Friday 23 March 2018
1 The Labor Party, yes the one you have supported all your life, is caught rorting the system, or the taxpayer, or both, for $400 thousand dollars but are saved from a knockout on a technicality. But that’s not all folks, then they use a million dollars of other people’s money trying to get out of it.
When I see the headline I’m disgusted. Why on earth do they do it I ask myself? Is it that they are just corrupt, do they think that all wrongs are explainable because their party does more good and, well the others do it too?
And it’s only yesterday that my post on a better democracy advocated a federal ICAC to deal with these matters. The Victorian ALP’s use of campaign workers illustrates just how bad political corruption is in Australia.
The report by the ombudsman Deborah Glass, released last Wednesday was a damning indictment of the Victorian Labor Party. They would have known full well what they were doing was wrong.
The ombudsman found that the 11 MPs implicated, and still in the parliament acted in good faith.
Glass found the 11 Labor MPs implicated in the scandal who are still in the Parliament did not personally benefit from the rorting. She didn’t refer the matter to the police.
The police, after investigating the affair, were not interested in laying charges. Their view was that there were no indictable offences committed so it means the case is unlikely to go back to the Independent Broad-Based Anti-Corruption Commission – the state’s anti-rorting watchdog.
But there is no doubt, that the Labor MPs misused taxpayer funds for the 2014 election campaign and that Daniel Andrews knew about it.
The ombudsman was particularly savage on former Treasurer John Lenders, so much so that he resigned from the $90,000 job with VicTrack a couple of weeks ago, to place himself beyond any further retribution.
Labor will be hoping beyond hope that the scandal will have an instant death in this, a Victorian election year. The Party has avoided a major crisis simply because the “guidelines” are so ambiguous that one of Labor’s excuses was that it didn’t know it was doing the wrong thing.
The report explains that Labor MPs okayed payments worth about $387,800 from taxpayers, which went towards ALP political campaigning in the last election.
Using paid staff to campaign for them rather than doing the work they should be doing is simply not on. Whilst Daniel Andrews says he will clean up the ambiguity, Deborah Glass wants an independent body, able to investigate politicians “without fear or favour.
Time after time politicians keep breaking the rules and when found out, they take no notice. Instead, keep breaking them again giving the impression that they are no more than petty criminals.
What an embarrassment when they are of your own.
2 The coalition seems to be 2 votes away from passing the company tax cuts with Hinch playing hard to get, dragging out for the best deal or the most publicity. What fools they are. The taxpayer to be hit with a huge tax bill.
Howard is right when he said that you should never ever give false hope. That is exactly what company tax cuts do.
3 Howard said intelligence provided to his government confirmed there were weapons of mass destruction. Proved wrong.
He seems very sensitive about Iraq. I wonder why?
4 Hundreds of companies pay no tax anyway and the rich have ways and means to reduce their tax burdens. Family trusts etc. Large companies wouldn’t pay more than 10% tax. What a deal they are getting and by saying that they will employ a few more people. They are dictating to the government how much tax they will pay.
Company tax cuts will be paid for by the taxpayer. Where else will the shortfall come from? And wow, what about the debt?
An observation
“Never in the history of this nation have the rich and the privileged been so openly brazen”
5 A South Australian friend tells me that Weatherill was the longest-serving state premier and probably the best in a political sense. Yet, still lost. But as has been said, given the number of scandals and length of time in government the loss was quite respectable.
6 With the help of Pauline Hanson, the Senate passed welfare reforms including a loss of $1,300 to pensioners for funeral expenses. How low can they go?
7 Both Labor and liberal know they need to reign in the handouts of the Howard government. Thus far only labor has had the courage to do it.
8 I may receive some criticism for my remarks about Victorian Labor but the fact is corruption is corruption, no matter the colour it comes in
9 Over the last two years, wages have grown by only four percent while company profits have increased by a massive thirty-two percent, eight times faster than wages.
10 Cabinet ministers on $400 000 a year talking about the need to reign in welfare. The same goes for penalty rate cuts. It was so important for people on $40 000 a year to take a pay cut. When the Senators discussing it were on $200 000 a year at least.
My thought for the day
“There are real known facts in the world”
