Perhaps the federal government could consider moving our RAAF base. Being only 40 klms out of the CBD it would be a welcome change for many residents in the Kirwan and Mt Louisa areas. Many things have changed since 1939 including the suitability of the Garbutt area to host a RAAF base and airport.
The claim from Treasurer Hockey that the world is awash with money at the moment, though governments are not, only serves to highlight the fact that he is weak on tax collection from the largest corporations.
The enforcement of existing taxation regulations brings about shortfalls in the funding that is available to governments to in turn fund programs like the NDIS, pension concessions, health and education.
Removing the price on carbon will save my family $4.31 per week, with the real winner being wealthy miners, and big polluters. A pattern is beginning to emerge. Revenue extracted from the big end of town is being abandoned.
Meanwhile ‘savings’ extracted from the small end of town where I live is chickenfeed to the federal budget, just more evidence of the “war against the poor” That’s what you get with a cruel, nasty, ideology driven conservative government.
At a time in our history when we should be investing in our youth we find this government leaning on its responsibilities rather than doing the lifting where it is needed. By making education and training more expensive you are making it more inaccessible, especially to lower S.E. individuals. This discourages a skilled Australia in favour of importing those skills in the form of 457 visa workers.
With the convictions of a couple of Australian high profile paedophiles in recent months Robert Hughes (Hey Dad) and Rolf Harris, and a Royal Commission continuing into the subject within religious institutions surely the time has arrived to increase the punishment for this crime against children.
I am not impartial on the subject, having narrowly avoided being a victim myself, and I do know of others whose lives have been wrecked by the crime. The great sadness for society is twofold, through the destruction wrought by the crime, as well as the hit this delivers to an individual’s potential.
Victims often blame themselves, when the blame and responsibility clearly lies with the perpetrator. Surely civilized society should apply a far harsher punishment than 3 years actual time served.
The dolling out of $4.5 million of hard earned taxpayers’ money to only a few political parties to think of “fresh new ideas” without attached KPIs does not represent democracy. We are not told how this amount came to be decided upon and there are no tangible regulations as to how the money is to be used. This, when the LNP constantly tell us the Queensland is broke?
No doubt the LNP, the ALP and the KAT, will all put this windfall toward their campaign chests, however PUP and the Greens will obviously cry foul and with justification. Surely public money is better spent on our hospitals and schools which are crying out for more financial assistance.
Honest independent candidates for parliament will receive nothing either, which again defies democratic freedoms and puts the independent candidate at a bigger disadvantage. Democracy is one vote, one value, and in my humble opinion it would have been far more democratic to have allocated a base amount to every vote and distributed the amount of $4.5 million equally among all sitting members and/or their collective parties based upon the actual vote at the last election.
Senator Jacqui Lambie has been quoted as saying “The Palmer United members will not support measures that take away from the poor while the government protects their wealthy rich mates” if this is indeed the case many people in the Australian community would be expecting PUP to vote down many of the LNP governments proposed cuts to low income struggling Aussie families. Time will tell if the good Senator is “fair dinkum” in her pledge.