I was kind of curious about this business about getting mothers back to work. Wasn't Howard very pro-family and mums in kitchens not that long ago?
I guess single mothers aren't real mothers and really have more time to work...
hingehead wrote:I was kind of curious about this business about getting mothers back to work. Wasn't Howard very pro-family and mums in kitchens not that long ago?
I guess single mothers aren't real mothers and really have more time to work...
Single moms are not quite NICE & they don't have REAL families, hinge. Anyway, we wouldn't want to encourage this sort of immoral thing by supporting them financially a minute longer than we have to! ... Real mothers are exactly like Jeanette (Mrs Howard).
Nice to see you here again, hinge!
Must be right msolga, we keep voting his government back in. Now I know that sounds arrogant and elitist but I really believe people have been sucked in. I'm not a proponent of the "false consciousness" argument either, that is too smug for me. Nope, I adhere to that famous eulogy of The Times (ahem - pre-Murdoch) when on the death of Disraeli it noted that he was able to discern the innate conservatism in the working class "as a sculptor sees an angel in marble". So Khaki Johnny is doing nothing new. Trouble is it works.
Mind you, he gets a wee bit of help from Packer & Murdoch! It's very hard to know exactly what's what when you're continually being told that bad is good, black is white ...
Oh yeah, Packer, Murdoch, Jones, Laws.
I cannot believe how much they lap it up - or maybe there's something wrong with us?
Nah, I agree with Einstein - there's always a simple solution, that's wrong.
Nah, there's nothing wrong with us, hinge. It takes a lot of time & thought & background knowledge to be wise to the crap that's being thrown from the media, daily. If you're not particularly educated or too busy just trying to survive from day to day, well what hope have you got?
You've probably read this but just in case:
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Michael Costello: Another big con
13may05
MAX Gillies, a devastating satiriser of Australian politicians, is in Canberra at the moment doing a hilarious show called The Big Con. Its piece de resistance is his finale, a speech by Prime Minister John Howard.
The Howard/Gillies character says: "We went to the people last year with a campaign based on trust". (Howard/Gillies chortles gleefully.) "Next time I'm going to pretend to be a six-foot tall black woman and see if I can get away with that one too!"
Judging by the overwhelmingly positive tenor of the media's reaction to the Government's latest budget, you have to reckon that Howard probably would.
This budget totally fails the fairness test. Even worse, it comprehensively fails the reform test. Let's start with fairness.
One headline after the budget read "Workers One, Shirkers Zero". An accurate headline would have read "Well-off get $87, Workers get $6, Disabled and Single Mothers get a kick in the teeth!"
How can you justify a tax cut of $87 a week for someone on $125,000 or more, but for a worker on $55,000, a cut of only $6? Howard says that's fair because people on higher incomes pay more tax under the progressive system. But someone on $125,000 a year pays a bit over three times the tax of someone on $55,000 a year and yet is going to get a tax break 14 times more than the person on $55,000 a year. So don't give me that progressive tax rubbish. As Gillies would say: "It's a big con."
As for getting disabled workers and single mothers back into the workforce, their real problem is not that they don't want to go back to work. Rather, it is that most employers don't want disabled people and they don't want single mothers who are available only part-time and constantly worried about their children because they have no back-up. It's like workers over 50 - employers mostly don't want to hire them even if they do want to work. And most of them do.
To brand these whole groups as shirkers is totally disgraceful.
More importantly for our long-term future, this budget fails the reform test. The OECD, the Reserve Bank and plenty of other disinterested observers have identified three key problems for Australia -- infrastructure, skills and education, and a low labour-market participation rate. This budget was our chance to take advantage of the fabulous inflow of company and resource rent taxes flowing to the Government from the commodities price boom. And yet Howard and Peter Costello have blown it, just like Howard blew it during the last resources boom when he was treasurer in the late '70s.
Education, skills, and scientific and technological development are the absolute key to Australia's economic future, and to the aspiration of ordinary individuals. Yet this budget does not seriously touch these issues.
The OECD says leadership on infrastructure is the responsibility of the federal Government, not the states. Yet this budget has nothing to say on this. The Future Fund has no specific charter for infrastructure. Indeed, Costello has made a virtue of the fact that it is a hands-off investment fund that can invest in anything from hedge funds to supermarkets to gambling.
On welfare to work, the focus on the disabled and single mothers is misguided. The heart of this problem, as the OECD and others have said, is the extraordinarily high effective marginal tax rate for hundreds of thousands of ordinary Australians who are desperate to get a job but would have to pay a 60 to 70per cent plus effective tax rate if they did leave welfare and go to even a modest job. Yet nothing is done.
It was thought that this budget would be the opportunity for the Government to really show what they stand for now they have control of the Senate. Well, they have. They have shown they are about no guts or ideas on economic reform, about a generous tax handout to the well-off and little to workers, and about a backhander to the most defenceless in our society.
Kim Beazley and Labor are roundly condemned for opposing this grotesquely unjust and economically unsound budget. If Labor had not stood up on this issue, then truly it could have been asked 'What does Labor stand for?'
It's argued that you should never stand between a voter and a tax cut. But the Government is only offering a $6 a week tax cut to 80per cent of the population, while Beazley in his budget reply offered them $12 a week. Moreover, Beazley spelt out a program and an agenda for real economic reform.
It's also argued that Beazley and Labor should put up this alternative but in the end should pass the Government's proposal in the Senate to ensure that workers don't miss out on their $6 a week tax cut for the six weeks from July 1 until the Senate resumes in August with a Coalition majority. Nonsense. Workers don't need to miss out on those six weeks. The Government can make tax cuts retrospective to July 1. It is entirely in the Government's power and it is the Government's responsibility.
Anyone still want to suggest Beazley lacks ticker, doesn't stand for anything, and doesn't have the courage of his convictions? Beazley may be a big target now, but he clearly sees it as being for the best and most Labor of reasons.
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Strangely enough I perked up a bit after reading it.
"Kim Beazley and Labor are roundly condemned for opposing this grotesquely unjust and economically unsound budget. If Labor had not stood up on this issue, then truly it could have been asked 'What does Labor stand for?"
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!!!!
The sniggers are from Packer/Murdoch/employer organizations, etc, etc .... So it's not fashionable to stand up to crap & oppression? We really should stop being undermined by this stuff. (Latham copped a bucketful of it, too!) & stand up for what we believe in!
Max Gillies, I love you!
And the cartoonists & Clark & Dawe & Kenneth Davidson in the AGE & the ABC journalists & the Big Issue & others ... May the Goddess bless them for holding to their watching brief when so many others have succumbed, given up, been intimidated, or have just faded away into obscurity. Bless them!
We need to slay the dragon of conventional wisdom. I'm feeling heartened, I really am
Oh, I'm glad someone is! <phew!> I know hinge feels very much like this, too. There must be others. Trouble is, Oz folk who think like this are so isolated right now. My god, where are our inspiring thinkers & leaders when we really, really need them?
I have to admit I was a bit annoyed that Beazley came back. I was wrong. Perhaps he is making the ALP finally stand up and draw the line.
The ALP is infested with two broad types of idiot. The first idiot is the idiot that wants to get into Parliament and obtain a sinecure and do anything to keep it. This idiot will do and say anything to get into government. They have no principles whatsoever.
The second type of idiot is the idiot that wants to stay in opposition because they can rant and rave and bang on about principle without every facing the threat of having to do anything constructive about it.
Perhaps Beazley has them worked out now. I've had the term "pragmatic principalism" spat at me (usually by Idiot Type 2) but I get the sense that Kym has finally worked out that you stand up and tell the electorate what you stand for, what you want to do, how the country should look and if they don't like it then too bad for them.
I am heartened. I would like to stay that way.
goodfielder wrote:..The ALP is infested with two broad types of idiot. The first idiot is the idiot that wants to get into Parliament and obtain a sinecure and do anything to keep it. This idiot will do and say anything to get into government. They have no principles whatsoever.
The second type of idiot is the idiot that wants to stay in opposition because they can rant and rave and bang on about principle without every facing the threat of having to do anything constructive about it...
That's an interesting observation, goodfielder. I'm not a member, for no other reason that I find the idea of toeing a party line (even when you strongly disagree with party policy) very difficult, almost impossible. I'm a bit of a fellow traveller & have campaigned, handed out ALP "how to vote" cards, etc. However, I've tended to be more of a unionist & an "issues" campaigner.
I know what you mean about the pragmatists. If you have something called ALP in government instead of the Libs, then what does it matter if only a fine line divides their policies? Well, hey, why bother with all those meetings, all that "consultation" then?
The determined "utopian malcontents" are interesting, too. Basically folk in love with their own "visionary" arguments & who thrive on an audience ... & love pointing out that others are less pure than they are!
I really believe both groups are fairly irrelevant, when it comes to deciding REAL direction & decision making. It's the factional wheelers & dealers who make the most important decisions ... And god knows what they stand for!: enjoying wielding their own power, probably ...
It really saddens me when I see so many good, involved grassroots people end up with the shabby results of the power broking process. Why they persist, I really don't know. (Maybe because of enhanced job opportunities in the public service?)
Summed it up well msolga. I am no longer a card carrying member. I was very active though but I was sickened by the factionalism (especially here in SA with that infernal "Machine").
Even when I went to my first UTLC meeting as a delegate one Friday night at Trades Hall I got in strife. In my ignorance I chose to sit in the wrong place. I was told my union was "non-aligned" and shown - quite politely - to the "non-aligned" section.
Thankfully the bar was all-in
Ah, good grief! Honestly!
Yep, I was so stunned I didn't even kick up a stink. Then later I was appointed to the board of the UTLC (my union had a position on there by virtue of numbers) but that was less factionalised thankfully. You know somewhere between the "business unionism" of the AFL-CIO and the heavy mix of factional politics and industrial representation in Australia there must be a good balance. We just haven't found it yet.
... but, but .... all the same, watching Kim deliver his response to the budget the other night, I was really quite anxious. Desperately wanting him not to stuff it up. Hoping that nothing TOO outrageous, that would give the Canberra journos fuel for derision & ridicule the next day, would occur. It's strange, isn't it? ... not belonging, feeling alienated, yet also feeling so tied up in knots in loyalty with the bloody ALP! Real love/hate stuff, this!
BTW, when I speak about loyalty to unionism these days, it's largely loyalty to folk in my own work place. The unfortunate leader syndrome!
