What’s happening in Australia? Are we still the lucky country? Who are we lucky for? We’re often told that Australia is a wealthy country, that the economy is doing well, that the employment figures are good.
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Where is all the wealth going? Why is the budget “unsustainable”? Maybe we need a clearer story.
Little of this national wealth seems to trickle down to the lower echelons of the community. Just this week the ACOSS Report revealed that in an Australian population of 24m as many as 3m are living in poverty. And even worse 17.4 per cent, or 730,000 of all Australian children, are living in poverty.
How can this be in a time of the best employment figures for years? Ah, but to be considered as employed you have to work for only one hour per week. By this measure many of the children live in households where the parent is considered to be employed and therefore not eligible for much welfare – misery for children, nice unemployment figures for governments.
So we seem to have inherited the American disease: a substantial section of the population considered to be employed but still existing below the poverty line.
We are told constantly that we have an unsustainable budget, that it is in need of urgent repair and that we must attend to this by cutting welfare, services, and pensions.
As well we must “stimulate” the economy to earn more, by shoveling up billions of dollars in direct tax cuts to the rich and multi-nationals and retain investment incentives, negative gearing and extraordinarily generous superannuation arrangements to maintain even the present level of trickle down.
Perhaps there are other ways of saving money and effecting budget repair.
In global terms Australia has the highest number of politicians per capita spread across eight parliaments and the infrastructure they entail. We also have some of the highest paid parliamentarians in the world and some of the most generous pensions and lifetime entitlements.
Maybe Australia can’t afford all this. Maybe Australia can’t afford a Prime Minister that is paid more than the President of the United States and three times as much as the President of France. Interesting to note that Vladimir Putin and seniors at The Kremlin took a 10 per cent pay cut last year in the interest of the national economy - imagine trying to get that through in OZ.
Again, maybe we should look at curtailing some of the subsidies we hand out to businesses and that often work entirely against our long-term interests and even our viability on the planet. Fossil fuel subsidies that cost millions should go.
Immediately we need to shut down our obscene and expensive prison camps on Nauru and Manus. Australian taxpayers guarantee lavish salaries to executives and profits to shareholders through these degrading operations; we need to stop that expensive plebiscite and legalise marriage “equality” through Parliament.
We need to re-develop a mixed economy with institutional levers in the market place; take more charge of where we want our economy to go as a community and make a fairer distribution of the wealth of the nation. Let “mutual obligation” be for all Australians.
The me-first millionaires and cup-holding beggars approach is not working for us. The Americanisation of the Australian economy is one of the most woeful legacies of Oracle John.