Monday 26 January 2015

The Aristocrats: why knighting Prince Philip is a joke at Australia's expense | Adam Brereton



The Aristocrats: why knighting Prince Philip is a joke at Australia's expense








If Tony Abbott absolutely had to knight a royal, why didn’t he choose
one who was popular with the electorate, like Prince William?
Australia Day – live coverage of all the day’s events














philip



‘He is such a bizarre choice because he’s actually the deadweight
holding back what appears to be a monarchist revival.’ Photograph: Tim
Rooke/Rex Features




The Aristocrats: why knighting Prince Philip is a joke at Australia's expense | Adam Brereton

he trade joke of stand-up comedians is a classic called the
Aristocrats. It’s a well-known format: a family turns up to the office
of a talent agent to perform their act, which is typically the most
depraved scene of incest – in Bob Saget’s version, the family sings
Sister Sledge in a pile of their own excrement. The comic doesn’t spare
the details, dragging it out for as long as their audience can bear and
then, when the talent agent asks what the act is called, the family
delivers the punchline:



“The Aristocrats.”


Chevy Chase used to try to break half an hour in his telling of the joke. Tony Abbott
almost lasted a whole year. He started telling his own variation on the
classic in March 2014, and today he delivered his own zinger:



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Ta-da! Meet Prince Philip, the Aristocrat!


Philip represents everything Australians hate about old-world
aristocracy: his racist bon mots, his pickled appearance, his unearned
wealth and privilege. He is a natural “type” for comedy. You can imagine
pissometer
Philip stepping effortlessly into the setup of a truly vile telling of
the Aristocrats: the Duke of Edinburgh and his family go to see a talent
agent ...



He is such a bizarre choice because he’s actually the deadweight holding back what increasingly appears to be a monarchist revival.
Wherever he goes, his “gaffes” breeze ahead of him like a bad smell. He
couldn’t be further from the young dream couple William and Kate, who
have seized the world’s imagination with their sensitive, virtuous
public profiles.



If Abbott absolutely had to knight a royal, couldn’t he have chosen Prince William
instead of drawing attention to the least popular member of the
monarchy? If this is about re-establishing the monarchy’s place in our
regime of honours and titles, why not choose a royal recipient who will
play well with the punters? And who is Angus Houston again?



Already there’s chatter about how dopey the appointment is, how it
will play poorly with an electorate who are discovering anew how strange
their prime minister is. If there is a single person in the country for
whom this decision would swing their vote, I’d like to meet them. Is
there anyone demanding the Queen’s rarefied consort be given yet another
gong?



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In the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t matter to Abbott. A former director of Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy,
he has always considered royalty to be an integral part of Australian
life outside and above partisan politics and, indeed, democracy itself.
It’s “a reminder of the transcendent in the life of the world”, he wrote
in 2006. An ideal “always beyond the reach of actual human beings but
towards which all should strive”.



Or as Philip put it in a comment to Alfredo Stroessner,
the Paraguayan dictator who turned his country into a sanctuary for
escaped Nazis: “It’s a pleasure to be in a country that isn’t ruled by
its people.”



Now that’s a joke! Try the veal, I’m a Knight of the Order of Australia all week!


The Aristocrats is a gag comedians tell each other in private. It’s a
“secret handshake”, a dirty joke that keeps the profession together.
Abbott’s version is the same: a joke for the benefit of the few true
monarchists left in the country, overwhelmingly men of Philip’s ilk. The
rest of us aren’t meant to get it, because it’s told at our expense.



On Australia Day, when many Indigenous Australians are mourning, when
we’re asking ourselves questions about what kind of democracy we
actually have, when the republicans among us are navel-gazing about the
flag, and when Abbott’s own supporters are tucking into their beer and
snags, the prime minister goes and knights a member of the royal family.
That’s what John Howard used to call a “barbecue stopper”, a clanger so
bad it could ruin the fun for everyone.



Except, that is, for the person who made the joke and his intended audience. Except for … the Aristocrats!

Labor MP asks PM Abbott to prove he's not a British dual citizen

Labor MP asks PM Abbott to prove he's not a British dual citizen

Ross Jones 234 4




Terri Butler has written to Prime Minister Abbott about his possible dual citizenship


Kevin Rudd's replacement in the seat of Griffith, Terri
Butler, writes to Tony Abbott asking him to put to rest speculation he
is ineligible to sit in the Australian Parliament due to never having
renounced his British citizenship. Sydney bureau chief Ross Jones reports.
TERRI MEGAN BUTLER is the Labor MP for the federal division of
Griffith, basically Brisbane’s inner southern suburbs. It used to be
former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s seat until he spat his final dummy.
Kev’s abrupt but overdue departure triggered a by-election held on 8 February 2014.


Terri, previously an industrial lawyer, had secured Labor pre-selection and, on the day, prevailed over the LNP's Dr Bill Glasson with a 2PP of 51.76%, despite a 1.25% swing against Labor.

It’s probably a much safer ALP seat now and, at 37, Butler has a bright future before her.

IA readers are familiar with the indefatigable Tony Magrathea as the man trying to uncover the truth regarding the Tony Abbott’s citizenship status. The results of his attempts have been well-documented in IA.

Fed up with frustrations attending the almost-impossible task of proving something doesn’t exist, in this case Abbott's 'Form RN' – his renunciation of British citizenship – Magrathea decided both-barrels, choke off, was the best approach.

So he a emailed a question to every MP in the land the following:

If a politician were to find out about something that might or
might not be a crime, should they make that decision themselves or
should it be left up to the police? I know most state crimes acts
require all who are aware of a crime to let the police know, otherwise
they risk being charged with perverting the course of justice,
especially if the politician and potential criminal are mates and there
has been some sort of monetary or political advantaged gained by staying
quiet.


I ask because the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet
declared in an FOI request, 2014-159, in October last year, that Mr
Abbott is still a dual citizen of Britain and Australia. They said his
renunciation paperwork for the British citizenship does not exist.  If a
politician were to find out about something that might or might not be a
crime should they make that decision themselves or should it be left up
to the police? I know most state crimes acts require all who are aware
of a crime to let the police know otherwise they risk being charged with
perverting the course of justice, especially if the politician and
potential criminal are mates and there has been some sort of monetary or
political advantaged gained by staying quiet.
After explaining the possible legal repercussions of their staying quiet, Magrathea asked:

Now that you are aware of the crime or potential crime, will you
advise the police or make the decision yourself that all is OK? I would
hope you forward the matter to the CDPP, the AG department and the AFP
or at least ask a question in Parliament so we can all find out what's
going on.


Coincidence, by definition, is a funny thing. Terri was on the ALP
campaign trail in Rockhampton on 22 January and got chatting to booth
workers.


IA notes it has not yet spoken with Butler, we will try
although she is a tad busy at the moment, so the next bit is an
informed, but not confirmed, reconstruction.


It seems the ALP booth workers filled a hitherto unknowing Butler
into the detail of the Abbott citizenship scandal and Tony’s findings to
date in that regard. She contacted her staff, who advised the content
of Tony’s email advising MPs of a possible criminal breach — not only by
Abbott, but anyone else who knew and was deliberately concealing a
crime.


Butler is now on record as the only MP, and that includes the crossbench zoo, to respond to Magrathea’s mass entreaty.

She begins her reply:

Dear Tony

Thanks for emailing me.

As you’d know, Britain is a foreign power for the purposes of section 44(i) (Sue v Hill
[1999] HCA 30; 199 CLR 462; 163 ALR 648; 73 ALJR 1016). That suggests
that if the Prime Minister had yet to renounce his British citizenship
before being re-elected in 2013, he would be ineligible to sit.


I understand the Prime Minister’s office has said that the Prime
Minister has renounced his British citizenship. If so, he would have
done so by paperwork filed with the British government, which may
explain why there aren’t Australian government records amenable to FOI.
Not having seen any proof that the claim is a lie, I am not in a
position to make any statement as to its veracity. I’d say that the
person best placed to know the Prime Minister’s citizenship status is
the Prime Minister himself. For that reason I accept his statement at
face value. Having said that, I intend to write to him, in the terms of
the enclosed letter, encouraging him to provide his declaration of renunciation, to avoid the need to continue to discuss this matter.
She concludes her reply to Tony Magrathea:

If it turned out that the Prime Minister was eligible, you
wouldn’t get relief from the court. If, on the other hand, the Prime
Minister wasn’t eligible when elected in 2013, it would seem likely that
the court would void the election for his division, and a by-election
would occur (as it did in the Kelly case). I suspect if that was to
occur the Prime Minister would win that by-election, but of course that
would be a matter for the voters in his Division. (I would make the
observation that if all that was achieved through court proceedings and
an expensive by-election was to maintain the status quo, that would be a
shame.)
It appears to me that if a person believed that an MP,
including the Prime Minister, was not eligible to hold his or her seat,
the proper approach would be to seek a remedy from the High Court. As
you will have seen from the Hill and Kelly cases, that is generally done
as a petition to the Court sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns.
You could also consider a claim under section 46 of the Constitution
which allows a citizen to seek that the MP be financially penalised for
sitting while ineligible.


If you believe that he has signed any false declarations, that is
a matter that you might consider referring to the police. For my own
part, not having seen any evidence that a false declaration has been
made, I’m not going to make allegations to that effect.


Having made all of those observations, I’d say that I have many,
many disagreements with the Prime Minister. I believe he’s wrong on just
about every issue of public policy about which I’ve heard his views. I
disagree with his government’s attacks on pensioners, students,
families, working people, and households generally. I vehemently oppose
his attacks on Medicare and on access to education, among many other
things. 


I hasten to add that nothing in this email is to be taken as
legal advice. You should seek your own advice, especially if you’re
considering commencing court proceedings. You may also be interested in
this e-brief (which I suspect you’ve already seen) about section 44 from
the parliamentary library: http://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/parliamentary_departments/parliamentary_library/publications_archive/archive/section44


Best wishes

Terri Butler MP
A polite dead bat you might think. But you’d be wrong.

Because enclosed was also a letter that had been sent to the prime minister:



Like reporting a UFO, Labor risks widespread ridicule if it airs this
thing in in Parliament. What happens if they beat it up, then Peta
reaches into Tony’s satchel and flourishes the RN? Ignominy, that’s
what. And no-one can prove he doesn’t have it. A hippy would refer to
this situation as a mind-fuck.


But now the stakes have been ratcheted up a cog. The PM has received a written request from a sitting MP.

Will Tony fess up? Will half the front bench go to gaol for knowingly concealing a crime?

You’ll read it here first.

Sunday 25 January 2015

BUCKINGHAM PALACE REACTION TO TONY ABBOTT
James Hudson ‏@jamesahudson
"And then one of the colonies gave him a knighthood".


Philip - A Just And Fitting Honour Of Someone Who Worked Quietly Behind The Scenes With No Recognition! - The AIM Network

Philip - A Just And Fitting Honour Of Someone Who Worked Quietly Behind The Scenes With No Recognition! - The AIM Network



Philip – A Just And Fitting Honour Of Someone Who Worked Quietly Behind The Scenes With No Recognition!














Ah, remember how the Left laughed and mocked Tony Abbott for
reintroducing knighthoods and dames. Remember when Tony explained how it
would work:



“There won’t be very many Knights and Dames in the Order of Australia,” Abbott said.


“There may be – I say may be – up to four a year, but they will be
people of extraordinary achievement and pre-eminence and I believe that
no one gets to be the Governor-General of this great Commonwealth
without being a person of extraordinary achievement and pre-eminence.”




So, the first two were the outgoing Governor-General, Dame Quentin
Bryce and the incoming Governor-General, Sir Peter Cosgrove. Given his
suggestion that it was pretty much an automatic thing for
Governors-General to be awarded this honour, there was hardly any
surprise with the choice.



The question of who would be our next knights or dames was the
interesting question. I’m sure many of you had sleepless nights and that
many pub conversations and barbeques were dominated by wondering
whether it’d be some ex-politician like John Howard, or someone with an
outstanding record in the area of charity such as Peter’s more likeable
brother, Tim Costello, or even, perhaps, someone who’d selflessly
devoted themselves to becoming as rich as possible like Rupert or Gina.



When the name Angus Houston popped up, I thought, of course. Apart
from his distinguished career as a military man, he did all that work on
those missing planes, and while not finding on of them cruelled his
chances for Australian of The Year, a knighthood was still an
appropriate reward for all his service to this country. A fine choice!
And as the man himself said:



“I was very comfortable with who I am and what I am,” he said.


“It’s a great honour to be recognised in this way but I’d like people to still call me Angus.”

I’m glad he cleared that up, because had I met him I’d have wondered
if I should call him Mr Houston, Chief Air Marshall or Loretta. But
Angus it is. Would ‘Gus be ok too, I wonder, or is that a bit informal
for someone like that.



Yes, the PM was correct to suggest that Angus had always put Australia first.


But now we had our woman, our soldier and our air force person,
obviously we needed a sailor to complete the pack, otherwise the navy
would feel left out. Much to everyone’s surprise, Abbott found a little
known navy person, whom he wanted to recognise for his services to
Australians – Prince Philip, a man that I’m sure has always put
Australia in his top three.  He was known for his services to some
of the Australian women, according to various sources, but I have no
confirmation of that.



For those of you who don’t know much about this latest knight of Australia, here are a few facts:


  1. “Prince” is not his actual first name, but a title bestowed on him
    at birth, when he was “Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark”. (Now that
    he’s been given the knighthood, it’s possible that he’ll be known as
    “Sir Philip” or “The Sailor Who Used To Prince”)
  2. His family was kicked out of Greece when he was a baby – not sure why.
  3. He joined the British Royal Navy in 1939, at the age of 18, which was a pretty bad year to join as it turned out.
  4. He is also known as “The Duke Of Edinburgh”, and is believed to have
    been worried that if Scotland had voted for independence he may have
    had to change his title to “The Duke of Hazard”.
  5. The “Duke Of Edinburgh” awards were actually named after him, and not the other way around.
  6. He married his third cousin, a woman called Elizabeth with whom he began correspending when she was 13.
  7. He has four children, which coincedently are three boys and one
    girl. Just like the knighthoods awarded by Mr Abbott. Three of his
    chlidren have been through a divorce, which suggests that it’s not a
    good family to marry into.
  8. He commented at the 1986 “Duke of Edinburgh” Awards: “Young people are the same as they always were. Just as ignorant.”
  9. His sisters were married to German princes, so they didn’t get an
    invite to his wedding in 1951. Something to do with sensitivities about
    Nazi connections.
  10. He commented during the 1981 recession: “A few years ago,
    everybody was saying we must have more leisure, everyone’s working too
    much. Now everybody’s got more leisure time they’re complaining they’re
    unemployed. People don’t seem to make up their minds what they want.”

So, I hope you can see why this man was such an outstanding choice
for our fourth knighthood (if you include the dames as part of the
knighthood, it seems awkward to be saying knightandordamehoods)! The
choice of Prince Philip (I wonder if he’ll suggest we just call him
Angus, too) shows what an excellent idea it was to reintroduce these
imperial honours and allow people who wouldn’t have access to such a
high title, the chance to be recognised. When Abbott first introduced
them, people suggested that it was a crazy idea, but I think you’ll all
agree, that this just shows how firm a grip Abbott has on reality, and
what an astute politician he really is. If we can’t honour rich men who
live overseas on Australian Day, when can we?




Saturday 24 January 2015

We knew who Abbott was back then - The AIM Network

We knew who Abbott was back then - The AIM Network



We knew who Abbott was back then














I’m really sick of people saying that they didn’t expect Tony
Abbott to be the type of Prime Minister he is. I’m really sick of people
saying his policies caught them by surprise, that they didn’t expect
him to slash and burn to the extent that he has tried, but thankfully,
so far mostly failed to. I hear all types of people, even political
journalists, saying that Abbott promised he wouldn’t be making cuts and
they took him on his word and they didn’t expect him to lie. He had a
pamphlet and apparently this was gospel truth about exactly what an
Abbott government would look like. To this, I’ve always said, just look
at him! Listen to him! Use your brain! Are you blind? Wilfully blind
perhaps?



Independent bloggers like me, who predicted exactly how bad the
Abbott government would be were told we were just partisan Labor hacks
and that he really wouldn’t be nearly as bad as we said. But we, if
anything, mostly under-predicted how bad he is going to be. However we
were spot on with the ideology that oozes out of this government – the
class and culture war that’s been inflicted is exactly as we thought it
would be. How did we guess the type of policies Abbott would sneakily
introduce once in power, but those who are paid to inform the community
totally missed it? Seriously, how was this mistake to universally made?
How could Australians be so let down that they have had the Abbott
surprise inflicted on them? How could they be left so ill-prepared and
uninformed?



This frustration was all running through my head when I came across
this address by Abbott as Opposition Leader to the Millennium Forum on
14 May 2010, helpfully stored in Hansard. When Abbott was saying all of
this, outlining his plans for Prime Minister Abbott, were political
journalists and commentators listening? Or worse, were they listening
but couldn’t comprehend what this obvious, blatant ideology would look
like in power? Do they have a different definition of ‘small government’
than I do? Or did they know and chose not to say, knowing that Abbott
would never win if people knew the truth about him. I fear it’s mostly a
mixture of the latter, depending on the media organisation they work
for.



You read Abbott’s words for yourself and be the judge. Would
Australians have seen Abbott differently if they knew he was coming at
politics from this world view? If this world view was explained sampling
(for example: small government equals cuts to health, education,
welfare and all public services).



Oh, and I can’t help but thank Abbott for his reminder that the last
one term Australian government was in 1931. I look forward to Abbott’s
government reclaiming that record in 2016.



LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION THE HON. TONY ABBOTT MHR

FEDERAL MEMBER FOR WARRINGAH

ADDRESS TO THE MILLENNIUM FORUM

14/05/10

Thanks very much, ladies and gentlemen. It’s great to see so many of you
here. Julie, I really do want to thank you for that terrific
introduction and yes, I think it is very important to be a politician
and a leader of conviction but it’s important that leaders of conviction
respect the  convictions of those who think differently and if there’s
one thing that I hope I have learnt over those 16 years it is that this
is a great big wide world, not everyone shares my views. I do, I think,
have a duty to do what I can to advance these ideas, these convictions
that I have but it’s very important to respect the convictions and the
ideas of those who think differently and in acknowledging all of my
colleagues I should say a special thank you to the political exemplar of
exemplars, namely our former Prime Minister, John Howard. A man of
great conviction, but a man who realised that in the office of Prime
Minister you had to be a Prime Minister for everyone, not just a Prime
Minister for those who voted for you. John Howard, the greatest Prime
Minister since Bob Menzies, the finest politician of his generation. I
am a different politician to John Howard. There would be some in this
room who would be disappointed that I am a different politician to John
Howard but I say this: the politician that I am owes a very great deal
to John Howard’s friendship and his mentoring and I thank you very, very
much indeed, John.



Again, I welcome all of my distinguished senior colleagues. I should
pay a particular tribute today to my Shadow Finance Minister, Andrew
Robb. Budgets are difficult weeks for both sides of politics. They’re
particularly difficult weeks for the finance men. I was the one who
delivered the words last night but the ideas and the concepts were very
much the property of Joe Hockey and Andrew Robb as well as the property
of Tony Abbott and thank you, Andrew, for all your hard work over the
last few weeks.

But ladies and gentlemen, we are getting to the business end of the
electoral cycle and when we look back over the last two-and-a-half years
and ask ourselves what has the Rudd Government actually done, I think
they’ve done two things essentially. They have spent all of the
carefully accumulated capital, they have blown all of the hard won
surpluses of the previous government, that’s the first thing that
they’ve done. The second thing they’ve done is that they have very
seriously undone some of the important reforms of the former government
and indeed of the government before that, they have let the union
bullies back into so many of our most vital workplaces, that’s the
second thing they’ve done. The third thing they are proposing to do is
to plunge a dagger into the heart of Australia’s prosperity because that
is what this great big new tax on mining will be. Now, all Budget week
we’ve had minister after minister hitting the airwaves saying that this
so-called super profits tax is about taking from the London shareholders
and giving to the Australian battlers. Well, that is wrong, wrong,
wrong.



It is a triple whammy tax. It is a tax on the 500,000 Australian
workers whose jobs depend directly or indirectly on the mining industry.
It’s a tax on the millions of Australian retirees whose incomes are
drawn from those shares and those dividends that the mining companies
pay. It’s a tax on consumers because you can’t raise the price of coal,
you can’t raise the price of oil and gas, you can’t raise the price of
building material, you can’t raise the price of fertiliser without that
flowing through into the consumer price index. It is a triple whammy tax
and my job, our job as Coalition Members of Parliament is to let the
country know the threat that they face from the Rudd Government if it is
re-elected.



And you’ve got to ask yourself where does this stop? I mean, if a six
per cent return on capital is a super profit for the mining industry,
what other industry is next for this kind of treatment? And if you
listen to the Prime Minister and the Treasurer talking about how good
this great big new tax is going to be for the mining industry, why
wouldn’t they impose the same tax on everyone else? There is a
fundamental lack of logic, though, about what they’re saying. Any of you
who have followed the debate closely over the last few days would know
that by the logic of this Budget a tax on cigarettes means less smoking
but a tax on resources means more mining. It just doesn’t work. It just
defies logic and yet it is the fundamental premise on which the Budget
is based.



But haven’t times changed, ladies and gentlemen? Just a few months
ago there was BHP, the big Australian, there was Rio, that great, iconic
Australian company under threat from potential foreign takeover. These
were heroes, they were the heroes that have saved us from the recession.
Now, of course, they’re big, exploiting multinationals. Well, as far as
I’m concerned they are just businesses but they are important
businesses. They are vital businesses if our country is to prosper, if
our people are to grow richer and happier, if our country is to be more
cohesive in the years ahead, and they do not deserve to be targeted in
the way they have by this government.



Sensible politicians know that what you should never do is sacrifice
the long term welfare of the country for tomorrow’s headline and that is
what this government has been prepared to do and the risk is that they
will strangle the golden goose which has laid the eggs, the golden eggs
which have driven our prosperity, and I say to all of you that the only
thing standing between Australia and this threat is the Coalition. If
you think this would be a disaster for our country and our economy there
is only one course of action open to you and that is to vote out this
Government.



But ladies and gentlemen, this is Budget week and there have been a
lot of stories coming out of Budget week. Some of them I’m afraid are
fairytales. The idea that the Rudd Government is ever going to deliver a
surplus is as big a fairytale as the book that the Prime Minister spent
his Christmas holidays writing. It just is not going to happen. They
can postulate a surplus in three years time based on very optimistic
assumptions about growth, but the only reality, the only hard fact in
this year’s Budget is that this year the deficit is $57 billion.



Now, the great thing about coming to these lunches is that they bring
you down to earth and I am indebted to one of you for this very
important piece of political advice. He said, don’t talk about a
billion. A billion dollars is meaningless to the average person in the
street. A billion dollars is the cost of 20,000 Holden Commodores. That
means that $50 billion is one million Holden Commodores. The deficit
this year is the price of one million Holden Commodores. It is a
staggering, staggering amount of money and that’s the money that’s going
out the door thanks to the profligacy of this Government and, sure,
they tell us that we will be in surplus in three years’ time. What they
didn’t want to tell us is that every week until then we will still be
borrowing $700 million and to use Nihal’s [Gupta] language, $700 million
is two 747’s every week. So, that’s a hundred in two years, it’s 150, I
mean these are the sorts of figures, these are the sorts of realities
that we are dealing with thanks to the continued debt and deficit of
this Government.



So, ladies and gentlemen, we do have a clear alternative. At least, I
suppose, we can say that both sides of politics believe that we do need
to tame the deficit dragon. We do need to kill the deficit dragon. But,
the difference is the high road and low road. We will take the high
road of reducing government expenditure and creating a more productive
economy. They will take the low road of increasing taxes and fiddling
with the assumptions.



What we will do is we will spend less, we will tax less and we will
have a smaller government. Lower taxes, lesser spending, smaller
government are at the heart of the Liberal Party’s principles, they’re
at the heart of the Coalition’s philosophy and what I did last night was
start to talk about how we would make that happen. Less tax – no great
big tax on mining. Less spending – we won’t give money to the education
bureaucrats to waste on over-priced pre-fabricated school halls. We will
give it to the parents of Australia who know what is good for their
kids and for their kids’ education. We won’t re-build Telecom fortyodd
years afterwards. We won’t go ahead with the $43 billion white elephant
with this big new nationalised telecommunications bureaucracy You know, I
spent long enough as a Minister in the Government to have a good
opinion of the Australian public service, but we don’t need more and
more of them every year.



There are 20,000 more public servants today in Canberra then there
were in 2007 when Lindsay Tanner said he was going to take a meat axe to
the public service. Well, I’m not so brutal as Lindsay promised to be. I
just think that by natural attrition we can have 12,000 less of them
and that will save $4 billion over the period of the forward estimates.



So, ladies and gentlemen, lower taxes, smaller government, less
spending. We have to get the debt and deficit under control and it’s
pretty clear that the only way you can do that in reality as opposed to
in a self-serving political fable is by changing the government by
supporting the Coalition.



Now, it’s not going to be easy, as all of you know. It is very
difficult to beat a first term government and as all of the commentators
will tell you, over and over again, between now and polling day, the
last first term government to lose was Jimmy Scullin back in 1931. But,
ladies and gentlemen, a 79 year old record is just waiting to fall. It’s
just waiting to fall. I don’t for a second underestimate the difficulty
of the task. I don’t for a second underestimate the gifts of character
that will be required from all of our team and all of our supporters
over the next four or five months, but I have great confidence in the
common sense of the Australian people and I have great confidence in the
ability of my colleagues and I think we can win. I think we can win and
we don’t want to do it for us. We want to do it for our country. That’s
what it’s got to be for. It’s got to be for our country and I know
that’s what all of you think. You aren’t here just for the Liberal
Party. You certainly aren’t here just for me. You are here for Australia
and I want to thank you for that very much indeed.


Monday 19 January 2015

Does the average person realise how much the Abbott Government is helping the wealthy? - The AIM Network

Does the average person realise how much the Abbott Government is helping the wealthy? - The AIM Network



Does the average person realise how much the Abbott Government is helping the wealthy?














In opposition and in government, the Coalition has moaned with frenetic monotony that Medicare is unsustainable. The fact is, it isn’t.
But while they can maintain the rage and attempt to convince everybody
that the country can’t afford to keep it in its present form, they’ll
find one way or another to use it as an economic scapegoat.



The news that they had scrapped their planned cuts to the Medicare
rebate was only a temporary reprieve as we’ve been warned that they are
still committed to introducing price signals into the national icon. Why? This was summed up by Tony Abbott:



Mr Abbott has called on the opposition and the
crossbenchers to come up with alternative savings measures to pay off
the debt and deficit instead of obstructing the government’s attempts to
repair the budget.

It’s the same-old same-old from Tony Abbott. Blame Labor, hit the
poor. The budget must be in one hell of a mess if the country’s
prosperity is at stake because of Medicare.



With the government’s back-down on the planned cuts to the rebate we
can expect a ramp-up in their rhetoric. The attempts to convince us that
Medicare is unsustainable will go into overdrive.



I agree with the government that the budget is in a shambles, but I
disagree at where the fault lies. One good thing – for them – is that
while they keep Medicare in the news the real culprits behind our budget
woes remain out of sight. Or as Richard Denniss
points out, the much talked about budget deficit gives the Treasurer
the chance to keep his agenda in the public domain. Which is, of course,
that the budget can’t be fixed because Medicare is the hole in the
economic bucket.



With the help of the Murdoch media not only will the Medicare bashing
be kept front and centre, but the ‘real’ culprits for the deficit will
be kept hidden from public view. The average punter has been deluded
into believing that Medicare is unsustainable and that the only way the
budget can be fixed is if services to the less well-off (aka the
‘bludgers’) are trimmed. The government and the Murdoch media have
managed to sustain both the delusions rather effectively.



I wonder if the mug punter is aware of how much the Abbott Government
is actually helping the wealthy. At not only the poor’s expense, but at
their’s too. The facts might shock them.



How can we accept that Medicare is the boil on the budget’s backside
when being slipped into the hands of the wealthy is enough money that,
if ceased, would go close to balancing social inequality? And the
budget, of course.



Stop pandering to the wealthy, and Medicare becomes sustainable. It
is the luxuries afforded to the well-off that are unsustainable. How
much is it costing us? Too much. Here are some examples.



George Lekakis writes in The New Daily that:


Former Liberal Party leader John Hewson last year called
on the Abbott government to slash the superannuation tax concessions
available to high-income earners.



One of the effects of the changes introduced by Peter Costello in
2006 is that most multi-millionaires can structure their assets so that
they pay no tax in retirement even though they might be reaping more
than $150,000 a year.



In an opinion column for the Australian Financial Review last April, Mr Hewson made three salient observations about the existing superannuation tax arrangements:


• The tax breaks on super are costing the government in foregone
revenue about $45 billion a year and this is roughly the same amount
that is spent each year on the age pension.



• The dollar value of the tax breaks is growing faster than
expenditure on the aged pension, making concessions on super
contributions a much bigger threat to balancing government finances in
the near-term.



• The super tax concessions are skewed to high-income earners: the
top 10 per cent of income earners reap more than 36 per cent of the tax
concession dollars, while the bottom 10 per cent are actually penalised
for making super contributions.

Did you read that? $45 billion a year just on superannuation tax
breaks. And who gets the bulk of that? Yes, the wealthy. (And it
certainly makes the $7.5 billion spent on Newstart look paltry in comparison).



This year Medicare will cost us $20 billion.
I’m happy to contribute towards the cost, but I sure do hate losing out
because of the $45 billion tax breaks (alone) to the country’s
well-off.



But it’s only the start.


Of the $18 billion in lost revenue over
the next four years from the abolition of the ‘mining tax’, $1.6
billion of that was “purely a gift from Mr Abbott to the miners”.



Scrapping the mining tax will cost us $5.3 billion and who gets that? It will go mainly to the biggest mining companies:


The mining industry is clearly at the top of the
government’s priority list. They sit far above concerns about the cost
of living for working families.

Then there’s the $2.4 billion
a year the government gives back to property investors because of
negative gearing. How many welfare recipients have investment
properties? How many of the well-off do?



And while the price of fuel costs you a couple of dollars extra week due to Hockey’s new surcharge you might like to know that:

A new report finds
exploration by coal and energy companies is subsidised by Australian
taxpayers by as much as $US3.5 billion ($4 billion) every year in the
form of direct spending and tax breaks.

Heard enough? There’s no doubt more, but this small handful of
examples alone should be enough for the average person to realise how
much the Abbott Government is helping the wealthy.



Medicare – I repeat – isn’t the problem. The government is. They’re giving too much money to the rich.