Back in 2012, when you said the age of entitlement was over, I was so relieved. I was relieved that highly-paid politicians like Tony Abbott would no longer think it acceptable to charge tax-payers for personal book tours. I was relieved that filthy rich politicians like Malcolm Turnbull, and like yourself,
would put an end to ethically-suspect rental schemes, where your
tax-payer funded Canberra housing allowance is paid to your spouses for
investment properties they have cleverly put in their names. Which you
will no doubt benefit from once again when they sell. I was also
relieved to hear that this sense of entitlement would also be finished
for the families of rich politicians, when the likes of Tony Abbott
would say it was not acceptable to accept a secret scholarship for his
daughter’s education. Nor a refund on a non-refundable deposit
paid on a rented flat without proper due diligence that any other
non-entitled member of the public is in no position to demand. Nor lavish trips to the Melbourne Cup
to hob-knob with celebrities which even you can no doubt see is not in
the public interest and therefore not an entitlement that should be
charged to the tax-payer. Because these are the best examples I have
ever seen of a sense of entitlement which is so entrenched and seemingly
innate that it’s like an incurable disease that seems to have no end.
So again, congratulations on declaring an end to it.
And oh how I wish I could leave this letter here. But I can’t. And
you know why I can’t. Because I am mistaken. I am not mistaken that you
wish to end the age of entitlement. What is clear is that you do in fact
want to end what you call entitlement. The problem is, your
definition of the problem of entitlement in our culture, and my
definition, are completely different things. From the budget you’ve
handed down, and from your recent statements about poor people’s spending habits on petrol (which no one misinterpreted, you really should own your mistakes Joe), it’s clear that you think entitlement is our community’s idea of rights.
Rights to quality education. Rights to quality healthcare. Rights to a
clean and sustainable environment. Rights to a social safety net when
things go wrong. Rights to live in a community where it’s possible to be
born poor, but to better our circumstances through hard work,
encouragement and support from those around us. All these rights are
what you call ‘a sense of entitlement’ aren’t they Joe? And aren’t these
rights the things you would ideally like to end? Isn’t your budget,
built on a foundation of lies about a non-existent budget-emergency,
your campaign to kill the very culture that provides Australians with
rights to all of these things that any first-world, educated,
well-resourced and fair country like Australia should strive to protect?
Isn’t your end of the age of entitlement just code for a user-pays
capitalist small-government, tax-free wonder-land?
Well, had I known you meant to end this definition of
entitlement, I would never have felt relief. You need a reality check
Joe. Rights are not entitlements. And someone like you, with your family
background, would surely understand this if you ever cared to think
about it, perhaps while you’re enjoying a quiet sit and a cigar. On the
profile on your website, you have published this:“Joe
Hockey was born in North Sydney, as the youngest of four children. His
father was born in Bethlehem of Armenian and Palestinian parentage and
his Mum in Chatswood. His family worked hard running a small business on
the North Shore, beginning with a deli in Chatswood and later, a real
estate agency in Naremburn.” So you like to portray your family
story as the classic ‘we pulled ourselves up from the bootstraps’ tale
of social mobility. And like so many who have come before you having
found riches and success in your careers, you now seem hell bent on
destroying mobility for others by burning the ladder of opportunity that
you climbed to the top. And that’s what you really meant when you said
it is time to end the age of entitlement.
You’ve got it so wrong Joe. Social mobility is not an entitlement.
Access to social mobility is a right. And it’s a right Australians will,
when they wake up to you, fight to save. You and your rich Liberal
Party chums portray the true meaning of entitlement through your little
glass tower of privilege where you think it’s ok to simultaneously reap
the rewards of tax-payer funded wealth, while destroying the rights of
the community by wrecking the public policies designed to keep the
playing field level. Shame on you Joe. Shame on you and your entitled
Liberal government.
Yours Sincerely
Victoria Rollison
JOE HOCKEY YOU CANNOT SQUIRM YOUR WAY OUT OF YOUR WORDS. DON’T SAY NOW THAT YOU WERE MISINTERPRETED. Click on link to view video https://vine.co/v/MYH9MiYZgaZ
(Image via georgebludger / Flickr) Treasurer Joe Hockey – and many other treasurer's in
developed countries – have a poor grasp of economics,
wrongly conflating national fiscal policy with running a household
budget. UNSW Professor Geoff Harcourt explains (via The Conversation).
THOUGH MONEY AND FINANCIAL FACTORS are integrated in complex ways in
the workings of the economy, ultimately it is real resources – work
forces (sizes and skills), capital goods and natural resources – that
set the upper limit at any moment of time on the size of the community’s
standard of living.
And yet that hasn’t stopped successive Australian Federal treasurers
– along with their counterparts in other advanced capitalist economies
– increasingly using terms which reflect misunderstandings of the role
of fiscal policy in economic policy.
When used by treasurers, phrases such as “we cannot afford it
financially” or “where is the money to come from?” or “you are using
taxpayers’ money”, confuse affairs of the state with what should be left
to the workings of individual households.
Obsessed with the relationship of government expenditure and
taxation, many treasurers suffer from deficit size fetishism, and fall
victim to the “balancing the budget over the cycle” fallacy. Many also
get caught up with hypothecation — matching specific government
expenditures with particular tax sources.
Some confuse the significance of the national debt to income ratio
for the present and future operations of the overall economy, especially
the supposed link between them and the welfare of future generations
relative to the welfare of the present generation. The “we’ll all be
ruined” fear.
Deficit obsession
“Deficit size fetishism” reflects the view that government
expenditure and taxation are always “bad”, regardless of the absolute
sizes and compositions of the two and the overall state of the economy
— for example, the rate of unemployment, the rate of growth, the rate of
inflation (or deflation, as Japan has experienced in recent decades).
Both the sizes and compositions of government expenditure and taxation
need to be assessed by other criteria.
The composition of taxation, the contributions to the whole of
indirect, direct and other forms of taxation, and their incidence on
different groups in the community, ought to reflect equity (fairness)
— such as which groups can least or most afford to pay particular forms
of tax and taxes overall.
The total tax take should reflect the impact required on overall
levels of spending in the economy, these in turn determining the levels
of output, income and employment both prevailing and what the government
would like to see prevail.
Spending and borrowing
The composition of government expenditure is made up, first, of
current expenditures — the salaries of parliamentarians, public servants
and government employees, generally; transfer payments from taxpayers
to recipients of social services, such as unemployment benefits, old-age
pensions and so on; and interest payments to domestic holders of
government bonds.
Secondly, there is government (public) capital expenditures on social
infrastructure — the creation of new railways, roads, hospitals,
schools and so on. Ideally, the level and composition of capital
expenditure should be determined by the perceived medium to long-term
needs of the community for the services they ultimately will provide.
As these expenditures have a significant impact on the efficiency and
productivity of the nation, there is no reason why they should not be
financed at least in part by borrowing, even by borrowing from overseas.
The latter does entail a real burden because interest and principal
repayments mean higher levels than otherwise of exports to service them
would be required. Nevertheless, if the borrowings are used wisely, this
burden may be met and the economy still be better off than it otherwise
would have been.
There is no equivalent burden associated with internal debt (owed to
lenders within the country) for, as noted, this involves a transfer from
taxes to interest payments. The impact on overall demand depends upon
the differences in the consumption and saving behaviour between
taxpayers, on the one hand, and interest receivers, on the other. They
may, of course, overlap. Any fairness considerations associated with
such transfers may be tackled through the composition of the structure
of tax rates.
So government expenditure and taxation, especially taken in
isolation, are not interesting numbers. Certainly not numbers to have a
fetish about, even if you are not just an ordinary Joe, or an earthbound Swan, or a surplus lover Costello that hands out tax cuts to friends.
The criterion of balancing the budget over the cycle – or,
preferably, creating a surplus – is based on a fallacy that the economy
is not growing, that it will remain at the same level of activity
forever. At least since the 1940s, it has been known that if economies
on average grow from cycle to cycle. Thus, it is possible always to have
deficits (within reasonable limits) without annual deficits exploding;
for specific rates of growth, the deficit approaches particular limiting
values that are livable within a wide range of values.
The real tax and spending relationship
One outcome of this discussion is that hypothecation is a fallacy —
particular forms and amounts of taxes should not be attached to
particular forms of expenditure.
Citizens should pay taxes according to their overall ability to pay
and they should receive government payments according to their
particular characteristics as citizens — unemployed, aged, disabled and
so on. The total of these government expenditures will be financed from
the total funds raised by taxation and borrowing.
“Treasurer Speak” in recent decades reflects serious conceptual
misunderstandings of how economies work and how the functions of the
state should be integrated with the workings of the private sector.
The end result has been the use of scare tactics over a wide range of
issues, tactics which have no foundation in proper economic logic.
Treasurer Joe Hockey has delivered a grovelling apology for
suggesting the “poorest people either don't have cars or actually don't
drive very far” and that the government’s proposed fuel excise increase
was a progressive tax measure.
Mr Hockey used the words "sorry" and "apologise" eight times
in an interview with his close friend and 2GB broadcaster Ben Fordham
on Friday.
Joe Hockey appears on 2GB on Friday to apologise for his comments. Photo: @BenFordham
He said: “I am really genuinely sorry that there is any
suggestion, any suggestion at all that I or the government does not care
for the most disadvantaged in the community.”
Mr Hockey had initially stood by the comments he had made on Brisbane radio on Wednesday, stating he was sorry if they had been callous but insisting he had statistical evidence on his side.
But in an embarrassing rebuke for the Treasurer, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Friday that “Well plainly, I wouldn't say that" before adding the Treasurer had his full support.
Illustration: John Shakespeare
Senior front bench colleague Christopher Pyne also said on Friday that Mr Hockey had his “full support”, but then declined six times to back Mr Hockey's inflammatory comments.
After 48 hours of criticism from his colleagues, the
opposition, the welfare and economists, Mr Hockey completely withdrew
his earlier comments.
“I’m sorry about the interpretation, I am sorry about the words," he said.
“All of my life I have fought for and tried to help the most disadvantaged people in the community.
"For there to be some suggestion that I have evil in my heart
when it comes to the most disadvantaged people in the community is
upsetting.
"But it’s more upsetting for those people in the community.
So I want to make it perfectly clear to the community that if there’s
any suggestion that I don’t care about you or that I have evil intent
toward you, I want to say that couldn’t be further from the truth and
I’m sorry for the hurt."
Mr Hockey conceded that his government’s message about the need for budget repair had been lost because of his misstep.
“We are trying to deliver a plan for the nation that ensures
that those most disadvantaged get the very best we as a community can
offer. I’m trying to make the healthcare system sustainable, I’m trying
to make the welfare system sustainable and the education system the best
it can be,’’ he said.
“You can only do that through what we are trying to do in the budget but it has been lost in the last few days and I’m sorry.”
“My feelings on this don’t matter, I don’t want to be in a
position where I am upsetting the most disadvantaged people in the
community because I am trying to everything I can, the government is
trying to do everything it can to help those people.”
"In the case of fuel excise, I am sorry the words came out
like they did but we are trying to lay down the best road program that
helps families, the most disadvantaged, that helps lift the economy and
create jobs, we can only pay that with an increase in the fuel excise of
on average 40c a week,’’ he said.
“But it has been lost over the last few days and I’m sorry about that.”
Mr Hockey said he wanted to get on with the job of explaining
to Australians the Coalition government was focused on building a more
prosperous and caring nation.
"What has been said can't be unsaid. I can only apologise for any hurt I have caused."
The Treasurer said he had not been asked to make the appearance or the apology.
‘‘I thought about it this morning and I thought I don’t want to hurt people and the words were clearly hurting some people.”
Labor, the Greens and
crossbenchers have taken the Treasurer to task for his comments about
low income earners, but Joe Hockey has defended the comments.
Joe Hockey's colleagues and political allies have rounded on
the Treasurer, questioning his judgment and the quality of advice he is
receiving after a disastrous gaffe suggesting poor people ''don't have
cars or actually don't drive very far''.
Mr Hockey has lost three key staff from his 17-person office
in the nine months since the federal election. They include the second
and third most senior people in the office, who have left since the
budget and were charged with overseeing the budget process and providing
crucial political and economic advice.
Fairfax Media contacted more than a dozen of Mr Hockey's
supporters in the ministry and party machine; political staff; and staff
to former treasurer Peter Costello on Thursday about this week's gaffe.
All expressed surprise, concern and dismay about Mr Hockey's remarks.
Illustration: Ron Tandberg
Furious ministerial colleagues turned on the Treasurer over
comments they variously described as ''stupid and wrong'', a ''bad
example of how to make a point'' and ''loose language''.
Several people close to Mr Hockey's office, who asked not to
be named, said he was taking advice from an increasingly small circle of
advisers - particularly chief of staff Grant Lovett and press secretary
Mike Willesee.
The loss of the experienced trio of deputy chief of staff
Creina Chapman, who moved to the corporate sector soon after overseeing
the first budget; economics adviser Tony Pearson, who took a sabbatical;
and media adviser Tony Ritchie, who joined the NSW Police media team,
suggested power was increasingly concentrated in the hands of too few
people.
Illustration: Cathy Wilcox
One observer suggested the office "lacked direction", and that Mr Hockey lacked an adviser with ''a hard political edge''.
''Joe is freelancing, being dumb with his words, though it's not Rudd office dysfunction,'' the source said.
A second observer said Mr Hockey ''could probably strengthen
his office'', adding the Treasurer needed a political adviser in the
mould of David Gazzard, the hard-nosed former political adviser to Mr
Costello.
Mr Hockey's gaffe has capped a difficult three months in
which the Treasurer has been under fire for puffing on a cigar and, days
later, dancing with his son on budget night before delivering
wide-ranging budget cuts, taking a holiday to Fiji during a key
parliamentary sitting, complaining that everyone in the media was
against him and co-operating with a biography that revealed he wanted
an even tougher budget.
The North Sydney MP went on a radio blitz on Thursday in an attempt to limit the fallout from the gaffe.
''The fact of the matter is that I can only get the facts out
there and explain the facts; how people interpret them is up to them,''
he told Fairfax Radio station 2UE.
Asked if he realised if his comments sounded callous, Mr
Hockey said: ''I'm sorry if that's the case but the fact is that the
Labor Party says that it's an unjust initiative, unfair initiative,
higher income people aren't paying enough, well here is an initiative
where higher income people pay on average three times the amount of
lower income households in the fuel excise,'' he said.
Mr Hockey's claim that higher-income households pay more in
fuel tax is correct in absolute terms but the claim the tax is
progressive has been debunked by research from the Parliamentary
Library, the Grattan Institute and consumer group One Big Switch that
shows poorer people spend a higher proportion of their income on fuel.
South Australian Liberal Cory Bernardi said the Treasurer's comments were a ''distraction'' and ''we don't need distractions''.
''Those in the lower socio-economic group tend to spend more,
as a percentage of their income, on transport and the basic necessities
of life than do those who are wealthier."
Queensland Liberals Teresa Gambaro and Ian MacDonald and NSW
Nationals senator John Williams also took thinly veiled swipes at the
comments.
The federal opposition used the three-month anniversary of
Mr Hockey's unpopular first budget, much of which remains blocked by the
Senate, to step up its political attack on the Treasurer. Treasury
spokesman Chris Bowen labelled the comments ''insulting to the
intelligence of the Australian people''.
Yes, fifteen dollars to go to the doctor is a lot to ask of an old
woman. Yes, $200 a week for six months is a lot to take from a young
man. No, this is not a "debt and deficit disaster", it is a bump in the
road. Yes, it was wrong to bid Holden to fuck off out of Australia. Yes,
we could do with a car industry. Yes we could.
This man is not so much a disaster as a dill. He truly cannot add. It is a serious fault in a Treasurer.
Worse, he has nothing to bribe or threaten Palmer with.
Palmer can add, and he knows a Double Dissolution would give him
eight seats in the Senate and four in the House, and would do so before
Christmas. What can Joe say to that? Please?
He also shown himself to be a dill by staying silent over Gaza. Some
of his cousins will have been killed there by now, and he is pretending
it isn’t happening. He said he was ‘proud of my Palestinian heritage’ a
year ago during the campaign, and though four hundred children have been
shredded, children of his bloodline, he is saying not a word.
He should be advocating they be brought here as refugees and he is saying not a word.
No voter can trust a man like that.
He is dead in the water. He no longer has any chance of being Prime
Minister. He no longer has any chance of retaining his seat. A Double
Dissolution by October would finish him.
Michael Chaney on ABC Lateline (12/8/14) You know things are pretty grim in the Coalition bunker when
even their corporate sponsors start coming down from their ivory towers
to soil their silky smooth hands spruiking unpopular policies.
But so it came to pass last night, when the grey, owlish features of softly spoken banker Michael Chaney appeared on ABC Lateline to, ostensibly, discuss Treasurer Joe Hockey's latest whine that big business should be doing more to sell his unfair and unloved Budget.
Chaney, of course, doesn't need to speak loud to be heard. The chair of the National Australia Bank and Woodside Petroleum has
the quiet, condescending air of a man accustomed to being instantly
deferred to and obeyed. And he was not to be disappointed in this regard
by interviewer Emma Alberici, who handled Chaney with the kid gloves
she seems to reserve for VIPs and plutocrats.
Chaney duly sold Hockey's budget using the typical conservative
tactics of distortion, deflection, oversight and, of course, egregious
factual error.
As she did in her interview with Roger Corbett days before the
September election, Alberici neglected to ask Chaney to declare
any relevant affiliations. At that time, Fairfax chair and RBA board
member Corbett attacked the previous Labor Government mercilessly during
a soft interview by Alberici, only to be photographed the following
night at a $500 a head Liberal Party fundraiser hosted by Tony Abbott — his close personal friend and, as it turned out, fellow Liberal Party member.
Is Chaney a Liberal Party member? Apparently not, according to his
NAB personal assistant. However, it's quite clear that blue flows
through Chaney's veins. Chaney's father was Menzies minister Sir Fred Chaney, and his brother is former Liberal Party deputy leader, minister, MP and senator, Fred Chaney Jr.
In any case, why be a member when you hold a mortgage over the party?
Woodside is one of the Liberal Party's biggest donors,
with NAB not far behind. Both companies often appear to be almost
corporate arms of the tories — such as when former Foreign Minister
Alexander Downer was slipped into a cushy job with Woodside just months after he had allegedly arranged for ASIS to bug East Timor on behalf of Woodside during sensitive gas field negotiations.
Chaney's inside connections don't end there. He is also a director of BHP Billiton and a member of U.S. mega-bank JP Morgan's 'International Council'.
But wait, there's more! According to the Power Index, Chaney is also directly involved in setting government policy:
Chaney chaired the Business Council of Australia between 2005 and 2007 and continues to serve on the board of the Centre for Independent Studies,
a BHP-funded think tank that believes in, among other things, slashing
company tax to 25% and ending “wasteful” social welfare. During the
Howard years its scorched earth policies provided the ideological
underpinning for WorkChoices.
The “independent” think tank, Chaney concurs, is “very
influential behind the scenes in shaping policy in economics, indigenous
affairs, in religion … the list goes on”.
In summary, Chaney is a sad-eyed symbol of the crony capitalism hijacking our democracy, described in the Saturday Paper earlier this month by former Independent MP Rob Oakeshott:
Whether it’s tax or carbon or gaming, this is the policy inertia
of Australia today. Money is beating our long-term standard of living to
death. It has sent many necessary policy reforms to the doghouse, and
it keeps many others on the short chain.
Our key decisions for the future of Australia are now being
outsourced at a level never before seen. Parliamentary democracy is
going through its own sort of privatisation. Bigger dollars come into
the party coffers at exactly the same time as less and less of the
necessary work gets done. We are trapping ourselves.
There is no heavy lifting in the Budget for business because, as Hockey clearly says:
"We work for the corporate sector."
Indeed, Hockey's North Sydney Forum explicitly provides paid access to the Treasurer
for business leaders and industry lobbyists, presumably so they can
provide him with direction — something that places Hockey's plaintive
cry to big business for assistance into stark relief.
Thus, Chaney's attempt to sell the Budget in his interview with
Alberici last night (12/8/14) was instructive as to the moral depths
corporatists will sink to try to promote their self-serving attacks upon
the poor and underprivileged.
Firstly, in the interview, Chaney complained about the media, the
intelligence and understanding of ordinary Australians, and even
democracy itself:
One of the challenges is making your voice heard. You know,
there's a lot of noise in our society and it's very difficult to get a
rational argument out in the public domain....
....there's a tendency, I think, today not to, amongst
the population, to engage in serious policy debate. A lot of people
don't read newspapers.
.... often you find that the
reportage of it is not accurate and it's not thorough and, of course,
there are always contrary voices as well....
For Chaney, it seems, there are too many people speaking up and not enough reading The Australian.
Chaney then tried to redefine the meanings of "crisis" and
"emergency" to remove these words' usual connotation of imminent danger:
"... one of the things that's really concerned me in all the
discussion of the budget is the complaint that I've heard some people
make that there is "no crisis": that there was no need for these sort of
cuts in the budget, that it's the sign of a cruel government and so on. ... there is a crisis. It's not an immediate crisis, it's a medium-term crisis..."
Or, in other words, a medium term structural issue that could be
dealt with incrementally rather than through immediate swingeing cuts
aimed at those least able to afford them.
Chaney must have been furious, then, when Hockey belled the cat in New Zealand recently, saying there was
"... no crisis in the Australian economy."
Chaney next suggested the poor should bear the brunt of any cuts
because they pay the least tax and are, according to him, the
predominant recipients of government largesse.
"... if you're going to do anything on the expenditure side you
end up making changes which disadvantage lower-income parts of the
population because it's those parts that are getting all the benefits
through the system."
All the benefits? Really?
Curiously, Chaney chose to ignore the billions in subsidies each year
doled out to mining companies, such as the one he chairs. He also
overlooked superannuation concessions and negative gearing, but when
asked about these benefits later in the interview, emphatically declared
them to be no-go areas for government.
Another cause of great misery for Chaney is Australia's "extreme" progressive tax system — where the fabulously rich, like himself, end up paying more per capita than the poor and destitute:
"Australia has a very progressive tax transfer system and it's
much more progressive than most nations. And, as I say, the OECD
described it as an extreme in the spectrum."
Putting aside the fact that this analysis ignores tax avoidance measures
operated by multinational companies like those he runs, which often see
these organisations paying virtually no tax, what Chaney said about
Australia's progressive tax transfer system compared to other nations
was simply an outright lie:
And people living on the breadline may not have been much comforted
by this corporate fat cat's analysis of the affordability of the GP
co-payment:
"Frankly, I think that a $7 payment to go to the doctor is a reasonable amount."
Yes, things must be looking pretty desperate for the Libs when filthy
rich banker-miners are trotted out to defend their despised Budget.
And if Chaney's dismal efforts yesterday demonstrate the best the
plutocrats can offer in selling this deplorable plan for Australia, then
it surely won't be long before they outsource this job to paid
professionals — after all, they've done it before.
Get ready for the same sort of big business funded advertising blitz
that killed the mining tax. If it's not in production yet, you can bet
your bottom dollar, it's coming.
Treasurer Joe Hockey is facing a fresh round of criticism for
being out of touch and not understanding the impact of his budget on
the less well off after suggesting “poorest people either don't have
cars or actually don't drive very far in many cases”.
Mr Hockey made the comments on Wednesday as he argued the
government's proposed rise in fuel excise was a progressive measure that
would cost people on middle and higher incomes more.
The Treasurer said the Coalition was asking "everyone to
contribute, including higher income people" by restarting indexation of
fuel excise, a measure Labor has labelled a new fuel tax.
Contrary to Mr Hockey's claim, a 2001 research paper from the
Parliamentary Library states that "petrol and diesel excises are
regressive in that people on low incomes pay a higher proportion of
their incomes in the form of excise than people on high incomes, given
the same level of fuel use".
And in a June 2014 submission to the Senate Economics
Committee inquiry into the proposed excise rise, the Australian
Automobile Association stated that: "Research indicates that the people
who use their cars most frequently are in the outer metropolitan areas
and rural and regional areas where there are lower incomes, less jobs,
and little or no access to public transport"
"The AAA is concerned that individuals in these areas will bear the highest cost increases of indexation changes."
Labor leader Bill Shorten, welfare groups and crossbench
senator Ricky Muir have rounded on Mr Hockey, labelling the Treasurer's
suggestion fallacious and based on incorrect assumptions.
“Are you serious, Joe Hockey? Are you really the cigar
chomping, Foghorn Leghorn of Australian politics where you're saying
that poor people don't drive cars?," Mr Shorten said.
“Joe Hockey says [poorer Australians] don't drive cars yet
they don't give them another alternative. It is almost as if the
Treasurer believes that poor people should be sleeping in their cars,
not driving their cars.”
St Vincent de Paul Society chief executive John Falzon said the claim was “completely fallacious”.
“This is a massive assumption on the Treasurer's part. In
fact many low income households are heavily dependent on quite old motor
vehicles that are not terribly fuel efficient as their only means of
transport," he said.
“Cheaper housing is often located in areas far from necessary
infrastructure and jobs and so they find themselves having to travel
long distances at times. And they are often very poorly served by public
transport.”
Uniting Care National Director Lin Hatfield-Dodds said the rise in fuel excise would disproportionately affect poorer people.
“Proportional to their income, these sorts of measures end up
costing people who are poor more than people who are wealthy," she
said.
“That's just maths,' she said
“To put the fuel excise up as an example of fairness in the
budget is a bit of a stretch, if we want to make the budget fairer we
could look at less impact overall on vulnerable Australians and more
impact on people who can afford to meet the costs.”
Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party Senator Ricky Muir said
that in rural and regional areas, people needed to use their cars,
"regardless of wealth".
"Coming from the country, I know firsthand, when you live a
fair distance from work and there's no public transport, people from all
backgrounds use their vehicles a lot."
Joe Hockey says the age of entitlement is over (image by theaimn.com)
To Joe Hockey.
The news that a young homeless couple were found dead in their car was news that you would, in an indirect way, find offensive.
It was not their death that offended you, but a certain reaction to it.
But first to the young couple:
Police say the 27-year-old man and 24-year-old woman,
both from Ballarat and believed to have been living in the car, were
using a butane gas heater to keep the chill away when they died.
Most decent people – upon hearing of these tragic deaths – would have
in all likelihood been deeply saddened. The life situation of this poor
young couple was also tragic. As too it is with thousands of young
Australians living like this. Jobless. Homeless. Penniless. Desperate.
It is a sad reality that some jobless, homeless, penniless people
die. Thankfully, the numbers are small. The welfare system in Australia
has always provided something for those desperate people; a fortnightly
dole payment which could ensure they at least could have access to the
most basic of human needs; food, shelter, medications and clothing.
But now back to you.
You were offended that Wendy Harmer (of The Hoopla
fame) tweeted that this incident (the deaths in Ballarat) may not be
the last as your budget starts to bite. You fired back, with this
ignorant, pathetic response:
Image from The Daily Telegraph Pole – Facebook page
Really, which planet do you live on?
So it is your opinion that Wendy doesn’t think before she tweets.
Well I think she does. She obviously thinks more about the social
horrors that your budget will cause than you yourself have given a
moment’s thought to.
If you cannot fathom that people with no money for food or shelter
may die of hunger or exposure then you live on a different planet to the
one I do, Wendy does, or anybody I could care to name.
There is something else you don’t seem to understand: desperate
people do desperate things. Sleeping in a car is a measure of
desperation. As is by need going without food or medication.
None of this bothers you. If it does then I’m yet to see, read or
hear any indication of such. Yet you’re offended over a tweet though: a
tweet that spells out the bleeding obvious.
It’s not as though Wendy’s claim is any revelation. Since the budget
was handed down (and even before it was handed down) to a shell-shocked
nation the media has been filled with the predictions this horror budget
will cause. People could die. People could also turn to crime if their
survival depends on it. You can read such predictions here and again here on news.com.au. Or here on theage.com.au. Or here from the chronical.com.au. Or on dozens of other sites, if you care to look, as I have.
And don’t just stop at the articles: have a look at reader’s
comments. They have been predicting the same social destruction echoed
by Wendy.
If you had been alert to what people were saying then I can assume
that you would have been offended long before Wendy’s tweet. I can’t
find any indication that you’ve been aware of not only how people feel,
but of the tragic fate that awaits many of them. I’m guessing that you
haven’t listened to anyone, except of course, the highly paid
bureaucrats that are paid to tell you what you want to hear.
That you should only now stop to listen, and in response spew forth
the shock and horror of being offended at the cold hard truth, is
behaviour I find difficult to comprehend.
If the ‘age of entitlement’ is over – as you have been constantly
trumpeting in an effort to justify your cruel budget – then I guess it
means that people are no longer entitled to secure and basic needs. I
find that truly offensive. Repulsively so.
Mr Hockey, brace yourself. Your days of being offended have only just begun.
Geoff Harcourt is a member of the ALP. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
