Fri - 28 Jan 2011

The word of the day is Levy.

Everybody's talking about the flood levy, Julia Gillard’s one-year tax. No one is talking about the potential for this process to be rorted as thoroughly as the pink bats and BER. When this was raised in a press conference Julia umm-ed and aah-ed dodging the question.

There are so many reasons why this levy is not only a bad idea but will be applied unequally and inconsistently. The levy is not taxable a donation is. There are a number of Australians, perhaps even a significant number, that have made donations to the flood effort. These people will be forced to donate further. All those people who are planning to donate will no longer do so because the government has decided to force the issue.

In the past people have claimed to be a victim of a fire or flood and later found to have had nothing to do with it. This is of course only those who are caught. Now we have a case where those considered to be flood victims are not subject to the levy. It would be interesting in a year’s time to be able to track the amount of the levy wasted on this determination process. We are after all talking about the government here.
Very wealthy individuals will benefit from the levy if they are flood victims. I'm not sure if those insured are covered by the terms outlined by the government seem to indicate that they maybe. If they are not then those who did not take out insurance are being rewarded by the government while those who were prudent, sensible, and wise would not be. The message then would be don't do anything the mother government will look after you. This is of course socialism at its finest.

So the donors get to pay, the volunteers get to pay, a number of victims will get to pay, businesses who were wiped out may get to pay and so the Socialist machine rolls on. The one industry to benefit once more as it has in all of the other failures of the Labor government is once again the building industry. They're talking about bringing people from all over the country, relocating them to free, to help in the effort. This is not the issue so much as the new potential for this favoured industry to overcharge and make large sums of money on the backs of the rest of Australians.

Page 12.

Keeping in line with Gillard’s "Education Revolution" which is not a revolution at all but a devolution we read an article, and a well-written one, about the poor quality of both English curriculum and the NAPLAN testing of English. At the same time in this article there is an indication that the testing should be weakened to accommodate non-native English-speaking individuals. To quote "other questions are written in ways that rely on native speaker into wish and, or common sense and logic, rather than a solid grasp of how English works."

Anyone who has spent any time in a non-English-speaking country, particularly one in Asia, will know that these people will often know more about grammar than a native English speaker but often has difficulty in basic conversation. Those joining a society are far more useful if they can speak and understand that if they know what a hanging participle is. Focusing on the inner technical workings of English rather than the ability to understand or answer questions about it is somewhat elitist. Given that one of the writers comes from ANU however based on previous experience listening to people from this facility this is not unusual.

The article from Tony Kevin on the SIEV to 21 incident, or the boat that crashed into Christmas Island, is both self-serving and a little disingenuous. He claims that the Jindalee operational radar network or JORN allowed Australia to detect and safely intercept 220 of 221 boats. Given that two of the boats were 'intercepted 'after they had touched the jetty, and many others either reached land or came very close this claim is somewhat spurious. The other issue is of course that everybody is focusing on the intricacies of the issue, and coming up with some wild solutions, rather than focusing on the core issue which is of course the weakness of the Australian policies and the huge number of boats leaving Indonesia.

Letters

As usual in today's letters we have a few people Abbott bashing without any substance whatsoever. One writer talked about putting his donation on hold, representing many, many more doing the same.

Two letters of note. One by Frank Pulsford raising the issue that even aborigines are not sure that all those claiming to be Aboriginal are, in fact, so. This is one of the many issues swept under the rug when dealing with Aboriginals. At the very least this question is going to cause division in both the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities.

The other letter by Ray Carman pointed out that President Obama’s wireless solution makes our cable solution look positively prehistoric. As an IT professional I would of course agree.

Peter Davidson's letter is yet another calling the division. The contention is that private students deserve no support from government. You are either for equality or against it. When it comes to children at the very least they should be treated equally. If their parents can afford to pay the extra money, well above and beyond that paid by other parents, then good for them. Socialists of course want everybody brought down to a particular level, socialism never ever elevates people in societies. By calling for a withdrawal of a subsidy for private school children Mr Davidson appears to be calling for special treatment of non-private school students. In other words he only favours looking after one group of children. If people have worked hard to make more money so that their children can go to private schools, and in many cases having to give up other luxuries so that their child can go to a private school, why should they be penalised for this. Again socialism does not reward those who work harder or try to distinguish themselves.