Yesterday, Tony Abbott took a mid-carbon tax argument segue to the issue of welfare reform/total destruction. Many took it as a welcome break from the current climate focussed vague-a-thon, but at a time when the cost of living is at the forefront of people’s minds, this was actually all about the carbon tax. Once again Tony Abbott is wetting his dog whistle and is off to the park with his shit scooper.
Welfare resentment is one of those things that seems to be higher at the lower end of the economic spectrum, and all that’s required to get it going is a little push with some cynical political footwork. Tony Abbott is well trained at this sort of manoeuvre, learned through his years of boxing and stomping on cute things. As those in the working and lower-middle-classes struggle with increased costs, there’s nothing that gets the hackles up than being told that THEY are paying someone to ‘slack off’. It gets even worse when they’re told that welfare fraud in particular is a major drag on the public purse.
Now of course, that is bullshit. While the complexities of unemployment and why people some people stay unemployed is probably something that should have a lot of money thrown at it, in terms of the budget it’s small potatoes. The long-term unemployed represent a small proportion of total unemployment, and in recent years there numbers have dropped dramatically, from 3.7 percent in 1993 to 0.9 percent in 2005. Which is perhaps a suggestion the welfare system is working just fine.
Of the billions spent per year on social security and welfare the vast majority goes towards the baby bonus, childcare rebates and the family tax benefit, which the most of those up in arms about ‘dole bludgers’ accept without irony. Of course that’s not what Abbott wants to draw attention to, because lots of those lovely swinging voters get those benefits and those guys are sensitive. Best to have a crack at the mythical, bong-smoking, couch laying arse picker living it up on $250 a week and that arrogant prick on disability. Those bastards are the real problem.
The current pressures on personal finances bring the need for political scapegoats and the long-term unemployed are an easy target for Abbott. They receive little sympathy or defence, have no lobby groups, and the myths surrounding them frustrate working people struggling with the current financial climate. Without mentioning it, Abbott has indirectly made people think of the financial effects of the carbon tax. All while pushing an ideological barrow and being a populist turd sock. This is the sort of evil genius reserved for James Hardie board meetings and Nick Minchin bathroom mirror monologues.
I’d like to say the electorate will see through this and call Abbott on his shit, but I’m not on crack and neither are you.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Demolition Unspinable
This Saturday past, the State of New South Wales took out the trash. It removed a government so decrepit, so past its use-by date that it spent most of the election campaign apologising for even having an election. It had been coming for a very long time. The NSW public decided to kick them out about 10 minutes after Morris Iemma completed his victory speech on election night 2007.
The 2007 poll was a victory for hopelessness and ennui. No one liked Iemma and no one liked his government. They had been on the nose basically since Iemma took over from Bob Carr, because Morris Iemma is the very definition of mediocre, he is a glass of tepid water. The reason people voted for him is, well…there was no other option. Peter Debnam had to work hard just to be called mediocre, his standard response to questioning was to shuffle some papers in front of him, look nervous, apologise and promise to have the figures next time. During the election campaign his costings were hours late to a press conference “because of the photocopiers.” Morris Iemma was incredibly lucky. You only get one Peter Debnam in politics, that’s because most of them sell insurance or Amway.
Then came the scandals varying in content from corruption to paedophilia, Iemma’s resignation after being rolled at the ALP State Conference, a new Premier who had only been an MP for two years and would have struggled to inspire water to flow downhill, resignation after resignation after resignation, a Labor run council linked to property development sex favours, another new Premier, and the sale of a state asset at nearly 25% of the price that was offered a few years before. This government was not only an embarrassment; it was an ultra slow motion car crash on national TV. The polls have been rancid for years and there was not one person in existence who did not see Saturday’s massacre coming.
Surely then, this is an election that needs no real analysis. A party does not lose 31 seats because of one issue, or even from a bad campaign. People were just over it. Everyone. How can you spin this? Either side. Barry O’Farrell didn’t need to say anything. He could have changed his party name to the Hitler Youth and started habitually urinating in an old lady’s dog purse at Circular Quay, people would have voted for him. He didn’t need to have policy; he just needed to attend.
Yet the Federal Coalition has the temerity to suggest that the result was due to dissatisfaction with the Carbon Tax, something that has been thrown up in the last two months. Put down the crack pipe please. For God’s sake, THEY HAD TWO UNELECTED PREMIERS, A MINISTER WAS A CONVICTED PAEDOPHILE, PEOPLE LIED TO THE CORRUPTION WATCHDOG, THEY SOLD THE ELECTRICY NETWORK FOR SOME MAGIC BEANS AND A WRISTY BEHIND THE BIKE SHED. This wasn’t a government, it was one of those late era Benny Hill specials were most of the jokes were stolen from Italian TV.
But no, Tony Abbott thinks his ‘Big New Tax’ line and some bullshit about ‘real action on shit we don’t believe in’ had enough traction to deliver the biggest electoral landslide in Australian History. Get your hand off it.
The 2007 poll was a victory for hopelessness and ennui. No one liked Iemma and no one liked his government. They had been on the nose basically since Iemma took over from Bob Carr, because Morris Iemma is the very definition of mediocre, he is a glass of tepid water. The reason people voted for him is, well…there was no other option. Peter Debnam had to work hard just to be called mediocre, his standard response to questioning was to shuffle some papers in front of him, look nervous, apologise and promise to have the figures next time. During the election campaign his costings were hours late to a press conference “because of the photocopiers.” Morris Iemma was incredibly lucky. You only get one Peter Debnam in politics, that’s because most of them sell insurance or Amway.
Then came the scandals varying in content from corruption to paedophilia, Iemma’s resignation after being rolled at the ALP State Conference, a new Premier who had only been an MP for two years and would have struggled to inspire water to flow downhill, resignation after resignation after resignation, a Labor run council linked to property development sex favours, another new Premier, and the sale of a state asset at nearly 25% of the price that was offered a few years before. This government was not only an embarrassment; it was an ultra slow motion car crash on national TV. The polls have been rancid for years and there was not one person in existence who did not see Saturday’s massacre coming.
Surely then, this is an election that needs no real analysis. A party does not lose 31 seats because of one issue, or even from a bad campaign. People were just over it. Everyone. How can you spin this? Either side. Barry O’Farrell didn’t need to say anything. He could have changed his party name to the Hitler Youth and started habitually urinating in an old lady’s dog purse at Circular Quay, people would have voted for him. He didn’t need to have policy; he just needed to attend.
Yet the Federal Coalition has the temerity to suggest that the result was due to dissatisfaction with the Carbon Tax, something that has been thrown up in the last two months. Put down the crack pipe please. For God’s sake, THEY HAD TWO UNELECTED PREMIERS, A MINISTER WAS A CONVICTED PAEDOPHILE, PEOPLE LIED TO THE CORRUPTION WATCHDOG, THEY SOLD THE ELECTRICY NETWORK FOR SOME MAGIC BEANS AND A WRISTY BEHIND THE BIKE SHED. This wasn’t a government, it was one of those late era Benny Hill specials were most of the jokes were stolen from Italian TV.
But no, Tony Abbott thinks his ‘Big New Tax’ line and some bullshit about ‘real action on shit we don’t believe in’ had enough traction to deliver the biggest electoral landslide in Australian History. Get your hand off it.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Carbon Poll Polution
So apparently Julia Gillard should just give up; should in fact resign in disgrace because according to the latest Newspoll and analysis of said Newspoll she is: "Prime Minister in name only.” Which is an interesting observation; because it seems to me that it is the name that counts. Power doesn't just disappear because Newspoll says it has. Newspolls do not elect governments, and the day they do is the day I'll be living in a tin shack south west of nowhere, muttering to myself and reading old newspapers. Polls can however, control Governments if they let them.
The poll also stated that 53% of people are opposed to the Carbon Tax, which given the fact that no one knows what that actually is yet, what it will affect, and to what extent it will affect it, that should probably say 53% of people guess that they will be opposed to the Carbon Tax when they find out what it is. It seems that it is never too early to have a poll about something the people are yet to be properly informed about.
Q. "How to you feel about a carbon tax that: may cause a rise in grocery prices, may make fuel unaffordable and may ultimately cause modern civilisation to crumble; leading to the establishment of a series of shanty towns warring with each other over the use of the last iPad, or may not, we're not sure yet. What do you think?"
A. "Strongly opposed."
Useless, but this is what you get when you announce a policy where a large amount of the detail is still unknown, and this is what the Government have done. In August last year I said that Gillard would struggle with the conservative independents on one side and Greens on the other, and while she has avoided a lot of confrontation in the first 6 months, we're beginning to see fissures. The Government largely went too early on this policy because of a combination pressure from the Greens for a carbon tax and pressure from everyone else for an environmental policy of some kind. The result is the announcement of impending environmental policy, but with no detail and no nuance. There is a title, and a vague framework, but nothing else because the work is still to be done. Meanwhile, the Opposition can say whatever they want to demonise the policy, because there is an information vacuum to fill. Tony Windsor came out last night and said that the Government has made a mistake. No shit.
I'm not saying the policy is wrong (how could I anyway?), but the strategy certainly is. The Government cannot not ditch this tax now; if they do, they're finished. There is nothing the public hate more than a Government that cannot make up its mind, and this one has already spent a lot of time dithering. They've gone too early, and they'll just have to eat the bad polls until they have something concrete, which needs to be soon.
In the meantime, we'll just have to put up with more polls on how people think they will think about things they haven't yet thought about.
Probably forever.
The poll also stated that 53% of people are opposed to the Carbon Tax, which given the fact that no one knows what that actually is yet, what it will affect, and to what extent it will affect it, that should probably say 53% of people guess that they will be opposed to the Carbon Tax when they find out what it is. It seems that it is never too early to have a poll about something the people are yet to be properly informed about.
Q. "How to you feel about a carbon tax that: may cause a rise in grocery prices, may make fuel unaffordable and may ultimately cause modern civilisation to crumble; leading to the establishment of a series of shanty towns warring with each other over the use of the last iPad, or may not, we're not sure yet. What do you think?"
A. "Strongly opposed."
Useless, but this is what you get when you announce a policy where a large amount of the detail is still unknown, and this is what the Government have done. In August last year I said that Gillard would struggle with the conservative independents on one side and Greens on the other, and while she has avoided a lot of confrontation in the first 6 months, we're beginning to see fissures. The Government largely went too early on this policy because of a combination pressure from the Greens for a carbon tax and pressure from everyone else for an environmental policy of some kind. The result is the announcement of impending environmental policy, but with no detail and no nuance. There is a title, and a vague framework, but nothing else because the work is still to be done. Meanwhile, the Opposition can say whatever they want to demonise the policy, because there is an information vacuum to fill. Tony Windsor came out last night and said that the Government has made a mistake. No shit.
I'm not saying the policy is wrong (how could I anyway?), but the strategy certainly is. The Government cannot not ditch this tax now; if they do, they're finished. There is nothing the public hate more than a Government that cannot make up its mind, and this one has already spent a lot of time dithering. They've gone too early, and they'll just have to eat the bad polls until they have something concrete, which needs to be soon.
In the meantime, we'll just have to put up with more polls on how people think they will think about things they haven't yet thought about.
Probably forever.
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