The problems with a principled stand

In the past couple of weeks, the conservative parties have retained government…

Government approves Santos Barossa pipeline and sea dumping

The Australia Institute Media Release Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s Department has approved a…

If The Jackboots Actually Fit …

By Jane Salmon If The Jackboots Actually Fit … Why Does Labor Keep…

Distinctions Without Difference: The Security Council on Gaza…

The UN Security Council presents one of the great contradictions of power…

How the supermarkets lost their way in Oz

By Callen Sorensen Karklis Many Australians are heard saying that they’re feeling the…

Purgatorial Torments: Assange and the UK High Court

What is it about British justice that has a certain rankness to…

Why A Punch In The Face May Be…

Now I'm not one who believes in violence as a solution to…

Does God condone genocide?

By Bert Hetebry Stan Grant points out in his book The Queen is…

«
»
Facebook

Is it really a great time to be an Australian?

Quite often one of our readers on this site or on our Facebook page will provide a comment that resonates with us. The comment will invariably be in one of the comment’s section of either of our sites, or it may come via an email, but it is a comment that we feel needs to be given the chance of a wider audience. This short one, from Julianne Vincent, is one you will also enjoy. It typifies the frustration felt by most Australians.

The State of Australia – a quick summary: What the LNP have mapped out for us.

At the moment, many areas of our economy are knowingly illegally paying their workers well below the minimum wage. Govt action: nil.

Casualisation of the work force has resulted in the weekly wage dropping to around $600 per week.

The unemployment rate is at 6% but the underemployment rate is more like 20% as 1 hour a week’s work means you are employed.

Our housing is unaffordable; both to buy and to rent and our government is trying to move all industry offshore, therefore closing down industries and putting us out of work … even getting overseas companies to build all our infrastructure thus causing the loss of more jobs (3,000 to Spain just last week).

As well, the government is waging a war against the unions, the unemployed, pensioners and the ill, in the hope that our wages and social payments will further drop even further.

Our land is being sold off to China in huge ‘lumps’, e.g. the actual Port of Darwin – our gateway to Asia on a 100 year lease to the Chinese.

Chinese businessmen able to openly give bribes to our LNP politicians and get away with it ($40,000.00 Rolex watches) which the politicians tried to say were fakes … still a reason to argue that charges to be laid.

Our minerals are virtually being given away to overseas companies who then pay no tax.

Our economy is close to being a basket case as money is being directed away from those who have to spend it – the middle and lower classes, to the top 10%, as in America. Yet we came through the last financial crisis fine … but of course we had a more economically astute government than the corrupt conservatives which we unfortunately have now.

No, Mr Turnbull, it’s not a very good time to be an Australian. Not an ordinary, everyday average Australian at least.

24 comments

Login here Register here
  1. Michael O'Brien

    I’m about 15 minutes from suicide.

  2. Susan

    ??????????

  3. The AIM Network

    Michael, if that is true, could you please contact emergency assistance.

  4. Florence nee Fedup

    Michael every political cycle comes to an end. I believe we are approaching the end of the cycle that began with Howard soon.

  5. John

    Did they check whether the returned watches were real?

  6. Douglas Pye

    …..Good one John ! ….. Arthur Sans dinaros returns a fake (from one hand) whilst keeping the $$$ job (on the other) ….. all whilst wearing two hats!! … aided by having two heads!! ….. 😉 …

  7. John

    And we know Abbott couldn’t lie straight in bed

  8. MichaelW

    Michael contact lifeline 131114. I work there, I hope you are joking. If not please contact them..
    I know how you feel present day politics would send any sane person around the twist..

  9. Warren Rodwell

    There’s never been a more exciting time to be a rich, highly educated and well connected Australian ….

  10. mark

    couldn’t have said it better,mark.

  11. Jaquix

    Signs that the political cycle may be changing are the spectacular rise of Bernie Sanders in the USA, and Canada tossing out the old (Abbott-like) govt and electing young Trudeau. We need a Bernie here. His message is clear and different and a long overdue one. We also need a readily available news source to counter the Murdoch Machine. Soon to be extended further in tv, which is even more worrying. I forced myself to read 2 Murdoch papers recently and it was clear that while they werent very enthusiastic about Malcolm, they totally ignored the Labor and Greens parties. Fairfax crumpling is inevitable, though I read the CEO earns 2.3 million. If it could reinvent itself without that sort of burden it has a chance of survival. TheAIM keeps me sane, how can we increase its reach?

  12. Michael Taylor

    Jaquix, the telling factor in the rise of Sanders is his extreme popularity among the under 30’s voters (who I hope vote, btw). It gives us a look into what the kids of today want the world to be like tomorrow. It’s the same here: the ruthless Liberals have their greatest support in the over 65’s.

  13. Michael Taylor

    Jaquix, we’re doing our best to increase our reach. Great articles are a good start. 🙂

  14. diannaart

    Julianne Vincent has indeed articulated my feelings.

    @Warren Rodwell

    Perhaps “richly educated” is a little bit wrong, given the intellect of many of our politicians.

  15. jim

    Right-wing governments ‘increase suicide rates’
    Right-wing governments may sap some people’s will to live and result in more suicides, conclude studies in Britain and Australia.

    The researchers speculate that losers are more likely to kill themselves in the individualistic, “winner-takes-all” societies favoured by right wing governments, because they are left to fend for themselves. Wide disparities in wealth also sharpen any sense of hopelessness, the researchers argue.

    “If you fail under that ideology, it would accentuate your feelings of failure,” says Mary Shaw, whose team at the University of Bristol analysed suicide trends in England and Wales over the past century.

    Left wing governments tend to be more “inclusive” and community based, she says, decreasing the isolation felt by people down on their luck. Shaw’s team calculates that over the past century, 35,000 extra suicides occurred when the Tories were in power.

    “That’s equivalent to one suicide for every day of the 20th Century, or two for every day that the Conservatives ruled,” the team write in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

    Britain’s Conservative Party declined to comment on the findings. PLEASE VOTE this lying pigheaded #*&$## LNP government OUT this election Thanks.

  16. Kaye Lee

    “Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.” – Mahatma Gandhi

  17. Matthew Oborne

    The crisis of the baby boomers increased healthcare requirements is one that isnt mentioned much, the government have kicked it into the long grass and last year tried opening a conversation about when to stop providing care for them. This effects all of us. Governments crack open doors to issues the public wont tolerate in small ways and then build on them, slowly boiling the frog, what is in store for us frogs in the decades to come.

    will there be an age limit to lifesaving measures? will the cut off point be based on the health issue or the overall health of the patient, would they set up “independant” doctors who asses whether the government should bother to provide life saving measures.

    Once that door is opened we are in for a nightmare ride where breaking bad become more like financial advice for people with health issues.

    Not one media outlet has bothered to look at the issues in depth and they absolutely should, A conservative government isnt going to meet this massive increase in health care costs and we all know it. They couldnt get increased costs for the patients through so they are simply deciding not to support some medical procedures which will increase over time.

  18. Pauline Westwood

    If only things were not about to get far worse yet. This government is pushing for the Trans Pacific Partnership, which will vastly increase overseas investment and we could see Walmart stores killing off what’s left of our small towns. They kill off all the local businesses then employ some locals at much lower wages until even the giant stores become unviable because the whole community has become totally impoverished. Plus, the Australian government (alone) has agreed to an unlimited number of foreign workers to enter Australia as skilled workers, without the necessity for jobs to be advertised locally. We can imagine how popular these foreign un-unionised employer-dependent workers will be. They have not negotiated reciprocal rights for Australian workers and the US (main architect of the treaty) has opted out of this clause altogether. Furthermore, without a mandate, Australia’s laws on copyright, working conditions, the environment, food labelling, importation of goods, etc. will be changed. Overseas corporations will be able to sue our federal, state or local governments for any policy or law which may interfere with their profits, such as raising the minimum wage (this happened to Egypt) or forcing a mining company to reduce the amount of poisons injected into our above and underground water systems. The cases will be heard in foreign tribunals without proper legal safeguards such as the right to appeal!

  19. Florence nee Fedup

    Building sites already flooded with unskilled 457s visas. Told to me, as example, brick tradesmen line up the site for laying bricks. Bricks laid by young men who speak no English. Another example, tradesmen laid complicated floor tiles, unskilled do simple big areas. This example the men didn’t have nous to noticed tiles should have been laid in a pattern.

    Builders are getting away with these practices because of lack unions on the sites.

    Why they are putting so much effort in killing CFMEU off is beyond me. Truth is, they now have little influence in the industry.

    Maybe they fear, those working in the industry might wake up to the fact they are being ripped off, and see the benefits of joining a union. One can only hope.

  20. Salstarat

    Michael, please please don’t take this action! These mongrel bastards in the LNP will be gone soon enough! They are NOT WORTH what you are considering … there are many people out there that love and care for you and no politician is worth ending your days for … not one of them! I can almost assure you that you have contributed 100% more to our society than the useless, non-achieving Abbott has done in his whole self serving life! I have read that when many people, who considered suicide were later interviewed, the overwhelming majority always said that they were so GLAD they chose life because as bad as things can get, you, Australia and the world will move on to better things. Please be optimistic … there REALLY is light at the end of the tunnel. Remember when we felt this type of despair when the war criminal John Howard was in power? He was finally ousted …. the awful Turnbull/Abbott fascists will be a vile memory soon enough. Choose life because this country desperately needs people like YOU in it!

  21. win jeavons

    Can a government be charged with treason ? If so, a queue is needed.

  22. JeffJL

    Australia is still a great place to be and live. Despite the current trajectory of current government if you look overseas there are few places as desirable as Oz.

    “Our land is being sold off to China in huge ‘lumps’” – A xenophobic comment there. Go back 30 years and it was all about the Japanese owning all of Australia. Before that it was the Yanks. Xenophobic comments like that devalue this site.

  23. Alan Baird

    Sorry, as hopelessly unequal and divided as Oz is, a change to Labor will quickly show how close they are to the Libs. It’d take about, gee, 3-4 weeks to start feeling the first twinges of concern. Uncharitable people like me subscribe to the view that ALP stands for, literally, Another Liberal Party. If placed on a see-saw, Libs and Labs would all be on one side. A perfect example of how stridently Left the ALP really is was when Julia, one of the so-called Left and apparently a so-called atheist, went out of her way to retain the Priests in Schools Scheme at a cost of millions AND in a fiscal contingency! Now that’s what I call walking the talk! Total pragmatism. Bless the pessimists for they shall not be disappointed. As the late great Alex Buzo wrote, “disillusionment: the party you voted for becomes government”.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The maximum upload file size: 2 MB. You can upload: image, audio, video, document, spreadsheet, interactive, text, archive, code, other. Links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services inserted in the comment text will be automatically embedded. Drop file here

Return to home page