Tuesday February 2 2016
1 Today the political year starts in earnest. Parliament resumes. The Honourable members will start hurling abuse at one another. A war or words will erupt about many and varied issues.
The Parliament will place great store on how best it can serve itself and its Honourable members.
Unless it’s been forgotten a report on Honourable member’s expenses will be tabled.
Some Honourable gentlemen lost their jobs during the break. A couple of other Honourable gentlemen are awaiting reports. One is wiping his Brough and the other might find himself in the Sin bin.
Honourable members will spend most of their time working out how to negatively debase their opponents.
They will in fact spend very little time being honourable, telling the truth and serving the people. Every decision the Honourable members make will be based firstly on how best it serves his or her party. Rarely on how it serves the country and the people.
The Honourable members should visit the bathroom often on the first day, look in the mirror and ask. ‘Am I really honourable?’ Then a supplementary question. ‘Why is it only 13% of the population think I am worthy of their trust.’
There, this honourable gentleman has said enough. I don’t judge people. I do however form my own opinion.
An observation.
‘Good democracies can only deliver good government and outcomes if the electorate demands it’.
2 The year begins with, according to Newspoll the Coalition leading Labor 53% to 47%. Of course Turnbull still has a commanding lead over Shorten in the popularity stakes.
3 Whilst the Government says it will run the full term its hard to imagine they will continue just talking about doing things when what is required is some actual doing. Gunna Morisson was at it again today. I mean they said we had a budget crisis. Didnt they. If there is a budget crisis and if as they say there is no revenue crisis it must mean, because of the crisis there will have to be enormous cuts.
What a crisis.
4 You would think the people who believe that love has no gender would be happy with the progress they have made. I mean up until 1949 if you dared to love someone of the same-sex and exhibited your love, then the death penalty applied. Well in Victoria at least. Of course in Tasmania until 1997 being gay was illegal and if you practiced being what you naturally were you could be put in the dungeon for 21 years. So demanding that in some way you are an equal in human terms, in 2016 is a bit of a stretch.
5 The Newspoll also indicated that 54% oppose raising the GST from 10% to 15% as part of a package including tax cuts for all income earners and compensation for low-income earners and welfare recipients. It showed 37% backed a GST increase while 9% were uncommitted.
Its got me tossed how you can do all that and fix health and education at the same time. And to ask those who pay the most GST, middle and low-income earners, to fund tax cuts for higher wage earners and businesses, some who don’t pay any tax anyway, is beyond me.
As a cohort the better off pay less GST tax than any other group. The government takes from the poor and middle class to help them pay for their kids private school education. They can negatively gear as many houses as they want. There are numerous tax concessions. And they, if they so choose, get a 15% tax discount if they put their money into super. Then there are Capital Gains offsets.
Negative gearing is costing the Federal Government about $3.7 billion a year in lost revenue, while the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount wipes off $4 billion.
In two years’ time the tax breaks on Superannuation will cost as much as the pension $50 billion a year.
And of course many of them with family businesses pay no tax at all.
Now we want to give them tax cuts. Bloody Tea Party politics if you ask me.
6 Only in America.
How sickening it was to see Republican Presidential hopeful Ted Cruz whipping up the support of the far right Evangelical Christian movement. Ronald Reagan has a lot to answer for in opening the religious door to American politics.
An observation
‘Religion in many ways is akin to Politics in so much as it believes that telling the truth isn’t necessarily in its best interests’.
7 The Royal Commission into Unions issued a separate volume of secret findings. Repeat secret. Not so secret that they can’t be shown to individual Senators that might help you get legislation passed that will stymie Union activity. For anyone else interested I have to inform you they are a secret.
My thought for the day.
‘The ability of thinking human beings to blindly embrace what they are being told without referring to evaluation and the consideration of scientific fact, truth and reason, never ceases to amaze me. It is tantamount to the rejection of rational explanation’.
