Murdoch Won’t Benefit From Company Tax Cuts And Malcolm’s Courageous Stand On Marriage Equality!

People need to start thinking before they speak. For example, I heard someone say that the proposed company tax cuts were just to benefit Rupert Murdoch. That’s nearly as silly as Donald Trump’s suggestion that because Obama was such a bad president, it’ll be generations before we have another black president. Even if you accept the idea that Obama was a disaster as president, why should we use one person to generalise about all people of that race? Isn’t that racism? You know, “I’m not employing any Albanians because the only one I hired was pretty lazy”. Using the same logic, you’d have to argue that as Donald has stuffed up so badly, it’ll be years before we get another orange one.

Anyway, while the current government was congratulating itself on actually passing the marriage equality legislation, a report from the Tax Office was released which told us that a large number of big companies paid no tax.  

One of those companies belongs to that American billionaire that everybody loves to hate. That’s Rupert Murdoch and News Corp, just in case some of you meant that I meant Mr Burns from “The Simpsons”. There’s a big difference between the two: One is the result of fiction writers creating an unreal world for dramatic effect; the other is a cartoon character. Whatever, the idea that company tax cuts would benefit Rupert is just plain wrong. I guess that’s why they had to give it a few million to cover women’s sport.

Some of the other companies included Adani, Chevron, ExxonMobil Australia and Ikea. Amazing that they could be so inefficiently run and still pay their boards so much. Anyway, let’s not talk worry too much about it because, hey, Turnbull has actually achieved something for once.

While some are being terribly critical of those who abstained from voting on the marriage equality legislation, I can’t help but feel that it’s a little unfair. If your religion insists that you deny others their rites (pun intended), while your party insisted that we need to consult the people before voting, then you are in a bit of a bind. Surely you can’t go against your conscience but, similarly, it would be wrong to vote against an expensive survey because the whole point of the plebiscite was that this wasn’t something that could be left to politicians. At least, it couldn’t be left to politicians until after they found out what the people wanted them to do. After that, they were free to do what they wanted.

Of course, I will single out Tony Abbott for special attention because the plebiscite was his proposal originally.. Now, I know that some of you are saying that it was just a delaying tactic to put the issue on hold until after the election, but Tony promised us that he’d take the people’s vote into account. That, of course, was assuming that he was still PM. Once Malcolm shafted him, he considered himself free to abstain because the Bill didn’t provide enough protection for those wishing to pretend that it – and the past fifty years – had never happened.

Of course, one of the problems with the idea of granting people “religious freedom” is that you can’t always allow one group freedom without sometimes infringing on the rights of another group. For example, in some sexist religions, women don’t have the right to an opinion. Does that mean, that should men from that religion get a job with the AEC, they can refuse to enrol women to vote? Mm, I presume even Mr Abbott would see that there’s a problem there…

But let’s ignore all that and admit that Malcolm deserves a big pat on the back. After all, it’s thanks to him that we now have marriage equality. Ok, when he first became leader, he didn’t stand up to the conservative elements in his party and say let’s just have the vote without an unnecessary and divisive plebiscite, but when the plebiscite idea was defeated, he courageously told us that this was the end of the matter and to blame Labor that legislation wouldn’t happen in this Parliament.

Then when it became clear that a Private Member’s Bill was going to be introduced, Malcolm showed his support for his own leadership by quickly grasping onto the possibility that the ABS could run a “survey” without the need for Parliamentary approval. Were it not for his quick thinking, this whole vote could have been taken months ago, and we could have been talking about other things.

Like why so many companies pay no tax.