Tag Archives: Malcolm Turnbull

Skip the work and save part and go straight to invest, you’ll be better off

November 11, 2015
Written by: Kaye Lee
22 Replies

Today Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox is giving a speech in which he will assert that broadening the base of the GST and raising the rate must play a “central role in a [tax] reform package.”

Mr Willox, whilst saying tax reform should not be about “individual self-interest”, advocates the company tax rate be cut to “no more than 25 per cent” in the next couple of years, a reduction in the overall number of taxes, a reduction in personal income taxes that “reduce the incentive to work” and broadening the land tax base to reduce duties on residential properties.

If that’s not individual self-interest I don’t know what is. Mr Willox is paid a lot of money to represent the interests of big business and any pretence otherwise is laughable.

“Tax reform cannot simply be about taking the burden off the rich and placing it on others. But neither should it be about shifting all responsibilities for paying tax to the wealthy,” he will say.

The absolute chutzpah of these people, in the face of the mountain of evidence of tax avoidance by the wealthy and by companies, is astonishing.

Whilst it is true that the top 10% of Australian earners pay about 50% of the total income tax take, they also take home an astonishing 30% of all income with about a quarter of it coming from sources other than wages, salaries and pensions. The share taken by the top groups has been climbing since the early 80s.

As for reducing company tax, almost a third of Australia’s largest companies are paying less than 10¢ in the dollar in corporate tax as is. It is also worth noting that the corporate tax rate in the US is 35% as compared to our 30%.

Between 2004 and 2013 some $80 billion was lost through ‘legal’ corporate tax avoidance through the use of subsidiaries in tax havens and so-called “thin capitalisation”, where local entities are saddled with huge debts to reduce tax liabilities in Australia. An overseas arm of the company borrows money at very low interest rates and then lends it to the Australian arm of the company at exorbitant rates.

Almost 60 per cent of the ASX 200 declare subsidiaries in tax havens.

Data suggests that if all ASX 200 companies paid the full 30 per cent rate of company tax, the budget would gain around $8.4 billion more revenue a year.

Turnbull’s three-word slogan, “work save invest”, is poor advice. As our taxation system stands, you are far better off to skip the work part, forget saving – just borrow the money, then invest it and sit back. Your ‘hard work’ and willingness to ‘take a risk’ will be rewarded. And if things go bad, declare yourself bankrupt so your creditors wear the loss and start fresh with some new risk funded by other people’s savings.

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Ms Gillard’s sickening hypocrisy laid bare

November 10, 2015
Written by: Dr Jennifer Wilson
125 Replies

It was with disbelief, and finally contempt, that I watched excerpts of the Al Jazeera interview with former Prime Minister Julia Gillard on the topic of her government’s treatment of waterborne asylum seekers, particularly women and children.

Gillard, now a global advocate for the education of girls and women, employed what has disturbingly become a normalised justification for Australian governments’ increasingly callous torment of women and girls in off-shore detention: we do it to stop people drowning at sea.

I have yet to get my head around the psychopathology of those who believe the torment of one group is justified in order to discourage another group from undertaking a particular action. I think such justifications are teetering precariously on just about every ethical and moral ground I can think of, beginning with the Kantian argument that it is reprehensible to use people as a means to an end, and that people are an end in themselves. To treat them in any other way is to dehumanise them, and ultimately, ourselves.

However, Gillard, Rudd, Abbott and now Turnbull apparently have no difficulty with treating waterborne asylum seekers as a means to an end, and justifying their hideous treatment of them as a necessary deterrent in order to save the lives of others.

It has been said more than a million times: arriving in this country by boat, seeking asylum, is not a crime. Indeed, as we are signatories to the UN Refugee Convention, we actively invite people to arrive here by whatever means they manage to employ.

If we want to save people from drowning at sea, and if we care about the humanity of those we already have in detention, we would cease to use the detained as scapegoats, and as examples of what will happen if you legitimately arrive here by boat. We would instead withdraw from the Refugee Convention. People come to Australia because we invite them, through our participation in the Convention, and our agreement with its principles.

Of course, we aren’t about to take that step. So instead we will continue to ill-treat asylum seekers in off-shore detention. We will continue to justify this crime against humanity by claiming it’s done to save lives.

And Ms Gillard will continue to strut the world stage advocating for the education of women and children but not, regrettably, those she imprisoned in mandatory indefinite dentition in tropical hell holes where they are abused, raped and made mad.

Women for Gillard? Non, merci.

This article was originally published on No Place For Sheep.

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Democracy: The Genie is out of the bottle

November 10, 2015
Written by: Kate M
12 Replies

Equality and freedom are two core component of democracy. Whether it’s me, you or Malcolm Turnbull walking into that polling booth on election day – everybody’s vote is equal and we are free to vote however we like.

But there’s a lot more to democracy than that. In the often quoted words of American President Abraham Lincoln:

“Democracy is government of the people, by the people, for the people.“

The concept of democracy has been around for thousands of years, but the way it works in practice has started to change this century. And that change has seen the average person in the street unwittingly gain more power in the political process – here’s how…

The balance of power in a democracy

A democracy is arguably the only model of government that aims to distribute power equally – to give everyone an equal voice, an equal say. But history has shown that we – the people – are not particularly good at holding on to democracy.

Democracies have risen and fallen over the centuries. And when they’ve fallen, it’s been pretty much the same story every time – the average punter has let the balance of power that exists between the rights of the individual and the rights of the government shift too far in favour of the government. While this sometimes happens as a violent coup, more commonly it happens as people give up freedoms – like their right to privacy – one at a time. In the words of the 20th century’s most famous enemy of democracy, Mr Adolf Hitler:

“The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time. To erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way, the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed.” (Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf)

Historically, one of the reasons that people have let democracy slip away from them is that they have taken it for granted.

In Australia today, many people take democracy for granted because they misunderstand the crucial role that democracy plays in controlling so many key aspects of our daily lives. From what we learn in school, how we drive, how much pay we take home right through to which foods we are able to buy at the supermarket – there is scarcely an aspect of what we do that isn’t impacted by legislation which is created and managed by the government – and therefore ultimately controlled by the democratic process. And yet rather than embracing democracy – people are disillusioned by it.

Disillusionment with democracy

The main institution that most people associate with democracy is their right to vote for a Member of Parliament (an MP) to represent their area (or electorate). That MP – at least so the theory goes – takes their place in the House of Representatives and should be a voice for the people of their electorate. And through that MP – so the theory continues – we all have a say and a vote in how our country is run.

That’s how it’s supposed to be. But in practice, when we head to the polling booths these days – unless you vote for an independent – your vote is normally for one of two political parties rather than for someone to specifically represent your electorate.

When you combine this with the fact that elected MPs often act like they are voted in to rule over us rather than to serve us – the result has been many that many Australians have lost faith in the very concept of democracy, feeling both that their vote doesn’t actually represent their views and that those entrusted with political power through their vote are not using that power particularly well.

In the last federal election, despite it being compulsory to vote, the Australian Electoral commission estimate that one in five eligible voters didn’t vote! And one in four young voters didn’t even bother to enroll.

In fact, in a Lowy Institute poll earlier this year, only 65% of Australians felt that a democracy was preferable to any other kind of government. And among 18 to 29 year olds, it was under 50%. When the Lowy Institute delved into the reasons for this – it turned out that it wasn’t that people thought we should become a fascist state. In fact, the most common reason cited for not believing in democracy was:

“democracy only serves the interests of a few and not the majority of society”

Since democracy as an institution was intended to achieve the exact opposite of this – then the most important thing that this poll tells us is that there is something very wrong with the way we are ‘doing’ democracy today in Australia, and that if we don’t lift our game, we are at risk of losing it.

The good news is that although many don’t realise it, the face of democracy has been changing this century – and strangely enough, as a result, the balance of power has been shifting back in the people’s favour.

The changing face of democracy in the 21st century

The forgotten pillars of democracy

Despite the fact that the role of the average punter in the political process is often associated almost solely with our right to vote, the reality is that there are a number of other core principles of democracy that we often forget about – including our right to freedom of information and freedom of speech.

Our ability to take advantage of these freedoms has changed drastically this century – and that change has brought about what is arguably one of the biggest shifts in the way democracy works since Aristotle first said “Let’s have a show of hands” back in Ancient Greece. This shift has happened not through our antiquated parliamentary houses and the parliamentarians who sit in them – but through the information revolution brought about by the internet. Thanks to the internet, we now have far greater:

Freedom of Information through ready access to unfiltered primary sources of information around the Globe; and
Freedom of speech through an ability to both voice our opinion and connect with others in a way that we never have before.

And many politicians don’t like it.

Politicians are quite happy to talk philosophically about the importance of ‘Freedom of information’ and ‘Freedom of speech’ – because in days gone past, these were principals which in practice would cost an individual a tremendous amount of time, effort and money to use. This dissuaded most from doing so – and instead we all had to rely on the ‘fourth estate’ – the media – to check out and validate politicians’ claims and press releases.

This meant that the average punter had very little – if any – opportunity to personally check out whether what politicians were telling us was true. And we had very little opportunity to have a say about what was going on – other than through an organised protest march or perhaps a letter to the editor or your local MP. The media acted very much as an information filter – and on the whole , we had no option but to believe them and hope that they were doing their job to validate facts, identify discrepancies and tell us what need to know to make an informed judgment about who is running the country.

(Given the quality – or lack thereof – that comes out of some of the mainstream media outlets today, a number of whom seem to act more like extensions of the government’s press office than newspapers – this is somewhat disturbing.)

This century however, with so much information readily available on the internet, we don’t have to rely on the media to do our fact-checking for us. Each of us can download an individual politician’s expenses from the Department of Finance and see for ourselves exactly how many chopper rides they’ve taken. And once accessed, we can readily share this information with people around the globe – both known to us and unknown to us – in a matter of seconds.

The boundaries have shifted

Greater freedom of information and freedom of speech has brought about a shift in the boundaries of the democratic power-base. We – the people – have unwittingly claimed back some of the power that has been stripped away from us over the years. Politicians don’t have to wait for a poll now to hear what people think – they can go online and read all about it – in online comments on mainstream media news site, on independent news site like the AIMN, on social media, on blogs – the list goes on.

Where previously politicians could cultivate a relationship with key people in the media, and to some extent manage and control what was presented to the general populace and what was amplified – this has now become a lot more difficult. We now have a far greater say in what we think is important than we did before.

This shift in the balance of power has literally brought governments down. You need look no further than the recent Arab Spring democracy uprisings in the Middle East, which many argue would not have happened without social media.

Of course anything powerful can be used both for good and for bad – and we have also seen examples of how the internet and social media has been used to harm. But even taking that into account, the power to have a say in the destiny of our nation is now at least partially back where the founders of democracy intended it to be – in the people’s hands.

We now have REAL freedom of information and REAL freedom of speech – where previously we just had it in theory. Ok, maybe ‘real’ is a bit strong – we are living in the age of ‘on-water matters’ after all. So let’s just say that our ability to exercise freedom of information and freedom of speech is much greater now than it ever has been.

The Genie is out of the bottle

The internet – or information Genie – is out of the bottle, and governments around the world are feeling the pinch, and rushing to do what they can to get that Genie back under control again.

This change is upsetting the political apple-cart – and there are those in power who don’t like that they can no longer control the narrative quite as well as they used to be able to. Our recently dethroned ex-prime minister Tony Abbott was well known for criticising twitter – calling it ‘electronic graffiti‘ and Australia ‘at its worst’. And the government of Nauru recently shut down social media primarily to silence opposition.

The challenge that we now face is to understand and take advantage of this power shift, to use this Genie to correct the boundaries around our government’s power and restore the balance.

With these newly accessible freedoms, we can more actively participate in democracy – we can drive change from the bottom up instead of waiting for our politicians to get out of their hermetically sealed bubbles steeped in outdated political traditions. Without these freedoms, we risk going back to a nation fed on what the media tells us, blithely oblivious to key aspects of what our government is doing on our behalf and in our name.

There’s more to this …

Politics is not something many people talk about often. Democracy even less so. There’s a lot more to cover on this topic, so I’ve split the discussion on this into four articles – this one plus a further three – coming soon – which will cover:

Voting: it’s all about the money
Information: it’s all about control
Democracy: it’s all about you.

And finally – remember curiosity didn’t kill the cat, complacency did

One of the things our disengagement with democracy has done is to make many feel disempowered – like the things that are happening in the world today, or even just in our nation, are somebody else’s problem, that there is nothing that we can do to fix them. They aren’t somebody else’s problem. They are our problem. And there is plenty that each of us can do. Many pollies want us to stay out of it, to stay disengaged – a public that doesn’t ask questions doesn’t create problems.

But heed this warning from a previous president of the United States – John Adams:

“Remember, democracy never lasts long……There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

The way to stop this from happening is to get and stay engaged with what is going on politically. To have your say. To engage with others about real issues.

Public opinion matters big-time now – arguably more than it ever did. And you play a role in forming that opinion every time you have a conversation with someone about national and global issues. It turns out we really are all only separated by six degrees – even less so within an individual country. This means that the conversations you have with your friends, family, colleagues and even online connections matter. Whether those conversations are in person, on Facebook, on a news site, a blog or on Twitter – it’s those conversations that change public opinion. And changing public opinion impacts the way our government acts.

That’s true democracy in action.

This article was first published on ProgressiveConversation.

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Tax And The Bleeding Obvious!

November 8, 2015
Written by: Rossleigh
24 Replies

Ok, most of the focus on discussions about the GST has been about how it’s a regressive tax and how it affects the poor more than the rich.

But there’s one other thing in this debate that hasn’t been prominent in discussions or commentary. If the GST is widened to include items currently exempt, how will that affect Health spending?

Given that a large chunk of health spending is paid for by the various governments, will they just be charging themselves more, or will the rebates stay the same and it’ll be up to the patient to make up the difference. In other words, will it be a “price signal” by stealth?

Even if the government does the right thing and increases its share by the increase in the GST, this will obviously lead to a blowout in Health costs which, of course, will have politicians arguing that it’s just not sustainable. (Interesting that the blowout in the costs of offshore detention never leads to screeches of how this spending isn’t sustainable. On a state level, one never hears that the massive increase in the cost of running prisons doesn’t mean that the “tough on crime” policy isn’t sustainable!)

Either way, it fits in well with the Liberals’ plan to destroy Medicare. Why they want to do this is a mystery to me, but it’s always been their policy either explicitly or part of their hidden agenda since Gough first introduced it.

Of course, the likely scenario is that widening the GST base will be discussed, but dismissed on the grounds that it would make it unfair on those struggling with their grocery bills, health costs or school fees. And when, Malcolm magnanimously rejects broadening the base, then a mere extra five percent will seem the reasonable alternative – in much the same way that removing Abbott led to the big poll bounce. “Gee, Malcolm answered that question by talking on something vaguely related to the actual subject and he didn’t way anything about stopping the boats. He’s so much better!”

Of course, the Liberals do some very strange things. I’ve never been able to fathom why they stop any increases in the superannuation guarantee every time they get into government. Howard froze it when he got in, and Abbott did the same. Given their rhetoric about people needing to plan for their retirement and the government not supporting them, one would have thought that increasing everyone’s super would be something they’d be right behind.

When it comes to superannuation, I’ve always wondered why it’s subject to a flat tax of fifteen percent. I’ve always thought that it would be better if there was a threshold before it was taxed. For example, imagine the first five thousand dollars was exempt from tax and the rest was taxed at twenty percent. This would be a big boost to the lower income earners and people would need to be on an income of more than $100,000 before they were paying more. The tax on super earnings could also work on a similar arrangement.

But I don’t expect we’ll hear much about changing the taxes on superannuation. It’s about as likely as the government using the phrase “a great big tax on everything” when refering to the GST.

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Shorten. Where’s the hope?

November 7, 2015
Written by: Dr Victoria Fielding
57 Replies

Shorten is like your ex-boyfriend who everyone wanted you to marry, but you just weren’t that into him. Your mum thought he was a nice boy. Your friends said he was a vast improvement on the dickheads you dated previously. He was easy to like. He wanted so much to be liked. The more everyone around you told you he was ‘a good guy’ and that you should settle down with him, the more your heart panicked and looked elsewhere. You liked him a lot. You even loved him. But you weren’t in love with him. So you broke up because no matter how right he was on paper, your head just couldn’t convince your heart he was the right man for you.

The electorate’s preference for political leaders is not rational. Just like dating and relationships, love and marriage, political preference is complicated. There are emotions at play when marking the ballot box which most voters don’t even consciously feel. But these emotions make or break political leaders. For example, it is becoming increasingly clear that the country’s emotional reaction to the Labor leadership battles of Rudd and Gillard are completely different from Turnbull’s knifing of Abbott. The news media has a huge influence on this reaction. Gillard was framed as the villain and never recovered her political legitimacy. Turnbull is framed as the hero who slayed Abbott – a leader the electorate had taken a deeply emotional dislike to. None of this is rational. It is politics.

So why don’t voters like Shorten?

As a matter of fact, I seem to be rare amongst Labor voters in that I do like Shorten and I think he would make a good Labor Prime Minister. When he cracks a grin, you see his affable personality shine through. His zingers are clumsily authentic and seem to amuse his audience. He genuinely listens to people. I’ve seen him speak many times to the Labor faithful and he is passionate, erudite and charismatic. He has led a united Labor opposition, without a hint of the disunity of the Rudd and Gillard era. Watching the Labor front bench in parliament, their body language makes it look like everyone is behind Bill. Not just because he’s their leader but because they share his Labor values. As do I. But regardless of how rusted-ons like me feel, and how his colleagues feel, the emotional reaction to Shorten from the majority of voters, left, right and swinging, is tepid. It sometimes seems like I’m watching a different person than the Shorten described by many as ‘beige’. First Dog on the Moon can’t even remember his name.

No matter what Shorten does or says, his unpopularity is apparently sticky and the more he tries to get voters to listen to him, the worse it seems to get. He is also suffering from a case of being damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t. For example, he is damned for supporting Rudd, then Gillard, then Rudd again. But the only reason he was able to be so influential in these leadership contests was because he has strong allegiances in the party which he is now using to lead a stable team. He spent his career before politics standing up for workers, which you would think workers might appreciate. But low and behold a recent survey shows Australians trust their bosses more than they trust unions. See what I mean about emotions winning out over rationality? And even when the only dirt Abbott’s witch hunt of a union Royal Commission could find on Shorten was that he had good relationships with both workers and business owners, negotiating to make sure an infrastructure project was delivered on time, an outcome in everyone’s best interest, even when he handled himself well under the scrutiny of being in a ‘witness box’ with a Liberal plant aggressively interrogating him, voters are still not interested in what Shorten has to say. It doesn’t mean, by the way, that they hate him. The major problem for Shorten, and in turn Labor, is that Australia’s emotional reaction to him seems to be one of yawning indifference. Ask anyone on the street which policies Labor has released this year and I’m confident most would have trouble naming a single one. But there have been many, and they are good policies. The ABC quoted Shorten recently as saying ‘I believe if Labor keeps working on policies, the polls will look after themselves’. But this view is reliant on the mistaken idea that voters are rational. Human beings are emotional. Australian human beings just aren’t listening to Shorten.

Is there anything Shorten and Labor can do?

There is always hope. I’m not talking about ‘hope’ for Shorten’s career. I mean there is always the emotional reaction to ‘hope’ that Shorten can appeal to. Back in August, when Shorten’s unpopularity wasn’t as big an issue, because Abbott was so unpopular a mouldy onion would have beaten him in an election, I suggested to Labor that their election campaign should be a mixture of hope and fear, encapsulated in a story about how Labor’s brighter future can overcome Abbott’s wrecking ball. Hope and fear are strong emotions and, I believe, are the most important ‘feels’ for political candidates. Shorten is doing his best to stake his claim on a ‘better future’, with forward-thinking policies and all the stats and facts you ever need to explain why Labor’s plan is rationally credible. But what’s missing is Shorten’s personal, gritty, in-your-face appeal to a hopeful tomorrow. He is missing his own emotion of hope. What does ‘Shorten hope’ look like? Shorten needs to tell us about his hope for the future. Shorten needs to be emotional. He needs to put down the rehearsed lines and the market-tested phrases and just talk to Australians about how he feels. He needs to explain how he felt about the Rudd and Gillard years (presumably not great), and how he hopes for a brighter future for Labor now that the stain of disunity is gone. He needs to show the passion and emotion of a man who is hopeful that his policies will make Australia a better place so that we all feel hopeful too. This is not just about getting ‘real’. This is about Shorten wearing his heart on his sleeve and admitting he’s not being heard, and respectfully asking Australians to listen. Asking Australians to give him a chance. Showing that he’s genuinely, emotionally, committed to making a difference. Asking Australians to put their hope in him while he puts his hope in them. Hope for better politics. Hope for better policies. Hope for better outcomes for all Australians. Replace hopeless with hopeful. If Shorten can bring hope, there is hope for Labor yet.

I hope Rupert is happy

November 5, 2015
Written by: Kaye Lee
51 Replies

There was a time not so long ago when Australia’s future looked bright.

In 2008, Rudd apologised to the Stolen Generation and COAG agreed to a definitive strategy to close the gap in Indigenous disadvantage.

We had successfully negotiated the global financial crisis with continued growth and relatively low unemployment.

We were world leaders in putting a price on carbon. We were addressing water issues with the Murray-Darling buyback scheme and extending marine parks. We had introduced water trigger legislation giving the federal government the right to oppose mining in sensitive areas.

We had expanded the Renewable Energy Target and established the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Wind capacity trebled and Labor supported the installation of more than 1 million solar panels.

Needs based funding for school education was underway, tertiary education had been expanded, and we had an agreement with the states on hospital funding.

The rollout of a world class fast NBN was underway.

We had a mechanism for deriving some income from the mining of our natural resources which was just about to start earning some money as they moved into production phase and had used up their accelerated depreciation.

We had introduced paid parental leave and the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

There was a Royal Commission into child sex abuse instigated.

Our troops had finally come home from Afghanistan.

We had our first female Prime Minister who was admired around the world who looked on bemusedly at the vilification she received at home.

But Rupert Murdoch wasn’t happy.

We had a debt and deficit disaster, which is now much larger.

They were a dysfunctional illegitimate government who knifed their own leader, just like the Libs have done.

We had to get rid of the carbon and mining taxes to improve investment and employment, both of which have gone backwards after the repeal.

And Juliar told us there would be no carbon tax, just like Tony said there would be no cuts to health, education or the ABC.

So what do we have to look forward to now?

Another war in the Middle East.

Paying hundreds of billions for war toys.

Paying hundreds of millions for political witch hunts aka Royal Commissions designed to demonise Labor and the union movement.

Becoming a toxic dump for the world’s nuclear waste.

A great big new tax on everything you buy.

Paying billions to polluters.

Forking out millions to try and keep Telstra’s copper network working so we can have really slow broadband.

Lots of big new coal mines and CSG mines dotting our prime farmland.

Getting sued by global corporations if our laws interfere with their profits.

An influx of 457 visa workers.

Condemnation by the world for torturing asylum seekers.

The selling off of all our assets.

Working till we are 70.

The removal of penalty rates.

Being told that government spending on everything to do with society is unsustainable because we need more money for security.

I sure hope Rupert is happy because we have paid a hell of a price for him to get his way.

Why would anybody want to re-elect this government?

November 3, 2015
Written by: Roswell
40 Replies

Voters must have an intense dislike of asylum seekers.

The latest Morgan Poll is great for the government, which sees them leading the opposition 56.5/43.5.

Taking away personalities (ie, disregarding that many people obviously like Malcolm Turnbull), it really is hard to see what the government has going for them.

If re-elected, they will make life harder or more miserable for near on all of the population. “Yes we can” says the poster. And yes they will. For example, if re-elected they:

will be doing nothing to address climate change
will possibly increase the GST, costing each family about $4,000 a year
will continue to ignore science of any description
will be doing nothing about housing affordability
will be doing nothing about the high unemployment levels
will be providing us with internet speeds that are the worst in the world
will continue to tighten the screws for people on welfare or income support
will still be giving billions to the mining companies
they will do nothing about the huge gap in wealth inequality (quite the opposite, they will continue to pander to the rich)
will do nothing to help the disadvantaged in our society (they will probably cut funding even further)
will continue to beat around the bush as far as same-sex marriage goes
have intentions of changing the media ownership laws which will give Murdoch even more control of our media (and they’ll probably cut funding to the ABC even further)
will continue to demonise innocent people (Gillian Triggs is a good example)
will make it more costly to see a doctor or a specialist
if economists are correct, the government will lead us into a recession
will keep ripping coal out of our beautiful country – coal that nobody wants
will make tertiary education unaffordable
will strip away our citizenship if (as a dual citizen) we do as much as destroy a government owned coffee table
will spy on our every movement
will jail anybody who dares report on atrocities committed by the government
. . . and on and on the list goes

But . . . they will keep telling us that they’ve stopped the boats and we’re safe from all those murderous would-be terrorists that did sneak through because they’re all locked up now on Nauru or Manus Island and with any luck they will either rot to death or be sent to a country with an unpronounceable name where they can perish without our knowledge.

And no matter how much misery this Coalition government casts over our own lives we will vote for them because of their asylum seekers policies.

And it’s got me beat.

Stop The Homeless … A Moderate Proposal

November 1, 2015
Written by: Rossleigh
3 Replies

When it’s all boiled down, politicians aren’t actually there to run the country. That’s what we have the public service for. It’s not that politicians don’t have the right to set the agenda after winning an election; it’s just that very few of them would have the faintest idea how to actually put their ideas into practice.

Politicians are there to argue their case, get elected and then to instruct the public service to implement their policies. The public service is there to – as far as possible – implement their policies while explaining to them the implications and problems associated with said policies.

“Yes, Prime Minister, I know that you were elected on a policy of absolutely no taxation, but you are aware that this will mean that your government has no revenue whatsoever to pay your salary. This is not a problem but it means that you’ll be running a rather large budget deficit and the following five hundred and twelve page summary of our thirty eight volume report on the consequences has been attached to this email for your consideration.”

Anyway, when Abbott and Hockey tried to say last month that they had good policies, they just didn’t explain them well, I thought that was rather like a teacher saying that he had an excellent curriculum, he just couldn’t get the students to listen to him because he hadn’t managed to engage them or even get them to turn up to class. Or perhaps a better example would be a salesman who tried to argue that they had an excellent product, they just couldn’t sell it, so it was really unfair that they were losing their job just because they hadn’t made a sale in two years.

Hockey didn’t seem to think there was any contradiction in pointing out that the way to afford a house in Sydney was to “get a better job” – in other words, earn more money – and his repeated insistence that the Budget Deficit couldn’t be fixed by raising revenue (in other words earn more money).

However, after Tony’s “Let’s really trash the memory of Maggie Thatcher by inviting the most arrogant sycophant we can find” speech, I got to thinking.

Tony seems to think that his most significant achievement is stopping the boats. Now, part of the reason that – prior to his election – people didn’t think he’d be able to stop them was the fact that they presumed that he’d actually be bound by the normal international protocols. They failed to understand that he was channeling Idi Amin.

Anyway, Abbott’s great success at stopping the boats made me think that I could start my own political party and call it the “End Poverty Party”.

Our first plank would be to end homelessness.

While it may not be a crime to be homeless, loitering is still a crime and we could round up all the homeless and send them off to detention centres in some un-named location. OK, this may cost more than actually putting them all up in a motel for the rest of their lives, we need to send a message to stop people from becoming homeless in the first place.

Some bleeding hearts will undoubtedly complain about human rights being ignored and attempt to use what’s now happening to the homeless to further their own narrow political agenda of human rights for all. To prevent this we’ll make revealing the location of the homeless or anything that happens there subject to the secrets act and therefore punishable under the anti-terror laws. (Of course, we won’t use these against journalists. Providing the journalists cooperate when taken in for questioning.)

However, if something should leak out, we’ll just simply say that we “Stopped the Homeless” and that we did out of concern for them because we didn’t want them taking the risk of sleeping rough. And we’ll point out that no deaths have occurred in the street since we implemented our policy and we’ll start lecturing other countries on how it’s done.

Now, unlike Mr Abbott, I realise there’s more to government than just having one policy. I also have a plan to end poverty by making it illegal and anyone with less than a certain amount of money would have to pay a large fine. This sort of deterrent should give people an incentive not to be poor. If they couldn’t pay the fine, they could work it off and in a scheme similar to work for the dole, we’d offer them to employers for nothing. This would promote jobs and growth, because look how many employers would hire extra people if they didn’t have to pay them. This would also rule them out of the housing market giving a much needed pause to the current housing boom. Not having homes to go to would mean that they were happy to stay at work all day and all night and Australia’s productivity would skyrocket.

Yes, it’s true that people could get around this by becoming an employer, but this is the sort of country we want to promote: One where everyone’s an employer and the only workers are those coming out on 457 visas or with some company that’s bringing its own workers because there’s a shortage of people with necessary language skills to talk to the other people working for the company.

Obviously not everyone should work for nothing. Certain people deserve to be well paid for their endeavours. People who have special skills. Like Arthur Sinodinis, who was paid $200,000 for his skills by Australian Water Holdings. But to earn that sort of money he had to put in long hours sometimes working 25 to 40 hours a year performing work so complicated that he couldn’t actually remember the detail. Or people like Joe Hockey who is now to become an ambassador so that he can use his skills to explain Australia’s position with such the same diplomacy as his poor people don’t drive comments or when he told us that Jula Gillard didn’t deserve respect.

On social issues, such as gay marriage, we believe that some should be determined by having on non-binding plebiscite on whether we should take the change to a referendum, while others should be decided by a conscience vote. And in the case of certain policies, we believe that people with a conscience would all vote the same way that I do, so I’ll just determine the policy and we’ll hear no more about it, apart from the sort of people that whinge about everything so we can just ignore them.

And finally, because three policies is surely not enough, we’ll have a fourth: we’d have a policy on climate change. We’re against it – naturally. However, if it isn’t caused naturally, then we need to do something about it. And the best way to combat climate change is to make people more aware, so we have a moral obligation to export our coal so that places where they don’t burn coal for electricity can see first hand the damage done by coal-fired power stations. Not only that, but once these places have electricity they’ll be able to get the internet and read all the articles and be better informed, so they’ll know all the facts because if there’s one thing the internet gives you, it’s access to unbiased, clear-headed information. Of course, some want a ban on coal, but what good would that do. Our coal produces just a small percentage of the world’s greenhouse gases. Any action Australia takes would be about as meaningful as a burglar ceasing to rob. It wouldn’t have any real effect on the crime statistics. There’s no need for him to change his behaviour, and there’s certainly no need for the police to investigate his crime. In fact, I’m not even sure that burglary exists and if it does, I’m not sure that it’s the burglar who’s causing it.

As you can see, I have the basis for the sort of party that’s a real threat to Turnbull. Once I launch my party, there’s a real danger that a large number of his party will defect and join it.

Malcolm and Scott’s great big new tax on everything

November 1, 2015
Written by: Kaye Lee
82 Replies

According to the Liberal Party newsletter, aka the Telegraph, the party who never raises taxes, the party who screamed blue murder about the carbon and mining taxes, the party who supposedly saved us $550 a year by ‘axing the tax’, is set to cost us thousands by raising the GST to 15%.

Today’s article seems to be a fishing expedition to see how much they can get away with. The preferred option is an increase to 15% with fresh food remaining exempt. The National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling estimates the average household would face extra costs of $2915 a year under a 15% GST.

So much for Greg Hunt’s hand wringing over the price of electricity – it’s about to go up by 5% along with everything else but it won’t be the polluters picking up the tab.

To hide the pain, Scott Morrison is talking about income tax cuts.

“When you have the average wage earner in this country about to move into the second-highest tax bracket at $80,000 next year, you’ve got a problem with the incentives in your tax system,” he said.

One wonders why Scott hasn’t considered changing the threshold or would that be too easy.

Thankfully the miners and big banks will continue on their merry way with their superprofits intact while pensioners and single parents pick up the slack on budget repair.

Looks like the joke’s on us.

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Reward for achievement?

October 31, 2015
Written by: Kaye Lee
57 Replies

When Peter Dutton, at age 30, was elected to Federal Parliament in 2001, he said “it brought to a climax a lifetime of hard work and a focus on achieving the goal of standing proudly in this place today.”

This “lifetime of hard work” included starting work in the family business when he started high school, joining the Young Liberals at age 18, which was when he bought his first property, working for 9 years in the police force while also being listed, from age 23, as a company director for his father’s business, then quitting the police in 1999 to ‘work fulltime’ with his father for a year or so while he campaigned to enter politics.

Dutton said that the Liberal Party was “a party of natural choice” for him because it was a party founded on “the principles of individualism and reward for achievement.”

Which begs the question of why, after being voted the worst Health Minister in 35 years, Dutton retains his position in Cabinet. One letter published in the Australian Doctor said “Dutton will be remembered as the dullest, least innovative and most gullible.”

Recently, George Brandis launched Australia’s bid for a seat on the United Nations human rights council (UNHRC), stating that “Across the entire panoply of human rights Australia has not only been an activist, but those rights are integral to what we Australians regard as our sense of nationhood”. He further maintained that we pursue a “vigorous, ambitious human rights agenda”, domestically and internationally and that he had “enlarged the scope” of the Australian Human Rights Commission “to be a trustee of all human rights, including importantly, but not exclusively, the right to freedom from discrimination”.

While George is pushing his incredible view from a parallel universe, Peter Dutton is busy denying any human rights abuses in our offshore detention centres and making sure there is no oversight.

He has rejected an Amnesty International investigation of boat turnbacks as an “ideological attack” saying “the government is not going to be bullied into changing our position.”

Dutton refuses to deny that we illegally paid people smugglers, just as he refuses to deny his department were instrumental in gaining a visa for ‘journalist’ (I use the term loosely) Chris Kenny to visit Nauru while refusing to allow head of the AHRC Gillian Triggs access, or to guarantee not to prosecute anyone who spoke to the United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants who subsequently cancelled his visit.

When Ms Triggs asked “have we thought about what the consequences are of pushing people back to our neighbour Indonesia? Is it any wonder that Indonesia will not engage with us on other issues that we care about, like the death penalty?”, Dutton slammed her saying “For her to be out there making these unfounded comments is a complete disgrace.”

“It’s an international embarrassment and it’s an embarrassment for all Australians that we would have someone in a public office making comments like this that are completely unfounded,” he said.

This from the man who joked publicly about “Cape York time” and Pacific Islands being inundated. This from the man who called Sarah Hansen-Young an attention-seeking embarrassment for thinking she was spied on while on Nauru – which was of course true. This from the man who was the only Liberal frontbencher to boycott the Apology to the Stolen Generation.

If you need any further evidence of the government’s determination to control information about its immigration detention program, aid agencies including Save the Children and the Australian Red Cross were asked to offer “performance security” bonds – in one case, of $2 million – during negotiations over contracts relating to work caring for asylum seekers and refugees. The non-profit organisations were also being asked to agree to clauses that would prevent them speaking to the media without government approval.

Save the Children refused, seeing it as an attempt to gag advocacy, and subsequently lost its contracts to Transfield Services and Connect Settlement Services. When they finish today, there will no longer be an agency whose mission is to uphold the rights of children on Nauru – nor will there be a human rights organisation advocating for asylum seekers and refugees

Dutton was also responsible for the shameful treatment of pregnant asylum seeker Abyan.

The following excerpt from his maiden speech shows what Dutton really thinks about human rights, advocacy, and the legal system.

“I have seen the sickening behaviour displayed by people who, frankly, barely justify their existence in our sometimes overtolerant society.

The fight for a better place in which to live is today made even more difficult for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that the boisterous minority and the politically correct seem to have a disproportionate say in public debate today. The silent majority, the forgotten people—or the aspirational voters of our generation, as some like to term them—are fed up with bodies like the Civil Liberties Council and the Refugee Action Collective, and certainly the dictatorship of the trade union movement. Australians are fed up with the Civil Liberties Council— otherwise known as the criminal lawyers media operative—who appear obsessed with the rights of criminals yet do not utter a word of understanding or compassion for the victims of crime. Their motives are questionable and their hypocrisy breathtaking.

The mood of the silent majority is fast rising to one of anger, because at present there is a basic right that is being impinged upon. It is incumbent upon us to represent the views of the majority and not to be held captive by groups who grab headlines in tabloids on the basis of anything but substance. As leaders and representatives of this country, we must facilitate and inform debate, and not be deterred by those who would seek to drive their own hidden agendas.

At this point in time it is stating the obvious that in my opinion the courts are not representing the views in the large of the broader community. Time after time we see grossly inadequate sentences being delivered to criminals whose civil rights have far exceeded those of the victim and others in our society. This imbalance must be addressed, and for the sake of living standards and reasonable expectations for all Australians must be addressed as a matter of urgency.”

Enter Border Force and a Minister with unilateral decision making power to bypass the judicial system.

Dutton is a hard line conservative who previously held leadership aspirations (truly!). He had run-ins with both Turnbull and Bishop when Malcom was leader the first time.

Apparently it was Scott Morrison who convinced Malcolm Turnbull to keep Peter Dutton in the Ministry. If nothing else, this, to me, confirms that Morrison wants the top job and is rallying his right wing foot soldiers for when his time comes because you sure wouldn’t be keeping Dutton on his performance.

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Abbott another Right Wing Nutter

October 31, 2015
Written by: John Kelly
25 Replies

There’s nothing quite as pathetic as watching a former Australian prime minister trying to redress a less than stellar political career. That Tony Abbott would use the Margaret Thatcher Lecture to do it, however, seems to fit nicely into his Anglophilic world view.

The event itself, celebrating a former UK Prime Minister who was far more arrogant and divisive than Abbott, seems a fitting place for him. No UK leader in living memory evoked such hatred for the way she so callously destroyed working class livelihoods.

Perhaps one should stop wasting good time writing about Tony Abbott. After devoting the last two years to his downfall and now celebrating that most joyous event, I would prefer never to pen his name again.

But after watching some of his Margaret Thatcher Lecture as he addressed that most pompous of audiences at the Guildhall in London, it became apparent that he is destined to follow another former PM and continue to embarrass himself and us along the way. It seems he is going to keep my keyboard working a little longer.

It is sad to watch someone in decline try to establish a positive legacy. It is worse when that effort is filled with such poisonous vitriol filled with such anti-human, anti-Christian values. As Alan Austin suggests, Abbott is in danger of being “consigned to the bin of foreign, right wing nutters along with Sarah Palin, Geert Wilders and Pauline Hanson.”

Margaret Thatcher, on the other hand, was the one who took on Argentina’s President Galtieri when he invaded the Falkland Islands. Against the advice from the Ministry of Defence she dispatched a Naval Task Force to reclaim them.

The Argentine invasion was a bizarre act by the ageing president in an attempt to deflect attention from his country’s appalling human rights record and its economic malaise.

The Falklands incident, however, could have been handled effectively through diplomatic channels over time. After all, it was a worthless rock in the Southern Ocean that meant little to either side. But Thatcher decided a show of force was necessary.

The result: Britain suffered 258 killed and 777 wounded. In addition, 2 destroyers, 2 frigates, and 2 auxiliary vessels were sunk. But they did reclaim their islands. For Argentina, the Falklands War cost 649 killed, 1,068 wounded, and 11,313 captured. In addition, the Argentine Navy lost a submarine, a light cruiser, and 75 fixed-wing aircraft.

As we have all witnessed recently, Tony Abbott, as Prime Minister, displayed an obsessive interest in defence and a willingness to commit Australian defence personnel to foreign conflicts. It is reasonable to speculate he would have gone further had his hold on the top job been stronger.

In his address to the English Lords and ladies, he suggested that placing boots on the ground in Syria was a necessary component to defeating ISIS. His use of the dreaded ‘death cult’ slogan was an embarrassment that, fortunately, the few who heard it, would not have understood.

But, there is little doubt that a ‘Coalition of the Willing Mark 2’, if it was gathered, would have seen Australian soldiers caught up in that conflict if Abbott was still in charge.

We are a better nation for his removal from such a powerful position. It was a strange act on Abbott’s part to make such divisive comments to a foreign audience while still a member of the Australian government. It is hard to see Malcolm Turnbull agreeing to such a scenario.

Turnbull avoided chastising him in public, but I would be surprised if that was the last Abbott heard about it. Thankfully, the address was largely ignored by the international media, but not by those were keen to satirise it.

Abbott’s term as PM is now little more than a blimp on the radar and we have regained our self-respect. This, however, does not mean to say we are being governed well. We are not. Those appalling asylum seeker detention tactics are still in play and our economy is still heading south. The latest CPI figures are a prelude to recession.

These and other issues will test the Turnbull government in the coming months. If Labor is to mount a serious challenge to counter Turnbull’s popularity, something will have to be done about Bill Shorten.

But somehow, that hurdle pales in comparison to the one the nation has already cleared. We have rid ourselves of one right wing nutter. There are still some around though and they need to be exposed for the danger they represent.

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“Jesus Got It Wrong”, Tony Abbott’s Thatcher Memorial Lecture.

October 29, 2015
Written by: Rossleigh
20 Replies

34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

36 Simon Peter asked him, “Lord, obviously you don’t mean foreigners trying to enter our country illegally just because they’re fleeing from persecution?”

Jesus replied, “Did I f*cking stutter?”

So our Tony has graced the international stage with his presence, delivering the Thatcher Memorial Lecture. Maggie Thatcher has always been a polarising figure within society. With some pleased that there is a memorial lecture for her, while others just wish it had happened sooner – many decades sooner! Abbott has merely divided his own party.

Abbott’s lecture was most instructive because it was almost an allegory of his time as leader of the Liberal Party. Full of strong rhetoric, with plenty of evidence to back up the very opposite of what he’s saying.

Although, I did find myself agreeing with Abbott when he said:

“In this audience, some may be disappointed that my own prime ministership in Australia lasted two years after removing Labor from office…”

Actually, I think that it’s more those here in Australia are disappointed that your prime ministership lasted two years. I suspect that your British audience couldn’t care less about your sudden end. And you did suggest to them that

“Implicitly or explicitly, the imperative to “love your neighbour as you love yourself” is at the heart of every Western polity. It expresses itself in laws protecting workers, in strong social security safety nets, and in the readiness to take in refugees. It’s what makes us decent and humane countries as well as prosperous ones, but – right now – this wholesome instinct is leading much of Europe into catastrophic error.”

See, it’s not just Pope Francis who’s been getting it wrong. Jesus, himself, didn’t fully understand how much trouble this loving thy neighbour stuff could get you into. Probably why Abbott had to leave the priesthood: The realisation that Jesus’ feeding the multitudes with the loaves and fishes had led to the entitlement expectations which caused the budget emergency that Australia was still paying off.

He went on tell us that countries would be better to slam the door shut on refugees, as he had done. I mean he wasn’t there to tell people how great he was. After all, earlier in his speech, he’d humbly told the gathered throng:

“It’s usually presumptuous to invoke the glorious dead in support of current policy – but your invitation to give this lecture suggests there was at least a hint of Thatcher about my government in Australia: stopping the flow of illegal immigrant boats because a country that can’t control its borders starts to lose control of itself; the repeal of the carbon tax that was socialism masquerading as environmentalism; budget repair so that within five years, the Australian government will once again be living within its means; the free trade agreements with our biggest markets to increase competition and make it fairer; the royal commission into corrupt union bosses; an even stronger alliance with the United States and a readiness to call out Russia for the shooting down of a civilian airliner.”

Conveniently overlooking that Europe is not “girt by sea” and that it’s not just a question of stopping a relatively minor number of boats, he went on to tell them to send back those illegal immigrants, before reminding everyone that ISIS was a “death cult”, barbaric and dangerous, but, hey, if people want to flee that, well, it shouldn’t be your problem. In other words, not only should we ignore the founder of his faith, but let’s just trash the UN convention on refugees, and say every man for himself.

After all, isn’t that what Thatcher would have wanted.

All this is just typical Tony. It was some of his comments on Thatcher that gave me a new lack of respect for Abbott’s mental faculties. For example:

“On Soviet missiles aimed at Europe, she didn’t see nuclear annihilation to be averted at all cost but an evil empire to be shown that aggression would not pay.”

Yep, we don’t need to avoid “nuclear annihilation”, we need to stand up to that “evil empire” (I think he still means the Soviets, although he may be suggesting that Maggie thought she was Luke Skywalker), even if means being annihilated. At least we’d be able to say that we showed those Soviets that aggression didn’t pay. Or we would if we all weren’t annihilated. But it was this little throwaway line that should send a shudder down the collective spine of the Liberal Party . . .

Actually, they wouldn’t have a “collective” spine, would they? Far too socialist.

“That was the essence of her greatness: on the things that mattered, she refused to believe that nothing could be done and would work relentlessly to set things right.”

Do I detect a whiff of his personal circumstances in that one?

Abbott’s recent speech makes good comic reading now that he’s no longer PM, and makes me think that a crowdfunding project where we book him to speak at a function where all the latte-sipping lefties can turn up to laugh at him and heckle might be a goer. Although, there is a chance that we’ll be competing with Turnbull millions, with Malcolm rumoured to be booking him for as many overseas appearances as possible for the next twelve months including Syria and Antarctica.

As I said yesterday, while I disagree with much that Turnbull is still doing – and yes there are still a number of people in his Cabinet that are only there for comic relief – there seems to be a more civilised tone returning to the conversations about how we deny people human rights, screw the poor and disadvantaged and destroy our natural resources. Less shrill screaming about how dare people use the law courts, and more attempts to persuade people that selling our coal is just part of our overall foreign aid program.

If I attempted to engage Turnbull by suggesting that renewables are the way of the future, I suspect that he’d reply by saying that coal will still be a part of the mix for a long time to come. If I suggested that he read up on disruptive innovation, he would undoubtedly tell me that he has, and that coal isn’t going to disappear overnight to which I’d reply that’s Kodak before they went broke and he’d say that Kodak had nothing to with coal and I’d say that he was just trying to change the subject and he’d point out that I was the one who brought up Kodak and then start talking about Kodak and his theory on why it went broke before I interrupted and…

Anyway, it’s a far cry from debating it with Abbott which would go something like this.

“Renewables will replace coal as the number one power source in the next few years.”

“Coal provides jobs. Doesn’t Rossleigh care about jobs? Or does he just care about his own?”
“I do care about jobs. There won’t be any jobs when the coal industry collapses because it’s not economical to mine it.”
“Rossleigh professes to care about jobs, yet he was part of the Labor government that run up a Budget deficit that we’ll never be able to repay.”

“No I wasn’t, but haven’t you run up an even bigger deficit?”

“We have the Budget back on the path to a sustainable surplus in 2050. Unlike you who’s never produced a surplus in your life.”

“I’ve never bean Treasurer.”

“And thank God for that, because with your policies we’d all be living in caves without electricity. It’s coal that’s given us progress and without coal, humanity would still be swinging in the trees…”

“Hang on, is it caves or trees?”

‘”It’s both. You’d have us all homeless and it’s only the Liberal Party who can deliver jobs and growth because we’re the ones who stopped the boats. There hasn’t been a single boat arrive in the last eighteen months.”
“Didn’t one land on Christmas Island earlier this year?”
“We never comment on operational matters!”

Well, I’ll leave Abbott with the last word. Summing up, he concluded his Maggie speech with the following:

“All of us, then, must ponder Margaret Thatcher’s example while we wait to see who might claim her mantle. Good values, clear analysis, and a do-able plan, in our day as in hers, are the essentials of the strong leadership the world needs.”

Mm, I wonder if he has anyone in mind … David Cameron? Rupert Murdoch? Donald Trump? Himself?

Well, you can bet he doesn’t mean Pope Francis!

Education, Re-education And Tony Who?

October 28, 2015
Written by: Rossleigh
16 Replies

A few days ago I read that the education system was failing because one in four students don’t complete Year 12.

That interests me because back in the old days, when I was getting a secondary education, it was the kids who failed when they didn’t complete Year 12. Of course, it was a different system them and a certain percentage was mandated to fail.

When one looks at the data a bit more closely, one finds that a lot of the reasons for this are the reasons we already know. High dropout rates in remote indigenous communities, poverty, mental illness and all the other factors that encourage governments to commission reports which recommend that something needs to be done. After receiving the report, the government either buries it or announces with much fanfare that it’s a great report and they’ll be studying it carefully and when they’ve had time to read it more fully, in the fullness of time, something will indeed be done. Why, we may even restore some of the funding that we took away in last year’s Budget.

Now I’m not saying that there aren’t vast improvements that could be made to the education system. I’m not saying that teachers are perfect. I’m just making the point that every time something goes wrong, we blame the education system and then turn around and offer some half-baked explanation of what’s wrong with it.

And speaking of half-baked solutions, did you read Kevin Donelly’s article today which suggested: “Singing the national anthem at school should be compulsory”?

Kevin, you may remember, was responsible for a review into the Australian Curriculum to see how it was working. Which, of course, it wasn’t. After all, it hadn’t been introduced yet, so it’s really hard to argue that it was working. But Kevin and his mate were appointed to review it because they thought that it was far too left wing and didn’t have enough about our Judeo-Christian heritage or Anzac Day.

Surprisingly, they found that it didn’t have enough about our Judeo-Christian heritage or Anzac Day, as well as having far too much about Asia.

You remember, Anzac Day where the diggers went and fought for our right to make things compulsory.

Young Kevin begins his piece with the rather interesting rhetorical questions:

“How far should we go in accepting diversity and difference, the new code for multiculturalism, and allow immigrants to pursue their own values and customs? And to what extent should all those who live here be integrated into Australian society and accept the nation’s way of life?”

New “code” for multiculturalism? Mm, and here I was thinking difference and diversity meant something else entirely.

Anyway Mr Donnelly’s problem is that the principal of a primary school exempted a number of Shite students from assembly where the national anthem was to be sung, because they were observing Muharram, during which time they don’t participate in joyful events such as singing or listening to music.

Ok, I’ve never exactly thought of “Advance Australia Fair” as particularly joyful. I mean I can’t ever remember dancing to it, so if it’s a time of mourning I can’t see that loudly proclaiming our girtness would cheer one up all that much. And you can make your own mind up about the principal’s decision, but I like Kevin’s neat sashay round the wider question to go straight to the heart of the matter.

“All those who live in Australia, especially immigrants, should accept that Australian society is unique and that the types of freedoms and basic rights we often take for granted must be celebrated and upheld.”

So let’s see if I’ve got his position. All those who come here should be forced to accept that Australia is unique – unlike all those other countries which are all the same and just full of foreigners – and that children should be forced to sing the national anthem so that they understand exactly how freedom and basic rights must be celebrated.

Of course, he doesn’t talk about what should be done if I a person decides that their religous practices are more important and simply doesn’t sing. Should they be packed of to some re-education camp where we explain how great our country is until they understand that “multiculturalism doesn’t work”?

Yep, Mr Donnelly was probably chosen for the review of the Australian Curriculum because, like Mr Abbott, he seems more at home in that era when we were concerned that those “new Australians” were bringing in things and strange customs like spaghetti and smashing plates, and we were proud because Holden was Australia’s own and there were so many pink bits on the map which indicated countries belonging to the Commonwealth. And people who weren’t British were “the other”.

And “the other” was wrong. Our way of life wasn’t just better, it was the only way that one could live. That was the thing about the Aborigines. They couldn’t assimilate, and that was a pity. That’s why they’d died off in such numbers. As for the ones that were left, well, what can you do? They don’t fit into Australia, but if they can learn to behave like white people then they’re welcome to stay.

Ah, the good old days.

The switch to Turnbull isn’t just a change of leaders. It’s a whole change of era. During Abbott’s time (and to a lesser extent, during Howard’s), the other side was just wrong. You didn’t need to argue or explain. You just needed to say how wrong things were. You had Tony arguing against an emission trading scheme and telling us that it would be simpler to just put a tax on carbon at one point, then arguing that a tax on carbon was the wrong thing when Gillard did it. If Labor did it, it was wrong. If they’d found a cure for cancer, Abbott would have criticised them for any recently purchased chemotherapy equipment.

So we move to Turnbull and suddenly some of the things he’s saying make sense. There’s a suggestion that he might actually have opinions on some topics that are reasonable. On others, he’s clearly locked in to some policies that are hard to justify, but we seem to have an entered a world where things are being debated on their merits, rather than simply telling us that Labor was hopeless in government and therefore not entitled to comment on any of the current policies. It’s been a few weeks but I don’t remember Turnbull uttering the phrase, “the mess we inherited”… Although that could be because people would presume he was talking about the one left by Tony and Joe.

Yeah, you’re right. He hasn’t changed many of the policies, and on climate change, refugees (an example of the freedom-loving, human rights-supporting Australia that Donnelly loves so much), unions and the rest we’ve still to see any shift. But he did remove Newman as advisor and he did use the words “innovation” and “science” without suggesting that they be the work of the devil. It’s as though we’re actually looking to the future and trying to make a decent plan instead of simply harping about what Labor did, or how great it was when Liberals were last in charge.

And there’s a change in tone. He speaks as though when you disagree with him you’re simply misinformed, not evil. It’s like the difference between swearing at someone who offends you, compared to beating him over the head with a club. While, both may be unpleasant, the former is the beginining of civilzation.

As someone said, “It may be a new toilet, but it’s still the same shit.” While that may be true, I think the current appeal of Turnbull is that he looks modern enough that it’s possible that he can be flushed from time to time.

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Malcolm’s test

October 24, 2015
Written by: Kaye Lee
69 Replies

In six weeks’ time, we will see if Malcolm Turnbull is a leader of substance or a snake oil salesman.

You have to admire his courage in deciding to personally attend the climate change talks in Paris but if he tries to push the Greg Hunt propaganda, he will get called out on it. Some 150 of the 200 or so countries attending have submitted their plans to move to a low carbon future and I doubt they will take kindly to spin.

Both the IMF and the World Bank, along with a growing number of world leaders, are calling for a price on carbon but Malcolm promised the Nationals and the right of his party that he wouldn’t do that.

As recently as July, we had two Western Australian Liberal MPs calling for an inquiry into the evidence of human influence on climate change.

“I’m open to being convinced but the data and the evidence that I’ve seen [on climate change] thus far certainly I don’t find compelling,” said Dennis Jensen. “You get the appeal to consensus when the data and the evidence is weak and it’s an appeal to authority rather than examining the data and the evidence.”

Dr Jensen said he was not alone within the party, and that there were “at least” 10 MPs who shared his view that the Government should not sign up to emissions cuts without a parliamentary inquiry.

We have Cory Bernardi whose argument runs along the lines of “Well, the Earth’s climate changes all the time, always has, always will and this happened well before we came along burning fossil fuels. Oh and by the way the world stopped warming since 1998 and I just saw an article the other day saying Chlorofluorocarbons were the real culprit of warming not CO2.”

Senator Fierravanti-Wells reminds us that CO2 is plant food which I assume means she thinks increased levels will be good for agriculture.

And then there’s George Christensen who, when addressing the Heartland Institute last year, said “The weather and climate in Australia has not changed in the last century but a new religious interpretation has arisen since then. When we are in a flood, they tell us ‘too much rain is a sign, more hurricanes is a sign, fewer hurricanes is a sign, the sky is blue – it’s a sign, gravity – it’s a sign’.”

The most strident critic of carbon pricing and the man who worked tirelessly to bring it down, Barnaby Joyce, is being touted as our next leader of the Nationals and Deputy Prime Minister.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said this month that the El Nino was now on course to challenge the 1997-98 event as the strongest on record, and was not expected to peak until late this year.

September was not only the seventh month so far this year to set a new record for heat, it was also the most anomalously hot month in 135 years of data, NOAA said and predictions are that 2015 will easily eclipse heat records in previous years.

Malcolm is going to have to explain why we are approving huge new coal mines and, with China and India both looking to cut coal imports, it is unlikely the ‘lift them out of poverty’ excuse will wash on the international stage.

Will he defend the Direct Action Plan that he previously described as “bullshit” and prohibitively expensive?

In an interview with the Guardian, Turnbull said “If something isn’t working as well as you want, chuck it out. I’m not afraid of people saying, it’s a backdown, or a backflip, an agile government is prepared to abandon policies that don’t work.”

We shall see.

Malcolm Fears neither Debt nor the Conservatives.

October 24, 2015
Written by: John Kelly
26 Replies

What a monumental turn around. In a newspaper interview this week, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has shrugged off the Abbott-Hockey debt and deficit rhetoric and signalled more debt to come.

“What we’re trying to achieve is to ensure that Australians who do live today in a high-wage, generous social welfare net economy, will be able to do so in the years ahead and in an environment where wages will be higher and we’ll have a bigger tax base and we’ll be able to provide for those in need more effectively,” he told Fairfax Media.

Contrast this with some of the verbal diarrhoea that came out of the mouths of both Abbott and Hockey when they convinced the more gullible amongst the electorate both before and after the 2013 election, that austerity was necessary to rein in Wayne Swan’s debt and deficit disaster.

Turnbull went even further when he said, “Everything, every single element, is on the table, and I know that always means that someone can then run a scare campaign, but I’m sorry, we’ve got to stop … this is part of the political tradition I’m determined to end. We have got to be able to consider policy options in an unfettered way.”

The significance of this statement and his acknowledgement that both revenue and spending options are on the table, cannot be ignored. While signalling a reversal of the previous administration’s scare mentality and adopting an expansionary mindset including borrowings for public transport projects, he has also, deliberate or otherwise, checked Scott Morrison for suggesting we only have a spending problem.

What are we to make of this policy about-turn?

My reading is that Malcolm has decided he will be his own man and if the party doesn’t like it, they can’t do much about it without making themselves a laughing stock. While the extreme right wing of the party might like to think it has its leader on a short leash, the opposite is the case.

Turnbull, it would seem, has decided that he will crash through or crash. To make public his intentions in such flamboyant language is a challenge to those who still cling to the ultra-conservative mindset that would hold the nation back.

Citing public transport as the flagship of future expansion is a good start. Who among us would deny a pressing need to upgrade and prepare ourselves for future population growth that will require some radical thinking in the area of mobility.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews will be delighted as will Mike Baird in NSW. Both have big plans for improving transport in our two major cities. Turnbull has foreshadowed that roads, urban infrastructure and ports, previously considered state responsibilities by Abbott and Co, are now up for Commonwealth funding participation through additional borrowings.

The burning question, ‘where is the money coming from’ has been answered before it has been asked. The former Goldman Sachs CEO knows how money works, unlike his parliamentary colleagues and is not afraid of debt.

This will not be good news for the banks. Such projects, normally financed within the private sector’s financial houses, will have the Commonwealth participating for part of the return on investment.

“We don’t need the same internal rate of return as Macquarie Bank would, obviously, but if we have a piece of it, then we’re able to invest more, frankly. Then we’re much better off being a partner rather than simply being an ATM, for which you get generally scant thanks or recognition,” Turnbull says.

Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey never understood this, nor does the conservative wing of the government that never wanted Turnbull as leader. They will be alarmed at his recent comments and will fight tooth and nail to stop him. But they cannot ignore his popularity and his importance in keeping them in power.

That is why he will win and so too the unemployed. While the private sector is twiddling its thumbs Government must take up the slack. That is not a theory, it is an accounting rule for a national economy. It is exactly what is needed today. Joe Hockey failed as Treasurer because he expected the private sector to do the heavy lifting.

At today’s historically low interest rates, issuing public debt has never been cheaper and when invested in projects that add value to the nation, promote growth, increase employment and by extension, increase tax revenue, everyone benefits.

Turnbull’s approach to inclusivity will enrage his conservative colleagues, but he knows there’s little they can do about it now.

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Tag Archives: Malcolm Turnbull

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