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Hockey’s lazy, lying helpers

It disturbs me that this email is hitting the in-box. Disturbing in that there appear to be a high number of Australians who are satisfied with the cruelty this government is dishing out to the nation’s underprivileged.

The email:

Subject: Written by a 21 year old female… Make her PM

“The problems we face today are there because the people who work for a living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living”.

This was written by a 21 yr old female who gets it. It’s her future she’s worried about and this is how she feels about the social welfare system that she’s being forced to live in! These solutions are just common sense in her opinion.

Put me in charge…

Put me in charge of Centrelink payments. I’d get rid of cash payments and provide vouchers for 50kg bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese, basic sanitary items and all the powdered milk you can use. If you want steak, burgers, takeaway and junk food, then get a job.

Put me in charge of Medicare. The first thing I’d do is to get women to have birth control implants. Then, we’ll test recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine. If you want to reproduce, use drugs, drink alcohol or smoke, then get a job.

Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in military barracks? You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair. Your “home” will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place.

Put me in charge of compulsory job search. You will either search for employment each week no matter what the job or you will report for community work. This may be clearing the roadways and open spaces of rubbish, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your dooff dooff stereo and speakers and put that money toward the “common good”.

Before you write that I’ve violated someone’s rights, realise that all of the above is voluntary. If you want our hard earned cash and housing assistance, accept our rules. Before you say that this would be “demeaning” and ruin someone’s “self-esteem,” consider that it wasn’t that long ago that taking someone else’s money for doing absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self-esteem.

If we are expected to pay for other people’s mistakes we should at least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system rewards those for continuing to make bad choices.

AND While you are on Centrelink income you no longer have the right to VOTE! For you to vote would be a conflict of interest… If you want to vote, then get a job.

Now, if you have the guts – PASS IT ON.

You may wonder why I’m giving publicity to this disgraceful email when the best option would have been to send it straight to the trash bin. Well, there’s a message in it. Not to the recipient, but to those low-life individuals who have it in their small minds that it should be, according to their wish, passed on. Instead, you can pass it back. I’m hoping that if you too receive the email you might have the urge to let the sender know about this:

Has anyone else seen this ??? It was sent to me today by an old friend. I call it “PUT ME IN CHARGE” and its message can be summarized by the final quote:

“The problems we face today are there because the people who work for a living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living.”

For me, this message beautifully addresses the ‘entitlement attitude’ that seems so common today amongst the electorate and it does so in a very interesting and forthright manner – somewhat blunt, maybe, but still an appropriate message just the same.

This was written by a British 21 yr old female who “gets it”.

Yes, a British girl. Note too the date: July 2012.

How she ended up being British I will never know. She used to be American. Well she was in 2011.

And how about “The problems we face today… “? Well they certainly weren’t written by a 21 year old girl from America, Britain, Australia or wherever the right-wingers wish to dig one up from. They can be credited to a fellow called Dan Cofall and I can assure you he definitely wasn’t referring to those damn Aussie welfare bludgers when he penned it.

The email itself isn’t as important as the knowledge that there are people in Australia who not only hold this opinion, but actually want to believe it. And if ‘believing’ it means they have to resort to perpetuating what is clearly a fabricated piece, then either they’ve bought the government’s line that the age of entitlement is over, or they have an inherently morbid attitude towards disadvantaged Australians that I am unable to comprehend.

And they resort to lies to promote it.

Let’s expose them.

More articles by Michael Taylor:

This government is now officially obscene

Can ‘The Australian’ stoop any lower?

Just a quick question; has the line been crossed?

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65 comments

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  1. doug

    Put me in charge and companies will pay their taxes, put me in charge and tax cheats will go to jail, anyone who is earning more than the average and paying less tax than the average will be investigated.

    Taxes will be spent on building our nation, employing our people and educating them.

    Voting will be compulsory and fines increased significantly for anyone who fails their civic duties.

    If you can afford drink, drugs, expensive cars, designer clothes or overseas holidays you can afford to pay more taxes.

    Anyone not contributing can choose to leave or face the consequences.

    If you

  2. jane

    I like the cut of your jib, Doug.

    Instead of bashing the underdogs have a crack at wealthy corporations and individuals who rort our taxation system and bludge on the rest of us.

    I find it strange that these sturdy RWNJs never have a go at the wealthy bludgers leeching off the poor and middle class. When they do, I might bother to consider that they deserve anything more than a begging bowl on a street corner.

  3. SunLight

    I sent an email
    And Doug came flying back through with above
    Then I sent another one
    With you are exposed frauds, fools
    Gooses and you numbers up now
    To that effect, and nothing back
    Nothing, I am disappointed
    They didn’t want that read did they 😉

  4. Horatio

    Obviously Lazy Joe bought it, saved him some effort

  5. Andrew Richards

    Since we supposedly pride ourselves on being a “Chirstian country” and since so many of the current Cabinet ‘claim’ to be Catholic, I thought it was worth examining that email in terms of the bible- speacifically Matthew 25: 31-46:

    “The Sheep and the Goats

    31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

    34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

    37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

    40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

    41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

    44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

    45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

    46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” ”

    In short if the Coalition government, its backers and its supporters wish to damn themselves to an eternity in Hell, this type of rhetoric and the policies it engages in apologetics for, are a great way to go about it.

  6. mars08

    Michael… the email is a hoax. It’s JUNK.

    It’s just another of those fekkin, mindless right-wing spam messages that whizz around the internet. It TRULY SHITS ME that we share the same language as those gormless tools who vote Republican against their own interests.

    Every once in a while some lazy Aussie wanker finds on of these crapfests and swap a few words to make them suitable for the local audience. Creativity isn’t a conservative strong point.

    Anyway, though the email is a hoax, it DOES highlight the messed-up thinking of some of our fellow citizens. So many sociopaths…

    Here’s an example of the American version from 2012:
    http://badgerlakeobserver.blogspot.com/2012/01/put-me-in-charge.html

  7. June M Bullivant Oam

    How true is this, the spin in some of the national papers are at the level that they are using this sort of thing, someone is being employed to write letters to the Nationals, you can tell by the tone and content, it has got to the stage that I refuse to buy the paper. I agree with Doug, put me in charge of the people who are rich enough to avoid tax, the family trusts and the people who have made millions by defrauding the system.

  8. Matthew James

    Emails like this reveal just how absurd and tense things have become between the “finance/business council/employer” sector of the population and the base wage/working class/Union sector. The propagandists that came up with that are reacting to a fear that they are losing control as the class war sets in worldwide.

  9. SunLight

    I can tell you anther one bites the dust, and his cohorts
    And still not finished, same man slapped an AVO on his/ my
    get this 19yr old law abiding working part time son, cos that all he can get where we,
    the live out back almost,who declares his pittance weekly wage, to centrelink like he should,
    because he is not a bludger or roster, he wasn’t brought up that way by me
    Now his old man who has dodged tax his whole working life mostly
    now to shut his own son up about what he knows, and has been exposing to others
    He has done the unthinkable, dragged him into a foreign place for him a court house,he has never stepped in one before, because he does not go out of his way to break the law
    He calls our other son ungrateful so does his wife,she sends him texts to that effect all the time
    for their poultry assistance a week, he gives him, ( I give him more and earn way less)
    and tonight his old man told him “to go get a job”
    he has said that to me before, I said “get lost, you try doing what he is doing and working to just survive” he has no idea, never been to uni,
    only sponged his way through at the tax payers expense
    The kid is in 3 rd year bio medical engineering and has to dedicate his time and resources into uni
    or he will fail ,and what a waste of money and years it will have been for him, because his fathers a jerk and and hard right Liarbil
    I am so saddened but not shocked at his old mans actions, but this is what the country has become
    It’s us against them, even fathers and sons, and been like that for awhile, it’s just got a whole lot worse
    Since Tones and co
    Dog help my family…..the kids tell me Sweden is the place to work, live and love life
    Not hate and destruction and demonising ones own flesh and blood….

  10. SunLight

    Sorry for all typos, but it’s been a long night 🙂

  11. Bob Rafto

    Ontario Libertarian Party

    The MISSION of the Party is to enable endless possibilities through recognition of, respect for, and protection of individual liberty.

    Charming, they want to remove the individual liberty of the poor, disadvantaged, the sick and the elderly.

    No they won’t be allowed to vote as they might lose power.

    They’ll set up gulags for all the poor and only to be allowed out if a job is available.

    If you’re poor and female, we’ll do things to your vagina to stop you falling pregnant. (individual liberty?)

    These people are really evil!

  12. Dan Rowden

    This has certainly seen some action on the Net. But it’s generated a few interesting responses:

    Nobody in the military should be allowed to vote cause there is a conflict of interest.

    Nobody that attends church should be allowed to vote cause they might change the Constitution so taxpayer money could constitutionally be given as tithing to their church.

    Nobody in government should be allowed to vote cause there is a conflict of interest.

    Nobody receiving state or federal aid for natural disasters should be allowed to vote.

    Nobody that is receiving Social Security should be allowed to vote.

    Nobody that has received federal college aid should be allowed to vote.

    Nobody that uses the infrastructure paid with federal monies should be allowed to vote.

    I especially like this one:

    “We will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and put that money toward the “common good.” – sounds like Communism to me.

    My reply to her was: WOW you want to control what people who get a couple thousand dollars a year of government money can spend it on. Fine. When do I get to control what companies who get millions of dollars in government subsidies get to spend that money on?

    http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021051618#post1

  13. Dan Rowden

    “[…]the magical thing about republicans is that, against all evidence, they can convince themselves that their station in life is superior to others and earned by nothing but hard work and personal ingenuity. they won’t admit that social conditions, structural prejudice, and bad laws play a part in who gets a job, who gets a house, and who gets health care; and they won’t admit that they have any part to play in improving these conditions and laws for others.

    at its worst, this becomes a kind of fascism: the mere suggestion that the poor might not deserve their poverty becomes a kind of personal insult, and violence is the response. how dare the less fortunate suggest that my property isn’t fully my own, my family doesn’t fully deserve its privilege, my employment isn’t because i was the best possible candidate for the job? they should be sterilized, deprived of simple pleasures, forced to live in military barracks. because race is the thoughtless person’s proxy for socioeconomic status, casual racism goes unchecked, and stereotypes about “22 inch rims” and “low profile tires” seem appropriate.

    civil rights exist so that people like you can’t make policy that destroys the bodies of others because you don’t like their “blasting stereo” and existential “mistakes.” civil rights: check them out, they’re in the constitution.”

  14. Dan Rowden

    Pretty cool response:

    Not draconian enough, say’s I. Put me in charge. As a proper tyrant, I say we fully dehumanize* the poor. Here are my better proposals:

    1. Bread and water only. And when I say bread, I mean cake – in the Marie Antoinette sense. And regular rain or swamp water – not the good stuff that we waste funds on treating and purifying for the so-called ‘public good’ (which is really just another term of socialism)

    2. Mandatory sterilization of all undesirables. Don’t let the sub-human vermin breed.

    3 and 4. Gulags! Put all the undesirables in work camps and make them earn their meager keep. Any non-authorized items, including any sort of toys for children, shall be strictly forbidden. Children need to learn to suffer and obey they all powerful state.

    And before you start complaining about human dignity, let me remind you that the founding father’s permitted slavery. And surely, these people always have the options to keep their dignity and die (and watch their children die) from starvation and lack of basic medical care. They should either surrender their humanity and civil rights, find a way to struggle their way out of poverty, or just die already since everyone knows that life is perfectly fair and bad things never happen to good people (unless it is people we know and care about – in which case we’ll make a limited exception).

    *Dehumanize is really what it comes down to. That and the delightful concept of cognitive dissonance. It can be hard to come to terms that some people are suffering despite doing their hardest to get by; that life is, in fact, not fair. Worse than that, such problems seem almost insurmountable even from the outside, and it is easy to feel helpless when facing the sheer scale of poverty and suffering, the programs which we have are a mere band-aid to patch up the worst of the problems.

    Further, it is frightening to look and think that there but for Providence go I. Not an easy thing to contemplate. It is far easier on the ego to pretend that the people who are suffering are so because of their own fault, and not really deserving of compassion. That position has the added bonus that one’s success can be attributed solely to one’s hard work and talent, with no good fortune involved.

    In a way, you almost have to pity such people (though I admit I consider pity the cruelest of emotions) as they lack the mental strength and moral fiber to come to terms with the fact that life is messy, complex, and inherently unfair.

  15. Shaun Newman

    She is either very frightened by LNP rhetoric, or has been brainwashed from birth in a working class conservative family, either way at 21 years of age it is doubtful that she knows much about life, she certainly has not been taught anything about empathy or compassion for her fellow Australian who worked hard and paid taxes to build this country into what it is today. The sad part is like all LNP supporters, she does not know, and is not interested in knowing the facts.

  16. Dan Rowden

    Even though “she” doesn’t actually exist, “she” could very easily be a member of any Young Liberal organisation across the country. Their rhetoric isn’t significantly removed from this sort of intellectual and moral dross.

  17. Carol Taylor

    Even though as Michael points out in his article that the email is *yet another* example of (race/gender equality/anti-equality) hate mail originating in the US which sadly does the rounds far too often, it’s the fact that so many Australians grasp onto it with so much gusto which is disappointing. It’s the fact that so many Australians seize on this email and believe in it’s sentiments to such an extent which has me concerned.

    And especially it’s the fact that the Murdoch media’s attempts to demonise *anyone*, the sick, the disabled, the disadvantaged in order to support the Credlin/Abbott/Hockey team resonates to such an extent, that all of a sudden people with disabilities and their carers are cast as the ‘rorters’ in our society – and that certain people believe this enough to start making derogatory comments, and enough to *alert* their friends via email to this.

    Previous examples have included that refugees, indigenous people as ‘rorters’, because they get put up at 5 star hotels (and other delusions)..this time the ‘enemy’ is the disabled and the disadvantaged. And it’s all based on envy, that somehow a person with a disability gets more than the almighty M-E.

  18. Dan Rowden

    Can we sheet home the blame for “downward envy” in Australia to Pauline Hanson, or was she merely a catalyst for entrenching it in the national psyche? Or does it occupy a natural and fundamental place in human psychology and the outward manifestation of it merely varies due to the political environment and ethos of the day?

  19. John921Fraser

    <
    Outstanding letter !

    Just like …… "P.M hails world tour success"
    and …. "P.M tells world I am a conservationist".
    "P.M tells world coal to power world for decades"
    "P.M tells world Jerusalem not occupied"
    "P.M tells world Australia will throw money at Iraq".
    "P.M tells world no new taxes"
    "P.M tells world god rules"
    My recommendation is for everyone to carry one and use it for picking up dog poo.
    Keep Australia beautiful.

  20. Lawrence Winder

    I still have copies of the “Horst Wessel” sheet music available.

  21. corvus boreus

    John Fraser,
    I tried your advice; I printed Miss 21’s missive, and went outside to use it as a wrapper for a fresh canine scat.
    The dog shit recoiled from the letter, and slithered down a drain.
    I don’t recommend burning it either, the fumes smelt toxic.

  22. John921Fraser

    @Dan Rowden

    I still think Hanson has copped a bum rap for Australia’s racism.
    It was always there …. she just highlighted it.

  23. John921Fraser

    <
    Apparently this isn't all that popular :

    Dear Mr. Abbot as the official replacement for Mr Rudd,
    Please find below our suggestion for fixing Australia 's economy.

    Instead of giving billions of dollars to car companies & other business that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan..
    You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan:

    There are about 10 million people over 50 in the work force.

    Pay them $1 million each severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

    1) They MUST retire.
    Ten million job openings – unemployment fixed

    2) They MUST buy a new Australian car.
    Ten million cars ordered – Car Industry fixed

    3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage –
    Housing Crisis fixed

    4) They MUST send their kids to school/college/university –
    Crime rate fixed

    5) They MUST buy $100 WORTH of alcohol/tobacco a week ……..
    and there's your money back in duty/tax etc

    6) Instead of stuffing around with the carbon emissions trading scheme that makes us pay for the major polluters, tell the greedy bastards to reduce their pollution emissions by 75% within 5 years or we shut them down.

    7) Cut down on pollies perks – they earn enough money to pay for their own petrol, food, drinks, airfares for their wives & families like all other hard working Aussies do. We pay big money but we still get MONKEYS.

    8) No government credit cards for pollies – let them get their own then they will be more careful about how they use it and pay up on time so as not to incur interest.

    It can't get any easier than that!

    P.S. If more money is needed, have all members of parliament pay back their falsely claimed expenses and second home allowances

    If you think this would work, please forward to everyone you know. If not, please disregard.

    Grumpies of the World Unite

    Also .

    Let's put the pensioners in jail and the criminals in a nursing home.

    This way the pensioners would have access to showers, hobbies and walks.
    They'd receive unlimited free prescriptions, dental and medical treatment, wheel chairs etc and they'd receive money instead of paying it out.
    They would have constant video monitoring, so they could be helped instantly, if they fell, or needed assistance.
    Bedding would be washed twice a week, and all clothing would be ironed and returned to them.
    A guard would check on them every 20 minutes and bring their meals and snacks to their cell.
    They would have family visits in a suite built for that purpose.
    They would have access to a library, weight room, spiritual counselling, pool and education.
    Simple clothing, shoes, slippers, PJ's and legal aid would be free, on request.
    Private, secure rooms for all, with an exercise outdoor yard, with gardens.
    Each senior could have a PC a TV radio and daily phone calls.
    There would be a board of directors to hear complaints, and the guards would have a code of conduct that would be strictly adhered to.
    The criminals would get cold food, be left all alone and unsupervised.
    Lights off at 8pm, and showers once a week. Live in a tiny room and pay $600.00 per week and have no hope of ever getting out.
    Think about this (more points of contention):
    ——————————————————————-
    THE AUSTRALIAN CONSTITUTION They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq … Why don't we just give them ours?
    It was drawn up by a lot of really smart guys, it has worked for centuries and we're not using it anymore.
    ——————————————————————-
    THE 10 COMMANDMENTS
    The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse or Parliament, is this –
    You cannot post 'Thou Shalt Not Steal',
    'Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery' and
    'Thou Shall Not Lie' in a building full of lawyers,
    judges and politicians…… It creates a hostile work environment.
    ——————————————————————-
    Think about this …. If you don't want to forward this for fear of offending someone —
    YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM!
    It is time for us grumpy old folk of Australia to speak up!

  24. Kaye Lee

    “does it occupy a natural and fundamental place in human psychology”

    No. I believe that most people are inherently good. They do want to care for people. The difference seems to be how many people. Some only want to look after their own family (or just themselves as in Gina’s case), others want to look after this country, others want to do what is best for humanity, others for the whole interconnection that is our planet. How big is your world?

  25. Kaye Lee

    After the eugenics movement was well established in the United States, it was spread to Germany. California eugenicists began producing literature promoting eugenics and sterilization and sending it overseas to German scientists and medical professionals. By 1933, California had subjected more people to forceful sterilization than all other U.S. states combined. The forced sterilization program engineered by the Nazis was partly inspired by California’s.

    The Rockefeller Foundation helped develop and fund various German eugenics programs, including the one that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.

    Upon returning from Germany in 1934, where more than 5,000 people per month were being forcibly sterilized, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe bragged to a colleague:

    “You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought . . . I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people.”

  26. Dan Rowden

    Kaye Lee,

    Not sure to what extent I’m able to agree. I do agree with the point about the “scale” of our ability to care for and empathise with others. For most people that ability dissipates the more egotistically distant someone is from them. i.e. caring starts with ourselves as the locus then extends to close loved ones, family, etc, then to friends, then to acquaintances, then to those who share some trait we identify with (e.g. political or social worldview). This then extends to things like attachments to nationality, race and other forms of “identity”. If at any point the sense of egotistical identification with the other is broken then the capacity to care and feel empathy is damaged. I always use “ego” in a Buddhist, not Freudian sense, btw.

    The more the purveyors of prejudice manage to sever the sense of connection we feel with others the easier it is for them to be demonised or lessened in our eyes. Some measure of philosophic or political sophistication can immunise a person against that sort of dynamic, but lots of people lack that sophistication. “Us and Them” strategies of social division are disturbingly frequent in their success and I feel there’s a reason for that.

  27. corvus boreus

    I think selfish tendencies and empathic dissociation are broadcast into the public consciousness each and every night through television, particularly commercial.
    When I absorb it each time I visit “norm” friends, I am progressively appalled by how far the ethos has slipped.
    The “unscripted” reality shows have the recurrent theme of conflict and competition, with any allegiances temporary, of convenience, and readily betrayed.
    Current affairs concentrate on stirring outrage at low end grift, the menace of sole traders and single parents, unwilling to spotlight any corporate corruption.
    Interspersed with over 30% saturation of an aggressive consumer message.
    “You can get the stuff you need to make you happy if you stampede over the herd, and it’s a minority stereotype’s fault if it hasn’t happened for you yet”.
    Hitler loved his dogs, and Siddhartha Gautama probably slapped mosquitoes with malicious satisfaction when they disturbed his meditations. Potential for good in the worst, or evil in the best, just like the yin/yang sticker.
    I make my own efforts towards the habit of compassionate rationality, knowing myself enough to see that I remain one emotional trigger away from being a hateful, vengeful member of a mob.
    Hard enough to hear the softly spoken voice of reason, empathy and wisdom over a discordant cacophony of individualistic shouting and tribal chants, let alone the screams of the hawkers.

  28. Möbius Ecko

    As predicted the hyperbole on Abbott’s world tour being an outstanding success is well and truly in full swing, though it’s happening earlier than I thought as they’re not waiting until he gets home to start it. When he does get back to Australia my guess is they will ramp it up to new record highs on the bullshit meter.

    Heard a conversation on RN an hour or so ago where they were discussing Abbott’s supposed hugely successful world trip. The conversation centered around people wanting and wishing for Abbott to fail on the global stage, and not only did he not fail he was apparently magnificent.

    Gerard Henderson was mentioned. I need say no more on just how much bullshit was thrown around in this radio piece.

    But there was one sane commentator.

    A male commentator, sounded like IPA or such to me, was effusive at how well Abbott did. He was brilliant in Indonesia, absolutely magnificent in Canada and bowled over the Americans.

    A pragmatic female guest said that all Abbott did was bumble from one engagement to the next without achieving anything.

    That got the other guest’s goat up and he challenged her on that statement. She asked just what did Abbott achieve, which was a fair question.

    His response was Abbott’s statement on coal in Texas.

    And there you have what Abbott achieved. A rolling tour of a handful of countries where in each he made grand overarching tropes, visited a lot of historical and current war related stuff, and donned Lycra for photo and video ops.

    That is supposed to be Abbott’s great success, that he said all those things and wasn’t challenged or rebuffed on any of them. But try to find anything concrete he achieved for Australia, like the signing of agreements, pacts, economic deals etc. and you won’t find a single thing.

    The right wingers certainly have a very low bar for measuring success, except that is when it comes to measuring Labor or Greens success, then the bar is always set stratospherically high and moved higher whenever it looked like it would be reached.

  29. David Linehan

    Those disgusting comments could have come from anyone of several current Tory women/men in the present rabble occupying the Govt benches.

  30. Diannaart

    Aaaah the old email changing nationality trick.

    Funny and sad and just scary how easily people are taken in – not unlike LNP voters.

  31. charybds

    Doug for PM …

  32. Stephen Tardrew

    The following is only a small example of links that confront the dilemma from a more empirical perspective. The problem is that the conservative are more prone to emotional reactivity whereas progressives are more inclined to use reasoning. What we have here is an evolutionary experiment which is leading to the conclusion that conservatism is self destructive and progressivism is more rationally values based. It is time for progressives to fight head on to enforce compassion and empathy as vital social memes (sociological genes) as evolution will bring about species extinction if we fail to adapt to climate change and resource depletion. It is as stark as that. The empirical evidence is in and, in some important way, it is vital to get scientist to join the debate and, to some extent, take it outside of the political arena. That such irrationality is taken seriously by many means that group conformity and compliance provides a basis for group think that can easily be spread through a dysfunctional and irrational media. Progressives need to get into a more evidenced based approach to the negative effects of greed and self-interest as it effects the environment and social domain. I know we are all trying but we must, at least, logically challenge such nonsense. Exposing it on this site plays an important role in informing us of the the depths of dysfunction of our opponents.
    <
    Money makes people right-wing and inegalitarian

    http://phys.org/news/2014-02-money-people-right-wing-inegalitarian.html
    <
    Life lessons: Children learn aggressive ways of thinking and behaving from violent video games, study finds

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140324181255.htm
    <
    Brain scans link concern for justice with reason, not emotion

    http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-03-brain-scans-link-justice-emotion.html
    <
    Being in a group makes some people lose touch with their personal moral beliefs

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140612104950.htm

  33. corvus boreus

    The Honorable doug, MP & PM to be,
    I submit for your consideration the following proposals to improve the performance of your parliament:
    * Test them all for grog and drugs each time they sit. Chuck any out who fail.
    * Have some people of proven transparent honesty and negal nouse to watch over them. Chuck out any who are dealing dirty or telling fibs.
    * Give us a choice between 1 or all in the upper house ballot. I try, but that shits too hard to do properly.
    Got more ideas, but I know you are busy. Hope you’ll make the time to chat if our paths cross.
    sincerely,
    1 vote

  34. corvus boreus

    PS If you do visit, please don’t wear lycra or speedos, that shit’s threatening.

  35. Carol Taylor

    How amazing, this 21yr old is also a South African…

    Written by a 21 year old, worried about her future in The REAL South Africa.

    “The problems we face today are there because the people who work for a living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living.”

    *Put me in charge of benefit payments. I’d get rid of cash payments and provide vouchers for 50kg bags of rice & beans, blocks of cheese, basic sanitary items and all the powdered milk you can use. If you want steak, burgers, takeaway and junk food, then get a job.

    *Put me in charge of the NHS. The first thing I’d do is to get women to have birth control implants. Then, we’ll test recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine. If you want to reproduce, use drugs, drink alcohol or smoke, then get a job.

    *Put me in charge of free housing. Ever lived in military barracks…

  36. Möbius Ecko

    Kaye when you break down his visit like that and quote what he said in context along with the negative international and some domestic press he got, how on earth anyone can claim his jaunt was a success has me beat.

    But none of it answers one simple question that should be asked.

    What did Abbott achieve for Australia?

    As much as I’ve searched, and knowing he had a bunch of wealthy business folks along with him at tax payers expense, I can’t find a single concrete thing he achieved nor anything he signed that will benefit Australia. Indeed going on the foreign reporting, he’s trashed our reputation and sent us backwards as there’s now open talk of imposing sanctions and tariffs on Australia on two fronts.

    Yet if you go back to past PM’s on foreign trips on behalf of Australia you can find deals that were struck, pacts that were signed and cooperation treaties reaffirmed. This goes for Howard as much as any other of our past PMs.

    Yet for Abbott all we got were tropes and photo ops for our hard worked tax payers money.

  37. Andrew Richards

    Dan, whoever wrote the following ” because race is the thoughtless person’s proxy for socioeconomic status, casual racism goes unchecked, and stereotypes about “22 inch rims” and “low profile tires” seem appropriate. ” is utterly blinded by able-bodied privilege. The worst type of bigotry, marginalisation and disadvantage in this community lies with the disabled.

    Let’s starts with employment rates:

    – In 2009, 54.3% of people with a disability participated in the labour force compared to 83% of people without a disability.

    – Australia ranks 21out of 29 OECD countries for labour force participation of people with disability[1].

    – Graduates with disability take longer to gain full-time work than other graduates[2].

    – People with disability have an employment rate of 39.8%, compared to 79.4% for people without a disability[3].

    – Two-thirds of people with disability earn less than $320 per week, compared with one-third of the general population[4].

    – 15% of Australians of working age (15-64 years) have a disability.

    [http://www.and.org.au/pages/disability-statistics.html]

    Also to extrapolate out the real empolyment rate of people with a disability (multiplying 54.3% by 39.8%), the actual disabled employment rate of 21.6%; conversely the actual unemployment rate of 78.4% or almost 4 in 5.

    Indigenous activists rail in horror at figures of 1 in 12 suicides amongst them and call it a blight on the nation. The official figures for the disabled as of 2010 were at 18% -or nearly 1 in 5, with 42% or over 2 in 5 having been found to have ben suicidal. [http://www.aihw.gov.au/publication-detail/?id=6442472401]

    However such bigotry shouldn’t surprise anyone when, and I say this without any level of hyperbole, we are quite literally a nation of Nazis where the disabled are concerned.

    As people may or may not be aware, it was the disabled who were first specifically targeted for extermination and exterminated by the Nazis. The first genocidal think tank, the Wilhelm Kaiser Institute, was formd in 1927 with the exclusive purpose of deteriming the best method of wiping out the disabled. In 1933, one of Hitler’s first acts, more than a year before the Nuremberg Laws were passed, was to pass “The Law for The Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring”, which resulted in the mandatory sterilisation and forced abortions of the disabled and women pregnant with disabled children. In that time, they also passed laws equatring disability with criminality and closed every possible “loophole” they could find with them – resulting the vast majority of the disabled in Germany being unjustly incarcerated.

    Between 1935-1938, Hitler developed the propaganda later used to justify and sanitise the “Final Solution” through propaganda which thoroughly convinced the Nazis that the disabled were a worthless burden- parasites on the system – or “worthless eaters” and through the usage of 2 child murder cases where children were disabled, set the precedent for the butchering of those deemed “undesireable”.

    From 1939-1942, the disabled were rounded up and used as guinea pigs in detrmining the best methods possible to wipe out a group deemed “undesirable” through the programs AKTIONT4 and AKTION14. They started with children under the age of 3 (although primary sources claim children up to the age of 5 were among them) – rounding them up in “research hospitals” and slowly torturing them to death through starvation and exposure. The “stubborn ones” got a lethal injection to the heart. They then expanded the program to include adolescents up to the age of 17.

    From there they rounded up the rest of the disabled and used them as guinea pigs in determining optimal approaches to extermination. Their initial attempts involved tying 30-40 disabled people together and blowing them up with dynamite- a method soon abandoned after being deemed “too messy”. Soon the mehtod of gas chambers were developed anbd perfected and the disabled were systematically and continuously put through the gas chambers at these “research hospitals”. By the time the first cattle car ful of Jews arrived at the first death camp, more than 1 million disabled people had been either murdered or sterilised against their will.

    We say “never again” to the Holocaust as a nation, yet our track record shows that we are no better than the Nazis. Up until 1992 we were still mandatorily sterilising the disabled and even now the practice largely goes on hidden. Furthermore draft legislation was put before the Western Australian Parliament in the past couple of years which would have resulted in the forced sterilisation, psychosurgery, institutionalisation and psychotherapy of minors as young as 12, without parental knowledge or consent.

    A report released earlier this year stated that 20-30 disabled people were found to be behind bars because they were deemed unfit to give a plea to a crime they were accused of.

    Our record on child abuse where the disabled are concerned is equally as shocking. The standard school experience for a disabled child is to be denied the services they need, while being persecued, bullied and abused by the teachers and students alike. Many disabled children, in place of love and compassion from their families, instead are forced to endure a broken childhood filled with abuse as the family attempts to “discipline the disability out of them”.

    Of course that is only dealing with those disabled children who are “given permission to be” born. The disabled are the only group in society who are subjected to legalised pre-birth screenings for the specific purpose of child murder when they are detected.

    Of course such attitudes are hardly surprising. When Adam Goods was sledged as “a gorilla” Australia was rightly outraged, yet the disabled equivalent of that revolting slur, namely “retard/ed” and “spaz/spasdtic” get a free pass in our society – the truth of those terms often being met with laughter.

    Of course this ignores things like “the little things” like the blind being allowed on taxis when they have assistence dogs, or the wheelchair bound being allowed to board planes.

    Yet all of the above, just as with the Nazis, is driven by the barbaric and revolting belief that having a disability makes you a “worthless burden” and that if we’re murdered, it’s “a kindness”, because “would you want to live if you were like that?”

    Things appear to be set to only worsen. It would seem that now that assylum seekers can no longer be used as a bogeyman, we the disabled are the next in line to be targetted.

    The Abbott government has made it apparent that they are determined to remove the only major avenues to justice and having a voice for the disabled in the community. Despite it being incredibly difficult to qualify for a Disability Support Pension, even when you are a genuine case (as I discovered firsthand a few years back), the governemnt has decided to demonise the disabled by claiming that those on DSP, despite having leapt through countless hoops, are being demonised as “rorters”. The Murdoch Press has even crossed over to the rhetoric of the Nazis by literally describing the disabled as “a burden” in an editorial in the Daily Telegraph, while running a front page article describing us as “slackers” [read “parasites”].

    In addition at 37%, we are axing the position of federal Disability Discrimination Comissioner and Ramp Up which uniquely provides a voice for the disabled – the only Federal Disability Discrimination Commissioner to be axed. This is despite the fact that the largest number of discrimination cases received by the Human Rights Commission is 37%- almost double the 19% of all claims which are sex discrimination based and more than double the 36% of all claims which are racial discrimination based. Apparently we don’t have $1.7 Million over four years to give the most vulnerable and marginalised in our society a voice, but we do have $4 Million over 4 years to spend on ballet classes.

    The current state of play means that those who are dissabled but deemed “not disabled to receive the DSP”, lose our one safeguard against the rampant anti-discrimination Nazi bigotry in this country- in a situation where for 6 month periods we will be without income, making us unable to feed or shelter ourselves, or provide ourselves with health care due to the Medicare copayment. As such, the policy ammounts to genocide against the disabled via starvation and exposure- making it akin to a repeat of AKTIONT4. Anyone who argues that such policies are nowhere near as bad as the Holocaust because the governments isn’t going about this by openly rounding up the disabled by force (as someone I spoke to from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry tried to claim) is engaging in Holocaust denial by way of engaging in methodology based semantics.

    Disability has already proven to be criminalised in many cases. Hitler’s anti-disability abortion policies are the defacto state policies. Mandatory sterilisation still goes on behind closed doors and there are moves afoot by bureaucrats in some states to make it openly the official line. Those deemed “unfit to plead” to a crime face mandatory incarceration for even minor offences. Now the propaganda sets in where we’re treated like “worthless eaters” – just like under Hitler in the 1930s. What’s next – people like myself being rounded up and forcibly sterilised, along with our wives? Where to after that, cases where the government intervenes and legalises the murder of the disabled as a pretext to rounding us up and massacring us in gas chambers?

    And you want to claim that racism is the biggest cause of socio economic oppression in this country? Get real!

  38. Andras

    What a horrible excuse of a human being. Your first suggestion about replacing money with food stamps is very Roman of you, at least they didn’t have preconditions on which citizens they fed though. your second suggestion about birth control implants? It is indisputable that a woman has the right to choose, if you as a 21 year old ever got pregnant would it be acceptable for a government official to force an abortion on you because of the economy? You want to test people for drugs, alcohol, tobacco and whatever? you are retarded if you can’t figure out that it would cost an arm and a leg to pay for that many drug tests across the country and the logistical implications of trying to implement such a scheme are beyond overwhelming. Turning community housing into army barracks with inventories of your possessions? That isn’t housing its a prison and given that it costs something like 300 dollars a day to incarcerate someone you would be spending more than you save. You will steal from someone and put their money to the greater good? our government just stole 360 million dollars so why not? Again you fail to take into account how much it would cost to implement and enforce such a scheme, you would barely cover your costs, unless of course you started with Gina and her lot then it might be worth your while. As for people taking money that doesn’t belong to them, when the Australian people are reimbursed for the mining subsidies we handed out, the money we spent going to a war we should never have been involved in and the tax cuts to the rich which are the real problem, then I will shut up, until then you can f* off.

  39. Winifred Jeavons

    This 21 yr old is clearly neither educated enough nor mature enough to be allowed to vote. The bottom line is that to get a job there must be jobs , and those with a living wage . She clearly still believes in slavery . Judge not that you be not judged is a moral truth that still holds ,doubly so for those calling themselves Christian or even democrats.

  40. Andrew Richards

    Andras, while I agree with your post in terms of the context you were arguing against it, as a disabled Australian, I honestly have to call out your saying that “It is indisputable that a woman has the right to choose,” as not only the height of hypocrisy, but as quite literally being “Nazism in lipstick” where the disabled are concerned.

    The fact is that where the disabled are concerned, we are the only group where it is legal for parents to specifically screen us on the grounds of our minority status, specifically for the purposes of butchering us. Before you try and invoke Godwin’s Law, I’ll preemptively debunk it on four grounds.

    Firstly, the very premise of abortion relies on arbitrarily dehumanising someone on ageist grounds. In fact it was for this reason that the Feminist Movement, was openly hostile to abortions for its first 110 years. In fact when NOW reversed there stance, it was only done so relucctantly and because they were badgered into it by a couple of hegemonic males. If you wish to dispute that, I suggest that you look up the stance of Mary Wollstonecroft on the issue and how staunchly she adopted that position.

    Secondly, the disabled are the only group specifically targetted by abortion in the Western World on the grounds of disability. We don’t legalise prescreening the unborn for gender for the purposes of abortion, or say, our Indigenous people or Jews (in fact in cases in more draconian countries like China, feminists are usually up in arms when it comes to sex selective abortions).

    Thirdly, the smocking gun in all of this. The justification for both previous points by proponents for them are to the effect of “the disabled are worthless burdens; parasites who are nothing but a drain which suck up resources and the life out of their families” and that “killing the disabled is ‘a kindness’ because ‘would you want to life if you were like that?’ “. Those two premies were literally the ideological foundations of the Nazi Euthanasia Program.

    Fourthly, if you think that it doesn’t lead to parents murdering their adult children on the exact same grounds, I suggest you read up on the murder of Matthew Sutton.

    If you doubt the previous tweo points, I suggest you read up on them.

    In fact a great resource on the Nazi’s treatment of the disabled is the Keynote Address for the Second International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, given by Dr Mark Mostert, a highly respected expert on the subject. It was uploaded by Regent University’s Institute for the Study of Disability and Bioethics to their youtube channel, and can be found here:

    Part 1- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVVNPAvCfH0
    Part 2- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vqHeqiqMFY
    Part 3- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqk6utnT51s
    Part 4- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_GcRHu4N0w
    Part 5- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8AEtx92iXw

    I realise that this response was a tangent to the point you were making, however it is simultaneously central to those who are arguably the most marginalised by the Abbott Government’s budget measures.

    As a disabled Australian however, I make absolutely no apologies for being sick and tired of being sent a message by feminist and “pro-choice” groups, to the effect that I should get down on the ground and kiss the feet of my parents because they refused to treat me like “a worthless eater” or subject me to a “mercy killing”- that I hould have been butchered or poisoned at my most vulnerable for being a “retard” or a “spastic”.

    Surely, by this point in time, almost 70 years since the Nuremberg trials, we’re long past the point of where we should have said “never again” to such attitudes.

  41. Florence nee Fed uo

    Well one could say, this hastily arranged trip did get him out of the country, and a way from his toxic budget.

    One could call that a success. Not saying for whom.

    Then we have him hurrying off to Canada and the USA, to defend his role in dealing with CC and destroying any chance that Obama has, to get his action off the ground.

    Yes, destroying any move back to man made climate changes and a ETS was imperative. Supporting the failing coal industry is high on is list of to do.

    I notice they have neglected to say, how he went in France.

    With a bit of luck, he will succeed in making noise about Iraq, to divert further attention., from his budget.

    Now Milne is bringing on, not the so called toxic tax bill, but the legislation for CEFC.

    Yes, that is very successful. Is not a tax. Is funded from the piece on carbon emission,tax. Is very efficient and successful Could be relabelled as part of DA if they were genuine.

    When a President stands in front of you, with his arms folded across his chest, looking you in the eye, with a amused smile on his face, I believe one would think they have lost.

    Then the same President pats you on the arm, as to say, there there, everything will be OK.

    Not only one photo shows this body language, but many,

    Also, any effort at ceremony was not attempted.

    Yes, a great success.

  42. Florence nee Fed up

    This mob is not stupid enough to believe they can get away without paying unemployed for 6 months. They have allocated money to the charities to hand out emergency funding for rent, food and other essentials. What it is about, is moving from unemployment benefits as we know it, to the USA food stamps.

  43. Florence nee Fed up

    Work for the dole, is a modern day version of the work or poor houses of a couple of centuries ago.

  44. corvus boreus

    Understand, all who rant at little Ms Sociopath 21 yo, she is a generic, fictitious shadow puppet cast by some middle-age dispepsic male manipulator on a keyboard in the south of USA, mutated by likewise minded local kooks to match local detail, and thrown out to cause anger in the general populace, one way or another..

  45. corvus boreus

    Sorry, folks, meant to say rail, not rant. Slight difference.

  46. Carol Taylor

    Corvus @7.13pm..sounds a very accurate assessment. 😉

  47. Carol Taylor

    Florence on US style food stamps. I would not put anything past this government. I’m certain that mates would be in charge of 1. printing, 2. distribution, 3. permitted outlets. Win, win all ’round.

    But in all sincerity, the entire program of this government gives the appearance of a never-ending conga line of Abbott brain f*rts..that is, the entire front bench appears to be completely oblivious to consequences. Imagine it, a large-ish community with an unemployment rate of around 15% and all of a sudden 15% of that community are thrown into complete and utter destitution. It would be absolutely impossible for any charity to be able to cope with the sheer numbers involved.

  48. Andrew Richards

    @corvus boreus I think we all realise that.

    The problem is that some of the inherrent bigotry in there, is part of much larger problems we have, and for example, in the case of where measures target those of us who are disabled (for example, those of us who are disabled and white, heterosexual males, theoretically no longer have any anti-discrimination representation at the HCR as we do not fit in with the portfolios of commissioners who discrimination against women, homosexuality or race- while issues such as workplace discrimination falls outside of the scope of the “freedom commissioner”) they are driven by deep-seeded and vile bigotry which this country has been long overdue in having an uncomfortable conversation about since 1945.

  49. James

    Growing up in largely houso suburbs, I can get behind most of this. I’d need about 500 billion hands to count all the ferals who just couldn’t give a shit.

    Maybe it would compel them, to, yknow, get some work and be respectful.

    I am absolutely for helping the DISADVANTAGED, but there are so few of them in comparison to those that are not, and many who are are temporarily disadvantaged will return to the workforce fairly quickly. Those of us who don’t leach off taxpayers as a matter of habit know that we typically don’t have the luxury of waiting for the perfect job.

    Take a walk through most of Campbelltown, Marrickville, St Kilda etc and you’ll see exactly why many of us can get behind that point of view.

    Swinging wildly in either direction is bad. Balance is needed; the government needs to take action and investigate the legitimate bludgers – because there’s a shitload of them.

  50. Möbius Ecko

    How about giving us some figures to back up those statements James, because the facts don’t match what you are saying, especially this fallacy; “…but there are so few of them in comparison to those that are not”.

    Howard tried this as well with Bishop leading as the responsible minister. They abandoned their policy fairly quickly as they found the cost of chasing down the small percentage of rorters was way more than the cost of the rorting.

    Our system of checks and balances on welfare cheating is very good.

    Where we fail is in allowing the wealthy and big business to shift millions and billions our of government revenue where it belongs, but we do little about it. Address that and there won’t be a budget problem. There will be lots of hugely upset elites, angry headlines, massive backlashes and a massive campaign with no money limit against any government that tries it, but it will go a long way to helping the country to be financially better off whilst still assisting the needy and disadvantaged.

  51. corvus boreus

    Andrew R, I am not wading into a debate on the subject of abortion. I do not have a womb and am miserly with my seed.

  52. Andrew Richards

    @Corvus boreus In terms of abortion existing as a component of a much larger culture of discrimination, persecution and genocide in this country, driven quite literaly by the mentality of the Nazis- whether or not someone has a womb is irrelevant.

    Furthermore my response to any lowlife scumbag, who engages in the “Nazism in lipstick” response of “you can’t comment unless you have a uterus” in the context of aborting the disabled, is this:

    “Unless you have a disablity and as a result of it have:

    – experienced years of child abuse driven by the belief of “disciplining the disability out of you”;
    – experienced a school life which was driven by bullying, persecution, indifference and marginalisation on the grounds of a disability;
    – been amongst the disabled who are at the highest risk of experiencing domestic violence in our society;
    – been thrown in jail without conviction because you were deemed “unfit to plead”;
    – been sterilised;
    – been targetted for murder by your parents because they class you as a “parasite” and believe that murderng you is “a kindness”;
    – been amongst the 78.4% of unemployed disabled people in this country who have either experienced discrimination by being fired for being disabled, discrimination by not being hired because of your disability, or have simply given up on looking for work because you’ve ralised that the vast bulk of employers will simply dismiss you as a “worthless retard/spastic”;
    – been subjected to slurs which are the quivalent of calling an Indigenous person a “gorilla” while it is continually normalised and enabled by society at large;
    – been amongst the 42% of disabled people who have been driven to the point of suicide by the above;

    Then and only then will you have the right to engaging in Nazi-sympathising rheotirc by claiming that the disabled of this country have no right to act like ‘uppity niggers’ “.

    Anyone who doesn’t like this can take their able bodies privilege and cram it up their backsides- preferably as painfully as possible!

  53. Andrew Richards

    @James what you need to realise is that the governments of the past 30 years have allowed housing commission estates to deteriorate into slums. It used to be that housing commission estates had a full raft of programs which were specifically designed to get tennants back on their feet. However, ever since the Hawke and Keating eras, housing commission estates have had their management approach transitioned towards being based in economic rationalism and as a result, have turned into slums, complete with the very socio-economic situation your describe.

    Worse still, from the Hawke and Keating eras onwards, our economy was deindustrialised, resulting in the vast bulk of unskilled and minimally skilled, blue-collar jobs in this country going by the wayside – the very employment group which throughout the history of this country have been most at risk of not only becoming slum-dwellers, but of their families largely being trapped in cycles of poverty for generations afterwards as a result. When you examine things like educational outcomes in slums, it soon becomes apparent why (and yes, I just researched this as part of a major essay for a third year modern history subject I studied at university this semester).

    The rhetoric is of course, all too convenient. By focusing on the “slum dweller” by any other name and maybe focusing on slums themselves, the “slum lords” of our society (ranging from the speculative prdedators driving the housingg affordability crisis and the politicians who have their snouts in the troughs and have been creating a serf class for the past 30 years) get off scott free when they should be hauled over the coals for their corrupt destruction of lives and our childrens’ futures for the sake of their love of money.

    What you seem to have forgotten James, is that an attitude of “who gives a stuff” is generally proceeded by an attitude of “what’s the point in continuing to try?” You might want to reflect on that.

  54. corvus boreus

    Andrew,
    I don’t have a womb, thus no personal insight, so I CHOOSE not to weigh in on a woman’s rights/obligations regarding her reproductive faculties. I make no claim to restrict the rights of others to comment either way. If, for this, I am adjudged a “low-life scumbag” then so be it.
    Being blessed thus far with full physical faculties, I have not experienced the listed discriminations, but this is not why I refrain from “nazi sympathising rhetoric”. I despise such language and behavior because it is disgusting, moronic and damaging.
    Although the current AG Brandis espouses our right to bigotry, I do not agree, and exercise my right to refrain.
    Regarding your original post, yes the attacks on the NDIS, and the accompanying, vilifying “telecrap” propaganda, is a repulsive low-blow on a sizable minority already physically marginalised, socially disadvantaged and discriminated against.

  55. James

    @Mobius

    I grew up a houso. My parents are housos, because my dad would rather get drunk than work to support his family.

    I’ve grown up among these people and their communities. They are very, very real and are exactly as described by the ALP detractors.

    I challenge you to walk through Airds, Claymore, Ambarvale, Rosemeadow, Marrickville, Lewisham, parts of Redfern & Erko, parts of the inner suburbs in Melb like St Kilda and you’ll see what I’ve seen and what you refuse to see. I won’t deny that there are many who aren’t rorting the system, but the maggots in these suburbs are the kind like my dad. The kind who refuse to work because it’s easier to sit on the dole in your commission home paying sweet f* all rent and as a result ending up with internet and pay tv and the latest gaming consoles and PCs.

    They were my school friends, my neighbours, my communities, my own damn family.

    You’ll ask for figures, but you won’t set foot in these communities to see it with your own eyes because you’ll fear you’re going to lose your wallet or a kidney.

    Go have some fun in the areas I’ve mentioned. Maybe you’ll understand if you decide to move into one of these areas and find your children’s playgrounds are covered with broken VB bottles, graffiti and used syringes.

  56. Kaye Lee

    James,

    Housing commission areas do not have a monopoly on drug and alcohol abuse which can be found behind the closed doors of many mansions. Look at the entertainment industry.

    You rightly describe the symptoms of social disease that some areas are facing but you ignore the cause. Developers make a fortune with new housing estates with no thought to infrastructure and services to support them. Schools in those areas have huge numbers but few resources to devote to social programs. Residential areas grow with no employment or public transport or community engagement.

    Families who have little in reserve can quickly start on the downward spiral when something unexpected happens – lose your job, car breaks down, washing machine blows up, someone gets sick. The despair of not being able to give your kids what they need, the daily struggle of how will we pay the bills, every day wondering how you will get to the next – it can take a toll.

    You are young James – perhaps when you have to face the responsibility of providing for a family you may be less judgmental. I am sorry that you have faced hard times with your dad – I’m sure, when he was your age, he wanted better for the future too.

  57. Kaye Lee

    Great link thanks Dan,

    “The report’s author, Associate Professor Roger Wilkins, said Australia was experiencing its lowest level of welfare reliance in decades, possibly since the 1980s.

    ‘‘I’m absolutely bewildered by Hockey’s obsession on welfare reliance in Australia,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s lower than it’s been in a couple of decades, possibly longer.’’

    Professor Wilkins said the long-term trend away from welfare reliance was largely the result of Australia’s long boom, although a succession of welfare reforms that have tightened eligibility to payments had also contributed.

    ‘‘The long and short of it is we’ve had 20 years of growth uninterrupted by a recession. This is a fact I don’t think is appreciated widely enough,’’ he said. ‘‘It is the longest boom recorded in any developed country ever.’’

  58. Dan Rowden

    Nice to have powerful friends and rellies…

    Tony Abbott’s daughter Frances wins legal stoush over Melbourne rental property

  59. James

    @Kaye, no, you’re simply wrong. The majority of the people in the areas I’ve mentioned *choose* to live like this.

    All the areas I’ve mentioned have more than adequate infrastructure, schools, transport and housing – again, I grew up in these areas, you clearly have very little knowledge of what life is like in the mentioned suburbs. You refuse to see it, you refuse to experience it.

    So, so many of them simply choose to live like that.

  60. trevor

    There are some right deadshits inhabiting this planet and James the know nothing know it all gets the cake this week along with the ficticious writer of global letter of venomous intent.

    Export Abbott not Refugees

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