“I also went to the educational facilities, the classrooms there [in the detention centre in Nauru] where young people at taxpayers’ expense are being provided with English classes and schooling otherwise that is of a standard at least as good as in Australia.”
Peter Dutton, Minister for “Operational Affairs”
Now some of you may have read that last week and thought, “Gee, why are we wasting money like that on kids who are probably just going to spend the rest of their lives in detention. It’s like how we feed and clothe all those people in jail and give them access to things like cells which is so unfair when there are homeless people that we could be spending are money on… if we wanted to give it away to the undeserving poor.”
Well, you’ll be pleased to know that the decision has been made to close the school. Yes, Mr Dutton may have only made that statement last week, but someone’s realised that we can’t have asylum seeker children getting “schooling that is of a standard at least as good as in Australia”.
Mind you, he didn’t say which part of Australia…
Anyway, soon the children will be allowed outside the compound to attend the local school where they can meet and interact with the locals who are expected to welcome them with open fists. (Strangely some of the Nauruans don’t like the asylum seekers and believe that they should be sent back where they came from – Australia) But at least we can stop worrying that these sons and daughters of “illegal immigrants” are in danger of becoming overeducated, because as the University of New England puts it in their Nauru Teacher Education project:
“Nauru has identified increasing gaps in the supply of quality teachers proficient in subject content and pedagogy to achieve the country’s desired learning outcomes.”
So that’s one thing taken care of, we can forget about these “illegal immigrants”…
Mm, just a thought: How can they be “illegal immigrants” if they’ve never actually made it to Australia, let alone settle here?
Anyway, let’s turn our conversation to tax reform and continue the dialogue we were having with Mr Hockey.
Mr Hockey – while standing in front of an IPA backdrop – asserted earlier this week “our current tax system, which was designed before the 1950s, is ill-suited to the 2050s”, which I find rather strange as I haven’t been able to find a single taxation initiative that occured in the 1950’s. Federal income tax was introduced in 1915 on top of state income taxes. Before that we had a reliance on excise and customs duties. The states stopped collecting income tax during World War Two, which I believe was well before the 1950’s. And the GST was introduced under John Howard who – contrary to popular belief – wasn’t actually part of the 50s.
Perhaps that’s why Hockey picked that decade – he was confusing the design of the tax system with the design of Liberal Party policies. Like their policy on how copper wire is so high-tech, who needs this Internet thingy. No wait, that’s the other way round. Something designed a hundred years ago is completely suited to the 2050s and Labor was just wasting money with the NBN because the Internet is just for downloading movies and playing games and when that talking pictures fad passes we’ll be left with a white elephant.
Now, just so you know, nothing’s being ruled in or out, but apparently company tax is a disincentive on companies making money. Just like the carbon tax was a big disincentive on everything. Except producing emissions. It had no effect on that, in spite of figures showing emissions went down in the two years it was there, and rose in the quarter sinces its removal. Anyway, the carbon tax isn’t up for debate. Nor the mining tax. Even though they weren’t part of the taxation system that was designed in the 50s (or whenever).
But I guess it must be hard to be a Liberal at the moment.
We just had the victory for Mike Baird in the NSW election where a nine percent swing to the Labor Party was dismissed as “ho-hum” and The Greens picking up traditional National Party seats was seen as just a protest against the fact that even National Party voters grow concerned when they feel that their health is under threat. So that was really a great endorsement for Abbott because losing seats was only to be expected when Labor ran a “scare campaign” which involved telling people what the Liberal policy was. Sort of like the 2013 Federal Election where Labor suggested that the Liberals would try to put up the GST.
As for the opinion polls…
I’m sure that you’ve read about Abbott’s improved poll showing. Yes, the last two Newspolls did show that he was now more popular than syphillus. (No, that’s an expression – not a nickname for Bill Shorten!)
However, Roy Morgan had it 56% Labor; 44% LNP two party preferred.
And the most recent Essential Polls look like this:
| 2 Party Preferred | Election 7 Sep 13 | 4 weeks ago3/3/15 | 2 weeks ago 17/3/15 | Last week24/3/15 | This week 31/3/15 | |
| Liberal National | 53.5% | 47% | 48% | 46% | 47% | |
| Labor | 46.5% | 53% | 52% | 54% | 53% |
So it must be confusing when everyone is talking about your poll bounce and any objective reading would suggest that either Newspoll was wrong, or the other two were wrong, and that we can’t be sure which is right without further polling.
But no, all the commentators are telling you, you’ve had a poll bounce and that must make all the Liberals wonder exactly what they’ve done right lately.
