Election – Australia

In a week’s time Australia will vote for its seventh Prime Minister in nine years.

Not the most flattering record to have, and one which a country like Australia does not deserve. In these times stability of leadership is crucial yet here we are at it again.

Admittedly four of those Prime Ministers were not elected but voted by their own parties for self-preservation and quests for power. Either way both major parties indulged in this high stakes game and both have lost voter confidence because of it.

I voted early so the current bombardment of political advertising is lost on deaf ears, and my guess is even if you haven’t voted already you have tuned them out.

Please let us have some stability. It’s really all we ask.

It’s all going to hell in a handcart

Politicians found guilty of lying to Parliament by a Senate Committee but keep their jobs, rich Catholic schools receiving billions of dollars, family child carers and carers for ill family members paid below the poverty line, pensions not increased for over 35 years but top tax rates raised allowing the highest earnings with the lowest tax rates ever.

This is the new Australia, and I for one am devastated that in ‘growing up’ we have become, at the top and fast filtering down, just a bunch of selfish hyperactive kids out for what we can get for ourselves. Five Prime Ministers in five years is testament to this.

Local Councils charging exorbitant rates that grow above inflation every year, some of the highest electricity prices in the world, car registration costs tripling (or more) within the last five years so now old and worthless vehicles cost more to register than they are worth.

People in institutions like unions, Councils, government found to be spending as much as possible as if it is their right to do so, not caring the money was paid by us, the electorate.

Fines increased by multiples, not even a backwards glance at the CPI.

Banks and Insurance companies charging us for services we do not receive, for products we do not need, even if we are dead.

We complain about a seemingly corrupt-ridden USA, yet in our own society we trample on the rights of individuals, charge way more than necessary for vital services (unless keeping a growing beurocrocay well fed is some sort of benefit to us all) and keep a vast number of our fellow citizens below poverty, with pathetic allowances that are meant to help those who fall between the cracks, not actively widen those cracks.

And we wonder why many of our best and brightest move overseas? If I had the option I would seriously consider it myself.

We have far too many rules and regulations, our nanny state is now a baby state. The fines for minor transgressions are so high that those just surviving are pushed one step closer to poverty, even with both couples working.

The reaction to all this from the majority of our ‘leaders’ and politicians? They ignore their duties and have no KPIs or accountability to those who voted for them and pay their wages and perks. Instead of working for us, as they all promise to do prior to each election, they spend their time fighting for pre-selections, factional votes, ministerial positions that cover areas they have no experience in, and ultimately chase how many ‘numbers’ they can control which somehow defines their own importance, and therefore how much power they can wield.

Already the sixth Prime Minister in five years is jockeying for position, even before next year’s election.

Carers and volunteers contribute far more to this nation than our politicians yet live in poverty.

Either a massive shift is coming from someone with the guts to make serious changes, or a quiet revolution of a significant number of independents being elected, or worse, will cause our country to have the massive look in the mirror it desperately needs before it implodes.

Another new PM

So Australia has yet another Prime Minister, and just yesterday the same man pledged his full support for the guy he defeated today.

Unfortunately from the outside it looks like Malcolm Turnbull was never given a chance to be the Prime Minister he wanted to be. In fact in his own words he said keeping the party unified took a significant amount of his time.

That’s what we like to hear, that those working for us, the long forgotten electors who are paying their exhorbitant salary and benefits, are only getting around seventy percent of their attention. The rest is on keeping their jobs and undermining those above them so they can have their job.

If they were my employees they would be given an ultimatum. Either take a thirty percent reduction in salary or resign.

They say they are concerned about our significant cost of living increase over the last ten years, our wages not keeping up with real inflation, our ludicrously expensive electricity prices, our sick waiting months and sometimes years to be seen and our elderly and unemployed who have not had an increase in their social payments for thirty-five years.

Does anyone, anywhere, believe them anymore? No matter what side you voted for in the past ten years, they have changed leaders (and therefore PM’s) more than ever before and made us an international laughing stock.

Time and again we see their naked ambition, their ‘do anything’ attitude towards their own careers and their unbridled megalomania.

So why should we expect it to change?

I predict a non verdict in the next Federal election, whenever that may be. Parliament will be full of independents and small parties as we collectively give up on the self aggrandisement of the two major parties.

But then minorities have held governments to account before, one of whom was described by all who spoke to him as the most stupid person they had ever met.

Well I say their stupidity would probably be an improvement over what we have now.

For heaven’s sake, it could not be worse.

Rebel Wilson’s defamation payout from magazine publisher Bauer Media reduced on appeal…???

If our learned judges can disagree so significantly, no wonder our whole world is upside down! Seriously, how can one judge award $4.5m and another, on the same facts, $600,000??

How the hell are we meant to know what is real and what is not when the System itself is full of lies, manipulation, inaccuracy, deceit and completely false reporting which is somehow our fault for shortening the news cycle? I for one certainly do not remember contacting the news media and asking them to broadcast any old crap because I want to read it quickly them get on with my life.

Did I miss a memo??

They also tell us there is no inflation, yet we get far less for the same money than we ever used to. Fewer crisps in packets pumped full of air, packs of four becoming packs of three for the same price, and our taxes such as car registration, ESL, Land Tax, speeding fines (which you cannot convince me is not a tax and a barely legal one at that) all tripling in price, or more.

Our cost of living has risen significantly and yet inflation is somehow measured as being between 1.5 and 2% here in Australia??

But we are wrong, of course, they couldn’t possibly be calculating the inflation rate incorrectly…heaven forbid!

We are being kept in the dark and lied to consistently, and far more often than we were ten years ago. It is all since the GFC and the consequences of which that still affect our economy today.

If we taxed everyone 100% of their salary it would still take many years to pay off our country’s debt. The poor USA has around $2 trillion in debt! I feel a default coming on, and not just in the US of good old A.

All our so-called Leaders and ‘Experts’ can do is disagree violently with each other, making fools of themselves when they don’t think we see right through them. How many of these expert’s predictions have actually come true? So please don’t call them experts in the media before you have asked how accurate they have been!

Any moron can be an Expert, just ask me.

We have been completely rooted by the powers that be, by major banks and other companies who can only see dollar signs and act on greed. And yes we know it is happening, you have not fooled us, as evidenced by the last few elections which have been massive messages of ‘we don’t trust you’ with a very large middle finger extended for emphasis.

And which dickhead made the rule that if you work just one day a fortnight then you are not counted as unemployed?? Give me a break and at least be somewhat realistic and make it 5 or 6 hours a week. One?? Really?? So our unemployment rate, the real rate we feel in real life and not those that live in fantasy land in their lofty offices who make these moronic decisions. Our unemployment is probably 2-3 times higher than reported, and we all know it and yet no one says it because it would be too awful to hear.

Sometimes the truth is the bitterest of all pills to swallow.

Sorry, when I saw this article I just had to vent. It blows me away that a judge can award $4.5 million then another judge hearing the same evidence awards just $600K….???

Unbelievable. That is how I describe our lives today.

No privacy because it’s for our own good, fighting wars because of WMD’s that were never there, the greed and corruption that brought on the GFC and still no one has gone to jail for it.

Dairy farmers going broke but supermarkets saying that it’s not their fault they started a price war of $1 per litre.

Large businesses making record profits and bonuses when our wages have hardly moved in ten years?

Just how stupid do these idiots think we are?

Don’t answer that, please, it will only make me angrier!

A certain percentage of young people will always leave South Australia

It stinks, but it’s true.

Steven Marshall campaigned hard on this issue in the recent SA State election (which he won) and I for one am glad that fresh eyes are looking at this problem. However he will never be completely successful.

It remains a fact that 90+ percent of head offices are in either Sydney or Melbourne, and unless we want to double our size (in people, infrastructure etc) we will never attract more than one or two big businesses here, compared to the dozens interstate.

Of course it is worth trying but ANZ, Telstra, Panasonic and the very large organisations will never move here.

I myself spent four years in Sydney because I wanted to see how high I could go, and to enjoy the variety and challenge of working for a major corporation. I ended up as National Product Manager for IT Products for Panasonic Australia, a position I loved and never would have achieved had I remained in SA.

Mind you four years was enough (I spent over three hours a day commuting, thankfully in a company car), and family circumstances necessitated that I return to SA.

I came back to a position as a Corporate Salesperson for Ericsson. This was a big step down from travelling around Australia every few months, demonstrating the latest IT products and teaching distributors and major retail outlets how to sell them. I also gained valuable experience in presenting to the top buyers in Harvey Norman, Myers and so on, negotiating floor space and pricing.

I never would have had that experience here in Adelaide, where the biggest employer is the State Government.

I much prefer working in Adelaide to the traffic, congestion, polluted air and high cost of living in Sydney. However the upsides of working interstate, if you have ambition, far outweigh the negatives.

The attitude interstate is also much closer to the US and Silicon Valley. There, if you have started a business and failed they are actually impressed by your initiative and know that you learned some hard lessons. In Adelaide you are more likely to be shunned.

This attitude within our beautiful State will not change until the current ‘startup generation’ are well into their forties. Unfortunately this is a hard fact that we must face head-on.

So how do we keep young people from leaving SA? By being more forgiving of their mistakes and encouraging them to try again. By recognising that a certain percentage will move interstate no matter what you do, and helping the rest to make the move back ‘home’ an easy one.

You can accomplish this by having a small department that keeps in contact with these talented and adventurous young people, encouraging them to explore outside SA (they will anyway) and yet also ehticing them to return by offering a more welcoming attitude. This same small department could assist them in their transition back to SA, without them having to go backwards in their careers, by facilitating them to find a relevant position here that is of sufficient interest to them.

This small (keep it simple and focused!) government department could help them find interesting roles by assisting local businesses here to create them. This can be achieved by finding the already successful small businesses in SA (of which there are many) and assisting them, without mountains of red tape, to grow.

Up until now most of the emphasis has been on opening startup hubs and announcing unrealistic figures on how many jobs they will create. Yes we need to foster our local startup community but it needs to be coordinated and supported properly. This would involve assisting them by providing long term mentoring, cheap access to accountants, lawyers and investors to steer them in the right direction. Also vital is utilising the founders of already successful startups in SA, by encouraging them to introduce local business people to respected contacts they never would have met otherwise.

All this needs to be done in conjunction with identifying small businesses that could easily become large businesses with the right backing and support.

Such a coordinated effort would make it more attractive for our young people to stay here, and for those that leave it would encourage the talented ones to return. That involves keeping track of them and using a CRM (customer relationship management) system within government, to keep in touch and to entice them back.

This means it would be essential for this arm of government to be run like a business.

I, for one, have hope.

SA Election, March 2018

SA Best pledges $7.5M for something so Labor promise $8M, then the Libs promise $10M for something else and SA Best promise $11M… it’s basically a bidding war to see who can buy your vote, especially as these promises are not legally binding and therefore meaningless.

Please, use your own judgement and vote for who you think deserves it, not just because of some promise that will most likely never be honoured.

It is monumentally stupid that political promises are not legally binding, and until they are I’ll call it for what it is – a laughable vote auction being presided over by a clown (yes, red nose and all).

So many times in the past, at both State and Federal levels, politicians have ignored their pre-election promises. My first experience of this was when Paul Keating got elected on his tax cuts which he said during his campaign were already in “L-A-W law!” and yet never happened.

Laws can be changed, and his was.

If they want our respect (and the party that earns it will also win our vote) then they have to stop making promises they have no intention on keeping (“We didn’t realise how tight the budget was so can’t deliver on everything” – heard this before?).

The only way they will earn our respect is by making their promises legally binding, with penalties if they do not deliver.

They also need to pass laws that stipulate that all political advertising has to be subject to the same rules as all advertising – that is they must be true, and penalties of $100,000+ should apply.

If I went on TV and said lies and made false promises I would end up in jail. The same fate should apply to all politicians and their parties.