I know the person on Twitter who suggested that we could all crowdfund the ABC to save the 400 jobs and the services that are being cut by Abbott’s savage ideological slash and burn of our national broadcaster was just trying to be helpful. But no. Sorry. There will be no crowdfunding of the national broadcaster. Unless by crowdfunding you mean paying taxes and seeing the revenue from your paid taxes being spent on the public broadcaster that we all value. Oh, hang on, I just realised tax is a form of community crowdfunding. So yes, we should continue to crowdfund the ABC. And we should continue to be horrified while Abbott and his merry-wreckers continue to swing their wrecking ball through public institutions that we, Australian tax-payers, and generations of Australian tax-payers have, through our hard work, payment of taxes, and community support, built through the community act of paying taxes and giving public institutions support.
Because that’s what’s really at the heart of this whole shemozzle, which is currently called the Abbott government, but in future will be referred to as the one-term-blip-resulting-from-the-biggest-mistake-Australia-ever-made. At the heart of the Abbott government is an ideological war to cut, slash, burn, decimate, belittle, downsize, nullify, reject, outsource, kill-off, delegitimise and ultimately wreck the public institutions that make up the Australian civilisation. Abbott and friends care to ignore that these institutions, these publically funded, owned by all Australians, including those who can afford to pay tax and those who can’t, these valuable assets to our community, are not his to wreck. It’s not his farm to sell off. It’s not his pool to piss in. It’s not his hard work that has paid for any of this.
I’m getting mightily fed up with Abbott’s attitude towards our collective assets. Abbott’s government has sold of Medibank Private. They’ve smashed the ABC and the CSIRO. The Climate Commission was the first on the chopping block and has since been generously crowdfunded by Australians worried about climate change and is now the Climate Council. Abbott’s doing his best to turn our Medicare system into a no-longer-universal-healthcare-system where ‘users pay’ for the privilege of being cared for when they’re sick. Our higher education students could soon have free-market interest rates assigned to deregulated and growing university fees. Our public schools have had massive funding cuts*. *School chaplains excluded. Our health system has had massive funding cuts and is becoming the problem of under-funded State governments who have no choice but to cut services. The renewable energy sector is disappearing, and the manufacturing industry has been all-but killed off with thousands of jobs with it. Abbott’s slashing and burning is ripping at the very heart of Australia. He’s ripping at the very heart of our communities. He’s wrecking the civilisation that we have all crowdfunded into existence and kept running. Why is he doing this? Why does a dog lick his balls? Because he can. (And he enjoys it very much).
Let’s have a look at a world where Abbott’s ideological utopia ‘user pays’ agenda overrides the collective spirit of a social democracy. Note, Abbott’s predilection for a user pays system extends only to people outside of his family and close circle of fellow neo-cons. Frances Abbott doesn’t have to pay for her own education. Abbott doesn’t have to pay for his private travel to attend campaign events or to promote his book for private profit. And Abbott’s friends, like Gina Rinehart, don’t have to pay for the government-funded infrastructure they need to continue to pillage our national wealth and to resent every cent of tax they pay for this self-entitled privilege. No, it’s just us plebs that should be forced to ‘user pay’. So this means every road is a toll road. Don’t leave for work without your credit-card linked toll-pass. You can’t get out of your driveway without it! Traffic lights would also be toll points, as would zebra-crossings for pedestrians.
You won’t step foot in a school or a hospital without individually paying for every doctor or teacher that you come into contact with. You can swipe your credit card on the way into the classroom or emergency surgery suite. Need the police? Before they respond to your emergency, they’ll check your credit limit, by which stage the intruder may have already bashed you to death. Is the government intending on sending Australian troops to war? The war won’t start without at least 10,000 interested funders and everyone who doesn’t fund the war will be put on a list and excluded from any peacekeeping in the future, and instead used as human shields. Need to use a toilet? At home or when you’re out and about? I hope you have your credit card with you.
You can’t use the sewers without it. There’s a nice big open park and playground down the road. Admittance by booking and credit card only. What about access to the internet? Yes, I know we already pay ISPs to hook up to their streams, but whenever you access a wireless network, your credit card will be charged accordingly to fund vital research work into technological innovation that used to be done by our national researcher, CSIRO, but is now done by private firms who will not make their technology available to anyone who doesn’t pay for it directly. Oh, and you want democratically elected leaders? One vote equals one dollar. How many dollars have you got? Doesn’t this sound like a fun place to live, in Abbott’s utopia?
But the good news is, there won’t be any need to pay for the ATO as there will be no taxes. So all the money you earn you get to take home (well, whatever is left after funding all of the above). What’s that? You can’t afford to see a doctor? You’re unemployed and you’re sick. Well bad luck for you! You were born into the wrong family! In Abbott’s utopia, only the rich survive. That’s actually the point. That’s the effing point of Abbott.
I know we have two years to go, but I’m ready to vote Abbott out today. Does anyone feel like helping me crowdfund a new government? I’m sick of watching this one wreck our place.
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