Joe Hockey

Some recent comments reproduced here. Please contribute more. Joe Hockey seems like a nice guy, an intelligent guy, but he's just too rich to be really useful to anyone who isn't. He reminds me of Marie-Antoinette, a foreign princess who didn't want to try to understand the problems of the people and her husband. People look back and say, "How could she be so silly? Couldn't she see that the people were angry and desperate?" But, you know, she had other priorities.

Joe Hockey's insulting response to unaffordable housing

He declared that "If you've got a good job and it pays good money and you have security in relation to that job, then you can go to the bank and you can borrow money and that's readily affordable". The fact that wages are not keeping up with house prices is being ignored by this buffoon, and shows just how callous and out of touch our arrogant politicians really are!

Mr Hockey made the comment at media conference in Sydney where he was being asked about rising housing prices across the country, especially in Sydney and Melbourne. He denied that housing in Sydney had become unaffordable, particularly for new entrants into the property market. Just wonder how the normal people are actually able to communicate with our leaders, in their ivory towers of affluence. How many houses must our politicians have? They just watch their profits increasing, while the masses are struggling to meet mortgage payments, or are thrown onto the streets. Older people now are in danger of homelessness, due to pension cuts and soaring housing and costs of living.

The Treasurer said rising house prices were a good thing because they enabled owners to borrow against the equity to fund new spending. After decades of paying off a house, or even part of it, how are they to see it eaten away with reverse mortgages? Houses can't be used to pay water, Council rates, electricity and everyday expenses!

Joe Hockey's advice to first homebuyers - get a good job that pays good money (9/6/15) | SMH/the Age
Other stories : Joe Hockey pilloried for 'get a good job' remarks

(9/6/15) | SMH, [Joe Hockey's claimed] property crackdown 'won't hurt Australia' (9/6/15) | SBS

"Skating on thin ice"

Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott are skating on thin ice with their defence of stratospheric house prices especially in Sydney. Another Liberal politician, Craig Laundy has defended Joe Hockey's recent remarks on the subject and advised the public that now is a good time to get into the property market. What happens if someone takes on a mortgage which he can just afford and then interest rates rise and he can no longer cover the repayments? Does the government bear any of the responsibility? Abbott said that he wanted prices in Sydney to rise because he has a property there (mortgaged). He is far from disinterested. Hockey says housing is not unaffordable because people are buying but that the answer to the problem that apparently is not a problem is to "build, build, build". He must know that the problem is shortage of land , land land in relation to the huge numbers of people, people, people needing housing in the areas where people want to live. He knows that the average person can only buy where land is cheap or buy in more expensive areas but have little or no land. Members of the government are skating on thin ice because they appear to be interfering in the housing market. Isn't their dictum to let markets be free? They also appear to be giving advice and to have their own interests in the asset case in which they are giving advice to the public. What they need to do is take on the responsibility of a housing safety net. This means "public housing, public housing, public housing!"

Age Discrimination Commissioner, Susan Ryan thinks that Treasurer Joe Hockey somehow deserves congratulations for suggesting that people's life expectancy may extend to 150 on the basis of some very speculative 'medical science'. [1] Futhermore, she's using this medical theory to jump on the moving retirement goal bandwagon. [2]
Is Susan Ryan, losing her marbles or simply doing what she has to to keep her job? Who do you know that you think is likely to live until they are 150 years old? And who do you know that wants to work until 70 or beyond? The value of elderly people is being sold out by the likes of Susan Ryan and Joe Hockey

Real trends

Nevermind that people young and old are dying early from poverty associated with unemployment in this country, fancy believing on the basis of past statistical curves, that most people are going to live to 150 even if some amazingly wealthy person like Murdoch might just aim, using cloned organ replacement, diet, blood transfusions and 24 hour slaves in attendance to aim for such longevity. How can Susan Ryan not be aware that the 'developed' nations are faced with actual declines in life-expectancy due to diet-linked diseases, notably diabetes, fatty liver, and the strain of obesity on their systems (which is not necessarily always present in the raised risk of diabetes.) [3]

Susan Ryan and Joe Hockey need to read more widely instead of relying on actuarial information from the past, hitched to a junk-science wagon. In this case past trends do not predict the future. Current trends break from the past. Joe Hockey is either poorly educated in health matters or pragmatically abusing economic stats. Probably both. If he really wanted to save money on medical costs, he would call for high taxes on denatured processed food and its advertising.

The church of the workhouse

Susan Ryan, like Julia Gillard, idealises payed work. To pretend that all work is good for health, rewarding or fulfilling, rather than a depressing and onerous treadmill, or a frighteningly tense battle to please capricious bosses, shows the insensitive submission of the work-privileged to a self-serving economic ideology. Although I supported quite a lot of what ex-labor PM, Julia Gillard, appeared to stand for, I felt sorry in advance for disabled people in the new National Disability Scheme if their only chance at dignity and security could be the 'right' and thereby the duty, to work. It isn't as if the were all guaranteed positions as well-paid neurosurgeons, party bosses, lawyers or chief executives. It isn't as if most of us have jobs like that.

Conditional love

In this Australia of very conditional love and self worth we must constantly struggle against the economic measure of our status. For this reason most women must struggle all the harder, meeting demands to be 'good' and obedient at home as well as at work. The elderly must struggle even harder. We are not taught how in simpler societies simply being a member of the society guarantees you a place, shelter, worth and rights. If we were we would rally to protect traditional societies instead of consigning their masses via 'development' to overpopulation, exhaustion, malnutrition, epidemics new and old as well as the same ones as the poor in the developed world: fatty liver, diabetes and its complications, and the political irrelevance and isolation of the mass consumer.

The value of elderly people is being sold out by the likes of Susan Ryan and Joe Hockey

Not a word in Susan Ryan's celebration of wage-slavery of the fitness of citizens, the rewards of political engagement in real life rather than effective total hours lost to unfair and redundant economic systems. Nothing about the loss of natural increase in status accompanying seniority in most societies before ours.

Evolutionary theory on longevity

The wisdom of older people and their retreat from sexual and warrior competition made sense of longevity in our species. Why do we have life expectancies around 3 score and 10 years? Because the presence of old people is fundamental to knowledge conservation in societies.

On the subject of how long humans lived, Kaplan et al [4] argue that humans had potential to live for about 70 years in hunter-gatherer environments. They theorise that reaching age 65 must have played a part in human evolutionary adaptation for the acquisition of life learning and storage of environmental knowledge over long periods of time and distance in elderly humans.

On the subject of causes of mortality, they assert that the comparatively isolated populations that persisted in localized environments pre-agriculture and large-scale settlement would have become genetically adapted to local pathogens. The effect of this would have kept disease mortality low.

Of course now, in our huge and cumbersome cities, local adaptation is no longer possible, since our diets and frequentations are globally sourced and mostly beyond any individual's control. We now eat industrially produced glop that our livers cannot break down, but can only store in ever increasing fatty deposits. In our global economic culture that may be just as well, since accumulated learning is not conducive to processed food consumption or widget production. Then again, if we did allow elderly people to transmit their accumulated knowledge from a position of authority, we might outwit the consumer-economy monster.

NOTES

[1] "The first drugs that can slow the ageing process are likely to become available within five to 10 years, raising the prospect of people eventually living to 150 or more, researchers say." Source: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/sci-tech/drugs-may-let-us-live-to-150-20111016-1lrm5.html

[2] Source: Susan Ryan, "The economic potential of older people is being ignored," The Age, 22 February 2015, http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-economic-potential-of-older-people-is-being-ignored-20150222-13lfgt.html.

[3] For anyone interested in the theory, I refer to Dr Lustig of the University of California's and associates work on excessive fructose consumption in particular but also on excessive consumption of any simple carbohydrates. See, for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHlEuDHpE2k These epidemic problems are now affecting children within six months of birth. There are many other lectures on you tube around this subject besides this one that explores the evolutionary signficance of fructose.

[4]See Kaplan, H., Gurven, M., Winking, J. 2009, “An Evolutionary Theory of Human Lifespan: Embodied Capital and the Human Adaptive Complex,”. For: Handbook of Theories of Aging. (Editors: Bengtson, V., Silverstein, M., Putney, N., Gans, D). Springer. Pp. 39-66. Also available at http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/kaplanetal_ch3.pdf.

Student activist Joe Hockey protesting the imposition of student fees in 1987

(Article includes 2 versions of the Youtube video of different lengths.) Recommend watching the video footage linked to below. Apologies if you have already seen it. It shows our eminent treasurer leading student protests in 1987 against the imposition of an annual fee upon tertiary students that was quite small relative to the burden being proposed in the current budget.

John Dawkins 1 the then Labor Minister for education who first imposed tertiary student fees

It shows our eminent treasurer leading student protests in 1987 against the imposition of an annual fee upon tertiary students that was quite small relative to the burden being proposed in the current budget.

Joe is proud of his 'up from the bootstraps' personal success, rising to where he has from very modest socio-ecomomic beginnings. Very evidently this success was built on the foundation of a free public education system.

Now wealthy and powerful, Joe is smoking cigars and dancing in celebration as he acts purposefully and directly within his budget to destroy all remnant of the affordable tertiary system that enabled him to rise and flourish. His efforts to end the so-called 'age of entitlement' are a cruel and savage ambition in the context of this background. Words simply cannot capture the essence of such profound and enormous selfishness at work. As many people as possible should see this blatant hypocrisy to be made fully aware of the nature of the fraud that is being perpetrated.

You really would not want to be caught adrift in a lifeboat with this bloke and his running mates. They'd eat your liver while you slept, and then probably whinge that they had no fine wine to wash it down with.

Editor's comment: If the link doesn't work, look for another. It seems that this video is a moving target for being taken off you-tube, but people keep putting it back up. :-)

Here is another version, with more footage of multiple students:

Hypocrite or opportunist? Politician, at any rate.

Footnote[s]

#fnHockey1" id="fnHockey1">1. #txtHockey1">↑ I originally posted then Senator Susan Ryan's photo into this story, mistakenly believing that she had introduced HECS. The Wikipedia article about Susan Ryan explains:

When the Hawke Labor Government was elected in March 1983, Ryan was appointed Minister for Education and Youth Affairs and Minister assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women. She was Minister for Education in the second Hawke Ministry and opposed the re-introduction of fees for tertiary education despite strong support in Cabinet for the user-pays principle. She lost the education portfolio in the third Hawke Ministry and was instead given a much reduced role as Special Minister of State. Subsequently the Higher Education Contribution Scheme was introduced to partially fund higher education. Ryan resigned from the Senate on 16 December 1987.

My apologies for that mistake. - Ed

Amid all the talk by politicians and media about the imminent horror budget with cuts to many important services, Treasurer Joe Hockey fails to see the source of more than enough money to cover all these ‘holes’, according to Sustainable Population Australia (SPA).

Cutting immigration significantly, and thus the population growth rate, would free billions of dollars that would otherwise be spent on infrastructure.

SPA National President, Ms Jenny Goldie, says estimates of the infrastructure costs of each new person added to the Australian population range between $200,000 and $300,000 per person, whether a new born baby or an immigrant.

“Thus, with population growing by over 400,000 annually, the additional cost in infrastructure is at least $80 billion, of which $48 billion is from net overseas migration,” says Ms Goldie. “This infrastructure cost is a cost borne by the existing population, either as economic benefits foregone or as deterioration in infrastructure services.

“Halving net overseas migration (currently 241,000 annually) would mean a savings of $24 billion or more.”

Michael Reddell of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand wrote this week that ‘Internationally, there is no evidence over the last century that countries with faster population growth, or greater inward migration, have achieved faster income or productivity growth than other countries…’

“The Productivity Commission has already shown that Australia’s very high immigration levels add nothing to the welfare of Australians,” says Ms Goldie.

“Australia now has the highest rate of population growth (1.8 per cent) of any OECD country. This adds 1.8 per cent every year to the cost of health and hospitals, schools, transport, pensions and other support benefits without any improvement in the quality of service.

“A very large reduction in the immigration intake would solve the problems the Treasurer sees in the Australian economy,” says Ms Goldie. “And the abolition of all inducements for families to have more children would also help. This is not to blame immigrants; it is to blame government, opposition and much of the media who all appear deliberately blind to this very large and unmanaged financial cost to the Australian community.”

It is said that Marie Antoinette, wife of King Louis XVI, when confronted with the fact that people had no bread, said, "Let them eat cake, then." This story is supposed to illustrate how out of touch Marie-Antoinette was - so much so that she could not see the absurdity of her pronouncement - which was that she was rich but the people were starving. Australia has a whole slew of Marie-Antoinettesque politicians who peddle fundamentalist global economic policies, apparently with no idea at all of how angry people are becoming about being treated like children with no rights to self-government at all.

The Australian Financial Review sums up Hockey's thinking as, "The entrenched entitlements of the welfare state, corporate handouts and the 'fair wage' are now exhausted," (Australian Financial Review, 5 Feb 2014, p.38.) It's an odd mix of subject matter and I for one do not believe that 'corporate handouts' belongs in there; it's just there for camouflage. The corporates are running Australia; they aren't going to deprive themselves of handouts. Like the Prime Minister, Mr Abbott, Hockey is a Roman Catholic, and extremely wealthy, married to an investment banker. One cannot help but think of the role of the Catholic church in places like the Phillipines and Haiti, where it fosters overpopulation and disempowerment, and worry about its ascendency in Australia.

Politics of South Africa

It is kind of interesting to realise that this 'age of entitlement' stuff probably comes from misquoting Nelson Mandela, who talked of ordinary people demanding economic justice as succumbing to the 'culture of entitlement'.

"Mandela warned ordinary South Africans against any expectation that the new government would alleviate the country’s mass poverty. “We must rid ourselves of the culture of entitlement that leads to the expectation that the government must promptly deliver whatever it is that we demand,” he declared. The New York Times noted on Thursday that Mandela also told workers to “tighten your belts” and “accept low wages so that investment would flow.”

At the same time, Mandela courted the South African ultra-wealthy. The Guardian’s obituary noted his “attachment to the glamour of the very rich.” The newspaper explained: “[M]oney was dazzling. Hence, once freed, he holidayed at the Irish businessman Sir Tony O’Reilly’s Caribbean island and gave the go-ahead for his takeover of South Africa’s biggest newspaper group, in anticipation of his ‘magic money’ providing black empowerment in the media. He allowed the casino king, Sol Kerzner, to host the wedding of his daughter Zinzi. He borrowed rich men’s houses and flew around South Africa in their aircraft.”

The social and economic disaster now evident in South Africa stands as an indictment of Mandela’s role in preserving capitalist rule and of his perspective of promoting a “non-European bourgeoisie.”" [https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/12/06/mand-d06.html]

But Mandela spent many years in prison as punishment for fighting against apartheid. This gave him some status and credentials among the poor of South Africa. In Australia we have leaders who have never suffered from any kind of poverty using Mandela's approach, without even bothering with a figurehead.

The bullies are ganging up

Another user of the 'culture of entitlement' term is Bernard Salt, advocate of widows downsizing to give worthier young people more room to live, whilst at the same time a huge pusher of high immigration. Salt and his allies have managed to penetrate the public and commercial media and have often been presented as apparently disinterested experts in fields where they have massive commercial interests. Their methods are questionable. The failure of even the ABC to protect Australians is largely responsible for the fact that political bullies are now openly ganging up on the Australian public. See: http://candobetter.net/?q=node/1711 and http://candobetter.net/?q=node/3613, for instance.

And don't count on 'union leaders' to get you out of this nightmare. 'Union leader Paul Howes, made a feature article and also got to write the Opinion in the Financial Review on 4 Feb 2014, by urging both Libs and Labor to include family homes in aged pensions asset tests. Is he aiming to do a Bernard Salt?

Howes started his political career among the Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance, and has gone on to abandon even their empty left-styled human rights rhetoric. Recently he angered the Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson, who called him a "Sydney blow-in" 'peddling lies about the Tarkine wilderness in his claim that a heritage listing for the Tarkine will shut down mines in the area'. (Herald Sun Nov 4, 2012).

Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt, has accused Howes of "giving ammunition to Tony Abbott's attack on Australian wages" and has suggested that he should resign his post. (James Massola, Judith Ireland, "Paul Howes: Excessive wages growth is 'pricing some sectors out of the market', "The Age February 05, 2014.)

Note that Mr Bandt is not saying anything about how excessive immigration is driving Australians into the depths of unemployment, housing stress, debt and homelessness. Almost no-one in the press is saying anything about that except candobetter.net. It's as if there's a civil war on in Australia but our politicians think they can paralyse resistance by flooding the media with pro-growth propaganda.

Whilst economic policies look bad, what is worse and what makes it possible for the rich to ride roughshod over the rest of us, is that Australians have almost no civil rights. Unlike the continental Europeans, we never had a code of rights, but we did have public institutions that had obligations towards us, including public banks, schools, universities, power and resources departments, public lands, public housing, baby health centers, employment services and a relatively democratic industrial relations system etc. (See more on this here: "Tingle shoots blanks despite Great Expectations - review of Quarterly Essay".)These public institutions are all being privatised and destroyed in a process that began post 1970s oil shock in all or most anglophone countries. With the disappearance of public-serving institutions disappearance from the public domain, little traction on government remains for citizens and residents. Australians also have diminishing private resources. These are being transferred to the corporate sector - notably banks. Our governments have become dominated by property developers and mining interests, corporate farming and media and big finance. Australians need to fight for their civil rights.

A 'rich nation' - that's rich!

Added to this mix of contradictions is the frequent and infuriating reiteration that "Australia is a rich nation".

"The second force driving the end of the entitlement age is the reshaping of the Australian economy from a protected domestically focused manufacturing base into a supplier of minerals, energy, services, food, and niche manufacturing to Asia. Among rich nations, this makes Australia is [sic] uniquely placed to prosper from the rise of China and the rest of Asia. [...]"(AFR, Editorial, 5 Feb 2014, p. 38, referring to Hocking's speech.

If we were rich then we could be able to preserve the institutions that once served us, we would be able to afford homes and education. It's ridiculous to tell Australians that they are rich, but rich Australians among a jumped up elite keep doing so. Do they mean to insult our intelligence? Or are they just completely deluded? You get the impression that these economic fundamentalists have no concept of the laws of thermodynamics; that they think like children or cargo-culters. Australia as a supplier of energy is a joke; we are now a net importer of oil and we are desperately digging up our best farmland for coal!

Opposition Treasurer Joe Hockey, on Lateline, warned the public that the Coalition would be looking closely at ''the whole range of entitlements'' - that is, welfare benefits. Hockey said, ''We need to compare ourselves with our Asian neighbours where entitlements programs of the state are far less than they are in Australia.''
Is the "Asian Century" is about downgrading our lifestyles to those of the third-world standards of their teaming and overpopulated cities?

Image: two boys on a concrete wall, overlooking rubbish in Dharavi.
Original description: Inside Dharavi, Asia's largest slum of over one million dwellers. From producing clay pots to recycling plastic, this slum is also home to hundreds of businesses and defying the many myths of poverty.The sum of these small enterprises have an annual turnover of $665 million!

Opposition Treasurer Joe Hockey, on Lateline, warned the public that the Coalition would be looking closely at ''the whole range of entitlements'' - that is, welfare benefits.

Despite Tony Abbot's efforts to manage what messages the opposition sent to the media, Hockey delivered a provocative speech in London and then mismanaged the interview afterwards.

Hockey's thesis was that Western democracies have been spending more than they could afford on ''entitlements''. ''Government spending on a range of social programs including education, health, housing, subsidised transport, social safety nets and retirement benefits has reached extraordinary levels as a percentage of GDP,'' he stated.

Praising Hong Kong in particular, but also the wider region, he said: ''The Age - The concept of filial piety, from the Confucian classic Xiao Jing, is thriving today right across Asia”.   (extended families would be responsible for welfare).

According to the Classic of Filial Piety , Confucius once said: "In serving his parents, a filial son reveres them in daily life; he makes them happy while he nourishes them; he takes anxious care of them in sickness; he shows great sorrow over their death; and he sacrifices to them with solomnity". It is this single principle that holds the families together, thereby binding the society to hold itself, and ultimately protecting the whole race and the nation. At the moment it allows SE Asian economies a degree of advantage over Western economies in terms of avoiding long-term costs.

On Lateline, Hockey said, ''We need to compare ourselves with our Asian neighbours where entitlements programs of the state are far less than they are in Australia.''

According to an article in The Australian, 21/4/2012, Joe Hockey's "age of entitlement" speech to the Institute of Economic Affairs in London this week deserves a standing ovation. The Asian Century demands that the West adjust its economic lens to stay (and in some cases become) competitive in an era it is losing control of.

The Asian Century

Is the  "Asian Century" is about downgrading our lifestyles to those of the third-world standards of their teaming and overpopulated cities? 

The Age, 16/3/98, reported this statement by Phillip Ruthven, Chairman of IBIS Business Information:
"By 2025 Australia was likely to have ceded some sovereignty over population and some financial and legal matters to a grouping based on our closer neighbours in the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) countries".

Graeme Campbell former MHR, founder of the Australia First Party, stated on 26/1/96 that Barry Jones (MHR) has said that Australians must decide whether they want more growth, more migrants, or retain their standard of living - they simply can't have both.

The Weekend Australian, 9-10/5/98 reported that governments  will face increasing pressure to erode both wages and welfare in line with global economic trends. Note, not just wages, but welfare, such as medical treatment, hospitals, pensions.

In the interests of the good of humanity as a whole, and for the benefit of our GDP, will Australia become a third world, polluted, over-crowded, Asian country, living in poverty?

The "Lucky Country" sold overseas and eroded

In 1995 Australia was the richest country on earth (World Bank survey, reported in the Australian, 18/9/95).  Australia used to be the "Lucky Country", but it's been exploited by attracting the overseas market for property investment, and mass immigration.  Decades of poor leadership and lack of patriotism is dragging us down to falling living standards and poverty. 

Industries have closed down, farmers have been driven off the land and our foreign debt continues to sky-rocket.  We have massive unemployment, poverty and appalling social problems. 

Our economy, our GDP, is mean to serve the people of Australia, and a system to pay for benefits such as pensions, infrastructure, public services etc.  However, the Economy has become a purpose, an  end in itself, and is being forced to bite the hand of those who have fed it!

Australia's wealth of ineffective politicians

The first target should be a reduction of politicians.  We are over-governed and burdened by expensive and ineffective politicians.  The three tiers should be scrapped to a Federal and local administration, and parliamentary privileges slashed.  The expensive and generous parliamentary retirement packages should go.  They belong to an age of privilege and of the gentry, something  that doesn't belong now. 

Good policies sacrificed for a bigger GDP

GDP is the value at market prices of all goods and services produced in the economy.  It depends on natural resources.  Just as there are limits to growth in the natural world, there are some physical limits to economic growth.

Governments  are facing increasing pressure to erode both wages and welfare in line with global economic trends.

There's an assumption is that a higher GDP growth rate will translate to a better quality of life and greater prosperity for the people.  Conventional economic thinking assumes that raw materials are unlimited and economic growth can continue indefinitely.

Steady-State economy- the better alternative

19th century John Stuart Mill, pioneer of economics and gifted philosopher, recognised that capitalism and the pursuit of wealth had to be restrained and regulated lest the desire relentless growth over-tipped  the capacity of a system to renew and sustain itself.

Under a steady-state economic model the GDP is fixed, with stable energy and a stable population.  However, it’s a growth in GDP by the standard measure that economists use to define GDP.

There are “tipping points” for economic growth, and once they are reached, growth becomes negative in impact.

Herman Daly, one of the founders of the field of ecological economics and a leading critic of neoclassical growth theory, defines a steady state economy as:
An economy with constant stocks of people and artifacts, maintained at some desired, sufficient levels by low rates of maintenance ‘throughput’, that is, by the lowest feasible flows of matter and energy from the first stage of production to the last stage of consumption.
Daly, Herman. 1991. Steady-State Economics, 2nd edition. Island Press, Washington, DC. p.17.

Image: two boys on a concrete wall, overlooking rubbish in Dharavi.
Original description: Inside Dharavi, Asia's largest slum of over one million dwellers. From producing clay pots to recycling plastic, this slum is also home to hundreds of businesses and defying the many myths of poverty.The sum of these small enterprises have an annual turnover of $665 million!

Note: This article encompasses and replaces a brief #original">article "Krazy Kevin Rudd video by Cyrius01" by Sheila Newman of 7 May 09. Please find embedded video within this article and brief introductory article below.

In 1996, the incoming Howard Government, 'discovered' a massive budgetary black hole left by the outgoing Keating Government. They claimed and claimed to have no choice but to impose slash-and-burn budgets and asset fire sales. The excuse of the cupboard left bare or crippling debt, supposedly taking all choice out of the hands of incoming Governments, forms part of a tired and recurring pattern in Australian history. Recently, Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey has seized upon the debt created by the Rudd Government's incompetently managed 'stimulus program' -- all supposedly to 'stimulate' Australia's moribund economy, dependent upon immigration-driven property speculation, digging holes in the ground and changing the hotel beds of foreign guests -- as an excuse to resurrect his dream of privatising Medibank Private and wielding the budgetary axe. Is history about to repeat itself, yet again?

The record of the Rudd Government seems so dismal that it is easy for many to forget the relief we felt barely more than two years ago, when we were finally able to vote out the detested Howard Government.

Many had high hopes in the Rudd Government. We hoped that the stranglehold of "free market" economic dogma over Australian public policy would be relaxed, for effective action to halt global warming, for action to fix Australia's dying Murray Darling basin, action against the illegal killing of whales, etc. These hopes have been dashed. On top of that, the Rudd Government has maintained and increased the Howard Government's already record high rate of immigration. Mandatory Internet filtering, which would give governments the power to censor at will any web-site it considers at threat, could become law. Consequently the Federal Coalition that seemed totally discredited not long ago could be the Government again before the end of the year.

Rudd and Swan crow about how their 'stimulus program' supposedly saved Australia from the worst ravages of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) by giving us back some of our own money to buy plasma TV's and throwing away more of our money on mismanaged government programs such as the domestic solar insulation scheme, but all they really did was buy us a small amount of time whilst avoiding confronting the problem at its source.

And to buy that small amount of time, they have taken away from us a range of choices that we might otherwise have had.

When Queensland Premier Bligh announced the $15 billion fire sale in May 2009 and the Federal Government said they had no spare money to help Queensland out of its financial difficulties.

The Rudd Government's fiscal recklessness has
provided Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey with an
excuse to resurect his dream of the Howard
Government years to privatise Medibank Private.

Last Sunday, Joe Hockey on ABC Television's "The Insiders" brazenly told the audience of his plans to impose government spending cuts and his resurrected plans to privatise Medibank Private.

So, almost a year after we were showered with our Federal Government's apparent generosity, we learn that we are going to be sent the bill, after all. Wouldn't we rather have had that choice put to us before all our money was thrown away?

The evidence from "The Latham Diaries" shows Mark Latham's 2004 federal election campaign was undermined by many within the Labor Party, including Kevin Rudd, himself. Apparently many within the Labor Party regarded three more years of misrule by John Howard to be preferable to Mark Latham becoming Prime Minister.

So, would it be that much of a leap to imagine that Kevin Rudd, himself, would not be that personally concerned about whether or not his own Government survives? Many former members of Labor Governments seem to easily find lucrative careers and with his Chinese language skills, Kevin Rudd would surely find little difficulty offering his services to Chinese investors intent on buying up Australian minerals, real estate, farms and publicly owned assets.

Whether the Rudd Government survives or is thrown out, it seems as if the Australian public are being set up, yet again, to be punished for decisions in which they took no part, unless we stop them.

James Sinnamon
Brisbane Independent
for Truth, Democracy,
the Environment and
Economic Justice
Australian Federal Elections, 2010

#original" id="original">Appendix: Original article of 7 May 09 by Sheila Newman

See embedded video #cyrius01">above or view it on YouTube.

Article teaser

Cyrius01 is a brilliant Australian political movie maker with a raw sense of humor who uses satire and - anything that comes to hand really. Take a look at his latest on Rudd and the growth economy to restore your sense of balance in this mad murdochian world.

Krazy Kevin Rudd responds to the Global Financial Crisis

Cyrius01 writes, "After studying all the options, Kevin Rudd has responded to the Global Financial Crisis in the absolute best, most perfect way possible. Go for Growth! By splurging every last cent of tax payers money on property developers and banks, we will have a huge infrastructure that working families can pay off over the next few generations. The most important thing is to restore the economy to exactly the same as it was before the crash - so that we can all borrow more and more money and consume more and more stuff. Growth Growth Growth!"

There are many more videos by Cyrius01 on his channel on you-tube. For a while I thought that his creativity muse had disappeared with the departure of John Howard, but I was wrong, thank heavens.

#JoeHockey" id="JoeHockey">Appendix: excerpt from interview with Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey

This interview is from the ABC Television's "The Insiders" of Sunday 7 March 2010.

Joe Hockey: ... And he said the best way to put downward pressure on inflation is to pare back on the Commonwealth budget. And if you do that that will take upward pressure off interest rates. Kevin Rudd said that.

Chris Uhlmann: Well given then that both sides of politics agree on that theory where would you cut spending?

Joe Hockey: Well firstly we would have spent $20 billion to $25 billion less on the stimulus package. Everyone seems to forget that. That was a substantial decision from our perspective.

Secondly we would pay off the debt faster and the starting point would be to privatise Medibank Private to that you can get $3.5 billion to $4.5 billion of proceeds and use those proceeds to get rid of some of the debt.

The faster we pay off the debt Chris the better our economy is positioned for the demanding needs to fund our growth into the future.

Chris Uhlmann: But selling Medibank alone doesn't get you there. What savings would you make to the Commonwealth Government budget?

Joe Hockey: Well we will outline all of those before the election. But I've already given you two great detailed examples of how we would have done it differently.

Chris Uhlmann: Do you think that it's enough to keep saying that the Government should cut and then never specify where those cuts should come?

Chris Uhlmann: Well we will do that when we have an opportunity to be in government.

I think this mob doesn't know how to control spending. They've had blow-outs on Medicare, blow-outs on the PBS, blow-outs on computers in schools, blow-outs on school halls.

They've had blow-outs on solar panels. They've proven themselves incompetent in running a pink batt insulation program.

How can you trust them with the entire health system of the nation?

Chris Uhlmann: Well let's look at some of programs. Would you cut back on the school spending?

Joe Hockey: Well we will have a good look at all areas of expenditure Chris, all areas.

Chris Uhlmann: So you might cut back on the school spending?

Joe Hockey: Well you know if you're in government you have to have the courage to make difficult decisions that are in the national interest.

And this mob have no courage, no policy courage at all.

(End of Interview.)