Day to Day Politics: When hypocrisy runs free in conservative veins.
Day to Day Politics: When hypocrisy runs free in conservative veins.
Wednesday 27 April 2016 – 68
1 Hypocrisy can mean a pretence of having a virtuous character, moral or religious beliefs or principles, etc., that one does not really possess. A pretence of having some desirable or publicly approved attitude. Or a situation where someone pretends to believe in something they really don’t, or the opposite of what they do or say at another time.
So when Malcolm Turnbull said that Negative Gearing was “tax avoidance” it could in, the light of his support for it now, be seen as gross hypocrisy. Not long back he actually co-wrote a paper that suggested that negative gearing skewed “national investment away from wealth creating pursuits, towards housing”.
When he did an about turn on policies that for some time he had assured the people he believed in so that he could attain the leadership, could we be blamed for saying “bloody hypocrite”?
When Scott Morrison repeatedly said of Negative Gearing that there were “excesses in the system” and decides to do nothing about them, it would be reasonable to conclude that he is a hypocrite.
When in his maiden speech Morrison alludes to fine Christian platitudes of compassion and love for his fellow humans and then behaves entirely differently, again I suggest that he is being hypocritical:
From my faith I derive the values of loving-kindness, justice and righteousness; to act with compassion and kindness, acknowledging our common humanity and to consider the welfare of others; to fight for a fair go for everyone to fulfil their human potential and to remove whatever unjust obstacles stand in their way, including diminishing their personal responsibility for their own wellbeing; and to do what is right, to respect the rule of law, the sanctity of human life and the moral integrity of marriage and the family. We must recognise an unchanging and absolute standard of what is good and what is evil. Desmond Tutu put it this way: … we expect Christians … to be those who stand up for the truth, to stand up for justice, to stand on the side of the poor and the hungry, the homeless and the naked, and when that happens, then Christians will be trustworthy believable witnesses. These are my principles. My vision for Australia is for a nation that is strong, prosperous and generous: strong in our values and our freedoms, strong in our family and community life, strong in our sense of nationhood and in the institutions that protect and preserve our democracy; prosperous in our enterprise and the careful stewardship of our opportunities, our natural environment and our resources; and, above all, generous in spirit, to share our good fortune with others, both at home and overseas, out of compassion and a desire for justice.
Yes indeed, bloody hypocrites both of them.
When Sophie Mirabella talks of a $10 million grant to a hospital on condition that she wins, I shout “hypocrisy”.
When Barnaby Joyce tells Tony Windsor he had funding for Armidale Hospital until he decided not to contest the seat I am enraged at the hypocrisy of it.
Liberal Member for Bennalong John Alexander who headed the Housing Affordability enquiry said:
Some have said we are on track to becoming a kingdom where the Lords own all the land and the biggest Lord will be King and the enslaved serf tenant is paying rent to the Lord to become wealthier.
It might sound a bit dramatic but it’s not far from the truth.
Greg Jericho writing for the Guardian:
Negative gearing: a legal tax rort for rich investors that reduces housing affordability.
Peter Van Oslen for The Australian says that six Coalition members, including the PM own 99 investment properties between them.
If you look at the electorates that benefit most from, the ones who are getting the largest deductions from Negative Gearing. Of the top ten for net rental loss all 10 were Liberal electorates.
Any wonder they want to keep Negative Gearing.
An ABC Fact check. Fact check: Did abolishing negative gearing push up rents?
- The claim: Treasurer Joe Hockey says abolishing negative gearing could push up rents, because that’s what happened in the 1980s.
- The verdict: During the period negative gearing was abolished rents notably increased only in Sydney and Perth. Other factors, including high interest rates and the share market boom, were also contributors to rent increases at the time.
Mr Hockey’s claim doesn’t stack up.
2 A wasted term of office.
The Tax Base
The following is an extract from an article by Laura Tingle in The Australian Financial Review in 2013:
A perhaps unintended message from the statement, however, must dog both sides of politics: it is simply not feasible for governments of either persuasion to keep patching over the shortfalls of the existing volatile and inadequate tax base.
3 An observation.
“People need to wake up to the fact that government affects every part of their life (other than what they do in bed) and should be more interested. But there is a political malaise in this country that is deep-seated. The politically naive abound in the community and the conservatives feed them all the bullshit they can”.
4 In 2015, 500 workers who benefited from Gillard’s edict that non-faith-based workers be allowed in our schools will be replaced by chaplains sourced predominantly from big Christian organizations. This in a secular public school system is fundamentally wrong be you religious or not. Principals had to sack social workers who they had high praise for. In 2016 it seems that the Evangelical Christians are gaining most from the National School Chaplaincy scheme, earning millions of dollars.
Generate Ministries has won $4 million to provide chaplains to 202 of the 438 NSW schools participating in the scheme in 2016.
The Hillsong-linked Your Dream will earn $1.4 million for 70 schools (up from 50 last year), while Macquarie Life Church will provide chaplains in 20 regional schools.
We are supposed to have a secular Public School System. Don’t you believe it!
My thought for the day.
“Commitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence, and scientific methods of inquiry, rather than faith and mysticism, is the best way of providing solutions to human problems“.
15 comments
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regalcrime
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Möbius Ecko
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Adrianne Haddow
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townsvilleblog
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keerti
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Max Gross
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Vince O'Grady
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Vince O'Grady
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Peter F
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Backyard Bob
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Backyard Bob
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Möbius Ecko
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Backyard Bob
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Backyard Bob
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diannaart
Return to home pageThe ultimate hypocrisy is that we are still waiting for an election to make changes. How many australians will have their tongue firmly planted in their cheek on the day we get the ‘privilege’ of ticking a few boxes at our own cost?
Hypocrisy. Turnbull questioned on the amount of government advertising currently being run. “Labor does it as well”.
Not Howard did it to the tune of billions and Labor substantially cut back on that excess, but it’s OK for him to spend way more than Labor because “Labor does it as well”.
No mention of the criticism Labor got from Abbott in opposition for doing it though. Hypocrisy.
I loathe the self deception of the likes of Morrison and his ‘christian’ values speech. Hillsong members have turned their backs on the values attributed to Christ. ‘Money lenders in the temple’, they run the temple for a profit and call it a virtue.
Morrison bleating re acknowledging our common humanity (as long as you aren’t Muslim or an asylum seeker or an indigenous Australian or unemployed or a pensioner), removing unjust obstacles that stand in the way of personal responsibility for their own wellbeing ( only if you’re rich and can afford financial advisers who can help you hide your money from the Taxation office, or have a cashed up family who can help you attain that expensive uni degree).
But the LNP god’s warriors never let the truth get in the way of their stacking legislation in their own favour. And we pay these people a handsome salary, and even more handsome entitlements, to screw us over.
Hypocrisy is too bland a term for their rhetoric.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-17/almost-600-companies-did-not-pay-tax-in-2013-14/7036324 How is this for hypocrisy, this has been public knowledge for 6 months and yet the LNP refuses to close loop holes or re-legislate adjustments to or addition of new policy yet they say they don’t have the money for better services like health & education, bloody right they don’t nor do they want it. If it comes at the expense of corporate Australia paying their “fair share” of taxation to the nation who hands them their huge income. Surely a 20% floor should be inserted into the corporate taxation policy so the minimum they can pay is 20%. They are supposed to pay 30% but their deductions take them way down, all I’m saying is that the bottom rate should be 20% the revenue to government would increase immensely and their would be no excuse for unfulfilling their obligation to every Australian in at least those two fields.
“People need to wake up to the fact that government affects every part of their life (other than what they do in bed) and should be more interested. But there is a political malaise in this country that is deep-seated. The politically naive abound in the community and the conservatives feed them all the bullshit they can”… And therein lies the fundamental issue in australia today, except that I’d want to substitute “willfully and woefully ignorant” in place of “politically naive.” It is still likely that australians will get the government they deserve and if they do it may take another election or two before they begin to wake up. By then it will be too late and social studies lessons in schools will include lessons in hat doffing!
Damn! I vomited AGAIN! Sorry but every time I read that extract from Morrison’s maiden speech to parliament an unavoidable gag reflex kicks in…
Thanks John,
Excellent as usual. I was wondering where Morrison plagerised the majority of his speech from. He doesn’t seem to me capable of such lofty thoughts. However he has one trait which all the Liberals seem to have and that is telling Lies. Bloody big ones.
Apropos to my last comment. This looks like a good candidate. I put the whole extract into the google search engine and up came this on the third page of results.
https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=53&ved=0ahUKEwizrPaYyK3MAhXl46YKHc96BFU4MhAWCCQwAg&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsahome.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F07%2F1stPriorities.pdf&usg=AFQjCNHJ-6_dK01nn4lKDl5avCX7EN-zjQ&cad=rja
Labor cuts tax savings to the rich and it is labelled “tax hikes” which will cost everybody : Coalition spends $50B on weapons of war, and it appears that this will not cost taxpayers anything at all. Apparently it is well within our capacity to pay for it. (As, no doubt , it will be).
IF they really believe their own stories, we are in for a very difficult time.
Vince,
I’m not sure Morrison’s words in that speech meet the standard for “lofty”; for me they barely exceed the level of platitude and cliche. But then that may actually be a criterion for maiden parliamentary speeches.
For me this story is deserving of attention:
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/dole-bludgers-used-medical-loophole-to-avoid-getting-work/news-story/d07701ed1839bbad00f8ced27d7dcc7a
It was circulated through the News Corp press in various forms a day or so ago. The Courier Mail’s hard-copy version is probably the most disgusting of them all, but they’re all pretty disgusting. This “Simon Benson” guy seems to have it in for welfare recipients.
I hope my brother didn’t read the story as he buys the CM every day and is currently on a medical certificate for depression and anxiety, both of which are desperately and despairingly real.
These people just sicken me. I just bet Benson would sing a different tune if he was to be confronted about this sort of tabloid shit face to face in a pub.
Backyard Bob the thing you won’t see from these tabloids is the graph doing the rounds of social media showing the cost to the government of rorts based on various sectors.
Lower to middle class welfare rorts are at the bottom with a column that barely shows, but rorts by business and the well off receiving benefits in one form or another are skyscrapers in comparison.
ME,
That’s good to know, but such stories also contain the lie about what welfare costs us and the fiscal dangers of such:
CM – “With the federal Budget under threat from being wiped out by a $190 billion welfare bill by 2020, Mr Porter has ordered an immediate crackdown – etc etc etc”
“Wiped out”, huh? So much for journalism.
Ah, now I see the bigger picture:
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/apr/27/welfare-groups-say-job-seekers-are-being-demonised-in-budget-lead-up
Möbius Ecko
They have been doing this for decades; sometimes it is good – Malcolm Fraser and refugees.
Mostly it is purely self serving – the privatisation of public assets started by Hawke/Keating, taken to extremes by subsequent LNP governments.
Introduction of HECS – now we have degrees which cost beyond the means of the average Aussie.
Negative Gearing – Hawke/Keating again taken to excess by subsequent LNP governments.
There is, no doubt much more, but what I can put forward in a few seconds is damning enough.