Tag Archives: Liberal Party

Labor’s Scare Campaign . . .

November 10, 2015
Written by: Rossleigh
5 Replies

“This morning, we’ll be talking to prominent Coalition supporter, Mr Con Server-Tiff. Good morning.”

“Now, if I can just correct you, I’m not a Coalition supporter, I’m an independent commentator.”

“Yes, but you have been supporting Coalition policies, haven’t you? I mean it would be accurate to describe you as Right wing, wouldn’t it?”

“No, that’s the sort of bigotry that you people on the ABC indulge in!”

“But this isn’t the ABC!”

“Well, it might as well be if you’re going to attack people and suggest that they’re political views are irrelevant just because you don’t agree with them.”

“I wasn’t actually attacking your political views, I was just attempting to describe them.”

“This is the sort of stuff that the Christian Right have to put up with all the time! People describing them as the Christian Right, you don’t have the left wing described like that.”

“What about references to the ‘loony left’?”

“What about them?”

“Well, isn’t that an attack on them?”

“Go on, defend your left wing mates!”

“Can we get back to the purpose of this interview – the proposed rise in the GST?”

“An excellent idea.”

“But isn’t the Liberal Party supposed to be opposed to raising taxes, I mean, don’t they always spruik themselves as the party of lower tax?”

“Well, the important thing here is to ignore Labor’s scare campaign. This won’t be increasing taxes because the overall tax take will be the same. We have Scott Morrison’s word on that and if you can’t trust the word of a Liberal minister then they might as well be Julia Gillard who promised us that there’d be no carbon tax!”

“If you’re not increasing the overall tax take, then why is it necessary to make any changes at all?”

“To make it fairer, of course!”

“And how will raising the GST make the system fairer?”

“Well, for one thing, the government will be able to do what the Business Council asked last week and use the money to reduce company tax.”

“How is that fairer?”

“Companies will be paying less tax. You don’t get much fairer than that.”

“Yes, but how does that benefit the man in the street?”

“Well, nothing can really be done to help the homeless. If people want to sleep in the street, that’s their choice.”

“I meant the average family man. How does increasing the GST help the average family man?”

“Well, it won’t be just companies that pay lower taxes, I’m sure that Mr Morrison can find an extra billion or so to cut everyone’s tax.”

“What about the unemployed?”

“They’ll have an incentive to get a job now.”

“But if they don’t get a job, won’t the increase in the GST hit them harder than anyone?”

“Yes, but if they don’t get a job its their own fault. I mean it’s easy to get a job. Even a dud like Amanda Vanstone found work writing a column for Fairfax. And Joe’s going to be ambassador to the US. You just have to look.”

“With respect, I don’t think that the average unemployed person would find it as easy as those two to get that sort of job.”

“I was just using them as examples. Obviously not everyone can become an ambassador but there are plenty of jobs about. Why just the other day I saw a help wanted in a shop window.”

“You said something before about a scare campaign, but didn’t your side of politics run a scare campaign about the carbon tax and how Whyalla would be wiped off the map and lamb roasts would be $100 each?”

“That wasn’t a scare campaign, that was just a series of possible scenarios under the GST.”

“Rather far-fetched ones I might suggest.”

“Hey, are you here to ask questions or commentate?”

“Do you concede that those were rather far-fetched?”

“Not at all. The Liberal Party had already started printing maps with no mention of Whyalla and sooner or later lamb roasts would have got to $100.”

“Yes, how is it reasonable for you to say that the carbon tax was a great big tax on everything and not to expect that Labor would try the same tactic with the GST?”

“There’s a fundamental difference there!”

“Yes, what is it?”

“Well, Labor started running a scare campaign before the last election suggesting that if we got in we’d raise the GST.”

“But you are planning to raise the GST!”

“No, we’ve simply put it on the table. We need to have a clear, level-headed discussion without the hysterical commentary from the opposition saying that when it was first introduced Howard promised that it could never go up. That was last century and as if ‘never’ refers to a new century.”

“I think you’ll find that ‘never’ means ‘not ever’, in much the same way that ‘no’ means ‘none’ when someone says ‘no cuts’ to things.”

“If you’re referring to the so-called “no cuts to pensions, health and education” comments that Tony Abbott was alleged to have made.”

“There is film of him saying it right before the election.”

“Allegedly.”

“Are you denying that there’s film of it?”

“Look we can get bogged down by what people did or didn’t say and whether the film’s clear, but I think that it’s more important to look to the future rather than argue about a leader who’s long gone.”

“It’s only been two months!”

“Allegedly.”

“Are you saying that you don’t believe that Mr Turnbull only became PM two months ago?”

“No, I’m saying that Tony Abbott was gone a long time ago. After that Prince Sir Duke thing, nobody let him make any decisions. But let’s not talk about Mr Abbott he did some excellent things while he was PM and I’m sure that history will judge him much more kindly than many other leaders.”

“What are his achievements?”

“Well … um, he stopped the boats, and … um, he introduced knights and dames and even though, that’s been thrown out, there are a number of people who wouldn’t be knights or dames if it wasn’t for him… and… ah, he got rid of the mining and carbon taxes … and he … um, he stood up to Putin and told him that we were really cross … and did I mention stopping the boats?”

“But he didn’t get the ‘budget emergency’ under control!”

“Ah, yes, he produced a chart showing us that by 2050 Labor’s debt would be twice that of Liberal’s debt!”

“That’s all we have time for. Thank you.”

“Typical! Cut me off just when I start to talk about this government’s achievements!”

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The Great Hoax, Climate Change or the GST?

November 4, 2015
Written by: Rossleigh
16 Replies

Personally, I think that maths is overvalued in schools. Now I’m not talking numeracy, I’m talking trigonometry, surds, quadratic equations and a whole range of things that most people won’t use past school. Fine for those who are going on to particular fields but a large number of students would be better off if they’d never had to struggle through them.

Of course, if you disagree with me, it’s not because you have a different perspective. It’s not because you think that maybe it’s a good idea to expose all people to maths because it’s good for them to be challenged. No, it’s because you’re gullible and a victim of the gigantic hoax that the maths teachers have invented. For a start, numbers aren’t even real. As for Pythagoras, not only did he believe that beans were souls migrating from one life to the next, he and his followers believed that numbers had magical powers. So, if you want to disagree with me, don’t cite a maths teacher or anyone who believes in maths teaching, don’t trust academics, they’re all part of the conspiracy. The best people to trust are your friends and family.

Yep, I sound ridiculous. While there is an argument to be had about how maths should be taught and whether it needs to be compulsory past a certain level, the idea that it’s a “hoax” and that you can rely on information from your friends and family makes me sound well, at least a little unbalanced.

Yet, this seems to be what the CSIRO’s survey on climate change revealed. People who didn’t believe in climate change found their friends and family their most trusted source. While I can support a degree of sceptism about what experts tell us, it strikes me that there are certain areas where the average person won’t have the necessary skills to be able to make an informed decision. Nobody says that they took their X-ray home and after everyone they know had a look at it, they decided that the doctor’s interpretation was wrong. In the case of climate change, many are arguing that they don’t even need to see the X-ray.

OK, there are “experts” on both sides of the climate change debate and it’s interesting to see how the media presents them. It was fine when Cardinal Pell gave his opinion, but Pope Francis should stick to religion. Anyone with a science degree or a couple of years at university hanging around the cafe is presented as an expert on climate change without much sceptism by the media and there’s no attempt to evaluate their credentials. . We have the absurd scenario where we’re asked to believe that a group of scientists decided that they’d find it easier to get funding to investigate something invented, and that rather than make actuall discoveries, they’d rather just take this funding and spend their time making stuff up. However, thanks to some intrepid physicists and geologists – often funded by fossil fuel companies – this hoax is being exposed.

Now, I’m not saying that the prevailing wisdom on climate change couldn’t be wrong. I’m simply saying that when one suggests that scientists have dishonest motives, one should be prepared to have one’s own motives scrutinised. Why climate scientists are supposedly part of a “hoax” and not just simply wrong is what gets me. For years, the cause of ulcers was misunderstood, but we don’t suggest that was because of some conspiracy to stop people stressing or eating spicy foods.

But speaking of hoaxes, how do you like this GST?

Remember when it came in?

No, I’m not talking about how “never ever” simply meant not until after the next election – although I suppose if that’s the case, then the assurances by Howard and Costello that it could never go up because, well, all the states had to agree and could you ever see a time when all the governments would agree to receiving more revenue, lasted a lot longer than we could have expected. That was “never” and not “never ever”, so I’m surprised that it’s taken so long before someone put it on the table.

Mm, I guess it’s easy to see why people don’t trust the “experts” and would rather listen to Uncle Frank and the guy next door.

Now, ignoring the politics, I can see an argument for putting up the GST. While the converntional argument is that it’s regressive and hurts the poor more than the rich, this needn’t be the case.

In the first instance, the poor have a limited amount to spend and so any increase in the GST won’t hit them in total terms as much as someone who spends more. If someone only spends twenty five thousand in a year, then a five percent increase can’t cost them more than $1250, whereas someone spending $100,000 could be hit for $5000. If the current exemptions on fresh food, education and health are included then it’s even less than the $1250. If you raise pensions and allowances by enough, as well as increasing the tax free threshold, you can compensate those who the five percent increase will affect.

Secondly, while income tax can be minimised by various accounting tricks to minimise one’s income, the GST is more difficult to avoid. I may have used the Cayman Islands to avoid the tax on my business, but when I buy my Jaguar, I’ll be hit for an extra five percent.

And finally, the extra revenue should enable the states to continue to provide services from which should benefit those who don’t have private health insurance or go to Xavier where they learn to be grateful that they don’t go to some “povo” school in Pakenham. (Hey, I know it was just one individual and private schools don’t really encourage that sort of class warfare thing. They just constantly tell you what a great education you’re getting and how their school is the best in the world. Why a student would think that government schools are “povo” is a mystery to them …).

So, I can see that a rise in the GST could be a good thing all round – even if it is the Liberal Party proposing it.

But then, I’m also gullible enough to fall for the climate change hoax.

Canadian Election: Paradigm Change for the Better?

October 22, 2015
Written by: The AIM Network
32 Replies

Denis Bright invites discussion about the rise of inclusive politics in Canada with the formation of a majority Liberal government after nine long years in Opposition. Is the conservative political template which has dominated representative democracies for most of the last 50 years being finally challenged by voters with implications for election strategies in other representative democracies?

Is Justin Trudeau’s majority Liberal government in Canada part of a paradigm change in the politics of representative democracies?

For much of the past 50 years, the conservative template constructed by President Nixon in the US and Margaret Thatcher in Britain has been the political model for a succession of representative governments in economically developed countries.

Now Justin Trudeau has shattered the political template of the militarized low tax state with a commitment to a deficit budget to promote economic recovery and the withdrawal of CF-15 fighter jets from Iraq and bombing raids in Syria.

The extent of Justin Trudeau’s political landslide is quite incredible and perhaps only comparable to the Queensland state election result on 31 January 2015.

Trudeau’s Liberal Party has drawn its support from both the right and left of the political spectrum. The opposition Conservative Party has half its previous representation. On the cross-benches, the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Greens are in a similar position. Only the Bloc Quebecois (BQ) has improved its representation.

Under the austere political template of Prime Minister Stephen Harper since 2006, Canada developed a neo-populist style of market-led economic development. Canada’s foreign and defence policies met all the requirements of NATO.

Writing in The Atlantic on 18 October 2015, Parker Donham notes the desperate measures used by Stephen Harper to cling onto government.

Stephen Harper wanted the electorate to focus on insignificant symbolic issues such as desire by one woman to wear a niqab veil during a citizenship oath ceremony. The Canadian Court of Appeal upheld her right as she was prepared to reveal her true identity in private before the ceremony.

The conservative populist strategy failed to strike a real rapport with the electorate.

Harper pounced on the decision; his deputies promised an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, and the prime minister hammered the issue during a September 24 French-language debate in Montreal, Quebec.

“When we join the Canadian family, we should not hide our identity,” Harper declared. “Never will I say to my daughter that a woman has to cover her face because she’s a woman.” Mulcair, for his part, accused Harper of attempting to “hide his record”—particularly on the failing economy-behind a niqab” (Parker Dongham, The Atlantic 18 October 2015).

Another desperate measure noted in The Atlantic article was the recruitment of Australian election strategist Lynton Crosby to promote negative perceptions of recent Arab immigrants. This became a political diversionary issue to distract from Canada’s ailing economic growth and employment record.

Voters were canny enough to realise that the decline in commodity prices could not be concealed by the conservative political template with its emphasis on balanced budgets and market-led growth.

The Conservative Government could hardly run on its record despite a modest last-minute pre-election improvement in short-term economic growth, retail sales and housing starts.

Reflecting the conservatism of the prairie provinces, The Winnipeg Free Press cheered on the extent of the surplus in its federal budget coverage. The government’s budget graphics were carefully reproduced with the caveat that the important surplus should have been higher but for the collapse of oil and gas prices in November 2014.

The Harper government lived up to its promise Tuesday to eliminate the deficit, making use of billions of dollars in balance-sheet tweaks designed to cushion the blow of the oil-price shock.

Finance Minister Joe Oliver delivered a federal budget that boasted a narrow $1.4-billion surplus for 2015-16, scoring a politically critical goal just six months before a scheduled election in October (Winnipeg Free Press 21 April 2015).

To the last, the Harper Government had clung to its convictions about the value of a balanced budget during a period of rising unemployment to 7.1 per cent and falling commodity prices for oil, gas, coal and most other minerals.

The National Democratic Party (NDP) saw its vote and representation in the House of Commons halved with a -10.9% swing.

When the NDP was narrowly leading the opinion polls just one month before polling day, its finance spokesperson Andrew Thomson of Saskatchewan and a number of high profile NDP candidates made the error of promising more balanced budgets for the next four years with modest increases in corporate taxes and an end to family income splitting as introduced by Stephen Harper.

Opposing Canada’s overseas military commitments in Iraq and Syria (The Globe and Mail 10 September 2015)

The commitment by Thomas Mulcair to withdraw all Canadian troops from both Iraq and the bombing of ISIL targets in Syria did not reverse the NDP’s decline in the last month of the campaign.

The NDP’s anti-war commitment came just one week after allegations surfaced of civilian deaths in Canada’s bombing raids on ISIL targets in Syria.

Justin Trudeau supported the NDP’s commitment to withdraw fighter jets from military operations in Iraq and Syria but offered an economic policy that was more daring in addressing the problems of economic stagnation and rising unemployment to 7.1 per cent of the workforce.

Let’s hope that advocates of political change are taking note of the Canadian election on 19 October 2015. Only time will tell if it is indeed a watershed in democratic politics.

Denis Bright (pictured) is a registered teacher and a member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). He has recent postgraduate qualifications in journalism, public policy and international relations. He is interested in developing progressive public policies that are compatible with commitments to a social market model within contemporary globalization.

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An Open Letter to the Liberal Party

August 15, 2015
Written by: Dr Victoria Fielding
22 Replies

Dear Liberal Party

Is he worth it? Is Tony Abbott’s Prime Ministership worth it since he’s done such irreparable damage to your brand?

I have no doubt when Abbott won the election, you thought you’d done the right thing. After losing in 2007, I’m sure you were upset. But then losing again in 2010, after Abbott failed to negotiate to form a minority government, must have been torture. You must have been livid that Julia Gillard, a leader you despised, (a woman no less!), was so proficient at getting things done, developing progressive policies and negotiating to make them happen. Policies that filled you with dread that Australians might actually care about each other. I understand you’re all very confused about whether you’re neoliberal ideologues or socially conservative, and sometimes it’s hard to know what you really are because all you truly care about is looking after your business mates at the expense of workers. It makes it hard for you to have a persuasive narrative. Because some of you only care about keeping Australia backward, focussing on destroying socially progressive policies such as marriage equality, while the rest are only interested in your special brand of small-government-neoliberalism which is defined by a quest to increase the profits of those people who finance your campaigns. But you understood Gillard and Rudd, and the Labor Party, were a threat to all of you one way or another and therefore must be destroyed if you were ever going to undo all the progress they made. So you built the Abbott wrecking ball with this mission in mind. With the help of Rupert Murdoch and his flying monkeys in the conservative press, you designed this wrecking ball, this no-machine, this village idiot who spouts three word slogans like an android, in order to scare the electorate into giving the Liberal Party what you feel is your entitlement; power. And it all seemed to be going so well! That is, until the first day in the job when you surely immediately realised you’d made a mistake. And that’s why I ask whether this mistake was worth it. Maybe you’ve been too scared to ask yourself this question, let alone answer it. But now you’re heading towards the next election, surely you have to face reality at some point? How about I try answering the question for you and you can decide if you agree with me?

There are three reasons why Abbott was not worth it for the Liberal Party. He might have got you the term in government that you desperately wanted, but what has this term done to your future?

The first reason Abbott was certainly not worth it is because he’s impotent. Politically, he has achieved very little and made a huge amount of mess in the process. Yes, he got rid of the mining tax and the Carbon Price. But this caused problems for you too since revenue disappeared along with these policies. Yes, you think Abbott’s done wonders in ‘stopping the boats’. But once this promise helped win the election, what good did it actually do for your political fortune? Other than costing a lot of money to keep people locked up in a hell-hole indefinitely, and causing you to have to keep secret anything to do with boats, which you’re no doubt not happy about because you love demonising refugees so you must be sorry you’ve painted yourself into a ‘we can’t tell you what’s going on because you’re not going to like it’ corner. And then there was the promise Abbott made, which you no doubt regret, to not make any cuts to education, health, the ABC and SBS. But what is the point of a Liberal government that doesn’t make cuts to education, health, the ABC and SBS? I do understand that you have to pretend you’re something you’re not in order to get elected. It must be very stressful having to keep up this façade when all you really want to do is bring back WorkChoices. Either way, Abbott’s promises were quickly broken, so even where he has managed to make spending cuts, they’ve not been celebrated as you might have hoped, but rather accurately painted as lies and more fodder for the independents to block much of the ‘reform’ you would have liked to make. If reform is the right word for a hand-break-turn-around-and-go-backwards policy platform. This impotency is surely of concern to you.

The second reason I don’t think PM Abbott has been worth it for the Liberal Party is because he is deeply unpopular and very good at finding ways to increase his unpopularity. I don’t have time to give you the entire laundry lists of Abbott-stuff-ups that have contributed to his terrible polls, which you’ve no doubt noticed have been terrible since pretty much day one. Dodgy scholarships for his daughter, insane ‘captains picks’ such as the Knighting of Prince Philip, biting onions, shirt-fronting the Russian President, choosing only one woman in his cabinet and then making himself, a known misogynist, Minister for Women, a Speaker expense scandal and of course your own leadership spill shenanigans. Sometimes I wonder if Abbott is actually one giant satire comedy routine sent to entertain the lefty-lynch-mob on Twitter. I’m sure you’ve wondered the same thing. The bottom line is, Abbott as Prime Minister doesn’t make Australians proud to be Australian. The last poll I saw was Essential Poll which had the two party preferred figures at Liberal 47, Labor 53. And this is after Abbott’s spent most of the last few months doing his best to whip up fear about the ‘death cult’ with a growing collection of flags and tried unsuccessfully to mount a smear campaign against Bill Shorten. Is Abbott’s poll-boosting bag of tricks empty? This far out from an election and you’ve got nothing? This must be worrying for you.

The third and final reason why Abbott most definitely has not been worth it for the Liberal Party is because his incompetence in managing the economy is destroying your long-relied-on strategic mantle of claiming Liberal governments as better economic managers than Labor governments. Of course we all know this mantle isn’t based in reality. But nevertheless you’ve used it successfully to win power, along with scaring people about national security, for the past 20 years. But how can you possibly think you can keep using this ‘economic competency’ line when Abbott, and his Treasurer Hockey, are making such a mess of business confidence, consumer confidence, growth, unemployment, debt and deficit and pretty much every other economic indicator that Liberal voters apparently obsess over when deciding that they will again vote Liberal. The bottom line is, your wrecking ball, which you used so successfully to wreck Labor’s electoral fortune, has swung back and wrecked your ‘economic competence’ campaign line. What will you do without it? I suspect you’ll lose. And you may not win again until Abbott has been long-forgotten by the electorate. How long do you think that will take? 50 years? Maybe even 100?

You’re probably feeling a bit depressed now that you’ve seen my very valid reasoning as to why Abbott surely wasn’t worth it for the Liberal Party. You’re probably feeling a bit silly for being so short-sighted in your quest to get power that you’ve made such a huge #OneTermTony problem for yourselves. One term of power isn’t really enough to justify all the effort, and money, you put into getting Abbott elected. And this one term will likely ensure you won’t get another term for a very, very long time. I, however, have no sympathy for you. Like a drunk-fool with a horrible hangover, you brought this on yourself. So in the words of Darryl Kerrigan: ‘Hey. Bad luck. Ya dickhead!’

Yours sincerely

Victoria Rollison

He really is off his rocker. Or he’s a nut case.

July 15, 2015
Written by: John Lord
28 Replies

Who else but a leader of dubious mental capacity would say something like this?

“This government doesn’t get enough credit, Australia doesn’t get enough credit, for the emissions reduction work that we have already done’’.

A statement like this is hardly plausible in light of the fact that there is not one economist who has come out in support of Direct Action. No one with any expertise in the field thinks it will work even for a 5% emissions cut let alone for a higher percent to be submitted for the Paris agreement.

The independent Climate Change Authority has urged Australia to adopt an emissions reduction target of 30 per cent on 2000 levels by 2025, equating to a 36 per cent reduction on 2005 levels. Following on from his ludicrous comparison of groceries with the Greek debt crisis our Prime Minister for undoing comes up with another captain’s call calculated to offend anyone who believes in the science of climate change.

And as a storm raged over the government’s directive to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to no longer back wind energy projects, it emerged that it has also put a stop to solar investments other than the largest industrial-scale projects.

“Oh no”, I thought. “It’s not just wind turbines”. The Abbott government has opened up another front in its war on renewable energy by pulling the plug on investments in the most common form of alternative energy, rooftop and small-scale solar.

What Luddites they really are. They say they believe in the science of Global Warming but their every action is contrary to that belief. It seems the combined advancement in battery and solar technology has escaped them.

And now the Prime Minister for Coal Mining says that our emissions target for Paris won’t be revealed until after a party room debate. The fact is it will only be as high as the hard-right conservatives in his party will let it be.

Honestly the luddite who gives Turnbull credit for inventing the internet is a fool of the highest order.

He has to come up with a figure high enough to satisfy Paris against a revolt from his backbench, let alone reveal to the Australian public how he intends to pay for it within a budget framework that is already under extreme pressure.

Good luck with that. Do I need to remind you that the Carbon Tax was already doing the job?

We are under pressure internationally to pull our weight because concerns have been expressed about the Abbott’s government’s domestic climate policies.

In other words, they don’t trust him. But then again who does?

The Agenda of Stigmatization is alive and well in Budget 2015

May 18, 2015
Written by: Trish Corry
42 Replies

One of the main themes I have addressed over previous blog posts in regards to the 2014 Budget is the “Agenda of Stigmatization” by the Liberal National Coalition Government. The Agenda of Stigmatization is alive and kicking in Budget 2015. The targets? Women, single parents and working mothers.

The stigmatization narrative of the Liberal National Government’s Budget 2015 is like a passive aggressive snarl, rather than the brazen punch to the face we received in 2014.

Rorters and Double Dippers

On The Insiders, ABC (17/05/2015) Barry Cassidy interviewed Joe Hockey on a variety of budget related matters. The first area that piqued my interest was the matter of Paid Parental Leave. This policy assists parents, predominantly young women to care for their new born babies for a period prior to returning to work. This was hailed as a major initiative of the Coalition Government. One where they built on Labor’s Paid Parental Leave Policy and had ‘achieved better and greater than Labor ever could, where it comes to women.’ In fact the coalition stated that:

The Coalition’s paid parental leave scheme will result in a woman earning the average full-time salary of around $65,000 receiving $32,500 – and they will be around $21,300 better off under the Coalition’s scheme relative to Labor’s scheme.

Tony Abbott also famously stated on 3AW in September, 2013, that

“I don’t think women suffer legal discrimination and I don’t think anyone these days sets out to do the wrong thing but it is very difficult for women to combine work and family if they don’t have a fair dinkum paid parental leave scheme and that’s going to change very soon under the Coalition.”

So now they don’t have a “fair dinkum paid parental leave scheme” – what has the Coalition got to offer women?

Now the Coalition has back-flipped on this policy; stating the reason for the back-flip was that they have listened to the community. Yes, the community needs reliable, affordable childcare, but not at the detriment of already hard fought for entitlements at work.

The negative narrative of parents, primarily women, being ‘rorters and double dippers’ is meant to stigmatise this group so the public believe that working mothers are getting more than their fair share. The Coalition would like the voting taxpayer to believe that mothers are essentially stealing the nation’s taxes.

The narrative here is set to stigmatise, so if they are returned to Government, there will be little outcry from the public, when they reduce or abolish Labor’s Paid Parental Scheme altogether.

Single Parents

Single parents, particularly single mothers are another favourite target group for the Liberal National Government’s agenda of stigmatisation. We have already had in Budget 2014 attacks on FTB reducing family income for up to $6,000 per year and a the abolishment of FTB once a child has turned six. In addition, return to work and education supplements, which have been vital in the past to transition single parents into work will also cease. These changes still need to be passed in the Senate and are now linked as savings, which will fund Childcare, in addition to savings found from those on Newstart under 25 having no income for one month.

When the Prime Minister and Minister for Women was challenged in Question Time about these cuts by Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Tanya Plibersek, the Prime Minister accused Labor of supporting welfare as “pseudo-generosity. This is a prime example of the Coalition’s narrative that they see welfare as a ‘generosity’ to be given or taken away rather than an essential need.

Now we have the “Have A Go” Budget of 2015, where the Coalition ‘Has a Go’ at Single Parents by comparing apples and oranges to convince the public that Single Parents are not only having their cake and eating it too, but eating hard-working people’s cakes as well. The message here is that single parents are greedy bludgers, who get more in hand-outs than a hard working voting taxpayer.

The following table was discussed on The Insiders, ABC Sunday 17 May, 2015. Barry Cassidy queried Joe Hockey as to why it was necessary to compare the two. Hockey’s response was that he thinks it is important to advise tax payers where their money is going. (It is also interesting that the pictures on this graph pegs a single mother with two children against a hard-working single man.)

As you can see the “Age of Entitlement’ Graph demonstrates that a hard-working person working five days per week, is actually worse off than a sole parent with two kids. This is a dynamic display of the ‘Lifters and Leaners” narrative we were accustomed to in 2014 although the actual words are not used in Budget 2015. The subliminal messaging is what is used to be effective here.

However, the graph does not take into account the cost of raising children, which I have added below:

As this table now shows, regardless of what the Coalition want you to believe, when you take into account the cost of raising children; a sole parent working part-time is not better off than a hard-working individual working five days per week on $80,000 per year.

As Barry Cassidy put to Joe Hockey “But you may be creating resentment though for no purpose” Of course, Joe Hockey disagreed and responded with “Why anyone would resent helping a single parent?”

After the last 18 months of stigmatizing those on welfare, including single parents; along with the Kevin Andrews’ mantra that married couples are more valued in society; this really speaks volumes of how out of touch Joe Hockey and the Coalition are. Maybe the Treasurer should follow commentary on social media and main stream media to understand what many people think of those on welfare.

Joe Hockey knows and the coalition knows that their negative narrative about those on welfare for the past 18 months has already increased resentment. Taking an under-handed swipe at single parents, whilst butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, is beyond reproach.

The narrative here is set to stigmatise, so if they are returned to Government, there will be little outcry from the public, when they make more harsh cuts to welfare and single parents in conjunction with a more Liberal friendly Senate.

The 2015 Budget has given little to no hope for those already doing it tough on welfare. The Budget failed to deliver a vision for our future and has painted an even bleaker future for women. It is essential that the vision we have for the future is to say “NO” to a Coalition Government at the next election and always, always, put Liberal & National last.

“Stigma is a process by which the reaction of others spoils normal identity.”
―Erving Goffman

Originally Published on polyfeministix

Will Brandis Shirt-Front Morrison? Can Morrison please be the Demtel Man?

November 9, 2014
Written by: Trish Corry
24 Replies

Originally published on Polyfeministix

We often ask each demtel brandis other “If you had a superpower what would it be?” Scott Morrison’s superpower was revealed yesterday. He gets to throw people out of the country. This person was not an Asylum Seeker with brown skin, but a wealthy, white, “female attraction expert” or (Misogynicus Piggius). After a very active social media campaign, Scott Morrison cancelled the visa of Julien Blanc. Scott Morrison kicked Julien Blanc out of the country.

This ‘event’ has raised two questions for me.

If Morrison has this superpower – can he please be the Demtel Man?

Will George Brandis now Shirt-Front Morrison?

I think to put my mind into perspective for others I shall need to explain. Julien Blanc did nothing criminal during his visit, but what he advocates is very harmful to women and if implemented by his male followers would see the physical and sexual harrassment of women in society, escalate. In a nutshell what he advocates is offensive and wrong.

Morrison booted him out the country as Morrison did not agree with Julien Blanc’s freedom of speech nor his freedom of expression.

Although, many advocate for freedom of speech and freedom of expression. This is a very good contemporary example of how freedom of speech and freedom of expression can be harmful to certain groups of people in society.

Freedom of speech was vigorously defended by the LNP who advocated very strongly to Repeal Section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act. Particularly because as Abbott demonstrates quite clearly here that “There is a great Australian silence – this time about the western canon.” (ie white people)

Tony Abbotts IPA speech

Fortunately, for whatever reason Morrison decided to cancel Blanc’s visa it was done without Morrison raising the emphasis on freedom of speech that the LNP hold so dear to their heart. In this instance, Morrison (hopefully) understood the harm that Blanc does to the image of and treatment of women wherever Blanc and his sad posse unfortunately land. (Maybe LNP can now join the dots to freedom of speech and how it can cause harm to others.)

Will Brandis, who so vigorously defended Freedom of Speech on QandA recently and who infamously stated “People have the right to be bigots” do anything about this? Will he actually Shirt-Front Morrison over his lack of cling-to-ridiculous-ideology-even-if-it-hurts-vulnerable-people-and-disrespects-our-first-people mantra? How will Brandis now defend the pathetic and harmful stance that they should repeal Section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act after what Morrison has done this week?

What will Brandis’ excuse be for Morrison, to defend him as part of the LNP? Does this mean that the LNP are now soft on Freedom of Speech? (If you are a Liberal voter and this worries you or you are anxious, pull out your wallet, open it up and breathe in….and out….and in….and out, now….relax. If you don’t have enough money in your wallet for this breathing & relaxation exercise to work, you should not be voting Liberal, you Dummkopf!)

The Demtel Man

Now onto why I want Scott Morrison to be the Demtel Man. Morrison has the power to kick people out of the country. This week he kicked out a vile person and ignored this person’s right to freedom of speech. Sanity and humanity finally prevailed. If only Morrison could be the Demtel man and yell:

“But wait….there’s more!”

Please boot out (because freedom of speech & freedom of expression no longer matter and I find these ‘freedom of speech & freedom of expression’ listed below just as offensive as Julien Blanc’s harmful opinion of women!)

Cory Bernardi, Liberal Senator – For using his freedom of speech to express that it was ok to put women in a headlock and that marriage equality will lead to polygamy and bestiality
(But wait there’s more)

Tony Abbott, Prime Minister of Australia – For using his freedom of speech to say offensive things about women, defense personnel, our Indigenous people and LGBTI to name a few (offensive statements are far too extensive to include here). (But wait there’s more)

Joe Hockey, Federal Treasurer – For using his freedom of speech to express his distaste and immense dislike for middle income and disadvantaged Australians by forcing his unfair, sick budget onto us (But wait there’s more)

Julie Bishop, Foreign Minister – For using her freedom of speech to imply that Julia Gillard was a criminal and gained personally from a Union slush fund 20 years ago (Apology NOW Ms. Bishop!) (But wait there’s more)

Bronwyn Bishop, Speaker of the House – For using her freedom of expression to act upon partisan smirks and nods at Christopher Pyne, For using her freedom of speech to restrict freedom of expression for Islamic women and for using her freedom of speech and freedom of expression to express her hatred of Labor, which is acted out under section 94a umpteen times in the last year. (I also thinks she picks on the Member for Gellibrand more than anyone else – or is that just me?) (But wait there’s more)

Christopher Pyne, Minister for Education – For using his freedom of speech to express his of hatred against anyone who desires a higher education (I often imagine Sturt to be this scary place like hell, where the constituents have been sent to earth to torture us. Sturt people – please stop!) (But wait there’s more)

Kevin Andrews – For using his freedom of speech to express his willingness to harm jobless Australians by forcing them to have no income for six months. For expressing his view that all people on unemployment are on drugs, suggesting they be drug tested. For expressing his view that de-facto couples are not as happy as married couples, and his over-riding mantra that the unemployed are ‘bludgers who need to be motivated. (But wait there’s more)

Mathias Cormann, Minister for Finance – For using his freedom of speech to express that being a girly-man is a bad thing, an insult. Gender is not binary Cormann! For using his freedom of expression by infamously smoking a cigar celebrating turfing the poor into the gutter with the LNP’s unfair, sick budget. (But wait there’s more)

George Brandis, Attorney General – For using his freedom of speech to express that people have a right to be Bigots. (But wait there’s more)

Malcolm Turnbull, Minister for Communications – For using his freedom of speech to express it is ok for rural and regional people to not have decent, reliable, fast internet (Do you think he may be Amish or he has a fascination with the 1930’s?) (But wait there’s more)

Barnarby Joyce, Minister for Agriculture – For thinking it was ok to change his freedom of speech to include things he actually did not say, when he changed Hansard (Maybe Kevin Andrews could enlighten Barnaby that Hansard is for better or for worse, ’til death do us part!) (But wait there’s more).

Nigel Scullion, Minister for Indigenous Affairs – For using his freedom of speech to express that money is more important than indigenous women being able to access safe, respectful, supportive National Family Violence Prevention and Legal Service. (But wait there’s more)

Greg Hunt – Minister for the Environment – For using his freedom of speech to express that he absolutely detests the environment, in everything he does and says (But wait there’s more)

Peter Dutton – Minister for Health, For using his freedom of speech to express that it is OK for the disadvantaged, poor, sick and needy to go without medical treatment because they can’t afford it and that is is OK that cancer may not be detected in many, due to the exorbitant costs through his proposed changes to medicare. (But wait there’s more)

Campbell Newman – Premier of Queensland, For using his freedom of speech to tell lie after lie after lie and using his freedom of expression to pose as a concerned Premier in advertisements instead of a politician spending public money on advertising in an early campaign. (But wait there’s more)

Liberal Voters – For using their freedom of expression to vote for the most incompetent, harmful, hurtful Government, we have had in the history of Australia. (But wait there’s more)

And last but not least – You, Mr. Morrison – Boot yourself out of the Country, for your ongoing freedom of expression and freedom of speech implying that human beings seeking asylum are less than human beings and should be treated as such.

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Sinking the Slipper, or Putting the Boot In

August 6, 2014
Written by: John Lord
16 Replies

In Australian slang, “Sinking the slipper” has a number of meanings. It can mean to kick someone, as in a street fight or brawl, or to kick someone when they’re down.

On July 28, Peter Slipper was found guilty of dishonestly using taxi vouchers: ACT Chief Magistrate Lorraine Walker found the former MP dishonestly and knowingly misused the taxpayer-funded vouchers on three days in 2010. The case was adjourned, and Mr Slipper will appear for sentencing on September 22.

There is no doubt about his guilt. He misused $954 of taxpayer’s funds claiming expenses that were private, not parliamentary. It is possible that Slipper might face a goal term. Whatever his sentence he is a disgraced politician and rightly so.

But is he alone in his guilt? Is it fair that other politicians, including the prime minister, were allowed to repay expenses under the Minchin Protocol, which allows for the repayment of wrongly claimed entitlements, while others get off scott free? The protocol came about because of the abuse of the system, and it allowed members to repay money without further consequences when controversy arose.

Mr Slipper has on a number of occasions said that he tried to repay the money under the Minchin Protocol, but the avenue has been denied him:

“What is breathtaking is that I am before a court … despite a number of attempts on my part to resolve the matter administratively.”

Why is he in the courts, then? It can only be put down to LNP payback for his taking the Speaker’s job. But of course, with Royal Commissions into everything but the Labor Party itself, conservatives have shown a considerable propensity for retaliation generally, even to the point of releasing cabinet documents.

Does Slipper deserve a gaol sentence? Most certainly not. If he does, the law will have been shown to be an ass. He should have been given the same opportunity to repay the money that the others had. Already the commonwealth have spent $70,000 in pursuit of $954.

Attorney General George Brandis has never adequately explained why the Commonwealth pursued him over such a paltry amount and who it was who took the complaint to the AFP.

Some of my best friends are corrupt

By way of comparison, let’s look at Tony Abbott’s top 25 claims:

Abbott’s age of entitlement: Tony’s Top Twenty-five:.

In 2009 Tony Abbott falsely claimed flight and comcar costs while promoting his book and had to repay $9397.42. Here are 25 other examples of Abbott’s work-related claims:

In August 2009 Tony Abbott claimed $1720 in travel allowance + $1,883 for flights while “volunteering” as a truancy assistant in Aurukun
In April 2010 Tony Abbott claimed $1539 travel allowance for all nights of his Pollie Pedal charity bike ride from Melbourne to Sydney + $480 flight to Melbourne
In November 2010 Tony Abbott and family claimed $420 travel allowance, $1956 for flights + $354 in comcar costs to attend the Melbourne Cup
In December 2010 Tony Abbott and family claimed $1910 for flights + $171 in comcar costs to attend day 1 of Boxing day Ashes test in Melbourne
In April 2011 Tony Abbott claimed $2875 travel allowance for all nights of his Pollie Pedal charity bike ride from Gold Coast to Sydney + $556 flight to Brisbane
In May 2011 Tony Abbott and family claimed $420 travel allowance, $1646 in flights + $599 in comcar costs to attend the AFL Dreamtime game in Melbourne
In September 2011 Tony Abbott (+ passenger) claimed $744 travel allowance + $12133 for chartered flights from Sydney to St George and back to Brisbane to attend the Birdsville races
In October 2011 Tony Abbott and family claimed $424 travel allowance, over $823 for flights + $550 in comcar costs to attend the AFL grand final in Melbourne
In October 2011 Tony Abbott claimed $5623 for a chartered flight from Sydney to Bathurst return to attended the Bathurst 1000 V8 supercars
In October 2011 Tony Abbott and family claimed $848 travel allowance, $3722 for flights + $763 in comcar costs to attend the Victoria Derby in Melbourne
In October 2011 Tony Abbott claimed $351 travel allowance while “volunteering” as builder’s labourer in Hopevale
In November 2011 Tony Abbott claimed $349 travel allowance + $941 for flights to compete in 70.3 Port Macquarie ironman event
In January 2012 Tony Abbott claimed $424 travel allowance, $771 for flights + $515 in comcar costs to attend the men’s final of the Australian Tennis Open in Melbourne
In January 2012 Tony Abbott (and passenger) spent $9347 to charter a flight to Tamworth to attend the Tamworth Country Music festival.
In January 2012 Tony Abbott claimed $349 travel allowance + $1095 flights to Melbourne to compete in Pier to Pub swim in Lorne
In January 2012 Tony Abbott claimed $736 travel allowance, $1438 flights + $684 in comcar costs to participate in the Tour Down Under Charity ride in Adelaide
In March 2012 Tony Abbott claimed $3141 travel allowance for all nights of his Pollie Pedal charity bike ride from Geelong to Canberra + $482 flight from Canberra to Melbourne
In April 2012 Tony Abbott claimed $349 travel allowance + $2023 flights to compete in Hervey Bay Surf Lifesaving Pier to Pub swim
In May 2012 Tony Abbott claimed $424 travel allowance, $909 in flights + $328 in comcar costs to attend AFL Dreamtime game in Melbourne
In August 2012 Tony Abbott claimed $234 travel allowance while “volunteering” at Aurukun Mission and claimed $9636 for charter travel to/from Aurukun
In August 2012 Tony Abbott claimed $349 travel allowance + $650 flights to compete in Coffs Coast Cycle Challenge
In Sept 2012 Tony Abbott claimed $354 travel allowance + $160 flights to compete in Wagga ‘Lake to Lagoon’ fun run
In Sept 2012 Tony Abbott and family claimed $429 travel allowance, $1480 in flights + $540 in comcar costs to attend the AFL grand final
In November 2012 Tony Abbott and family claimed $848 travel allowance, $1053 for flights + $594 in comcar costs to attend the Victorian Derby in Melbourne
In December 2012 Tony Abbott claimed $1108 travel allowance for three nights while driving a big rig down the Pacific Highway.

That’s over $84,000 in work-related travel entitlements Abbott claimed while “volunteering”, running, swimming, cycling and attending major sporting events. There are of course many others from both sides who have repaid wrongly paid expenses:

• Attorney-General George Brandis repaid nearly $1,700 he had claimed from the taxpayer to attend the wedding of radio announcer Michael Smith in 2011.
• Former Attorney General Mark Dreyfus was forced to repay $466 claimed while he was away from Canberra on a skiing trip in August 2011, which his spokeswoman said was “an administrative error.”
• Former Trade Minister Richard Marles claimed flights to Labor MP Michael Danby’s 2008 Parliament House wedding but said he had meetings in Canberra the next day.
• Wayne Swan, when acting PM in 2010, took his two children to both the AFL grand final replay and NRL grand final by VIP aircraft, costing taxpayers more than $17,000 in one weekend.
• In August 2012 Mr Abbott went to Coffs Harbour for its cycle challenge, claiming $1,002.
• Julia Gillard repaid $4243 in 2007 when she was deputy opposition leader, in relation to her partner Tim Mathieson’s private use of a taxpayer-funded car.
• As a minister Mr Reith racked up a $50,000 phone bill at taxpayers’ expense, which he repaid.

The list goes on and on, yet the rules have never altered. In fact, Abbott’s response was to suggest his colleagues should “err on the side of caution”, and if they had any doubts about their entitlements they should “act immediately to clear the matter up” – but it still goes on.

When the Coalition came to office they promised an end of entitlement. Obviously it didn’t apply to them, because Coalition ministers appear to have developed a taste for VIP jet travel. A review of “special purpose” flights by Fairfax Media, covering the first three months of the Abbott Government, found ministers are routinely opting for a luxury Royal Australian Air Force-operated jet over the commercial alternatives of Qantas and Virgin, yet Department of Finance rules on entitlements state: “When considering tasks for special purpose aircraft, the approving authorities will take into account: a) the availability of flights on major domestic airlines.” However, in a two-month period between October 16 and December 12, 2013, eight ministers took 35 flights on busy intercity routes. The bill to taxpayers was $182,160.

If Peter Slipper gets a gaol sentence it will be a gross miscarriage of justice. Not of the court’s making, but that of a government more intent on punishing people than exercising leadership. Thus far it has been punishment of pensioners, the sick, the young, the unemployed, the opposition, and anyone who disagrees.

Meanwhile, the credit cards are quick to emerge from wallets filled with taxpayer’s funds.

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Et fixa regimen Abbott praeteritum OR Let’s Examine The Respective Plans of The Parties.

June 22, 2014
Written by: Rossleigh
30 Replies

Photo: Liberal Party of Australia

Last week, while acting as goal umpire, I signalled a goal to our team. Although it came out of a pack, I had a clear view of the ball leaving the player’s foot and going through the goal. The opposition started screaming that it was touched. I was tempted to ask which of them thought touched it given they were all about a metre away from the ball, but instead simply signalled the goal. (In such decisions, the field umpire will call “Touched, all clear” if he heard or saw anything – he didn’t.)

As the ball was going back to the centre an opposition supporter called out that I was a cheat and that I knew the ball was touched. Clearly, he had a clear unbiased, unimpeded view from thirty metres away, and knew that I must be cheating. His attitude reminded me of the various times I’ve been attacked a “left-wing moorun” or “Labour party supporter”. Logic has nothing to do with the argument. For many, it’s simply: I disagree with you, therefore you’re biased and unable to see this clearly because you’re an idiot, and even though I can’t spell, this doesn’t detract from the fact that I am always right about absolutely everything.

I try to make sure that I don’t fall into the same trap. Perhaps, Andrew Bolt really does have a point when he says that it’s not white people who are racist, it’s Asians and those people with non-white skin that he’s not allowed vilify any more because the law prevents free speech. So, in order to be fair and balanced, I thought I’d just examine the way that both parties approach the future.

Labor

Wanted to improve school funding and adopted some of the Gonski modelling.
Introduced the NDIS to ensure that people with disabilities had a better quality of life.
Attempted to improve communications through the NBN.
Believed that those making “super” profits from digging up our resources could afford to contribute more to the country through taxation.
Moved to increase superannuation so that in the future people would be less reliant on the pension.
Believes that we need harsh deterrents to discourage people from coming by boat, because if we don’t have them, then the Liberals will frighten people in Western Sydney about “illegal immigrants” causing traffic problems.
Has committed to a modest target for renewable energies.

Liberals

Pushing for Latin to be studied in schools.
Put the Catholic Education Office of Western Australia in charge of schools program on Manus Island. (They do have a proud tradition of covering up abuse.)
Believes that everyone should pay their own way and not rely on handouts. (Unless they’re trying to run a court case against a politician such as a One Nation leader or an ex-Speaker.)
Thinks that funding public schools may not lead to better results, so let’s give the money to those parents struggling to afford private school fees.
Don’t believe that we need faster broadband because it’s only used to download movies and for playing games.
Believes that we should put in harsh deterrents to discourage people coming by boat. If you look at the history of boat people coming to Australia, the first group included convicts, who were poor and not the people of “calibre” that we won’t coming here (or having children). Later groups coming by boat included Tony Abbott, so you can see why Australians are against boat people.
Have appointed a diverse group of climate change sceptics to investigate our renewable energy target, and after spending a few weeks looking at the situation, will hand down a report saying that Labor got it wrong and we really should be trying to sell more coal.
Have introduced Knights and Dames.

On balance, you’d have to say that the Liberals have a clearer idea of what they want the future to look like.

P.S. I know that some rabid Liberal supporter will accuse me of deliberating ignoring the Budget deficit, but I feel that it’s been well covered in so many other areas. And yes, it is true that while Labor weren’t likely to return the Budget to surplus before 2017, the Liberals promise that they’ll do it within ten years. They also promised that they’d deliver Budget surpluses in their first term.

Also by Rossleigh:

Abbott Government Declares Unity Ticket With Obama on Climate Change!

Abbott’s Groan-Up Government!

Slackers, Slouch Hats, Slaves, Sex Workers and Salacious Winks.

Introducing the new “ABC free” AUSTRALIA … now with extra ignorance, selfishness and cruelty

March 29, 2014
Written by: Letitia McQuade
47 Replies

(Or why we need the ABC)

Since the coalition’s Murdoch lead victory in last September’s federal election there has been a palpable shift in our national narrative. The images of a sun burnt country forged by convict sweat and hard working immigrants is fading fast, and in its wake a new story is being fashion.

It is a tale of well intentioned, hard working corporations, (who really just want to keep us all employed), being squeezed by draconian regulations and pushed offshore by rampant, out of control wages. It’s the chronicle of a government being driven into the red, not by cutting taxes for the wealthy and turning a blind eye to the corporate “offshoring” of profits (read “legal” tax evasion), but by those lazy unemployed/disabled bludgers on welfare, and their “anti business” environmentalist buddies. It’s the saga of nation overrun by so called “illegals” intent on subverting our immigration laws for the sole purpose of suckling endlessly on OUR government teat, (Ironically most of whom are coming here LEGALLY as refugees).

These new LNP/Murdoch sanctioned mantras are repeated so often, and with such earnest conviction it seems people are finding it pretty damn hard not to buy into it. There are even those in the Labor party who seem quite happy to have joined the chorus.

I hear it everywhere I go, everyday Aussies out there parroting the coalition’s vitriolic hatred for anything even vaguely related to the unions, the unemployed, the environment, asylum seekers, disability pensioners, ABC lefties, foreign aid, etc.

So why all the negative jawboning?

Well, if you read the papers Australia has, up until our recent electoral liberation, been a nation under siege by left wing “special interests”! Because of this evil leftist scourge we have been forced to endure such indignities as the 2nd highest standard of living in the world (after Norway), the planets largest houses, one of the worlds best/most affordable health care systems, quality education, disposable incomes such that we can afford to be the be the worlds leading per capita emitters of of CO2, and the dubious privilege of ranking 69th in our per capita refugee intake (49th in overall terms).

When you lay it out like that it’s easy to see why we have all been so unhappy, we have been really suffering! Clearly something had to be done.

But seriously, something has happened to us. If you listen to the rhetoric, it would seem we are no longer a nation that strives for the fair go, but rather one that values our own perceived self interest above all other concerns.

I scratch my head and wonder, how did this happen? When did Australia become a place that embraces the social and political agendas of the most ignorant, selfish and cruel among us?

It wasn’t that long ago that Australian public opinion was DEEPLY CONCERNED with the environmental legacy we are leaving for our children. As recently as last year people seemed happy to talk about the scandal that is corporate tax evasion. There was even a time, in living memory, when refugees that came here by boat were welcomed with a broad smile and a hand up.

So what happened? How did the social and moral imperative get banished from our national narrative? Did it happen by accident, or by design? And if by design, then by who’s hand?

And then there’s the bigger questions. Exactly who’s interests are served by these apparent changes in our attitudes? And is anyone standing against the tide?

The sculpting of public opinion has a long history and there are many tools, such as fear and scapegoating, that have been used to great effect through out the ages. “Group think”, for example is an extraordinarily powerful weapon, (after all who wants to run outside the herd, everyone knows how dangerous that is). The truth however has never been a necessary component when seeking to sway the prevailing sentiments of the masses.

William James, the father of modern Psychology notably once quipped “There’s nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will not believe it”. This rather glib observation was most infamously put into practice by the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, (a man on whom the power of the press was most certainly not lost), who used the simple “lie, repeat, lie, repeat, lie, repeat” principle to whip up the greatest genocidal frenzy in history.

More recently Goebbel’s philosophical musing “Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play” has been turned on it’s head by the irrepressible Rupert Murdoch, our prodigal puppeteer d’jour, who, like some gruesomely wizened “whack a mole” has popped up here again to lead his relentless political cheer squad for which ever side will acquiesce to do his bidding. It would appear that, in spite of his meddling hand being beaten down in UK and much of the USA now being hip to the fact that “FOX NEWS” is an oxymoron, if you hand the old boy a monopoly he’ll show you he’s still got it.

murdoch-puppet_1940215i

One rather startling revelation that came out of the UK’s recent Levinson enquiry into press standards , was was that Murdoch had actively lobbied former UK prime minister John Major to change the Torries policy on the EU, lest he engage in willfully biased coverage in order to “hand the election” to Blair’s New Labor (a party/man seemingly more willing to do his bidding). Major refused to allow Murdoch to dictate policy and was duly slammed by the Murdoch press, who came out swinging hard for Blair.

So in spite of the Torries having had a clear lead in the polls up until Major’s “disagreement” with Murdoch, the Torries, (much like Gillard), found the power of a vindictive, inflammatory press mobilised against them simply too great to overcome. Blair was elected and the rest, as they say, is history.

While the Brits were duly outraged, you would think something so blatantly corrupt as seeking to dictate government policy in return for favourable press would raise a dubious brow from someone back here in Aus; but much like the “March in March” (a mysteriously unnoticed gathering of over 100,000 Australia wide) somehow it failed to be deemed newsworthy enough to make any significant impression on the Australian mainstream media.

So… If a media baron is dictating government policy in return for press support, but no one ever hears about it, is the political process actually being subverted? Probably, (but then who has time to worry about such things when we are all so busy hating and punishing refugees).

Or… If a crowd gathers in the city and no one is there to report it, did it really gather? Maybe it did in the hearts and minds of those who were there, but for anyone else, or in the archives of history?… Well maybe not.

We have been told a lot of things recently, (much of it negative), about everything from the unions to environmentalists, from asylum seekers to the NBN. And while it’s easy to put a question mark over anything a politician might say in an effort to popularise their chosen policy agenda; I can not help but wonder if a press core that is practically a monopoly, (and known to actively pursue it’s owners personal agendas), is actually telling us the whole truth, or even any small part of it?

Like many others I can’t quite shake the feeling that we’re being fed a grab bag of skilfully crafted misinformation, half truths and innuendo designed to direct our hostility toward the poor and disenfranchised, or anyone out there pushing for a fairer, more sustainable policy agenda.

According to the official story, Australians are apparently (on average) far richer than we were 10 years ago… but for some rather opaque reason we just don’t feel it.
I can’t help but wonder why that is?

Is it because we feel more entitled than we used to? (If we don’t have a car, a mobile phone, a laptop, an ipad, a kindle, a 50″ TV, Foxtel, Quickflix, a yearly overseas holiday, and at least 3 restaurant meals a week we think we are suffering an intolerable injustice?).

Is it that we are constantly being assaulted by the relentless negativity of a 24 hour news cycle, telling us that our unfettered access to “more stuff” is being threatened by the poor and disenfranchised?

Or maybe it’s that the wealth is only going to the top end of town, and no one else is reaping the benefit?

It’s perfectly understandable that when we are feeling squeezed we like to have someone to blame, but it is worth asking ourselves, is our anger being misplaced?

Here we are, literally seething with contempt for refugees, single mothers, greenies, protesters, students, socialists, the disabled, lefties, intellectuals and the all those former bank and manufacturing workers that have now joined the ranks of the unemployed. Meanwhile the gap between the haves and have nots is at an all time high. Our trusty government is busy reducing taxes for the top end of town, Corporate profits are breaking records left and right, (but strangely corporate tax receipts are not, Google, for example, had revenue of over $1 billion in Australia in 2012, and yet paid only $74k tax). CEO’s wages and share options continue to defy gravity, and our banks, whilst being incredulously profitable, are shipping jobs off shore faster than you can say “transaction fee”, and so it goes…

*(brings to mind a joke I heard recently: A banker, a Daily Telegraph reader and a refugee are out to lunch. The waiter puts down a plate with twelve biscuits on it; the banker takes eleven, nudges the Telegraph reader and says “hey watch it mate, that refugee wants your biscuit”)

Everyone knows trickle down economics is bunk, and yet we keep buying into the myth, lauding the lords and kicking the powerless. The cognitive dissonance simply staggering!

So my question is this…Who’s interests does this new hateful narrative really serve? Murdoch and his buddies in the 1%, or those of us in the mortgage belt?

Please don’t get me wrong. I am not wholly blaming Murdoch. We all lobby for our own interests, and why should he be any different. What I am saying however is that a virtual monopoly concentration of Australia’s media in any ones hands is dangerous. We need visible, diverse mainstream media to give a balanced range of views.

We also need some measure of mainstream media presence that is not driven by profit, or dictated to by advertising revenue and share holder values. We need a media that is prepared to objectively challenge the veracity of the story as told to us by Murdoch, (and given the governments proposed changes to section 18c of the racial vilification act this is now more important than ever).

In short, we need our ABC.

[twitter-follow screen_name=’LetitiaMcQuade’ show_count=’yes’]

Disclosure of my political affiliations

November 18, 2013
Written by: Rossleigh
18 Replies

Photo: captionit

A few weeks ago I wrote about the formation of a new party called The Australian Arts Party in an interview with one of its founders. So far it has 268 foundation members and needs to reach 500 to register.

I have since become one of the founding members.

I mention this because – every now and then – some troll will jump on the comments and tell us that we’re all a mob of Labor party stooges, and that the ALP are “complete morons” and total incompetents. After one such commentator had told me that the Labor Party were the biggest mob of idiots in the history of the world, I suggested to one that I may not – in fact – have voted ALP, he immediately assumed that I’d voted for The Greens and told me that they were even worse. For a moment I considered asking how The Greens could be worse than the biggest mob of idiots of all time. Then I considered telling him that I had – at one time – considered standing for the National Party. In the end, I decided that neither logic nor the truth would have any effect so I resorted to strategy of dealing with trolls by being more ridiculous than they are. I simply pointed out what a terrible job Joe Hockey was doing as Opposition Leader. For a person who argues by engaging in abuse and simply ignoring the facts, it frustrates them beyond belief when someone else does the same.

I am not, nor was I ever, a member of The Greens. If I were, I would have resigned in protest when they joined with the Coaltion to block the ETS in Labor’s first term.

I am not, nor was I ever, a member of the Labor Party. If I were, I would have resigned in protest at their race to the bottom on Asylum Seekers.

I am not, nor was I ever, a member of the Liberal Party. If I were, I would have never resigned in protest because I’m sure I could justify whatever they did, because hey, whatever if it takes to become Government. And so what if you torture the odd person, Sri Lanka, times are tough and when the going gets tough, we give you a couple of boats so that you can round up anyone attempting to leave. After all isn’t the country that a potential refugee is attempting to leave the best placed to decide if they’re really fleeing persecuction or not.

I am not, nor was I ever, a member of the National Party, because I can use coherent sentences and use words such as “spurious” and “lickspittle”.

But I am – potentially – a member of the Arts Party.

Yes, I’m sure that many of you will argue that there are more important things than the Arts, and that we should be more concerned about other things. That’s part of the reason I’ve paid my $20 to be a founding member. Politicians and others frequently decide that there are more important things than the Arts. We’ll cut the Arts but not Defence. Schools will run a Physics class for four people, but decide that the numbers are too low in Music with fourteen.

So I could have joined a party with more important causes on its mind. I could have joined that party supporting motorists that just elected a Senator. What’s it’s name. Motorists United Together Enthusiastically. Or MUTE, as their newly elected Senator seems to be.

But I didn’t. I decided that the Arts was more worthy of a voice than all the other small parties that seem to be influencing government decisions, like the Shooter Party in NSW.

Hockey To Lift Debt Ceiling by 33%, and the Hypocrisy Level to an All-time High

October 19, 2013
Written by: Rossleigh
48 Replies

If you search really hard, you’ll find some reporting of this:

“The Federal Government’s debt ceiling could be raised to $400 billion in a bid to head off the financial tremors facing the US.

Treasurer Joe Hockey has used a speech in the US to signal the debt ceiling – currently $300 billion – would be increased to take account of the Government’s required borrowings.

Mr Hockey will have to increase Australia’s debt ceiling by Christmas. Total debt is expected to peak at $370 billion by April 2016.

Mr Hockey said yesterday the ceiling was likely to be well above the bare minimum required.

“We believe the debt limit needs to be set at a level that provides sufficient headroom to accommodate likely events but also to provide discipline to budgetary management,” he said.

“It must be the case that debt limits should only be altered when unexpected significant events necessitate a call on the markets.”

The Federal Government yesterday sold $800 million in debt at an interest rate of 3.8 per cent, taking total debt on issue to $284.5 billion.”

The West Australian

Of course part of this, like everything for the next few months, can reasonably be argued as a hangover from Labor. (Although I suspect any fall in unemployment will be claimed immediately!) It’s the sentence sandwiched in between all those other boring numbers that I want to draw everyone’s attention to!

“Total debt is expected to peak at $370 billion by April 2016.”

Now I know that there are various ways in which it can be argued that our net debt isn’t as high as the figures being thrown about. And I am well aware that relative to GDP, Australia is very well off compared to the rest of the world. Economics is rarely ever straightforward, so I don’t want to be distracted from the main point here by all the intricacies of Australia’s debt.

Taking the figure quoted in the article, our current debt in $284.5 billion, then the estimate of $370 billion by 2016 increases our debt by $85 billlion dollars. I’m aware that almost no-one – including me – grasps really big numbers, so let me break this down a little.

After nearly three years of an Abbott Government that was elected to stop Labor’s “wasteful” spending” and to stop putting things on the “credit card”, they will have actually increased our total debt. Of course, it could be argued that this figure is only an estimate, but according to some reports Hockey wants to raise the debt ceiling to $400 billion to cover “contingencies”.

Or to break the figure down a little more, it means that the Government will be borrowing close to $100 million a day for the next three years. Now where have I heard that figure before? Oh that’s right, from here:

“Every year that the budget is in deficit is a year that Australia is living beyond its means,” says the Coalition’s Treasury spokesman, Joe Hockey.

The Coalition’s calculation that Australia is borrowing $100 million a day gives a sense of government excess.

– See more at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/a-credible-path-back-to-surplus/story-e6frg9qo-1226330714317#sthash.3NksimEy.dpuf

And here:

TONY ABBOTT:

I think that if the Government wasn’t borrowing $100 million every single day it would a lot easier for the banks to keep interest rates down. Everyone needs to understand that when the Government is out there borrowing $100 million every single day, there is going to be upwards pressure on interest rates. So, the best thing the Government can do to help the Australian people is get its own spending under control.

Just as well the Liberals are there to fix this budget emergency, because borrowing well in excess of $90 million dollars day is apparently no problem at all.

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Liberal Party “Real” Solutions

link
March 15, 2013
Written by: Rossleigh
27 Replies

Interviewer – Good morning, on today’s show we have a representative from the Liberal Party who promises to reveal his name closer to the election, but wishes to be known as Mr Pink, for this interview. Good morning, Mr Pink, and what’s in the Real Solutions Document. Mr Pink – Good morning, well, Terry, real…

February 3, 2013
Written by: Michael Taylor
34 Replies

Do you remember how good life was under the Howard Government? How we were all made to feel safe from terrorists and boat people? Remember too that we had a media – and Howard himself – incessantly tell us how lucky we were? Remember how good the economy was and remember having that message drilled into us? Ah, they were all part of the golden years.

Ministers could be sacked or toss in the towel without a media scandal ensuing. Any Government hiccups weren’t a national headline or publicised as glowing evidence that the Government was in turmoil. In the golden years, the Prime Minister could even wear glasses.

In those days the media let the Government do its job and told us what a good job they were doing.

Aren’t we lucky that Tony Abbott wants to lead us back to those days?

But before you start reminiscing for those days long past let’s recap on the finer points of Howard’s Golden Years before we decide if we really want to return to them.

Blogger Cuppa has compiled a list of the highlights, taken from a parliamentary speech by Senator John Faulkner, 22 March 2006 when Faulkner recounted a list of the scandals, lies and intrigue that were the real highlights of Howard’s Golden Years.

We remember:

Minister Jim Short was forced to resign for failing to divest himself of financial interests in his area of ministerial responsibility.
Industry minister John Moore was exposed for his shareholdings in technology investment and share-trading companies.
Parliamentary secretary Brian Gibson lost his job because of a conflict of interest.
Small business minister Geoff Prosser was running three shopping centres while he was a Minister and he was forced to resign. (Geoff Prosser resigned in July 1997 following the disclosure that he was a shopping centre landlord while he was responsible for commercial tenancy provisions of the Trade Practices Act 1975).
Resources minister Warwick Parer had massive share interests in a coalmine and in other resource companies; he stayed, in breach of the Ministerial Code.
Acting Minister for Communications Peter McGauran forgot that he owned 70 poker machines.
Employment Services Minister Mal Brough promoted training courses which were actually Liberal Party fundraisers.
Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane was involved in a complex scam to rort GST rebates from Liberal Party fundraisers.
Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Herron kept up his practice as a surgeon, in breach of the code.

Mr Howard himself was found to be in breach of his own code when he failed to resign as a director of the Menzies Research Centre.

Mr Howard misled the Parliament over meetings he had held with ethanol producer Manildra’s boss – massive Liberal Party donor Dick Honan. It was eventually proved that the meetings did occur, and three weeks later the Government increased trade penalties against a Brazilian ethanol producer.

And there’s more:

Parliamentary Secretary Warren Entsch’s concrete company won a massive Government contract in breach of the code.
Peter Reith was appointed as a consultant to defence contractor Tenix immediately after resigning as Defence Minister.
Health Minister Michael Wooldridge signed a $5 million building deal for the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and days later, after resigning as Health Minister, was employed by the college as a consultant.
Senator Coonan, as Minister for Revenue, avoided paying a land tax. She was then exposed and forced to resign as a registered director of an insurance dispute resolution company operating from her own home.
Wilson Tuckey, then Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government, heavied a state police minister on behalf of a family member.
Parliamentary secretary Bob Woods retired from politics when he was under police investigation for travel rorts.
Communication minister Richard Alston’s family trust held Telstra shares.
Peter Costello, the Treasurer, appointed Liberal Party megadonor Robert Gerard to the Reserve Bank board despite being told by Mr Gerard that he was involved in a 14-year long tax evasion dispute with the Australian Taxation Office.
Three ministers – John Sharp, David Jull and Peter McGauran – were forced to resign as a result of travel rorts involving false claims, mismanagement or cover-ups.
Parliamentary Secretary Bill Heffernan was forced to resign over fabricated claims against a High Court judge.

What else have we had over the past 10 years? Ten years of public policy failure. A partial – very partial – list would include:

The massive pork-barrelling of the $1 billion Federation Fund program.
The scandal over the budget leak about MRI machines.
The development of a culture of assumption and denial in DIMIA while Mr Ruddock was minister for immigration, which the Comrie report called failed, catastrophic and dehumanised; the wrongful and scandalous deportation of Australian citizen Vivian Alvarez Solon.
The wrongful and scandalous detention of Cornelia Rau at Baxter detention centre.
The utter incompetence of Veterans’ Affairs Minister Dana Vale over roadworks at Anzac Cove.
The rorting of the $500 million Regional Partnerships program, with massively disproportionate grants being allocated to Coalition seats – not to mention the Tumbi Creek and Beaudesert Rail scandals under the same program.
Support for the training of scab labour in Dubai to work on the waterfront and the use of dogs and security guards in balaclavas during the waterfront dispute as waterside workers were sacked under the cover of darkness with the loss of all entitlements and, in some cases, personal possessions.

Of course, the Prime Minister introduced the GST after promising he never, ever would.

The Howard Government have sponsored many attacks on the independence of the judiciary and the courts, including repeated slurs by Senator Heffernan in this chamber and in Senate Estimates.
They scrapped the free Commonwealth dental health scheme for low-income people.
They put back the cause of reconciliation irrevocably by refusing to say sorry to the Stolen Generations.
They blurred the line between church and state by the disastrous appointment of Archbishop Hollingworth as Governor-General of Australia.

Within days of coming to office, the Howard government sacked six departmental secretaries and have since politicised the public service so that officials will never offer frank and fearless advice. In fact, the Government have encouraged a culture where advice of any kind from a public servant is not welcome.

They have increased Government staffing of Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries from 293 when they came to office to 430 now, many paid above the salary range.
They cynically manipulated public sentiment about asylum seekers for political advantage.
They refused to sign the Kyoto protocol to deal with our greatest global environmental challenge – climate change.
They sponsored attacks from the former Communications Minister Richard Alston and from government backbenchers over alleged ABC bias while making partisan appointments to the ABC Board.
They introduced draconian industrial legislation to strip away the hard-won rights of Australian workers.
They introduced the flawed Pacific Solution, which has seen detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island remain open without any detainees.
They have allowed an Australian citizen, David Hicks, to be held overseas without charge or trial for more than four years and left him to face a highly flawed tribunal process without making any efforts to ensure he will have a fair trial.

Then there was the dithering over preferences to One Nation, giving succour, as a result, to Pauline Hanson and tacit approval of her racist views.

There was the billion dollar bungling of major defence upgrade and acquisition projects. There was the massive blow-out of $2 billion in the Commonwealth’s Consultancies Bill.
There was the complete fiasco of the family tax benefit debt trap, which has slugged millions of Australian families with over $1.5 billion in debts.
There is the fiasco of child-care shortages and the broken promise of the Government on the child-care rebate.
We have had the Minister for Health and Aging, Tony Abbott, presiding over private health insurance premium hikes, which have totally absorbed the government rebate.
We have had the plunge in bulk-billing rates and the breaking of the Health Minister’s promise not to increase the Medicare safety net threshold.

We really have seen 10 years of sleaze, deception and manipulation. We would be here all night if I had time to list every sorry exploit of the Howard Government, but I do not. A mere sample includes:

National Textiles, the company headed by the Prime Minister’s brother, Stan Howard, which was bailed out by the government to the tune of $4 million.
The infamous Peter Reith telecard affair.
The lies and deceit of ‘children overboard’.

Then this nation was committed to war in Iraq on the basis of faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction while the Government claimed that they were not aiming for regime change in Iraq.

But when the government’s claims about weapons of mass destruction proved false, of course regime change became the justification for the war in Iraq. Never before has an Australian government sent our troops to war and lied to the Australian people about the reason for doing so.

We had Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty heavied for doing no more than stating the obvious about the increased terrorist threat in Australia after our involvement in Iraq.

We have had public servants and senior defence officers forced to take the blame over the Government’s denials about their knowledge of the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison.
We have had an unprecedented amount of public money splurged in advertising campaigns – as the Auditor-General has reported – to promote Liberal Party policies in the lead-up to the last three federal elections when the Howard Government was in office.
We have even had the government write the name of the Federal Liberal Party into electoral legislation on 33 occasions to strip the Liberal state divisions of public funding. They even now use the Parliament for their own dirty factional work.

Despite the farcical denials that we have heard about Senator Hill’s appointment, he is about to become the 18th former Liberal Party politician to be appointed by the Howard government to a plum diplomatic post.

Mr Howard perverted the accepted definition of an election promise. He broke promises willy-nilly but just redefined those broken promises as ‘non-core’ promises.

What about the Nixonian leaking of a classified document to Andrew Bolt in order to politically assassinate its author, Andrew Wilkie, while not vetoing the leaker from contesting a Liberal Party preselection ballot?

We also had a situation where Mr Howard’s government engineered the sleaziest of deals with a former Labor senator, Mal Colston, to promote Colston to the Deputy Presidency of the Senate in return for Colston’s vote on crucial legislation. How low can you go? Just recently, we had the unprecedented gagging of public servants before estimates committees.

Kickbacks to Saddam.

Mr Howard himself, his senior minister, and his entire government have turned a blind eye to kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein’s regime to ensure wheat sales. At the same time, we had Mr Howard self-righteously proclaiming that Saddam Hussein is a ‘loathsome dictator’. They turned a blind eye to our single-desk wheat exporter, who practically became the banker of the Baath Party in Iraq. Who knows where that money ended up? Who knows what it paid for?

What we do know is that, under the Government’s own terrorist legislation, if someone acts recklessly and funds turn up in the hands of terrorists, the guilty party is subject to life imprisonment. You go to jail and they throw away the keys if you recklessly engage in an action under our terrorism laws where financial resources end up in the hands of a terrorist. Let us see what happens in relation to the Howard government, which has acted as Saddam Hussein’s banker.

Of course, all these sins mean nothing to the Howard government. After all, how can they repent what they cannot recall? This Government, and its hand-picked sycophants, suffers from the worst case of collective amnesia in medical and political history.

What are the bywords of the Howard government? ‘I cannot recall,’ ‘I don’t recollect,’ ‘I wasn’t informed,’ ‘I can’t remember,’ ‘I have no recollection of that.’

Best of all, we had Trevor Flugge of AWB fame claiming, as his defence, that he is hard of hearing. It seems to me the whole of this government is hard of hearing. They are certainly deaf to the cries of conscience.

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Howard’s Golden Years