Contributed by Joe Montero
The Turnbull government’s war against Centrelink benefit recipients is based on the lie that they are imposing a burden on those who have a job.
It is this painting of Australians not able to find a job or not able to work, as spongers on the rest of society that has been used as the cover to impose humiliating processes, public attacks and denial of payments on hundreds of thousands of victims. This sort of profiling is reprehensible and shows just how far any concept of basic human compassion has gone missing, as far as our political leaders are concerned.
This is a wrong that calls out to be righted. It is also evidence of the kind of politics that has raised its head in our society. When politicians pick up a knee jerk habit to justify whatever they do, by signalling out a defenceless section of our community as the cover, something is seriously wrong. This is what we must pay attention to.
Research commissioned by Anglicare and carried out by Per Capita, has its results published in a report called The Cost of Privilege. It shows that the drain on taxpayer money is not those who go to Centrelink, but the wealthiest households that are given a staggering $68 billion a year.
The system of subsidies and loopholes allow the following examples. The wealthiest households get, $40 billion for Capital gains Tax exemptions, $20 billion for superannuation concessions and $3 billion for private education and health care. There are also the generous negative gearing provisions for investment properties, and a whole array of other loopholes existing in the taxation system.
A weakness in the report is that it concerns the wealthiest 20 percent of households and does not tell the full story that even here the benefit is skewed sharply upwards. The top 5 percent, for example, get much more. They send their kids to the most expensive private schools, have the resources to gain the most from negative gearing and capital gains tax, and can take much better advantage of the tax avoidance opportunities.
Compare this to the little under $11 billion total cost of Newstart for the unemployed and under employed, and this is the costliest service provided by Centrelink.
The staggering gap shows that there is a major class division in Australian society. Although it is very much part of it, the miserable treatment of those who find themselves at the Centrelink office asking for help, is far from the whole of the story.
Handing out miserable treatment for those who find themselves at a Centrelink office to ask for help is far from the whole story. Most Australians lucky enough to have a job, find themselves in an increasingly precarious position. Real wages are buying less and less, and about a third of the workforce has now been casualised.
Among the causalised, a high proportion is constantly in and out of work. Others are not paid enough to make their own way. Both groups are forced to front up at Centrelink. They are the working poor.
The abuse of both those without a job and the average wage earner is backed by laws and government practices. Nothing could illustrate more clearly that this is government for the wealthiest. Income is taken from one side of society, to maintain the lifestyle they are accustomed to. This is what must be put to an end.
Just like America. Rich goon in charge!
Good article. It is the intent of the criminal code to protect the rich by any means possible including the legal system. The Preamble to the Australian Crimes Act, which is no longer published, spelled out “This Act is to protect power privilege and wealth.” At the time (late 1960’s) this preamble was removed from publication not a word of the Act had changed, just the preamble dropped. Presumably it was because the intent was to hide the earlier blatant statement that simplified purpose of this Act, effectively exposing it. After all, it is the political purpose of the law in a capitalist society to do exactly that, protect the wealthy powerful few against the rest of society thus impoverished.
yep, and do something like strike without first asking permission from the masters, us serfs will quickly find out what a police force is for.
background of the series
The Farmers’ Holiday Association campaign for a farm strike in the early 1930s is the actual historical event on which the story is based; the Iowa locale in the series is essentially based on Plymouth County, Iowa during this time, the strike and related events in the county seat of Le Mars, Iowa and rural areas of the county specifically beginning in early May 1932. A miners’ strike at the same time in Kentucky is the basis for that element of the plot.
this is a joke right we will be looking at everything we are fed up with the way this government is doing things in the government we will be kicking turnbull and abbot out because they aren’t listening
Same tactics all over world by conservatives. 2004 to 2007 John Howards tax cuts to the rich being:
2004 tax thresholds top rate $60k Tax returns $11B
2007 tax thresholds $180k ( lost tax ~$35B PBO analysis 2009) tax returns $20B
2018 tax reruns $28.5B ( budget.gov.au search returns)
Then their is fact that 2004 to 2007 $170B stolen from pension fund. This was created 1939 to pay pensions in Australia where 7% of wages went into the fund. peter Costello Liberal government stole this money & put it into Federal government future fund to pay exclusively federal government pensions both Federal government employees & military & politician only. THEY STOLE THE MONEY!
Then there is franking credit on shares, capital gains, negative gearing, private health, superannuation.
Also there is the loopholes for business where 1/3 of business pay no tax & those that do pay between 0% to 17%
These tax cuts were done to bankrupt Australia to push USA new world order & the American Trickle down lie. Only thing that Trickled down was 3rd world poverty & 3rd world slums in USA. Now liberals doing this class war here.
May God help us
You know it is funny i see heaps of people on facebook that say take your money out of the banks and watch the system crash. That is CRAP.
All you do is create a stupid bit of crap. The rich have the money not us average people. You basically would create yourselves as a moving target to be robbed. It is the stupidest idea i have ever heard it will not work.
Although taking all your home loans, credit cards etc and moving them to just one bank will kill all the banks instantly. The world would know everyone has a voice. Especially if you can get a bank to work with you. If that bank doesnt then create your own. Everyone in the world throws in one dollar and builds this global bank.
If this doesnt as a revolution demostrate that the people not the rich rule the world then do the next steps. The best thing is that if you tell your children this then they can act on this. It can happen anytime in the future. You as people can shut down the elites and spread the wealth easily if you work together.
Can you imagine if we as people only ever bought samsung because we choose them. It would kill apple stocks and every other mobile brand and computer. Then when they are dead in the water we as people buy them eg apple then only support our companies that the people own. You can do this with any type of company oil super market etc. We demonstrate we as people control the world not the rich.
If they dont change as people the rich we basically take over as people. You imagine everyone on the planet working together for the people. Currently the poor are only going to get poorer until something like this happens. A revolution without any bloodshed.
You look at how technology is going to take over soon. You hear the rich say ah there will be other jobs that will support this tech. Nope the rich will just get richer and pay you less as nobody can get a job. That is all our enslavement.
If all people knew this information hence i tell media, government, rich, groups etc that control us all. Hence i usually get fired from my job as a security risk. All i do though is tell people this information and i can become the richest person on the planet. As everyone is working with me. I dont want the money i just want the people in control of their destiny.
All it take is one media company on the planet to display this information about me, this idea and the world will change and never be the same again. NEVER
take your money pout, the system set up now enforces the use of banks, try and pay for your mobile phone, or internet by cash. the days of being invisible financially are long gone.
they lie,they assume ,they invent bank accounts and money that you have never had ,they change your super retirement fund to a saving account and tell you you never declared it, while your in hospital on life support they assume that your out working overtime, they open a contract for you to get some suport 6 weeks later they assume that you have earned more than 36 cents so the contract gets ended, you have no wright of reply and when you ask why your being treated in this way the only answer is –as if you didnt no ???.
HOW DO I NO THIS ITS BECAUSE THAT’S HOW THEY TREATED ME WHILE MY WIFE WAS IN HOSPITAL ON LIFE SUPPORT, THEY HAVE NO HART NO SOUL; NO SELF RESPECT OR REAL COMPASSION AND WHILE THERE TALKING TO YOU IN THAT QUITE IMPASSIONED VOICE THE OTHER HAND HAS A KNIFE IN YOUR BACK.
AS I WAS TOLD BY A CENTRELINK WORKER ITS ALL ABOUT NUMBERS THE ONLY THING THEY WANT IS TO SEE YOUR BACKSIDE LEAVE THROUGH THAT DOOR AND NOT RETURN.
I can only hope that Malcolm ,Tony and the other bigoted, people that we vote for one day might be in a position that gives them a taste of what they give out.
One more thing i was advised a while back that centrelink would be going to an overseas call centre, have a look now at the amount of centrelink workers that are left on the floor so what goes around for you government workers that where untouchable workers who thought they where there for life from me— tell someone who cares—-.
The big polutiations give themselves a pay rise,. The ones that mistreat their privilages ought not receive a polutiations pension. Yes and by attacking the youth ,this implements more crime, and mental health issues for Teaches,Nurses,Ambulance offices and police to deal with.Plus the rich send their money overseas, if the taxes are tooooo high here.
Unemployment has not always been with it. It’s a tool used to oppress and disinherit the working class and to disempower Australia’s once proud union movement. When mass unemployment reared its head again in the 70’s, it could easily have been countered with humanising strategies like creating shorter working weeks to share the available employment with all who needed it. The slow creep of disinheritance and demonisation of welfare applicants/recipients really hit its stride in the late 80’s when the Labor government cut in half the income of homeless youth (under 18 year olds). It succeeded in doing this because it successfully demonised those young people as being deficient and labelling them as “authority resisters”. Once it succeeded with this first move, successive governments were able to, step-by-step, demonise and disinherit other categories of welfare recipients – single mums, older categories of unemployed, disability pensioners, and now even aged pensioners. The kind of demonisation and brutal processing of welfare applicants has successfully created a generation or two of severe, deeply embedded trauma amongst the disiherited population. What better way to keep people subservient, including workers. Who wants to go on strike when you know there are millions willing to do anything to have your job? And yes, these strategies were all reflective of the world wide regroupment of the right wing, and the spread of neo-conservatism both socially and economically.