the result of the previous Labor government. On the other hand, if they have a surplus, the Coalition would have had a a bigger one because they wouldn’t have wasted money on unspecific things, and anyway, shouldn’t they be helping people by giving them tax cuts instead of having a surplus?
In a rather interesting development, the Queensland Labor government was accused of plagiarism by the Greens. A number of policies introduced by Steven Miles were policies that Labor had argued against when Anna Palaszczuk was Premier, leading Max Chandler-Mather to argue that this is why a Greens MP was needed, which is strange because surely Labor can steal their policies even if they’re not elected. Jarrod Bleijie, the LNP deputy agreed, telling us: “They have pinched a Greens policy that the Labor Party in parliament voted against not long ago!”
I guess this sums up the change in the Greens over the past few decades. When Hawke was elected and he saved the Franklin River, nobody complained that this was Greens’ policy. Now, even when Labor pinch their policies, instead of saying that Labor have done the right thing for once, they complain that this was their idea as though the thing shouldn’t be done unless they’ve been given credit and a release of copyright.
I mean when Labor approves coal or gas mines or when they fail to raise the rate of Jobseeker nobody in the Coalition complains, “Hey, this is what we do!”
Although they do complain when the Labor PM buys an expensive house without once using the phrases “class warfare” or “politics of envy”.
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John Hanna -
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Arnd
Return to home pageLabor is no longer a party of the left. (If it ever really was)
ROSSLEIGH
Love this, especially the lead in…hilarious ! You two must have such fun !
xxx
Labor has never been the party of the left……what ever possessed you to think otherwise. Its just a slightly more human face than the liberals. If it seems a little tone deaf at times, its because fear of being set upon with a fear campaign has stripped it of a good reason for existing and fighting for us plebs.
Rossleigh, is that the same pub that Jack Irish and his Fitzroy Lions supporting mates frequent?
Rossleigh, I know this is satire but I believe that “The Greens deputy leader, Jarrod Bleijie”, is actually the LNP deputy leader, Jarrod Bleijie.
Not that there seems to be a great deal of difference between the LNP and the Greens anymore in that they both are working to unseat labor governments, each in their own way.
Albo’s lack of judgement is astounding.Maybe he’s just confirming the inevitable,go into minority government,resign immediately,and head for Copacabana and leave governing for someone capable.Good plan.
Quite right, Patricia. I did a cut and paste with that paragraph and mucked it up. Mea culpa!
And, RomeoCharlie, no it wasn’t but the house was walking distance to there as well.
This would be the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. Albo bought a house because he can afford it and he needs one and now the entire Murdoch/MSM is massively butt-hurt over this fact. That they are trying to equate this with the cost of living crisis (which, BTW, I was reading the other day is actually over according to the numbers and stats) and him being somehow tone-deaf……………..and today they are comparing it to Morriscum holidaying in Hawaii while Australia burned???????????????
I bet if Dutton went out and bought a house nobody would even give a shit, nothing to see here. This is really how desperate they have become in their Trumpian world of blatant lies and misinformation. Really, what is next??? Oh hang on, Albo is going to get married so is that being tone-deaf to all those who can’t afford to have a big wedding??????
Phil Coorey is actually copying No Cred with that line. No Cred farted that a trip to Japan, which had been planned for the Prime Minister months before the election was called and which happened to be 2 days after the election was held, was Hawaii on steroids. For a law graduate, No Cred is a bloody dickhead.
I remember someone with whom I used to have arguments in my local paper claiming, “Tone the Botty has a glass of beer in a pub and is in all sorts of trouble; Bob Hawke sculls a yard of beer and is a hero.” Tone the Botty, as Minister for Women, did not have a good image. Bob Hawke sculled a yard of beer in a competition.
While I concede that it may be a poor image, Anthony Albanese bought a property to be able to stay at to be nearer to his fiancé’s family. He did NOT buy a property and inadvertently forget to add it to the pecuniary interests register (that was Michaelia Trash); he did not buy a cluster of shops and forget to declare them (that was Potty Boy). He did NOT charter an RAAF Jet to fly to the Gold Coast for a meeting and at the same time purchase an apartment (that was This Goes With This And This Goes With That At Sussan Ley).
Fact is many middle aged and retired ALP voters are wealthy due to careers, house prices and increasingly more substantive super pots; by any global standard.
Thanks Rossleigh, a reminder of the state of ludicrousness of our msm, and the desperation of the LNP and Greens.
As for various commentators bitching about Labor not (or never have been) a party of the ‘left’, hmmm, sounds like snarky aggravation – what in this day and age defines ‘left’ – it’s not just shearer’s strikes and ‘blue collar’ any more. I might just add IMHO Labor is faced with a prodigious task of addressing monumental global issues, both emerging, and left untouched by previous Oz LNP govt or attending to the though bubbles of the stupefied internecine Greens, but also the task of reforming the destructive neoliberalism extant into a positive social democracy – it has to be started from within, moving slowly and strategically to avoid being crushed by the vested interests – there’s no magic wand. So far they’re doing a pretty good job.
Clakka:
Clakka, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’ve been weary about the German Sozialdemokraten since my teenage years, and sonewhat uncertain about Labor since arriving in Australia for the first time in 1986.
I did sort my politics and economics in 1992 – and simply note that the political and economic perspectives of the so-called left-of-centre, world-wide (USA, Germany, UK, New Zealand, Spain …, and, yes, Australia) are not informed by the principles which according to my strong and closely reasoned belief are applicable. Instead, Labor has enthusiastically participated in, and often decisively driven, the decades-long political mismanagement of the nation’s affairs – and none other than their treasurer, Jim Chalmers, has very recently once again reconfirmed their fundamental commitment to capitalism – albeit a “new values-based capitalism”.
What is happening now is that senior Labor types are actually deriving very considerable personal benefits from their failures to secure and advance the cause of all Australians.
Clakka, please tell: by what ethical or philosophical principle should I consider myself bound to approve and respect their personal benefitting (Albo buying an expensive big house, Shorten taking a 7-figure job in the severely stressed tertiary education sector) from their protracted mismanaging this country’s – and thereby my personal – economic affairs?