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Abbott’s first year: the media narrative

September 6, 2014
Written by: Dr Victoria Fielding
26 Replies

Since political journalists so love to talk about Labor Party narrative, I think it’s time we turned the tables and talked about mainstream media narratives instead. The one I would like to specifically discuss is the media’s recent coverage of the one-year milestone of the Abbott government. From what I have seen and heard so far, these are the mandatory ingredients of the media’s narrative marking this occasion, with the consistency of a wheel in a track. This review of the media narrative also, handily, becomes my critique of Abbott’s first year as Prime Minister. One stone, two dead birds and all that.

Acknowledging the kept promises

Abbott is given a big thumbs up for doing what all Prime Ministers were expected to do until he broke pretty much every promise he made during his first twelve months and Teflon-like changed the expectations that a Prime Minister shouldn’t lie. So on the three occasions that Abbott didn’t lie – promising to get rid of the Carbon Price and Mining Tax and stopping the boats, he gets a round of applause from the mainstream media.

This applause definitely does not include any critique of the effect these decisions will have on the community. Because discussion of policy outcomes is forbidden. All the journos need to know is that Abbott said he was going to get rid of the Carbon Price, the Mining Tax, and stop the boats and he’s done that, so big tick to Abbott! You’ll see no comment on the devastation that the demise of the Carbon Price, with no policy to replace it, will have on our environment, even though a study has already reveals that emissions went up immediately after the repeal. You’ll see no comment on the impact of the death of the Mining Tax on wealth inequality.

And has Abbott really stopped the boats if they’re still leaving Indonesia only to be turned around in secret military-like on-water operations that break international treaties and desperate people are sometimes sent back to the hell-hole they came from? One murdered asylum seeker and one death due to sub-standard third-world medical care and a damaged relationship with Indonesia doesn’t seem to me to be a successful policy. But if it kept a promise, it’s fine apparently.

However, if you cared to judge the Abbott government not on their ability to keep a promise, but on their ability to be humane and to work in the best interests of the community while keeping a promise, they have clearly failed. You won’t hear the media making this point.

Praise for Abbott’s response to Malaysian airlines disasters

It is clearly not hard to put some glasses on and to look sombre while you speak pre-prepared consolatory words about an airline tragedy. And let’s be honest people, if that’s Abbott at his pre-prepared best, then he’s at best a mediocre public speaker who should never have got anywhere near the top job and at worst a George. W. Bush-like moronic bumbling ah-ah-ah-ah embarrassment to this great nation.

So looking past what Abbott said, as he scheduled non-stop press conferences about plane disasters but wouldn’t talk about his failed budget, and focusing more on what he did, what did he actually do? He volunteered millions of dollars in Australian resources and never found Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, despite raising the victim’s family’s hopes unnecessarily and announcing in Parliament that the plane had been found when it hadn’t. He also volunteered Australian resources to help recover the bodies of victims of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 which, sorry to have to point this out, again raised the hopes of the victim’s families and again he failed to complete the mission, whilst also putting Australians in harm’s way.

Praise for Abbott’s Team Australia bullshit

Apparently it’s ‘statesmen like’ to rush to a war on terrorism. Talking about the merits of going to war for at least a few days before committing Australia to what could be an ongoing conflict in a country that still hasn’t recovered from the last time Australia rushed to help America and the UK wage a war, would to me, seem at least foolish, at worst criminal. But Abbott’s Team Australia khaki campaign, in aid of his personal polling, will no doubt be applauded by the press as long as it continues to help Abbott win the poll war. Because that’s how journalists judge the merits of a Prime Minister’s decisions – on their real or possible impact on polls. Didn’t you know?

Downplaying Abbott’s lies as ‘they’re not different from Gillard’s lie’

Even when journalists do bother to remind voters that Abbott’s first budget was based on a barrage of lies and broken promises, they always make sure to compare these lies to Gillard’s Carbon Price ‘lie’. A lie is something you know to be false when you say it. Gillard didn’t know she was going to have to make a deal with the Greens to form minority government when she said she had no intention of implementing a tax on carbon, and instead preferred an ETS. So if you believe Abbott is in the same boat as Gillard in saying no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no cuts to the ABC or SBS numerous times throughout the election campaign, and then immediately back flipping on all these promises because he was forced to by a change of circumstances, then where are the changed circumstances?

Abbott didn’t need to make deals in the lower house to put his budget together (although deals with the Palmer United Party over superannuation cuts in order to kill the mining tax are surely as close as Abbott has got to circumstance like Gillard’s Carbon Price policy). We could go on discussing the blatant differences between Abbott’s huge list of broken promises that culminated in the most unfair and cruel budget this country has ever seen to Gillard’s decision to introduce a Carbon Price.

But the biggest difference I would like to point out, which you never hear a journalist mention is a really simple one and also such a whopping big one that it’s hard to know how journalists can even look at these two situations without seeing the gulf of difference between them. Simply, Abbott’s lies made ordinary Australians worse off. They are bad policies on every single measure you care to measure them by and were ideological assaults based on the lie of a budget emergency. Gillard’s decision to bring in a Carbon Price, followed shortly thereafter by the policy she did say she wanted to bring in – an ETS – is good policy that is good for the environment and an important step in the international challenge to mitigate climate change. But journalists either don’t or can’t seem to see the difference between good policies and bad policies. Are they scared to judge a policy in case they appear partisan? What is the point of political journalism if not to inform the public on the merits of public policy? Seriously, what is the point? It’s a bad budget just because it’s bad. Full stop.

So there you have it. You’ll see this narrative over the next few days. Of course there will be, thankfully, examples of journalistic work that swims against this narrative, and good luck to those brave people. I know that one year into Abbott’s government, the one thing I am most sure about is that if a Labor government had behaved even a little bit like the Abbott government has in their contempt for the voting public, the mainstream media would have drawn and quartered Labor by now. The lack of contempt for the Abbott government from our media is, quite frankly, alarming.

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An Open Letter to Joe Hockey

August 19, 2014
Written by: Dr Victoria Fielding
60 Replies

Dear Joe Hockey,

Back in 2012, when you said the age of entitlement was over, I was so relieved. I was relieved that highly-paid politicians like Tony Abbott would no longer think it acceptable to charge tax-payers for personal book tours. I was relieved that filthy rich politicians like Malcolm Turnbull, and like yourself, would put an end to ethically-suspect rental schemes, where your tax-payer funded Canberra housing allowance is paid to your spouses for investment properties they have cleverly put in their names. Which you will no doubt benefit from once again when they sell. I was also relieved to hear that this sense of entitlement would also be finished for the families of rich politicians, when the likes of Tony Abbott would say it was not acceptable to accept a secret scholarship for his daughter’s education. Nor a refund on a non-refundable deposit paid on a rented flat without proper due diligence that any other non-entitled member of the public is in no position to demand. Nor lavish trips to the Melbourne Cup to hob-knob with celebrities which even you can no doubt see is not in the public interest and therefore not an entitlement that should be charged to the tax-payer. Because these are the best examples I have ever seen of a sense of entitlement which is so entrenched and seemingly innate that it’s like an incurable disease that seems to have no end. So again, congratulations on declaring an end to it.

And oh how I wish I could leave this letter here. But I can’t. And you know why I can’t. Because I am mistaken. I am not mistaken that you wish to end the age of entitlement. What is clear is that you do in fact want to end what you call entitlement. The problem is, your definition of the problem of entitlement in our culture, and my definition, are completely different things. From the budget you’ve handed down, and from your recent statements about poor people’s spending habits on petrol (which no one misinterpreted, you really should own your mistakes Joe), it’s clear that you think entitlement is our community’s idea of rights. Rights to quality education. Rights to quality healthcare. Rights to a clean and sustainable environment. Rights to a social safety net when things go wrong. Rights to live in a community where it’s possible to be born poor, but to better our circumstances through hard work, encouragement and support from those around us. All these rights are what you call ‘a sense of entitlement’ aren’t they Joe? And aren’t these rights the things you would ideally like to end? Isn’t your budget, built on a foundation of lies about a non-existent budget-emergency, your campaign to kill the very culture that provides Australians with rights to all of these things that any first-world, educated, well-resourced and fair country like Australia should strive to protect? Isn’t your end of the age of entitlement just code for a user-pays capitalist small-government, tax-free wonder-land?

Well, had I known you meant to end this definition of entitlement, I would never have felt relief. You need a reality check Joe. Rights are not entitlements. And someone like you, with your family background, would surely understand this if you ever cared to think about it, perhaps while you’re enjoying a quiet sit and a cigar. On the profile on your website, you have published this:“Joe Hockey was born in North Sydney, as the youngest of four children. His father was born in Bethlehem of Armenian and Palestinian parentage and his Mum in Chatswood. His family worked hard running a small business on the North Shore, beginning with a deli in Chatswood and later, a real estate agency in Naremburn.” So you like to portray your family story as the classic ‘we pulled ourselves up from the bootstraps’ tale of social mobility. And like so many who have come before you having found riches and success in your careers, you now seem hell bent on destroying mobility for others by burning the ladder of opportunity that you climbed to the top. And that’s what you really meant when you said it is time to end the age of entitlement.

You’ve got it so wrong Joe. Social mobility is not an entitlement. Access to social mobility is a right. And it’s a right Australians will, when they wake up to you, fight to save. You and your rich Liberal Party chums portray the true meaning of entitlement through your little glass tower of privilege where you think it’s ok to simultaneously reap the rewards of tax-payer funded wealth, while destroying the rights of the community by wrecking the public policies designed to keep the playing field level. Shame on you Joe Hockey. Shame on you and your entitled Liberal government.

Yours Sincerely

Victoria Rollison

Judging the sales pitch: #mediafail

August 3, 2014
Written by: Dr Victoria Fielding
35 Replies

As I mentioned last week, I am researching political narrative by investigating the words that come out of politicians’ mouths and are written in press releases by their spin doctors. This research is in the field of political communications. And what has occurred to me through this research is that just about every political journalist in Australia is also interested in political communication. But the problem is, that’s all they’re interested in. The wrapper on the shiny policy launch. The sales pitch for the budget. The salesman for the new policy car. Of course I find any discussion of political communication fascinating and often worthy of a citation in a paper. But that’s just me. The rest of the community doesn’t need to hear about the success of the policy spin job. They care about the actual policy. The thing in the wrapper. The car the salesman is trying to sell. The impact that product is going to have on them. And that is where the political journalists in Australia let the community down. Because they never delve further into the cake than chatting with each other about the icing.

A perfect example of this type of journalistic style is Peter Hartcher. All the time. As the political editor for Fairfax’s Sydney Morning Herald, you would think Hartcher might be interested in political policy. But no. After many years of a total dedication to Labor leadership tensions due to his role as Kevin Rudd’s full-time-leak-recipient, he’s taken a few months into the Abbott’s government to work out what his new narrative might be. And predictably policy outcomes still don’t make an appearance. Instead, it would appear he’s settled on the well-worn ‘they’re just as bad as each other’ narrative to report on the Abbott Liberal government. Because that gives him plenty of opportunity to continue with his dedication to Labor bashing.

For example, this article from yesterday, helpfully titled ‘Tony Abbott’s Coalition making same mistakes as Labor’ might appear to the untrained eye as an article comparing the previous Labor government’s mistakes with the new Liberal government’s problems. But look closer. This article is not about politics. It is about political communication.

In fact I agree with Hartcher that Labor’s communication strategies were, in the most part, not up to the task of selling their highly successful progressive reform agenda and, along with disunity, were a key factor in their 2013 election loss. I’ve written about this failure myself. But, as part of the mainstream media’s synchronised failure to give credit where credit is due, again Hartcher misses to make the point that Labor’s policy success during the previous two terms was phenomenal, particularly in a hung parliament. Over 500 pieces of legislation were passed by the Gillard/Rudd government in their last term. And comparing the first 7 months of Gillard’s government with Abbott’s government is a ‘look at the scoreboard’ moment which should be impossible for journalists like Hartcher to ignore. 127 to 7. Including Abbott’s Knights and Dames farce. And it’s not like Gillard’s policy successes were minor. The Carbon Price, the Gonski reforms, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the mining tax, the National Broadband Network. Literally just to name a few. But because Hartcher has decided Labor failed to sell these policies, he’s perpetuating the perception, through his influential position of political editor in the mainstream media, that these policies were failures, when really all he is commenting on is the communication strategy employed by the politicians.

A great example of this is Hartcher’s example of one of the policies mentioned above, which happens to be the policy I’m studying for my thesis: the mining tax. Hartcher says:

“The mining tax is a prime example. A perfectly reasonable policy, based on rational economic principles, that would have given Australia some lasting benefit from a passing boom.

But it was doomed by political mismanagement. It came out of nowhere, met a firestorm of opposition, was rewritten in a political panic, and soon disappeared into ignominy.”

When you read these sentences, they seem fair. Hartcher has given the mining tax policy a sort-of-thumbs-up by calling it a ‘perfectly reasonable policy’. But there’s a key element of this ‘doomed’ mining tax that you need to take into account, which happens to be the other topic of my thesis: I’m not just focusing on what politicians say, I’m also investigating how the mainstream media reports what politicians say. Even if Labor politicians while in government were saying ‘the mining tax is a perfectly reasonable policy’ until they were blue in the face, the public didn’t hear this if people like Hartcher refused to report it.

Out of curiosity, I had a look at what Hartcher said about the mining tax the day after it was announced. I found this article: It’s not the economy, it’s the election stupid. Remember what I was saying about the ‘they’re just as bad as each other’ narrative? This was a moment where Hartcher could have analysed the mining tax policy from the perspective of a political journalist interested in policy outcomes. This is where the public could have found out how the mining tax is designed to redistribute profits from billionaires and rich investors (mostly foreign) to the people who own the resources: all Australians. This is where, just imagine, Hartcher could have given the Labor government even 500 words of credit for developing a policy aimed at reducing wealth inequality by sharing the windfalls from a once in a generation mining boom. But no. Hartcher wasn’t interested in this type of article. Instead he accused Swan and Rudd of introducing the policy with the populist motive of winning an election. To improve Labor’s sales pitch. Because, low and behold, this is the only part of politics Hartcher focuses on. And in doing so, he’s letting down his audience, he’s letting down his profession and most importantly, he’s reducing politics to a PR exercise.

When the audience thinks they’re reading a comparison of Labor and Liberal policies, but they’re really just reading a review of the party’s communication strategies, the community might actually start to think the policies of the two parties are just the same. And look where that has got the community. It’s got us Teflon-Tony Abbott as Prime Minister with a majority of voters who seem to know little about what Abbott’s government was going to do, and are shocked at finding out too late that they don’t like any of it.

I wonder if this has ever occurred to Peter Hartcher. Abbott’s opinion polls dived soon after the public saw for themselves the new government’s policies. But if the public had a chance to read about Abbott’s policies before the election, Abbott’s budget would not have been a surprise. By judging Australia’s political journalists on how informed the electorate is about political policy, it’s clear that Hartcher and his colleagues have comprehensively failed. Their devotion to the reporting of political communication instead of policy leads them to blame the failure of Abbott’s budget on the budget sales pitch. But what if the icing isn’t the problem? What if it’s the policies in the budget that are to blame for Abbott’s problems? How about journalists have a look at what politicians are doing instead of focusing solely on what they are saying? What if Hartcher admitted you can’t polish a turd? Or does he know too little about political policy to make this call?

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‘Middle-Out’ Economics

July 27, 2014
Written by: Dr Victoria Fielding
17 Replies

Here it is. Here is the wealth inequality narrative progressives have been searching for. Yesterday I wrote about rich wankers and a couple of helpful commenters contributed the following two articles on the subject of wealth inequality:

‘Middle-Out’ Economics: Why the Right’s Supply-Side Dogma Is Wrong

The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats

Both articles are written and co-written by Nick Hanauer – a member of the 0.01% wealthiest people in the world thanks to his foresight in investing early in Amazon. Hanauer is arguing for a progressive narrative to replace the right’s reliance on ‘trickle down economics’. I would suggest reading both articles, as I really believe Hanauer is spot on. Hanuaer’s 2012 TED talk is also worth watching.

I am currently studying political narrative and framing and through this research, I have become interested in George Lakoff’s work in trying to convince the US Democrats to be smarter about the language they use to argue against Republican and Tea Party policies which widen the gap between rich and poor. Policies like tax breaks for the rich, using the incorrect excuse that the rich are job creators. And policies that aim to make the government smaller and more ineffective in stemming capitalist greed. Hanauer argues that there is no empirical evidence that tax breaks for the rich create jobs. He also argues that the best way to reduce the size of government is to reduce welfare payments by expanding the size of the middle class. Someone needs to show Joe Hockey this suggestion. People don’t want to be on welfare and would support a government who supports them to be trained and prepared for meaningful, well paid work. This is simple, yet powerful stuff.

The crux of Hanauer’s narrative is that middle class spending creates demand in the economy and in turn, creates jobs. As Hanauer explains, from his own experience as a member of the ultra-rich American community, he might earn 3,000 times more than the average worker, but there is no way he consumes, or buys, 3,000 times more than the average worker. His excess money goes into his own savings and investments, which help him to get even richer, widening the gap between his wealth and everyone else’s. Hardly any of Hanauer’s wealth influences the wealth of the middle-class in his community and contributes to job creation. As he simply says, if Walmart employees can’t afford to be Walmart consumers, who is going to ensure the long term sustainability of Walmart’s business model? His arguments are not social ones, although of course they do affect social policies. His arguments are economic. The loss of America’s middle class means the loss of their consumer base.

Here are Hanauer’s suggestions as to how ‘Middle-Out’ economics can become a thing as published in The Atlantic:

First, relentlessly frame the choice as a choice. It’s trickle-down and middle-out economics. Not “top-down.” Not “the old ways that got us into this mess.” Trickle-down vs. middle-out. If we don’t have the courage to name our alternative, and repeat it relentlessly, we haven’t given people a clear choice. We will never displace trickle-down ideas if we don’t provide a clear, concise, and compelling alternative. Neither term has inherent force; it’s only in the contrast that we win.

Second, propagate the one pivotal meme at the heart of this entire effort: that rich businesspeople don’t create jobs; middle-class customers do. To put it another way, the right’s claim that rich businesspeople are job creators is the critical vulnerability deep in the heart of the Death Star; if we can target our ammunition to obliterate that single claim, the entire Death Star of right-wing ideology will implode and disintegrate. Why? Because without that claim, there is no way for the trickle-down camp to justify the absurd preferential treatment in the tax code and the regulatory regime for the rich and for large corporations. Without that claim, trickle-down economics reduces nakedly to a rent-seeking, self-serving agenda by the very rich to extract wealth from the poor and middle class. In short, we need to pick a fight with the right about the origins of prosperity in a capitalist society. Middle-out economics will prevail.

Third, make every economic issue an example of middle-out economics. The Ryan budget fails not because it is unfair or heartless or draconian. It fails because it perpetuates trickle-down thinking and cripples the ability of the middle class to generate national prosperity. Entitlement reform is not about the virtue or vice of running deficits. It is about whether we create enough security for middle-class consumers and workers to participate in the economy. The Affordable Care Act is not about the byzantine bureaucracy of health-care delivery. It’s about whether the middle class can dedicate its purchasing power to productive economic activity instead. And so on with sequestration, fiscal stimulus, and tax reform.

Fourth, recommit to capitalism — in a truer and more effective form. Middle-out economic policies aren’t just good because they benefit the middle class or the poor in the near term. They are great for the United States as a whole in the long term because they drive prosperity for all, including the rich. Our agenda is to make capitalism be all it can be for all of us.

Fifth, take this case to the people in the form of story. The argument we make here is a conceptual one. But the delivery device for that argument has to be narrative. Perhaps unfortunately, the last 30 years provide a very simple narrative arc — the tale we told at the very start of this article. That kind of storytelling must become second nature to progressives. Indeed, on all these fronts, progressives need dozens of complementary and simultaneous efforts to turn middle-out economics and the job-creator meme into products — media stories, policies, bumper stickers, viral videos, school curricula.

The fifth point is the one that most interests me and my study into political communication and narrative. The left need a new narrative. And ‘Middle-Out’ provides this narrative. As I have previously written, wealth inequality needs to be at the heart of the left’s new narrative. Hanauer’s suggestions provide the left with a way to make this happen.

John Oliver’s recent segment about wealth inequality was both hilarious and depressing. It revealed to me that President Obama knows that he needs a wealth inequality narrative, but so far hasn’t been able to find one. Oliver quotes from this article which explains that when Obama’s historian, Robert Dallek, asked the President during a round table discussion what his administration needed help with, Obama’s response was:

“What you could do for me is to help me find a way to discuss the issue of inequality in our society without being accused of class warfare.”

I believe Hanauer is offering a possible solution to Obama’s problem. Coupled with Senator Elizabeth Warren’s ‘You did not build this on your own’, the Hanauer ‘middle-out not trickle-down’ narrative adds another layer of concrete to this concept. The genius of Hanauer’s argument is that you can’t be accused of class warfare when the advice you are giving helps every class. Every class benefits from a strong, productive, wealthy-enough-to-consume middle class. ‘Middle Out’ economics is the narrative Obama, and all progressives, have been searching for. Is the Australian Labor Party listening?

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Rich wankers

July 26, 2014
Written by: Dr Victoria Fielding
61 Replies

Let me start out by saying that I know many rich people who have a social conscience and for whom this post is not relevant. But I also know many who are wankers. And I’m sick of these wankers ruining it for all of us.

When I say ruining it, I mean doing dumb things like voting for Tony Abbott and for encouraging many others to do this too. ‘It’ in this scenario is our community. But the problem with many rich people is that they don’t even think they belong to a community. Many try to closet themselves away from the ‘general public’, because they think they’re above all that. A great example of this sort of attitude is the very existence of ‘poor doors’ which I came across in this article about London housing. Of course Australia doesn’t have ‘poor doors’ because we have hardly any apartment buildings, or even suburbs, where ultra-expensive-designed-for-the-very-rich housing is mixed in closely with more affordable housing, or even public housing.

But apparently in London, developers often need to include affordable housing within apartment blocks in order to get planning approval. So what do these developers do to make sure their rich clientele don’t have to even see the poor tenants in the building, let alone have to breathe the same air as them? Yes, you guessed it. They have separate entrances. The apartheid between rich and poor – a glamorous lobby for the rich and a meagre side-entrance in a scummy lane for the poor. It’s almost as if the rich are scared they’ll catch ‘poor’ off their neighbours and would prefer to live in a closeted bubble where they don’t have to know these nasty poor people exist. Unless of course they need a taxi, or a teacher, or a meal at a restaurant, or a trades person or, god forbid, a nurse in a hospital.

I also note that there is now solid evidence, in the form of peer reviewed research, that proves many rich people have a sense of entitlement which presents as the ‘asshole effect’. Have you ever noticed that it’s the large, shiny, expensive cars which appear to be driven by the most aggressive, least-likely-to-let-you-into-traffic, most-difficult-to-share-the-road-with-drivers? If you have noticed this, it turns out it’s not just in your head, because this research shows that it really is the rich drivers who are the biggest wankers on the roads.

And I think this road user behaviour is a perfect analogy for the problems rich wankers cause in our community. The key point of this research is that the rich weren’t wankers to begin with, unless of course they started out rich. But it actually shows that when people reach a certain level of wealth they believe they are entitled to exploit others, to behave rudely and to be mean to their community because they have earned this right. Is this a good time to mention that all three men involved in the last Liberal Federal leadership ballot are Members from three of the richest electorates in the country – Turnbull in Wentworth, Hockey in North Sydney and Abbott in Warringah? Funny that. Is it any surprise that these men were the architects of the meanest Federal Budget this country has ever seen?

So we know many rich people are wankers and it’s clear they’re ruining our community for everyone, and I agree there is probably little we can do to change these people’s behaviour. Their narcissism is likely entrenched. However I would like to try a new strategy for encouraging these rich wankers to think twice before ruining it for all of us again. I have been harping on about this topic a lot in recent months, and let me be upfront in saying I’m not about to give up on this quest, because it’s important. Wealth inequality. The rich think wealth inequality is great for them and they’re more than happy to continue promoting it. In fact, they think they’re entitled to snatch and grab as much of the country’s pie as they can get their grubby hands on. Many no doubt think their greed is as natural as the animal instinct for survival. Most of them think tax-evasion is clever. However, it’s time to question the very basis of this attitude and to question it loudly.

Because wealth inequality is not just bad for all of us who aren’t rich. It’s also bad for the rich. And no, I’m not about to say it’s bad for them because they should care about other people and they’ll find much more happiness in human relationships with a diverse range of people rather than falling in love with money. I don’t really care about the happiness of the greedy. I’m saying that what is bad for the wealth of the community is also bad for the rich. The rich need all of us to be wealthier in order to maintain their own wealth. The rich need to pay their fair share of tax so that the government can fairly distribute wealth for the betterment of all of us. The rich need to learn that the pie must grow in order to keep growing their piece of it.

A rising tide only lifts all boats if the boats are in the tide, not broken and stranded on the shore. If you don’t believe me, ask Joseph Stiglitz. He’s got a Nobel Prize for researching this very idea. Or just have a think about how the rich got rich in the first place. Sure, some of them make money from the money they already have. But think of it this way. If people work full time and can’t afford to buy the things that the rich are selling – such as mortgages, consumer goods, food, education, insurance, cars, then how are the rich going to hold onto their wealth? And back to education, if the masses aren’t educated successfully, who will work for the rich? Because no one ever got rich on their own. Wealth does not trickle down and this should be just as concerning for the rich as it is the poor. Australia needs a large and strong working and middle class in order for the country to maintain a successful community AND a successful economy. People can be wankers on their own, but they can’t be rich on their own. That’s what we need to tell them.

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A question of balance

July 14, 2014
Written by: Dr Victoria Fielding
54 Replies

‘Where’s the balance?’ I raged as I listened to ABC Radio National this morning. In yet another example of a run-of-the-mill interview that you might hear on any news media platform or channel across this country, James Carleton was interviewing a business owner about the Carbon Tax. This interview may as well have been produced and gift-wrapped by the fishing industry’s PR firm, it so reeked of one-sided bias. But that’s the thing about balance that the mainstream media just don’t get. Or just don’t care about. Or both. Balance isn’t the ability to find someone who wants to speak in favour of the Carbon Tax (if these people have been interviewed in the mainstream media over the last few years, I must have missed it) and then to balance the argument, interview someone staunchly against the Carbon Tax, like Carleton’s guest this morning. That’s kindergarten simple thinking on what balance might be, and they can’t even get this right. No, an intelligent producer and interviewer would aim to find balance in the very questions they ask, so to provide an insight into the two sides of an argument within the one segment of news that they’ve given over to a particular topic for a limited amount of time.

So let’s look at how Carleton might learn from this sloppy, unbalanced interview. First of all, it’s important that the audience know who is being interviewed in order to properly frame their ‘well you would say that wouldn’t you’ opinion. Carleton introduced his interviewee Gary Heilmann as apparently a ‘small business’ owner, the managing director of De Brett Seafood at Mooloolaba on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. Carleton explained that Heilmann’s business includes a tuna fishing boat, a fish processing plant and a fish and chip shop. Fine. But it’s often what is left out of such an introduction which is so lazy on the part of the interviewer and also most telling. Because a quick Google of Heilmann makes it very clear that he isn’t just some random small business owner who the ABC happened to come across to provide his views on the repeal of the Carbon Tax. Here he is quoted in the Sunshine Coast Daily, posted on Liberal Mal Brough’s website, bemoaning the Carbon Tax back in March 2013. Here he is on the ABC’s website in 2011, apparently representing his own business and other fishing operators in lobbying the government to provide $76 million in compensation because of the proposed introduction of a marine park. In this article on the same topic from 2011, the author writes that ‘Fishing operators such as Heilmann say drastic measures are needed because Australia’s waters are over-fished’ and makes the point that since many operators have gone out of business, licenses have been cut back to 115 and Heilmann has slashed his fleet from 10 boats to only 2. This time he’s talking about the Coles fish price-war (aren’t free markets fun?). Here he’s complaining about the Sunshine Coast Regional Council building a roundabout that makes it hard for his fishing trucks to get away from the port of Mooloolaba (how dare the council try to improve traffic conditions for people visiting the beach when Heilmann’s trying to move stock!). And finally, here is Heilmann defending against claims that fishers were raiding Gold Coast recreational fishing areas, in, you guessed it, his role as Managing Director of his company, and a member of a tuna fishing industry advisory committee. Wouldn’t this background as a fishing industry media spokesman have been helpful to the balance of Heilmann’s Carbon Tax interview?

So what questions might Carleton has asked so to at least challenge Heilmann’s pre-prepared-press-release-like rant about why the Carbon Tax is bad for his business and must-be repealed? What could Carleton have done to provide some balance, rather than offering nothing more than the perfect Dorothy-Dixer-like combination of questions which came off sounding like they had been written by Heilmann himself to keep his flow of ‘I’m anti-Carbon-Tax-and-my-opinion-is-important-because-I’m-a-business-owner’ script perfectly intact? How could Carleton have avoided the same-old-lame-overused-statement that was so perfectly rehearsed it sounded like Abbott himself had planted it in Heilmann’s head, when he said ‘governments… have simply managed to drive the cost up to the point where it’s just not worth being in business anymore because you can’t generate a return on the assets’. I know what you’re thinking. I know you’re thinking it’s not Carleton’s fault that Heilmann so perfectly slotted into the Abbott anti-Carbon-Tax narrative which brought us to this point tonight where the Carbon Tax is, devastatingly for the environment, about to be repealed. But it is Carleton’s fault and it’s every journalist’s fault who has given exactly this sort of interview all the airtime it ever wanted, without once asking a question that challenged the very basis of the argument about pricing carbon. What if he’d tried even one of these questions, just to throw an alternative argument into the mix and to provide some balance for the audience:

‘Being a fisherman, and clearly concerned about over-fishing, you must be concerned with the sustainability of not just your business, but also your family’s safety in the environment you live and work in. Do you worry that climate change will have a detrimental effect on the sustainability of your livelihood and the sustainability of the planet we live on?’

‘Do you think it’s appropriate for a government to put the concerns about business profit for a handful of business owners ahead of their concerns for the safety of our planet in an unstable climate?’

‘What policy would you prefer the government introduce to encourage large polluters to cut down on their carbon emissions instead of the Carbon Price, to change their business practices to ensure we limit the catastrophic effects of climate change? Or do you not believe climate change is real?’

‘Have you considered renewable solutions such as solar energy to cut down on your high electricity costs, in order to improve your margins and to make your business more sustainable as fossil fuels continue to deplete and grow in cost?’

‘If you can’t make a profit running your business in a sustainable way, is it time to think about doing something else and to stop blaming the government for every challenge your business faces? If you can’t run your business without producing unsustainable amounts of carbon emissions, isn’t it better for the community if you do try something different?’

If people like Heilmann don’t want to answer such questions, they can choose not to be interviewed on a national radio station. Someone else can be interviewed instead. How about me? I would be happy to answer balanced questions about a particular topic. But I would never be invited because I’m not a business owner or an industry spokesperson. I guess that’s the thing that’s most disappointing about Carleton’s interview in the first place. Journalists like Carleton never interview a nobody like me who has to actually live in the community where climate change is happening. The Carbon Price was not just some economic burden on large polluters. It was designed to try to save our planet. How about interviewing a member of the community on this topic, rather than a whinging-he-would-say-that-wouldn’t-he-self-interested-axe-the-tax-business-owner. Just for a change.

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Back where you came from

July 5, 2014
Written by: Dr Victoria Fielding
151 Replies

Image by ahmadiyyapost.blogspot.com

Someone gave me some good advice when I was a single woman: when you’re out on a date with a man, take note of how he treats the waitress. Because one day that’s how he’ll treat you. I couldn’t help but think of this advice, strangely enough, when I tried to digest the disturbing news that Abbott’s government has almost certainly handed Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers back to the government they were fleeing from. Because it occurred to me that Australian voters really should heed this same advice when it comes to the way Abbott treats the most desperate and vulnerable amongst us.

No doubt many Australians would read this and think smugly to themselves, ‘no, I’m Australian. My government would never treat me like they treat an asylum seeker. They’re not from here and I am, so that gives me certain privileges that the asylum seekers don’t have rights to’. But this is clearly naïve.

You think Australians have rights. Sure we do. But asylum seekers have rights too. They’re called human rights and Abbott completely disregards them. Australia has signed up to the UNHCR Refugee Convention, but from the behaviour of the Abbott government over the last 9 months, I wonder why the UNHCR still accepts Australia as a signatory to this international agreement. Yes, we think of ourselves as a first world country. But what first world country would violate human rights and demean the weak and defensive amongst us in order to win political points? How callous does the government have to be before Australian citizens start to show a rational level of concern about the people in charge of this country?

Still not convinced that Australian voters should be worried? Still think vulnerable Australians automatically rank higher in the government’s concern than desperate people fleeing from persecution and violence? What if, just like a first date, a political party is on their best behaviour for a short time? It may last the election campaign. But just like in a new relationship, once the honeymoon period is over and you get to know the real government, their true character can’t be ignored.

The cracks started appearing in Abbott’s best behaviour on the first day of his new government. And there was nothing but red flags in the delivery of his budget. Look, for example, at the way Abbott is treating young Australians. If his welfare policy is accepted by the new Senate, people under 30 who don’t have a job will be denied even the most basic level of Newstart assistance. And it’s not like Abbott’s government haven’t considered the ramifications of this policy change. They know that young people who aren’t getting any Newstart allowance for six out of every 12 months will find themselves broke and homeless. They know that thousands of Australians are going to need emergency relief of the most basic kind – they’ve already increased the emergency relief budget for this very reason. And what about the disabled? Abbott wants people with periodic mental illness to be denied a disability pension because their disability isn’t ‘permanent’. Yet they must know it will be impossible for these people to get a job. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that these Australians will soon be as desperate to survive as Tamil asylum seekers who’ve chosen to risk their life on a leaky boat rather than risk staying where they are.

The handing of Tamil asylum seekers back to the government they were fleeing from should be a lesson for all Australians about a government that wants to put people back in their place. A government that wants to tell us all to go back where we came from. A government who knows that the unemployed young adults from poor families will have the least chance of surviving for six months without Newstart, whilst the rich will be cushioned by their inborn safety net of privilege. But that’s the point of the Abbott government isn’t it? To put us all back in our place. To kick the ladder of social mobility out from under us. To punish the poor and to rub their nose in their misfortune.

I hope Australians are starting to learn this lesson about the Abbott government. I hope they look at the way this government treats asylum seekers and they understand that these poor desperate souls are the canary-in-the-mine-test-of-character that provides all the insight they need into the true values of the Abbott government. And I hope that when they think of the asylum seekers being turned away from Australia, they don’t feel satisfied that Abbott is succeeding in turning back the boats. That they don’t think he’s doing something good for the country and good for them. Even if Australians can’t, on the whole, feel empathy for asylum seekers, I hope they can at least have the emotional intelligence to be worried about themselves. Especially those who know what it is like to be poor and who want to make, or have made, a better life for themselves and their children. I hope they look at the Abbott government and wonder what their futures would be like if they were forced to go back to where they came from. Abbott is trying to exclude whole sections of the community, to define them as less than citizens and to send them back to the misery they came from – just like the asylum seekers. Through his ideological budget, and every decision he has made since becoming Prime Minister of Australia, Abbott is already proving that he will decide who belongs to our community and the manner in which they belong. My question is, are people worried about how he treats the waitress?

Compare the pair

June 14, 2014
Written by: Dr Victoria Fielding
95 Replies

Joe Hockey’s budget has been widely rejected by the Australian people. And he knows it. How do I know he knows it? Because why else would he ramp up his rhetoric about welfare bludgers to desperation levels in such a whiney and pathetic tone?

This week Hockey’s been promoting hatred of welfare recipients by telling Australian workers that one month of their annual salary is being sucked away by these sub-human, leech-like, lazy, good for nothing dole bludging sloths. Ok, he didn’t exactly use these words, but this is the image he’s clearly trying to conjure up.

It is moments like these that I am reminded how important it is for independent media sites like this one, and independent voices, to get an alternative message out there. Because Hockey’s hobby of blaming Newstart and Pension recipients for all the world’s problems is not only bully-boy lazy, but it also completely misrepresents the situation to make it appear that the only people in society who benefit from government spending are those receiving welfare payments. And the mainstream media, on the most part, support this lazy myth.

The inconvenient truth for Hockey is that all Australians benefit from government spending of one kind or another, because without government spending there is no civilisation. And as I wrote recently, the key fact that Hockey will do his best to supress because it doesn’t fit his ‘let’s-blame-welfare-recipients-while-we-bring-about-an-ideologically-inspired-small-government’ narrative is this: it’s the rich who benefit most of all from the very existence of government. You don’t believe me? Well how about we compare the pair? Who’s really benefiting most from Australia’s publically-funded civilisation?

Olivia’s life
Olivia is 32 years old and rents a one bedroom studio apartment in western Sydney for $140 a week. Olivia has been out of work for two years ever since the manufacturing company she worked at sent all their factory jobs to China, and since then she’s been sending out resumes via the computer at her local library but hasn’t had a single call back. She completed a qualification in production systems at TAFE while she was working five years ago, but very rarely sees a job advertised requiring this qualification. Each week she receives a Newstart allowance of $255.25. After her rent and household power and water bills are paid, she is left with $90 a week for food (three meals a day across a week equates to $4.29 per meal, so sometimes she skips meals). Some of the food she buys includes GST so a portion of her spending goes back to the tax office. Olivia can’t afford to go out and walks everywhere as she can’t afford public transport. She avoids seeing a doctor as she can’t afford to go to the chemist to fill a prescription. She hasn’t bought new clothes in the two years she has been unemployed – when her clothes wear out she goes to the local op shop. Her TV broke eighteen months ago so she doesn’t have any entertainment at home, except when her elderly neighbour invites her over for a tea and they watch the ABC news headlines together. Olivia is an only child and her parents live on the Central Coast of New South Wales and don’t own a car, so she only manages to see them every few weeks when she has enough money for a train ticket. She has friends who call her sometimes to chat, but she can’t afford to call them as her phone never has any credit. Her friends don’t ask her out anymore because she can’t afford to do anything. Her life is lonely and miserable and most of the time she is depressed.

So let’s recap the benefits Olivia receives from government spending in an average week. She completed her education at a public school and co-funded her government funded vocational training at Tafe. She sometimes sees a bulk-billing doctor and if she got seriously sick or injured, she would have access to a public hospital. She could also call the police if ever she needed to. And she has received a Newstart allowance for two years, and hopes one day to find a job. So this hypothetical Olivia doesn’t exactly sound like someone who is really enjoying their ‘welfare Queen’ status while screwing tax payers, does it? She doesn’t sound like she’s benefiting that much from the civilisation she lives in.

Now let’s compare Olivia to Mark and Jenny:

Mark and Jenny’s life
Mark and Jenny, both 32 years old, live in a three bedroom townhouse in Wollstonecraft on Sydney’s north shore that they bought for $750,000 four years ago with help from both of their parents and the first home owner’s grant. Their home has appreciated by 4% each year since they bought it. Mark works as an accountant at a large pharmaceutical company in North Sydney, which sells many of its products via the government funded Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Mark takes the publically-subsidised train to work every day. Jenny works as a physiotherapist in a public hospital and drives to work every day on publically funded roads. Together they take home a weekly household salary of $3,000 after tax, and after they’ve paid their mortgage, they have around $2,000 each week to spend on life’s necessities like energy and water bills, insurance, internet, car payments, petrol, Foxtel, groceries, gym memberships, take away food, wine, beer, spirits, Friday night drinks, Saturday night dinner parties or movies, tickets to sporting events and concerts, designer clothes, books, magazines, gifts, pet toys, home wares and furniture. Each week they put money away in a savings account to pay for their yearly overseas holiday. Both Mark and Jenny needed a university degree to work as an accountant and a physiotherapist and they both contributed to the cost of their degrees through the HECS system, whilst most of the investment in their education was made by the government. Mark attended a public school and Jenny went to a private school, with the cost of her education partly funded by her parents and partly funded by the government.

Mark and Jenny have a good life and much to be grateful for. They are content in their work and have busy and enjoyable lifestyles. When you look closely at the lives of Mark and Jenny, you can see that government spending has not just influenced much of their success, but it has been at the very foundation of the civilisation where they enjoy their affluent lifestyles.

Joe Hockey (image from news.com.au)

So back to Hockey. He is clearly trying to make the Mark and Jenny’s of the world resent Olivia. He wants Mark and Jenny to think about all the hard work they do each day (and no one is questioning that they do work hard) and to resent that some of what they earn is taken away from them and given to someone else who needs it. But what Mark and Jenny need to also understand is that they did not reach their level of happiness, comfort and first-world lifestyle on their own. The government funded civilisation that they live in enabled their lives and continues to enable their lives every day. It’s the fact that there are so many government-enabled lifestyles in Australia that makes Australia a rich country – a place where so many people make money by relying on others being able to afford whatever it is they sell. If there really is a class war going on in Australia as Hockey says there is, Mark and Jenny are winning and Olivia is clearly losing.

So rather than resent the tax that the likes of Mark and Jenny pay, and begrudging people like Olivia who benefit so little from our civilisation, how about everyone ignore Hockey and instead offer some gratitude for the opportunity they’ve been given to be part of a civilisation that gives them so much benefit? And how about some empathy for the Olivia’s of the world who exist day to day in poverty? Because the truth is, Olivia isn’t lazy. Olivia doesn’t bludge. Olivia just survives. And Olivia would love to pay as much tax as Mark and Jenny do, so as to reap the benefits of the position in their society that their highly-paid government enabled lifestyles affords them. Think about that next time you see Hockey blaming Olivia. Think about that next time someone talks about lifters and leaners.

Follow Victoria on Twitter

What does Kenny’s ABC defamation case mean?

June 8, 2014
Written by: Dr Victoria Fielding
22 Replies

What does Chris Kenny’s $35,000 settlement and apology from the ABC over the Chaser’s dog f*cking joke mean for Australia’s culture? I don’t know, but I must admit I’m worried.

For those who haven’t caught up on this news, you can read David Marr’s summary of the situation here. There was a lot of discussion of this case on Twitter yesterday, and already Kenny was inserting himself into the conversation in an intimidating, litigious tone, requesting an apology and no doubt aiming to remind Twitter users that they better watch what they say about him, lest they get the same punishment as the Chaser team and the ABC got:

As I write this post, and discuss what Chris Kenny has said, which is all of course my opinion, something I am completely and utterly entitled to, I am nervous. This morning I’ve been warned privately by a fellow Tweep to watch what I say about Kenny on Twitter, to avoid being sued by him. The inference of course being that he has form in suing people who make jokes about him and therefore I should watch what I say. But if I decide that this Kenny/ABC defamation case has resulted in the demise of Chris Kenny’s credibility, this is my opinion and I should feel completely safe in voicing this opinion. Shouldn’t I? We live in Australia, an open and fair society so we should feel safe to make a joke or to voice an opinion without fear of a law suit. Shouldn’t we? And if we can’t do this, what has happened to our society? What has Chris Kenny, with the support of Tony Abbott, done? The ramifications are far reaching.

Of course no discussion of free speech in Australia can be complete without mentioning Andrew Bolt’s breaching of the racial discrimination act, an action that resulted in howls of protest from the right, screaming that their free speech was under threat. One example of such protest is this statement:

Many left-liberals in the love media have welcomed the decision as revenge against Bolt, rather than railing against it as an illiberal blow against free speech.

I personally strongly support laws that stop people like Bolt mis-representing the truth in order to discriminate against people of a certain race or nationality, and I am strongly opposed to the Abbott’s government’s proposed changes to Section 18c of the Racial Discrimination act. And it’s important to remember the judgement against Bolt was due to him misrepresenting facts in two articles. Simply, he said certain high-profile indigenous Australians were pretending to be indigenous to gain certain benefits when they were not pretending to be indigenous at all. So Bolt wasn’t sued over a difference of opinion, he was sued for misrepresenting facts – an important distinction.

So back to Kenny. It appears to me that Kenny decided that the Chaser’s dog f*cking joke defamed him (DISCLAIMER, I am not a legal expert). In the same way that I could quite easily decide that this Tweet from Kenny defames me in implying that I have a bad-education (which I don’t):

But it never occurred me to sue Kenny over this Tweet, nor any of the nasty responses it elicited from Kenny’s followers after this exchange, nor any of the offensive abuse I quite often receive on Twitter and on my blog. Kenny doesn’t hold back in belittling and ridiculing left-wingers on Twitter, nor does he criticise the abuse given out by his right wing mates. So the fact that Kenny was the one suing the ABC over a joke does seem to me to be infuriatingly hypocritical to say the least (can I say that without being sued?).

In fact, it would appear that the right are only worried about free-speech being impeded when it’s a right-winger’s speech being impeded. For example, you would think that a staunch defender of free-speech – Andrew Bolt – would condemn Kenny’s court case as damaging the Chaser and the ABC’s right to freedom of speech. But no. As noted in Marr’s analysis, Bolt commented in Kenny’s defence saying:

Yes, the graphic was clearly fake. But the issue is that it was obscene, humiliating and viciously abusive…

However, we don’t see such concern from Andrew Bolt or Chris Kenny about obscene, humiliating and viciously abusive images when it comes to right-wing bloggers like Larry Pickering. Pickering regularly publishes highly offensive cartoons of progressive politicians on his right-wing blog, such as one described by Bernard Keane showing Gillard as a “dildo-wielding rapist”. What would Bolt and Kenny have said if Julia Gillard had sued Larry Pickering for the same reason Kenny sued the ABC, by saying that the cartoon implies she is a dildo-wielding rapist and that this implication defames her character? How can they even reconcile their staunch defense of free-speech when it comes to Bolt’s case, but then turn around and try to silence the likes of the ABC’s Chasers from PhotoShopping images in a comedy sketch show? Of course I can only ask these questions, I can’t answer them.

It’s people like me who write a blog, and people like me and thousands of others who partake in Twitter commentary all day every day who should be worried about Kenny’s defamation precedent. And that’s the thing that makes this situation most confusing. Because Kenny is also a regular public commentator, but the difference is, he is paid to offer his opinion and I am not. Kenny is on Twitter numerous times a day and he writes a blog (DISCLAIMER: Kenny’s blog is really badly written and this of course is just my opinion) on The Australian’s website, as well as regularly appearing on Sky News – offering his opinion on a range of subjects. So what if we were all slapped with law suits every time someone felt we had publically offended them? What would this mean for Kenny’s career? Just a quick trawl through Kenny’s twitter feed revealed this tweet with a link to a video called ‘How to behave during an Islamic Massacre’. Kenny also helpfully points out that the video raises questions you’ll never hear on the ABC.

Without forcing anyone to watch this video, I can tell you people of Muslim faith might find it highly offensive. So is Kenny suggesting these offended people should sue Andrew Klavan who made the video? Or should they sue Kenny for posting it on Twitter? What if I decided to sue Kenny because I am deeply offended by his non-factual opinions and constant jokes about climate change?

The thing is, there are literally hundreds of memes, PhotoShopped images and home-made videos floating around Twitter at any given moment – what if each of these was the subject of court proceedings? What would happen to our culture if we felt scared to take part in commentary on social media – about politics, about business and economics, about sport, arts, culture, the environment, for amusement or maybe just to pass time. What if I felt scared to write open letters, such as this one I wrote to Chris Kenny? I feel Australia would be different and for this I am incredibly upset with Chris Kenny (which I assume I can’t be sued for saying?)

Follow @Vic_Rollison

Tax: renting a spot in civilisation

June 7, 2014
Written by: Dr Victoria Fielding
23 Replies

While I was reading Josh Bornstein’s excellent contribution on the subject of tax, it reminded me that progressive Australians really need to work harder at reframing this word and the whole concept of tax to make it a positive thing. The question is, how do we do this after the Right have spent so much time and effort turning tax into a dirty word?

The problem with the current concept of ‘tax’ as being something bad, something annoying, something to be avoided, is that it is impossible to even mention the word in a conversation, let alone in a budget speech, without eliciting a negative reflex. So while we should be having conversations about who in our society should be paying what types of tax and how much they should be paying, we can’t even start the conversation. As an example, I am a huge fan of the mining tax, but I am deeply offended by the GP tax. There are fair ways of generating revenue and there are unfair ways. And this is what we should really be talking about, instead of reeling at the very mention of the word.

So how do we fix this problem? How do we change the way our community reacts to taxation? I think we need to turn the payment of tax into a moral act. I’ve got some ideas about how we go about reframing the very act of paying tax.

The first key idea that needs to be communicated is that we are very lucky to be born into a country with the infrastructure that provides us with the opportunity to live the lives that most Australians live. When I say infrastructure, I don’t only mean physical infrastructure like roads and bridges, I mean everything that makes up a civilisation. This includes a banking system that enables investment in the economy, an education system, a health system, support for arts and culture, emergency services and a defence force. A first world civilisation also has an appropriate welfare safety net to protect those who need it. And the reason we have this civilisation is because we have a democratic government, whose activities in organising this civilisation are funded by our payment of tax. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the American Supreme court once said ‘I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.’ He knew a thing or two that too many people have forgotten.

I know I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but stick with me because this is going somewhere. It’s only a short step from understanding why paying tax is crucial to the existence of the Australian civilisation, to then understand why those who are benefiting most from this civilisation should, morally, be the ones paying the most tax. And this is where I pause to make clear that those on welfare are often the ones that tax payers perceive as benefiting most from civilisation, when really, they are the ones benefiting least. Why? Because our civilisation offers the greatest benefits to those who earn the most and the people earning the most wouldn’t have the opportunity to benefit from this position of wealth without the opportunity to live in our civilisation. Benefits like highly paid, interesting and intellectually fulfilling work. Benefits like a lifestyle where people can list their hobbies as buying nice things and eating nice food. Benefits like a safe, supportive community in which to raise a family. Benefits like an economy where there are enough well-off people to fund a range of business activities, where income from profits contribute to an increase in quality of life. It’s this quality of life that paying tax provides. And the better the quality of life, morally, the more an individual or a company (hello Google, Apple and Westfield just to name a few) should contribute for belonging to this civilisation.

The problem with the way that we speak about tax avoidance currently is the word ‘avoidance’. You avoid bad things. To avoid something is to cleverly do something in your best interest by getting out of the way of something that’s not in your best interest. So when you put the word ‘tax’ next to the word ‘avoid’, the image conjured up is positive, clever, brave even. This is wrong and is yet another example of the way in which the Right manipulate language, and spread this common-usage phrase to suit their ideological agenda.

So how about this for a new frame. What if paying tax is akin to paying rent to live in a civilisation? So just like in the property market, where the more you pay for a property, the better the location, the bigger the rooms, the better the view, the more ‘mod-cons’ available to you, the ‘status’ you receive for living there, and for companies, the more profit you make from the prime real estate you’ve secured, I think tax paying should also be viewed in the same way. The more rent (tax) you pay, the more benefit you receive from living in our civilisation, which is funded by the tax you pay. So what if we start calling those who minimise and avoid paying their fair share of tax ‘freeloaders’? What if we openly refer to them as cheapskates and slackers? What if we start a campaign to name and shame these tightwads? What if we start telling them they are squatting in our civilisation and they either need to pay their rent or we’ll evict them? What if we reinforced this frame in everything we ever say about tax? I don’t know about all of you, but I’m going to give this plan a try. Starting now. Never again will I call a tax avoider a tax avoider. From now on, I will call them tax freeloaders. This is how we will solve the world’s problems one word at a time.

What Abbott Taught Us

May 31, 2014
Written by: Dr Victoria Fielding
83 Replies

I know it’s going to be really hard for most of Australia to be convinced that Tony Abbott has done us a favour, because everything so far that he has done for Australia since becoming Prime Minister has been the opposite of a favour. However, it has occurred to me that Abbott, unbeknownst to himself, has, through being the worst Prime Minister we have ever had, done us the favour of teaching us some lessons that I hope are taught well enough that we won’t forget. So that we don’t go and make the same mistake twice in 2016. Here are some of the key lessons Abbott has imparted so far in his first shambolic, chaotic term:

Conservative Liberals are conservative Liberals.

If it walks like a conservative Liberal, talks like a conservative Liberal and quacks like a conservative Liberal, I hope we have all learned that it’s a duck. Seriously folks, I know you all feel like there’s not much point us all saying this over and over again, but sometimes I feel I need to say it just a few more times quietly to myself to keep from going insane and screaming from the roof tops with the scale of my ‘I told you so’ impulse. But yeah, I did tell everyone and not enough of the people who needed to listen listened. Yet, perhaps they are listening now?

Abbott has always been a conservative. No matter what way you ‘spin’ it, none of his behaviour whilst in Howard’s government for all those years told us anything more than we already knew about how right-wing-fanatical-conservative Liberals behave. It has always be thus.

You only have to know their two favourite words to understand Abbott and his government’s entire ideology, which drives their entire raison d’être. User pays. The likes of Abbott’s have a subconscious thought process that goes something like this: those who are born poor and haven’t worked hard enough are too lazy to stop being poor and are lazy and dependant on hard working rich people who pay taxes. Rich people who pay taxes shouldn’t be relied on to fund the lives of lazy, immoral poor people who are too lazy to get rich and pay taxes. It’s immoral to let people be dependent on the government and a big government encourages people to be lazy and to depend on the government. Big government should be destroyed in preference for a small, useless, and not able to be dependable government. Users should pay their way, so user pays is the best system for funding everything including health, education, infrastructure, community, everything. If user can’t afford to pay, user doesn’t get and user should stop being so lazy and hungry and in need of shelter and should go and get rich so they’re not reliant on the rich people who have to pay tax to support them.

Get it? This is the way conservative Liberals like Abbott have always seen the world, and always will see the world. Once you recognise this mentality, you can see it in everything Abbott does and in all his policies and of course all over his budget. We should never ever forget this. Abbott and his ilk will always be this way. A fair chunk of the voting public also think like this. But those who don’t share this attitude shouldn’t vote for Abbott, and if they do vote for Abbott and they’re surprised that they get a duck for a Prime Minister, they should learn from their mistake and never do it again.

Running the country takes more than a 3 word slogan.

You know how it was really fashionable and mainstream over the last six years to run with the line that the Labor government was chaotic and dysfunctional and needed to be voted out for this reason, especially after Labor formed a minority government in 2010? Abbott’s government has proven, through a continuous barrage of chaotic mistakes, missteps, scandals, embarrassments, tragedies, ships pinging themselves, diplomatic rows with Indonesia, a murdered asylum seeker, lobbyist chiefs of staff, expense scandals, a biased Speaker, back-bench revolts, the c-bomb in Parliament, the shutting down of an industry, scholarship nepotism, senior leaders not knowing details about the budget, wink gaffes, that it’s not as easy as it looks to run a country. Note that this list is long enough, without also including two nationwide marches of tens of thousands disgruntled voters, or any of the policy horror stories included in the most unpopular budget of all time. So we have learned that three word slogans count for less than nothing. And the outcome of this is that Abbott’s government has shown the previous Labor government to be the policy-successful, cohesive, on-message, highly professional and well-oiled machine that I always said they were, despite Rudd’s white-anting. I told you so. Oops, another one slipped out.

The mainstream media is terrible at reporting politics and covering political campaigns.

I’m clearly not the only person at the moment who has noticed that the mainstream media isn’t wearing any clothes. Not only did they completely fail to scrutinise Abbott’s character and policy plans before the election, but now they are floundering around, failing to adequately explain what it is that Abbott is trying to do to the country. How many times do we have to hear a political journalist say that Abbott needs to ‘improve his message’ before these so-called professional journalists understand that you can’t just spit on and polish this turd of a budget?

Abbott’s polling problems have nothing to do with ‘message’ or the ‘sales job’ and everything to do with the actual policies contained within the budget papers. Policies. You know, those things that decide how the wealth of the country will be distributed, who will pay what tax, who will receive what services and who has access to what support? This is seriously important stuff for political journalists to be looking at, but every time they get paid to open their mouths or to put pen to paper, all we hear commentary about is Abbott’s spin-job. It’s a disgrace. And it’s this disgrace that enabled Abbott to get the job in the first place. Shame on you all.

Here’s a couple of tips for journalists who are trying to work out where they’ve gone wrong at doing their really important jobs. The first thing they need to understand is that Australians didn’t need to hear them discuss how Hockey sold the budget, because we were listening to Hockey and we heard exactly what he said. We speak English just as well as journalists do, and our ears and eyes function in exactly the same way. The second thing they need to know is that the Liberal government’s polls are bad because the budget is a horror movie for the Australian community. Not because it was sold badly. How about putting that objective perspective out there, just for a change? This is not a two-horse spin race. This is people’s lives. This is everyone’s lives.

There were more than one or two progressive policies worth defending in the election.

Enough said.

The fate of our community is our own fate.

Abbott’s budget proved that the community does care about the community. And isn’t that what being a progressive is all about?

Sometimes it’s not until the values of a community are so blatantly threatened like they have been by Abbott’s budget that people realise even if these policies aren’t going to be personally detrimental to them, they are going to be detrimental to lots of other people in the community and that this is not fair. When voters start to think about what is fair and how they want their country to be fairer, progressives are bred in huge numbers. So perhaps the community has learned that they do care about their community. And perhaps this is Abbott’s most important legacy that we should be most grateful for. Abbott is breeding progressives. And progressives don’t vote for Abbott.

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GP Co-Payment: Policy Analysis

May 25, 2014
Written by: Dr Victoria Fielding
25 Replies

Even Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey seem confused about their Great. Big. New. Tax on doctor’s visits, as announced in their horror budget two weeks ago. It’s still not clear exactly how this policy will be applied and who it will be applied to. While the government who introduced the tax go back to the drawing board to try to work out how it actually works, I thought it might be useful to do some policy analysis of my own, by interviewing my brother-in-law. I know this is a radical idea and one Abbott and his government clearly haven’t considered, but let’s throw in some facts from an expert. My brother-in-law can provide these facts in an expert manner since he is a GP:

Peter Dutton has said he decided the government should introduce the Medicare co-payment while visiting his doctor. Dutton explained that people should contribute to visits to a GP because this would make the health care system more financially sustainable. This doesn’t strike me as a consultative policy analysis process. If Dutton had chosen to investigate the effect of this policy in a more consultative way, who should he have spoken to?

Changes to the Medicare architecture should be undertaken through liaison between the Department of Health, the AMA [Australian Medical Association], the College of General Practice and State Health Departments.

As a practicing GP, what is your opinion of the Abbott government’s proposed Medicare $7 GP co-payment policy?

The proposed Medicare co-payment and its associated changes to Medicare have the potential to be very destructive to patient care for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, it will deter people from discussing minor symptoms that they have with their GP, which often are a warning sign of more serious illness. This can lead to patients presenting with more advanced or severe disease, which may ultimately present a higher cost burden for the government.

Secondly, the capacity for general practices to be flexible in their billing to patients with limited financial resources is significantly reduced under the proposed changes.

Thirdly, hospital emergency departments will see a major increase in the volume of people with minor ailments presenting for care. Already, approximately 30% of patients presenting to an emergency department are non-urgent or semi-urgent conditions that could be managed in a GP setting. I suspect this proportion will increase significantly after the introduction of the co-payment.

Finally, the co-payment may influence doctors to manage their patients in a less-than-ideal manner, as GP’s may try to protect their patient from additional fees. For example, the GP may not undertake a planned review of an infected wound the next day to see if the antibiotics are helping. Or the GP may defer referring the patient for pathology tests that might have picked up the serious electrolyte abnormality. There is a significant potential for the quality of care to deteriorate.

What influence will the $7 Medicare GP co-payment have on the total price GPs will need to charge their patients rather than bulk-billing? Will there be an administration fee charged on top of the $7 fee?

This will vary depending on the way the practice currently bills. Some practices charge all patients a fee with a gap. The proposed Medicare changes will reduce the amount that patients get as a rebate and they will therefore have a larger gap (however, the co-payment per-se won’t be paid).

It is practices that bulk-bill patients who will see the most impact. For example, a general practitioner that chooses to bulk-bill a pensioner for a standard consult will have a 24% decrease in their income for that patient, and if they charge the co-payment without an additional fee on top, then their income will drop by 11%.

For example, here is the current situation where a standard consult for a pensioner is conducted:

Medicare Rebate ($36.30) + bulk-billing incentive ($6.60) = $42.90

And here are the proposed changes:

If no co-payment is charged then total income for consult is:

Medicare rebate ($31.30) = $31.30

If co-payment is charged:

Medicare rebate ($31.30) and low-gap incentive ($6.60) and co-payment ($2.00) = $39.90

As a general practitioner who runs a small business, these reductions in income have the potential to make the business unviable. My practice is considering its options but it is likely that we will simply have to charge concessional patients a gap of approximately $11 to maintain business viability (this will essentially keep our income stable). We are exploring other options such as reducing the duration of consults from 15 minutes to 12 minutes or reducing the number of supporting staff, but these options all have a negative impact on patient care.

What types of patients will this co-payment affect the most? Do you expect certain types of patients to visit their doctor less often?

This will have the most impact on patients who have chronic illness. In particular; the elderly, those with mental illness, diabetes, high blood pressure and children with recurrent infections. The impact will depend on how the medical profession and medical practices change their fee structure after the changes are introduced. It is unclear whether the large bulk-billing organisations such as Primary Health Care will continue to bulk-bill or whether they will charge the co-payment. I suspect that the overall impact of these changes will be much more severe than expected as many general practices like mine will change from conducting ‘mixed-billing’ (bulk-billing concessional patients and charging gap for non-concessional patients) to conducting private (gap) billing for all patients.

What types of illnesses and conditions will people suffer from more severely if they don’t see their GP as often?

Chronic illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, asthma, heart disease and those with mental illness are likely to be the hardest hit.

I also expect that some diseases will be picked up later. For example, a woman with a minor breast symptom who delays having it checked and it ultimately is found to be a breast cancer.

Another example is that if a patient reports an unusual mole early and it is excised and found to be an early melanoma, there is very little risk of the cancer spreading and cure is usual. However, if the melanoma is diagnosed after spreading, it is generally regarded as incurable and the costs of newer chemotherapies for melanoma are astronomical in comparison.

What affect do you think the GP co-payments will have on the overall health of the community and on the health budget bottom line?

There is likely to be a negative effect on general health in the community. I suspect that we will see some diseases that have been declining in severity, such as heart attacks or advanced breast cancer, either plateau or even increase in frequency.

I suspect the health budget will largely be unchanged, as while there will be a reduced number of general practice consultations and pathology/imaging rebates, there will be an increase in the number of more advanced diseases. There will probably be some cost-shifting as the more advanced cancers and heart disease will be cared for through the hospital system, whereas there will be less costs coming from general practice.

Do you think it was responsible of the Abbott government to use the revenue from the GP co-payment to build a future fund to fund scientific health research?

Increased funding for research is sorely needed. If there is a co-payment then I would support its proceeds going to research, however, I believe this funding should go to non-corporate research such as through the CSIRO or universities. I am concerned that corporate grants will be given for research by pharmaceutical companies that do not need government support.

The funding to the states for the provision of hospital care should also be increased if the co-payment is introduced as the further demand will outstrip already limited services in our public hospitals.

So there we have it. Not only some much needed facts, but clear analysis that shows the government haven’t thought through this policy. Either that, or they have and they don’t care about the detrimental impacts on our community. Sigh.

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An Open Letter to Frances Abbott

May 22, 2014
Written by: Dr Victoria Fielding
681 Replies

Dear Frances,

First off, I want to say that I feel really sorry for you this week since the news broke about your $60,000 scholarship to study at Whitehouse Institute of Design. As your passion was to study design, you should be commended for following this passion, and for applying yourself to your studies and graduating with Distinctions. Well done. No one is suggesting that you didn’t deserve to graduate with high grades, and no one is suggesting that it was unfair for you to be accepted into the course in the first place. But what people are upset about, including me, just so we’re clear, is the speculation that you got this opportunity to study without paying for it through your dad’s job and his connections. If this is true, we’re upset with your father. And I should imagine that you would be really upset with him as well because of the perception that he put you in this position where you now probably feel that you’ve been unfairly criticised.

I am not naïve enough to think that this sort of ‘favour’ amongst rich people doesn’t happen all the time. Jobs get opened up and opportunities appear all the time for the children of the privileged and the powerful. Your dad has actually been giving lots of his mates jobs since he won the job of Prime Minister too. People like former IPA front man Tim Wilson, who is completely unqualified to be responsible for human rights, is now an Australian Human Rights Commissioner. Former Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella, who is completely unqualified to oversee the building of submarines, is now on the board of the Australian Submarine Corporation.

But what I would like you to understand, and I’m certain that you have the emotional maturity to understand, is that your father has made decisions recently which make your scholarship to the Whitehouse Institute of Design incredibly hypocritical. You see, your father has decided that Australian teenagers and young adults should pay more for their higher education degrees and vocational training AND should pay interest on the HELP loans they get which are the only way most can access this education. With interest of 6%. So where you paid only a fraction of the cost of your expensive private design college, students whose parents don’t have access to favours of the kind you’ve been given are facing a situation where they will finish their degrees with a huge and growing debt, a situation which may lead many of them to abandon their dreams of further education all together. And that is a tragedy for the individuals involved, and for Australia.

I note you are now working at the Whitehouse Institute of Design as a teacher’s aide, and it’s great that you’ve managed to get a job at the end of your study. Congratulations. However, for students who struggle to find their first career roles after finishing their study, and who find themselves in the very common transition period between study and the experience they need to climb the career ladder, your father has made sure these students can’t get a Newstart payment for six months. Six months is a long time to have no money. I don’t expect you to know what this feels like, as you don’t come from a background where you’ve ever had to worry about having money for food. But what I would like you to do is to be able to show empathy for the people who will find themselves in this position due to decisions your father has made. You might even be assisting the Whitehouse Institute for Design to teach these very students who are saddling themselves with huge education expenses, and have absolutely no guarantee of a job on graduation.

These students grew up in a society that promised them a safety net as they pursue their life aspirations. But your father has torn up this safety net and slapped every one of them in the face with his three word slogan ‘earn or learn’. Just like you have done, these students are learning. And then they’ll be doing their best with the earning part. I see no reasonable reason to force these students into poverty while they go through this struggle. Without privileged favours from rich parents and mates of rich parents, life can be pretty tough out there. But poor students are basically being told that it’s their fault they have no job and they should have been more careful about which family they were born into.

Of course your father will defend you, and I’m sure you and the rest of your family think it’s terribly unfair that you’ve had your own personal story dragged through this mud in the media over the last few days. Again, I really do feel sorry for you. But, again, this is really your father’s fault and he’s the one we should all, including you, be upset with. He chose to organise for you and your sister Bridget to accompany him all over the country for as many media appearances as possible during the election campaign.

I often wondered why you and your sister were always there, but never spoke on camera and I guess that’s because you didn’t really want to get involved with politics. But just being there made you involved and your father benefited from this involvement. You got lots of free tax-payer-funded travel and tickets to fun events out of this arrangement too, so it’s not like you didn’t all have a nice time promoting your father’s career. So now that your father is saying he doesn’t think it’s fair to involve his family in politics, he needs to take responsibility for involving you in the first place. Life is like that sometimes. I believe that you can’t have things both ways – all the spoils of privilege and power with none of the repercussions.

At the end of the day, this hasn’t really been about you, but it has affected you. You’ve been caught in your father’s web of perceived hypocrisy and you’re a victim of your father’s terrible decisions just as the rest of Australia is. When your father leads a government who asks that everyone does the heavy lifting, you must understand that it’s really important that the members of that government do the heavy lifting too. And when this quite clearly hasn’t happened in the case of your education expense, it’s only fair that we all get a chance to know whether our Prime Minister is willing to do what he’s asking all of us to do too.

Yours sincerely

Victoria Rollison

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More great articles by Victoria Rollison:

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What does Kenny’s ABC defamation case mean?

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What Abbott Taught Us

GP Co-Payment: Policy Analysis

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A wolf in sheep’s clothing

May 17, 2014
Written by: Dr Victoria Fielding
99 Replies

As the dust settles from Tuesday night’s wrecking ball budget, I have been thinking about how this happened. How is it possible that Australia was conned into voting for Abbott and his fellow Liberal and National psychopaths? There’s a fairly obvious answer to this, and two clear culprits. First of all, Abbott and his LNP colleagues lied to the electorate about what their real plans for Australia were. And second, the mainstream media let the people of Australia down by refusing to pre-warn them about Abbott’s real plans.

Abbott knows as well as I do that the Liberals would never win an election if they were truthful with voters. So they lied. Lying has become natural to them, because without lies they have no chance of power. But let’s make something very clear right now. Anyone who didn’t see this budget coming, wasn’t looking. When I say they weren’t looking, I mean they were either too uninformed to understand who Abbott really was, they were looking right at Abbott and wouldn’t admit to what they were really seeing, or they were looking elsewhere and ignoring what was right in front of them. And when I say anyone, I mean all Australian voters. But much of the responsibility for keeping these voters informed falls on the journalists who were responsible for this important democratic function. And there’s absolutely no doubt that Australian journalists did this important job atrociously.

When you take into account that the mainstream political press in this country have been obsessing for the last six years over the Labor Party, it’s quite easy to see why journalists either wilfully refused to scrutinise Abbott, or why they were wearing their Labor-bashing blinkers and whacking so hard with their Labor-bashing sticks, they had little energy for any Abbott coverage. And by coverage, I don’t mean following Abbott’s safety-vest-banana-stacking-three-word-slogan circus blindly around the country. I mean truthful, objective analysis. Not a big ask, but apparently too big an ask for Australian journalists. If even half the time that journalists spent covering Labor leadership tensions over the last six years were instead devoted to even a cursory analysis of Abbott’s values and ideology, the lies from the Abbott government would have been obvious well before it was too late for the voting public to defend themselves from the sucker-punch budget we’ve just had rammed down our throats by Foghorn Leghorn Hockey.

Another favourite topic that mainstream journalists obsessed over was Labor’s narrative. Did Labor have one or not? If they did have one, was it the right one? If it was the right one, why were Rudd and Gillard having such trouble communicating their narrative? And on, and on, and on, and on this analysis went. But, I have the same question as some of the commenters on Andrew Elder’s post about the Guardian’s Katharine Murphy’s failure to properly inform her readers about Abbott. Why do journalists never write about Liberal narrative?

I’ve got a really simple explanation for this; it’s because the Liberal narrative is a wolf dressed up as a lamb, in an entirely unconvincing costume that leaves the wolf looking exactly like a wolf to anyone who has their eyes open and is looking straight at the wolf. Yet, when this wolf tells people it’s a lamb, journalists tell everyone the wolf is a lamb. And voters vote for this lamb, and even think this lamb is a better than the Labor alternative. But as we all found for ourselves on Tuesday night, the wolf is a wolf! And all the journalists are now acting surprised, as if they had never seen this wolf before. But I would suggest that either these journalists are lying or stupid. And either way their inability to expose the wolf makes them unqualified to be journalists.

The new trick for many of these journalists, having discovered that Australians have seen the wolf for themselves, and are now rightly quite afraid that this wolf is running the country, is to say ‘Labor is a wolf too. You can’t trust any of them. They’re all as bad as each other’. You get this same attitude from some lefties who, for reasons only apparent to themselves, have decided to perpetuate this myth of Labor and Liberal being just as bad as each other. This myth works like a charm for the Liberals because it allows them to get away with being a wolf when they need to be. I often wonder if these lefties are aware of the damage they’re doing to their own cause. And I ask them to think about why, if Labor and Liberal are apparently just the same as each other, the Abbott budget has ripped the heart out of Labor’s Australia, and left it bleeding and unable to breathe in the gutter on the side of the road? It doesn’t look like they’re just the same at all now does it?

So back to this wolf. Since Australian journalists are unwilling to discuss the Liberal narrative, and are obviously incapable of understanding Labor’s narrative, which is right in front of their eyes in the same way as the wolf in sheep’s clothing is, I thought it might be helpful to explain the values of both parties really clearly, here in digital ink for them to find whenever they need them to accompany a discussion of complex policy debates and budget analysis (so in other words, never).

Labor’s values

We are all in this together. Where this means a community where everyone works towards the health and security of the whole community. The collective wealth of the economy serves this community. Not the other way around.

Liberal’s values

We are all in this together. Where this means a free-market economy where a person’s wealth determines their status, and in turn their status determines their privilege and their privilege determines their access to health and security. If someone can’t access health and security, this is their own fault and it’s not the free-market economy’s role to help them. So in fact, we’re not all in anything together. We’re all on our own.

These values can be found in the true narratives of both parties, intertwined in every policy they produce, and every statement they make. To find them, you don’t have to look very hard. In fact, you don’t have to look for them at all. All you have to do is open your eyes. Australian voters have had our eyes opened for us. But I just hope that those who feel most let down, the ones who are suffering in silence now because they were the dopes who voted for Abbott, I hope they save some of their resentment for the mainstream media for so blatantly letting them down by feeding them to the wolves.

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At What Cost?

May 12, 2014
Written by: Dr Victoria Fielding
59 Replies

As we await the release of tomorrow’s Federal Budget, it would appear in Abbott-land, not all promises are born equal. The promise to return the budget to surplus is clearly far more important to Abbott than promises not to cut welfare, health and education funding. Another priority promise appears to be the promise to ‘stop. the. boats’, which Abbott uses as an excuse to override any semblance of decency and humanity in the way that our country treats the most desperate members of our community.

But my question is, how much do Abbott voters value these promises to return the budget to surplus and to stop the boats? Do they value them as much as Abbott clearly does? Or are the people who supported Abbott in 2013 starting to ask a question that should keep Abbott and his team awake at night – are the end goals of a surplus and the end of the flow of boats really worth all this cost?

Like the ideological zealot that he is, Abbott is quite clearly more than happy to swing his wrecking ball at anything that even remotely resembles Labor Party policy, and will continue to do this for the term of his government because he can. This is an important point. Abbott is not cutting and burning spending because he really wants to keep his promise to return the budget to surplus.

Because clearly there was no ‘budget emergency’, and clearly deep cuts to an economy that is already nervously coming out of the global financial crisis is a hugely detrimental strategy. These cuts have nothing to do with Abbott keeping a promise, because apart from anything else, Abbott has proven time and time again that he doesn’t give a crap about keeping promises. Abbott wants a small government, not because it is good for the economy, not because it is good for the community, and not because it is the responsible adult thing to do. He wants small government because it suits his free-marketeer ideology.

I’m guessing the vast majority of Abbott voters don’t understand what ideology even means, let alone how an ideology such as Abbott’s guides every decision the man makes. However, I’m wondering, while Abbott bandies around his ‘surplus at all costs’ justification for his broken promises and his wide ranging and anti-community, anti-poor-people, pro-wealth-inequality policies, if people who voted for him are a little peeved that he’s doing all this for them. Because I don’t think when they voted for Abbott, and they heard him say he’d deliver a surplus, they were really giving him permission to do everything he is doing now.

Did Abbott voters know that the surplus promise came with a list of asterisks that completely undermine the social contract between government and voters? Did they know they’d be paying for GP visits? Did they understand that once the mining tax was gone, they would have to pay for the loss in revenue themselves somehow? Are they happy about paying more for petrol, after Abbott told them it was OK to protest against the Carbon Price? Are they starting to wonder who this lunatic is who they have put in charge? Are they starting to realise that their support for Abbott is being used to justify him doing terrible, horrible, cruel, ideologically-driven, fiscally irresponsible things to the country which is going to detrimentally influence their own lives, and the lives of all their family and friends? Are they feeling used? I think they might be.

Clearly most Abbott voters don’t give much thought to the lives of asylum seekers and the reasons why people put their families on boats. Nor do they care what happens to these people if they don’t get on a boat.

But I wonder if the ‘stop the boats’ slogan that sounded so promising to these people during the election campaign, is now making them feel a bit nervous. Did voters understand when they gave Abbott their vote that he would be using it to destroy Australia’s relationship with Indonesia? Are they starting to understand that there was never a simple way to deal with asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat and anyone who said there was, was lying? And even if they don’t care about asylum seekers, what do they think about asylum seekers being murdered inside an Australian detention centre? Are they proud to know that they had a part to play in the violence at Manus Island? Do they cringe even just a little bit at the thought that they gave Scott Morrison control of this situation, and he’s clearly not fit to be in charge of people’s lives?

I very much doubt any Abbott voter would ever admit to a feeling of unease about the surplus situation, or what is happening to asylum seekers, but Abbott needs to understand that even if these voters can’t bring themselves to form the words, or even the thought that they might have done the wrong thing by voting Liberal or National, it will influence their behaviour in the future. Judging by the latest polls voters may be learning not to make the same mistake twice.

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