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Greg Hunt To Become Health Minister And Other Good Jokes!

Of course, Greg Hunt has to be our Health Minister. After all, he’s the “best minister in the world” according to some group somewhere. And the idea that Arthur “What Was I Doing Again” Sinodinos could take on such an important portfolio is just ludicrous. Why he might easily lose track of where the all the money went.

Not that losing track of things is that big a problem for the current government. According to an audit report into our detention centres, “$1.1 billion was approved by DIBP officers who did not have the required authorisation and for the remaining $1.1 billion there was no departmental record of who authorised the payments.” It further found that there was no assessment of whether we were getting value for money. And what was Peter Dutton’s response? Well, of course, it was Labor’s fault because they changed Howard’s policies and that was the reason for all these boat arrivals.

But enough bad jokes. Let’s move on to some good ones. Like the one about the boy who shot both parents and pleaded for a lighter sentence on the grounds that he was an orphan.

I think the point of that joke is that some people never take responsibility for their own actions even when they’re not the Minister for Immigration.

Which sort of leads me in a roundabout way back to the distraction of Susssan Ley (I added an extra “s” because clearly her decision to add an extra one in order to have a more exciting life was a mistake and if I simply took it away, you’d think I didn’t know how to spell her namme) and to the whole Centrelink debacle. In a strange coincidence, I was read a book called “Messy” by Tim Harford and I came across a section where he wrote about Google’s 96% accuracy with the Street View. I quote him verbatim:

“Such a high error rate is actually a source of comfort, because it means the method won’t be relied on. Companies such as UPS or Fedex would never accept as many as one in twenty-five of their parcels going to the wrong address; it would be a reputational disaster.”

But, one in five errors, according to our Aussie government is the system going according to plan. And the most worrying thing about that is that I’m afraid that it’s the truth.

However, all’s well, because a confluence of things gave me the solution to the unemployment problem. Shortly after reading a suggestion that instead of targetting the poor, the government should be sending letters of demands to all those companies avoiding tax, I noticed a report in the media which told me that the eight richest men owned as much as the bottom half the world combined. And I thought, there’s the thing. They don’t want to upset people who are wealthy. They dont’ call them leaners. Even if you’ve got a million or so in investments, nobody complains if you spend you’re whole day just checking the stock prices and sipping boutique beers while wondering how to while away the hours.

And then it hit me. We need to start making our unemployed millionaires. Ok, we can’t do it overnight, but if instead of saying it’s all your own fault for the fact that sometime in the last twenty-five years some head of some company decided that he’d export your job to some third world country or that it be better off to be done by a machine and, in return, he got the sort of pay increase which means that he’s in the sort of tax bracket where he feels entitled to complain about all his taxes going to pay to keep those dole bludgers in food and clothing, we need to make them all men and women of means.

Of course, we could have done it simply by considering that the mineral wealth of Australia belonged to all of us and pretending that everyone was a shareholder, instead of receiving “welfare” we could have all received a dividend cheque once a fortnight, but it’s probably a bit late for that. So I guess the only solution is to find a few billionaires and fine them for something. I mean there must be some law that they’ve broken. Or maybe we could simply send them a letter asking them to prove that they didn’t owe the government half their wealth. Failure to do so would lead to a confiscation of several billion. And let’s be real, does it really make any difference whether you’ve got five billion or ten billion?

Now let’s say that we’ve collected five billion in the first year. If we gave a million to each of the longest term unemployed, there’s five thousand instant millionaires. What a boost to jobs and growth that would be, eh?

The only problem is how to pick which of the unemployed get the million. I guess we could encourage them all to look harder for jobs by having random job applications chosen as the lucky winners. Ok, the chances might be small but then so’s their chance of getting a job in today’s market.

All right, I know it’ll upset some of you who’ll think it unfair that the unemployed are rewarded and not working people, but don’t worry. The longer that this mob stays in government the more chance you’ll have of becoming one of them yourself.

 

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27 comments

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  1. John Lord

    After Abbott I rank him as the Coalitions biggest liar.

  2. David1

    What a disgraceful appointment by a disgraceful PM. he continues to reward the low life on his front bench and this latest brain fart will lead to more trouble for him and his Government and despair for middle and low income Australians.
    Hunt has proved beyond doubt by his actions in previous Ministries he has no idea what the needs of those less fortunate than he are. To put him in charge of the nations health will see a further decline in the existence standards of particularly our Seniors, sick and disabled. Whatever relief they felt with the departure of Ley, will shatter their future health prospects even more.
    What have we done to deserve such punishment? it goes on and on.

  3. helvityni

    I was surprised to see what ABC had to say about Hunt, and especially after Mal had praised him profusely:

    “Last year, he (Hunt) was awarded the inaugural Best Minister in the World award at the World Government Summit hosted by the United Arab Emirates.

    The four-day trip for the summit cost taxpayers more than $32,300.

    Mr Hunt also made international headlines in 2014 after telling the BBC he used Wikipedia to research climate change.”

  4. lawrencewinder

    I realise the talent pool in that “broad church” the liarbril swamp is pretty shallow but I’m beginning to understand their gene pool seems to be awfully arid, too.

  5. Rossleigh

    Oh, I just went down to the coffee shop and – taking the Murdoch paper so that more susceptible minds were not corrupted by it – I noticed that they predicted Hunt on page 2 so I wasn’t first.
    Damn, I wonder who leaked it to them!
    It also told us that as Industry Minister for the past year he’d been negotiating to keep Ford, Holden and Alcoa in Victoria.
    There was an article yesterday on about page 3949, saying how the Alcoa deal wasn’t going well until Victorian Labor Premier, Dan Andrews, got invovled. I suspect if they’d pulled out, we’d have had a front page headline: Dan Destroys Portland!

  6. jimhaz

    [But enough bad jokes. Let’s move on to some good ones. Like the one about the boy who shot both parents and pleaded for a lighter sentence on the grounds that he was an orphan]

    This bit lead me to the conclusion that pollies don’t think the unemployed need more than say a ½ of the base non poverty level income as their stomachs have shrunk already from not being able to afford food. Also, they don’t money for any decent clothes or haircuts as everything is now online.

    PS. The underlying logic in your humour is consistently extremely sound and hard to fault – even where they conflict with my attitudes as they do in some areas. The SMH or Guardian should be publishing these.

  7. Oscar

    My My Old Dorian Grey Hunt does get around.He lost his soul on the environment now health.

  8. babyjewels10

    Sadly, it has been announced, Greg Hunt to be the new Health Minister. He will continue Sussan Ley’s work, dismantling Medicare. He’ll be good at it, he destroys everything that’s good and will lie to your face about it… like most of the LNP.

  9. Matters Not

    He’s good at geographical locations as well. Wiki is always close at hand.

  10. Michael Taylor

    Can only agree that his number one instruction will be to dismantle Medicare. He will act swiftly.

  11. kerri

    Hunt is the Federal member for the electorate where our holiday house is, so naturally we don’t get to vote against him but we still get all the propaganda (junk) in the mailbox!
    I said to hubby years ago before Hunt was promoted to his level of incompetance,
    “Who is this git? All he ever seems to do is have his photo taken with various members of the community?
    Here’ Hunt with some lawn bowlers. Here’s Hunt on the pier with some fisherman. Here’s Hunt at the shops with some shoppers.”
    What a useless piece of tripe he is! Then I read The Good Weekend article and it scared the crap out of me!
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/the-weather-vane-20131124-2y4n8.html

  12. 245179

    The farce of this govt shows no bounds, total denial is their mantra. Hunt………..someone taking the piss here, or what.

    Canberra is awash with pathetics, intellectually limited self serving oxymorons. Just how low do we go…….

  13. Jaquix

    Hunts main talent seems to me to be to spout the Coalition’s line on anything, whether it be the environment, climate change, and now health for goodness sake. I suppose this ability is the charm he has for Abbott and Turnbull. Basically he is just rubbish.

  14. Ill fares the land

    I imagine that Ley did her numerology report and found that by adding the extra “s” she would instantly gain the mental agility and ethical capacity to believe that all of her Gold Coast travel would be on “taxpayer business”. Did the taxpayer fund her visit to a numerologist (on the Gold Coast of course, so perhaps she just detoured between a quick dalliance with her partner and a spurious press announcement.

    Does Hunt now have to add an extra “g” to Greg? Numerologists everywhere must be excited by this prospect and are waiting for his call.

    Since Turnbull’s position is so weak, presumably he had to think long and hard and appoint someone who would be a rabid supporter. In addition, Hunt has shown a great talent for being able to stare into the camera and lie (he did it routinely on climate change, the Great Barrier Reef, the Adani mine – the list is endless). He didn’t lie credibly of course, but in politics, the carefully structured lie has more chance of being accepted after being repeated a sufficient number of times..

  15. Möbius Ecko

    Hunt in photo op with health officials and sundries, and he suddenly knows all about the portfolio because he’s been in close contact with health people for a long time.

    Listen to his presser (with barf bag at the ready) and get a feel for just how incompetent this man is. As with his other portfolios, so many in such a short time, he talks big, in this case the best health system in the world, but apart from photo and video ops will do the opposite. He’ll destroy health whilst he saying he’s making it the best, just as he destroyed the Reef whilst saying he was saving it.

    I have one thing for Hunt. We had the best health system in the world until the Libs in the form of Howard got into power. It’s gone downhill on every Lib government since and yours won’t be any different.

  16. Max Gross

    Nope, nope, nope. Increasingly we are being left with just one recourse: Guillotine Day!

  17. Henry Rodrigues

    Max Gross…………… Fear not, but rejoice, this government’s days are numbered. I was at a party over the weekend, and to a person, right , left, and otherwise, the jury was in,the verdict was unanimous, Off with their heads.

  18. silkworm

    Ghunt’s main job will be to oversee money from the pharma industry flowing into Liberal Party coffers.

  19. jim

    “Of course, we could have done it simply by considering that the mineral wealth of Australia belonged to all of us and pretending that everyone was a shareholder, instead of receiving “welfare” we could have all received a dividend cheque once a fortnight, but it’s probably a bit late for that”.
    Not on ya nelly,those things in the Liberal party will have the unemployed filling in the left over gigantic mining holes some as big as ten Sydney harbors with a pick and shovel to “enhance” their jobs skills/ training and even let them do it for free. you bet your raw onions.

  20. ace Jones

    Greg Hunt’s first comments were that his wife and Mother have been Nurses, and Greg’s dear father died in a hospital. This seemed to be his only given relationship with Public Health .. now, these are the qualifications to become Federal Health Minister ! in a terminally ill Government.

  21. Jennifer Meyer-Smith

    Greg Hunt as Health Minister is the same as Dracula in charge of the blood bank. He is the worst choice possible for the Health needs of Australians and our Medicare system.

    If we cannot go so far as Guillotine Day, I want us to put Hunt on notice that if he undermines Medicare and our health resources any more than Ley already has, he will be hit with the legal consequences of his official misconduct.

  22. helvityni

    Ill fares the land, I do know a bloke who was baptized Greg but later on for some mysterious reason added yet another g to his name. I had a feeling it was to appear more masculine, somehow a bit stronger. Oh dear, one little extra ‘g’ will not MAKE you stronger…he was a Liberal voter…say no more.

  23. paulwalter

    Fortunately, there is just enough bitterness in the post to make it truly welcome. Thank you Ross Leigh, for saying what I am too angry to say myself.

    Clearly, Abbott is in the midst of a deep destabilisation of Turnbull, if comments in the newspapers about about Abbott wanting a cabinet ministry like Health are true. You could also wonder if the Centrelink debacle is a runaway dreamed up and instigated by Abbott supporters to make Turnbull look bad, with Leys sins leaked simultaneously…nicely wedged.

    GHunt is his throw of the dice to block Abbott, but if GHunt is caught out, that only leaves the family cat.

    Turnbull is dead in the water, like Gillard and like Obama with the Tea Party right during much of his presidency.

    If he wanted to do something meaningful to salvage his reputation he world resign and go to the back bench with some of the more loyal o of his supporters (I know, it fails because the concept to the LNP members), leaving Abbott to fail a second time and forced to call an early election.

  24. 245179

    abbott……..he wishes………. morrison and his smug offsider are ready to pounce, both will be salivating watching turnip floundering.

  25. MichaelW

    Just finished reading and posting on the right wing media blogs. Came here for some sanity. Lord help us…
    The comments I have read in the Mudrake press from right wing nutters are unbelievable. And these so called conservative Christians like our present government think they are…. actually I’m lost for words…. I can’t believe these nutters are allowed to breath oxygen, allowed to vote, maybe there should be IQ tests before anybody is allowed to cast a vote.

    I think our God loving conservatives are reading and abiding by the Old Testament, which makes the Quran look like a comic book.

  26. Jennifer Meyer-Smith

    Sadly MichaelW,

    I am in furious agreement.

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