Society of knowledge v. economy of greed
"A nation-building plan is only as good as the nation's willingness and ability to pay for it." Tim Colebatch (The Age 3/7/01)
Colebatch's commentary on Labor's education policy, on which Kim Beazley has staked his future, raises some interesting points.
To fund Knowledge Nation, Colebatch says Australia will have to raise itself from being the third-lowest taxing country in the OECD to the OECD's median of 41 per cent of GDP. To do this, he suggests Labor would have to raise the GST to 15 per cent; wipe out GST concessions for private spending on education, health and food; allow bracket creep to remain on the sly; seriously tackle tax avoidance; wipe out negative gearing; undo Costello's cuts to capital gains tax and remove the exemption for the family home.
None of these will happen, Colebatch says, because of Kim Beazley's panic over Stephen Conroy's suggestion to a Canberra schoolboy that taxes may have to rise, and Beazley's subsequent pronouncement that there would be "no increase in any taxes on ordinary Australian families".
Beazley's unfortunate response may indeed have gutted the future of this country, at least in the foreseeable future. On the other hand, maybe Beazley wasn't all that off the mark. It's not ordinary people whose taxes need to be raised, but business and the wealthy who need to start paying their fare share.
Colebatch compares Australia with the United States and South Korea.
"The United States is a low-tax knowledge nation because it started a long way ahead, has a highly entrepreneurial culture and its huge economy draws knowledge creators from all over the world.
"South Korea is a low-tax knowledge nation because until recently it had no welfare system to finance and its education-hungry culture means households spend 10 per cent of their income on education.
"Australians are not like that. We have a business culture focused on short-term profits, and a laid-back highly indebted society focused on enjoying itself.
"The initiative would have to come from government and would have to be paid for by higher taxes. Neither majority party will do that."
Is the culture of this country really limited to turning over bags of lucre to the business window at the bank? I thought we had a pretty active arts community. And when you compare Australia's film culture to that of Canada, with its larger population, you are simply blown away.
The truth is, the whole world has been hijacked by the globalisation of greed.
But you have to wonder at Australia being regarded as the third lowest taxing country in the OECD. We are currently being taxed at 48 cents on the dollar, while Americans suffer but 25 cents on the dollar. These figures are based on the tax that comes out of my wife's pay and the tax that comes out of the pay of an American friend. I'm afraid that the skewed formulas used by economists don't match reality. Am I missing something? You bet. At least half of the money my wife doesn't get owing to taxes. Any other formula can take a flying Wilson Tuckey. Of course obscurantist economics experts would no doubt look down their disdainful noses at such a real-world interpretation.
Putting the myth that Australia is a low taxing country aside, we are presently being taxed all over the place for absolutely no gain. Our hospitals and universities are apparently being bypassed. Where is the money going? Instead of being taxed arbitrarily we could opt for putting most of that money -- not new money derived from tax hikes -- into an educated future, one that will produce a culture of intelligence instead of a culture at the mercy of profit-crazed suits.
There is nothing remotely fair or even efficient about the GST. It amounts to an anal-retentive's dream turned to nightmare. The previous indirect tax system, while not a prize-winner, was easier and more equitable for consumers.
Perhaps governments, by their vary nature, are incapable of treating citizens fairly. What transpires then, is a culture of selfishness. Under the conditions of full-blown selfishness, a thriving economy is absolutely essential. The culture can then be expressed in the old testament worship of mammon, with the haves lording it over the have nots who, with clever manipulation by governments, are always given just enough to keep them from rioting. But when such an economy goes bad, the selfish culture degenerates as it did in Hitler's Germany and Milosevic's Serbia. The haves, of course, preserve themselves with their wealth, while the have nots turn on each other, resorting to mutual slaughter based on fear and rumour.
In his five years of power, John Howard has brought about a reformation of selfishness and its offsider: ignorance. He and his supporters are today pouring scorn over Labor's Knowledge Nation (while everyone is having fun with Barry Jones' "brain pattern") because it is anathema to their simpleton's, business-oriented world view. For them, education is meant to be limited, to lay the foundation for wheeling and dealing and nothing more. Beyond that, education provides a dangerous foundation for thought, and thinking people do not elect conservative governments. That's why, under the Howard-Kemp stewardship, our universities are becoming little more than institutions for job preparation in a market with reduced or no entitlements, where the 19th century standard, casual employment, is the norm.
Australia is at a crossroads. Kim Beazley could take a giant step towards reversing Howard's about face to a narrow-minded dark age of peasant-like fear. Regardless of what the economists say, the money is there. It has always been there. It's just a matter of rearranging priorities. It's time we once again became an open, intelligent society with limitless horizons instead of a reactionary, dumbed-down economy whose vista is no larger than a money counter's thumbnail.
Kemp offers unis carrot to chop unions
In response to Kim Beazley's Knowledge Nation, the Federal Education Minister David "Doofus" Kemp shrieked: "There are proposals for increased regulation, there are proposals for increased spending, there are proposals for increased government intervention, central control, huge central databases are going to be constructed, huge, I tell you!" Actually the last four words are not his. He finished his diatribe with an accurate reading of Illiberal philosophy: "These are not policies that really reflect the mood for Australia to be a flexible economy."
No, they're not, Doof. They are policies that reflect the mood for Australia to be a society.
But let's move on to the real reason for this little article. The National Tertiary Education Union has begun proceedings against Dr Doof and the Commonwealth Government, "claiming 37 tertiary institutions were offered extra funding -- equivalent to a 2 per cent salary increase across the sector -- if they made reforms that reduced the involvement of unions." The offer amounts to a cool $259 million to chop unions out of the equation.
Yep, it's those anti-union Illiberals in action again. Evidently Kemp is in breach of section 170NC of Gunsel Reith's Workplace Relations Act, which prevents a person from threatening action with intent to coerce another party to make a non-union agreement. I'll bet the Doof is spitting databases over Reith's incompetence. How dare he insert a clause leading to recourse for unfairness!
The NTEU won't win, of course, because clause or no clause this government rules with, and is ruled by, corruption. (Based on an article by Meaghan Shaw, The Age 3/7/01.))
David Murray: Cockroach in the vault
Despite the fact that Kim Beazley was Finance Minister when Keating sold off the Commonwealth Bank, and that Labor sold off the second half after promising not to, we all know that the Illiberal Party would have done the same thing. Indeed, their hatred of Paul Keating rests not so much in his effective dismissal of them as worthless little scumbags, but because he got in first with privatisation and all the other Tory policies of social disenfranchisement.
Years later, we are firmly entrenched in the era where everyone is required to reduce the godlike capacity of their brains to that of a glorified abacus. Is it any wonder then, that the Commonwealth Bank -- a private institution for so long now that no one remembers what it was like to have a people's bank -- and it's CEO, David Murray, should threaten to turn away low-fee account bludgers?
Oz Family Hark routinely pays the Commonwealth Bank between $18 and $30 monthly for bank fees. This is precisely because we are not business people and do not spend otherwise valuable time planning our expenditures in advance. Were we to gather together round the kitchen table every pay day and unfurl the spreadsheet of happiness, we could plot every likely monetary requirement over the next fortnight, thus saving us most of these fees.
Instead, we use Eftpos every time we visit the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, or need an extra $20 for a bowl of pizzle soup at the local Vietnamese Pho emporium. Beyond the monthly five free transactions, we inevitably chalk up a whopping number of visits to pin number heaven, not to mention costly fees for the odd cheque sent to 19th century institutions who have yet to avail themselves of electronic efficiency.
We are not being good little business men and women. And we are being penalised for it.
Like everyone else, we have no choice but to use a bank. (Credit Unions are tantalising, but they don't have an Eftpos machine on every corner, and we know the major banks will still be standing after the Earth has disintegrated from old age.) The pay cheque is sent directly to it. It is, or was, wonderfully convenient. Until the banks decided to take advantage of its captive consumers, that is.
Even though the Commonwealth Bank has posted a $1.1 billion profit for the last six months, CEO David "Australians should send banks telegrams of praise for closing branches" Murray is claiming that the bank is being hit by low-fee accounts. We wonder what the profits would be without these dreadful un-Australian drains. And how many of us there are. Mr Murray, whose Commonwealth shares are worth $40 million, has denied that he will turn away loss making accounts from unprofitable customers such as pensioners and the rest of Globalisation's New Poor, including Oz Family Hark. But he has made it abundantly clear that he considers us little better than dole bludgers.
To tell the truth, we are so bad at the anal retentive world of business that we don't even know if we constitute a low-fee account. If we do, and if we are paying up to $30 monthly for the privilege, then there can be no doubt that the bank will collapse into a pile of rubble if Labor were to pass laws prohibiting the banks from charging us so much.
And we certainly don't want that.
We understand that while the accumulation of wealth is the highest ideal for entry-level humans, the rest of us -- content to toil just enough to allow unfettered explorations into the raptures of being born with a contemplative mechanism -- can go jump in a lake. If only the entrance fees weren't so high.
But not to worry. Hand in hand with the world takeover by corporate greed is the Orwellian inevitability that we shall succumb to their incessant siren songs of praise at our compliance. We shall come to love the hand that taketh away. Our poverty shall be the benchmark of our worth and we shall weep with gratitude every time we are cosseted by soft spoken fund managers and CEOs on commercial television. Actors portraying corporate gods will be the new priests and we shall be made glad of it. Or risk collecting our cheques at the paymaster's window and presenting them to the local Cash-in-a-hurry! for a reasonable fee of, say, between $18 and $30 a transaction.
"Desperate goody-goody McDonald to stay on
A recent assembly of the undead hit science for a six by reversing the laws of physics. How? They appeared animated. John and Janette Howard, Janet and Donald McDonald, Jonathan Shier and 120 others supped together at McDonald's book launch for The Boyer Collection, Highlights of the Boyer Lectures 1959-2000.
After squeezing past some 50 Friends of the ABC, who stood outside in the July cold to advise him to drop dead, and if not that then to refrain please from reappointing McDonald as chairman, John Howard joined the Friends of a Different ABC for an evening of warmth and comradeship not matched since the ball following the Wannsee Conference.
During which the man with the kind of name that questions his parents mental fitness, Donald McDonald, rose to reveal the essence of his character.
As a child, McDonald (left) said he was the "most desperate goody-goody" who spent every Thursday afternoon listening to Evensong from St Paul's Cathedral. From all evidence, the poor old toddler has never grown up. He's like The Simpson's' Martin Prince, but without any trace of Martin's intellectual thirst or bubbling personality.
Before the revellers returned to their caskets, the PM made the following comment when asked if he would reappoint McDonald. "I think he has done a first-class job as chairman, an absolutely outstanding job." At which point Krusty the Clown was heard to emit his trademark sigh of hopelessness.
Archbishop-General: Nowhere man with a mean streak
Peter Hollingworth, appointed by John Howard to represent the right wing of his beloved Anglican church as Governor-General for the next five years, appears to have turned into just another Illiberal supporter. Was his former reputation of being quasi-liberal merely a mirage? Or has John Howard simply bought him off: sing my tune and you're in the history books, sort of thing.
In some kind of evolution-thwarting counterpoise, Hollingworth will represent the right during Labor's up-coming reign, just as William Deane represented humanity during Howard's mean-spirited years.
The new Arch-Gen has added to his questionable views on education (that private schooling instils values lacking in state run equivalents) by refusing to allow visiting fellow Anglican Bishop, John Shelby Spong, from speaking at Anglican venues in Brisbane.
The inevitable spokespuppet claimed the ban was to avoid forcing parishioners to choose between the American Bishop and Hollingworth's final sermons before taking up his post. Indeed, what would it say of Hollingworth if more people were to have gone to see Spong? And well they might have, because Spong is as liberal (in the pre-Coalition sense) as Hollingworth is apparently conservative.
Spong's response?
"I've spent my life dealing with scared Bishops, so it doesn't bother me.
"I don't believe that it's possible for any ecclesiastical figure to tell people what it is that they should listen to and what it is that they should believe. You might have gotten away with that in the 13th Century, when the only educated people in town were the ecclesiastical people.
"But in the 21st Century, when people can get on the Internet and read anything they want, I think it's a very strange tactic to try to say that if this man speaks it might upset the people. People are grown up and they're no longer children and they can make those decisions.
"And as a matter of fact in the United States we talk about what pleasure it is to be banned in Boston, because that means that twice as many people listen to what you have to say because they don't want anybody telling them what they can hear. So I probably owe Peter, who is a friend of mine, I know him fairly well, I probably owe him a debt of gratitude and that's all I would feel.
"I know that when he came to Brisbane he came with a reputation of being a liberal. I'm not sure that he's retiring from this position with that reputation intact.
"But, again, I don't walk in Peter's shoes and he's got to make those decisions and I don't want to be his judge. I want to reach my constituency. There are parts of the Anglican Church in this country, like in Sydney, that I don't want to be identified with. I think that they're in a time warp.
"They're still condemning gay and lesbian people and they're still saying women aren't fit to be priests, and they are still treating the Bible as if it's literally true. I don't want to be identified with that.
"Those people have got to do what they need to do; I don't want to be condemning or critical of them. But I'd like to tell you they drive more people away from the Christian Church than they ever bring in." (extracted from the ABC's PM, 25/6/01.)
Amen, Bishop Spong. Of course there are many people who do like to be told what to believe in and what to do with their narrow little lives. And we all know who they vote for.
Benchmark Tories 1: Bob Charles
The Age editors must have snickered when they decided to publish "Why books should not be GST-exempt" by Illiberal MP for La Trobe, Bob Charles.
Here's what he said (29/6/01):
"Natasha Stott-Despoja's push to make books GST-free would shift the tax burden towards poorer people.
"Low-income households on average spend less on books than wealthy households. The most recent Household Expenditure Survey, in 1998-99, shows that the poorest 20 per cent of households spend only $4.10 a week on books, while the wealthiest 20 per cent spend $11.95.
"The wealthy not only spend more on books, but they spend more on books as a proportion of their total expenditure. Thus the ones to benefit most from an exemption are the wealthier."
Well, that's Illiberal Party thinking for you. Alien bunch of fuck-wits, aren't they?
A couple of advertising ideas for Charles during the election:
Your friendly Coalition: helping the poor by doubling the GST on books. (We think the wealthy are getting a soft ride, too!)
Coalition relieves poor of tax burden: With the GST on books and our education policies, the next generation of poor won't even know how to read. Result: money in the pocket!
Benchmark Tories 2: Barry Haase
Barry Haase, Illiberal Party member for Kalgoorlie has clarified what many right wingers have been knocking their handful of neurons together for years to express: the 1967 referendum was a mistake.
"We shouldn't have allowed them the equal rights we gave them in 1967. It's like a re-run of the Garden of Eden story. We tempted them with everything and what happened? The person who had not been consuming alcohol suddenly was allowed it."
Sum and substance, eh Bazza?
"That was wrong, we did nothing to ease people into a drug that has had very deleterious effects both in terms of sexual violence and in terms of health effects. We needed to introduce it to them gradually and train them into it."
What, train them to drink booze like they were chimps? Maybe he's right. All those Illiberal-voting booze sellers could then have applied for good citizen awards.
And besides, we all know that alcohol abuse leading to sexual violence is confined to Aboriginals. Never happens with the white folk.
Haase is just another Illiberal who sounds like he got where he is by selling used cars. The kind of thinking produced by bottle after bottle of Ten High Whisky -- the preferred whisky of American hobos -- and a string of Kingswood sales to the down and out.
Australia should seriously consider some kind of basic intelligence cum humanity test to be given to aspiring politicians. A simple test with questions like: "Giving Aborigines equal rights made them alcoholics. True or False." Too many nutters like Haase and Charles have slipped through the net. A net loosened largely by John Howard. Then again, places like Kalgoorlie might forever be unrepresented.
Admiral Reith to refit the Bounty
So the Peter "the gunsel" Reith is jumping Howard's Titanic for the safety of a taxpayer funded, early-super sailboat. Here are a few comments from the dailies:
• Michael Gordon, The Age: " ... while the waterfront dispute hurt his reputation in the electorate, it did him no harm in the party or in the business community."
• The Weekend Australian editorial: " ... the truth is that no other minister with responsibility for industrial relations has done more to improve the lot of Australian workers."
• The Age editorial: "His departure at the next election deprives the Coalition of one of its most effective operators."
• David M. Hurburgh (letter to The Age): "Now here's an idea for Peter Reith's retirement. He says he wants to do some more sailing. Make him Admiral and Governor of Macquarie Island, one of the more habitable Australian Antarctic Territories. Give Macquarie Island some autonomy (raising a flag with a penguin rampant should do the trick), and make it a flag of convenience for the Australian maritime industry.
"Think of the advantages. No more pesky unionised sailors. We could hire as crew those Afghani refugees (proven sea-dogs) currently in the brig at Port Hedland.
"Admiral Reith, in command of chilly Macquarie Island, could wear his balaclava year round."
• Dr Bill Anderson (letter to The Australian): "The 'grapes of Reith' have finally withered on the vine, soured by a political career based on attacking the working conditions and standard of living of working men and women by meanness, by arrogance and by general vindictiveness.
"It is rather sad, however, that a scabmaster like Reith fell on his own sword before voters were given the chance to put him to the sword.
"One doesn't want to appear bitter and twisted but -- good riddance."
Since we're not getting paid for this, we won't waste another word on the bastard. Instead, here are a few links to past issues on what we thought of Peter Reith:
• Machiavelli would have slapped the oblivious ninny ...
• Peter "arbeit macht frei" Reith
• Feudal Reith rides again
• The Prince and the Gunsel
• Peter Reith: Ugly face of an ugly party
Where's Me Tablets!
by Gort Slypesunder
• Following the exit of Senator John Woodley in Queensland, yet another Illiberal dressed in Democrat/Labor clothing has given up. To this we say: good riddance. John Schumann's withdrawal from the Democrats' election campaign paves the way for a genuine Democrat to actually beat Alexander Downer in the South Australian seat of Mayo, instead of coming close. Now if Mark Latham would quit Labor ...
• Poor Serbia needs a Centre for Cultural Decontamination these days. Bora Pavicevic, a member of the Centre, said: "We have such a warped national concept of culture and identity. Under Milosevic the people learnt that crime was useful, corruption was useful. They learnt that the macho guy was the hero."
Not a bad idea when you've had right wing scum running the country for decades. Another few terms of John Howard and Australia might just need its own branch. At least Peter "The Gunsel" Reith is out of the way. Imagine what Oz would be like with him at the helm. After two terms of John "the little fascist without balls" Howard to lay the foundations, Reith could have stepped in and turned us one against the other. A nation of balaclava-clad, rottie-wielding thugs kicking the shit out of everyone who knows how to put two thoughts together to form a third.
• I was going to advise Dr Karen Phelps that I am one taxpayer who is happy to contribute to her justifiable defamation action against the Health Minister, as well as asking the Federal Government to extract the necessary contribution to pay for the men in white coats when they come to cart him away. But the bastard apologised.