Tag Archives: selfishness

Greens True Colour Is A “Consistent Red”

20 Feb

Paul Kelly tells it like it is:

CHRISTINE Milne’s busting of the Labor-Greens alliance proves the Greens are Labor’s political enemy and that Julia Gillard should never have entered this deal in the first place.

With the Prime Minister in her weakest hour, the Greens have sunk in the boot. Perfect timing. Some friends. Some allies.

With the election near, the alliance has exhausted its utility. Both sides are looking to product differentiation as campaign rivals.

Milne’s decision has nothing to with principle and everything to do with the Greens’ electoral needs. It makes no difference to the parliament, but it shows the Greens are as cynical, expedient and unscrupulous as the major parties. Their claims to superior morality are a joke.

Kelly’s article is headlined “Greens showing their true colours”.

Which got me wondering.

Paul Kelly is right. The Greens’ claims to superior morality are a joke.

Clearly, they are just as self-serving as all the rest.

And so, as the political party of choice for the resurgent religion of paganism, I thought it might be interesting to see just what colour a pagan would assign to “selfishness” in a person’s “aura” –

A Consistent Red: A consistent dark red indicates a violent nature, a selfish and deceitful attitude.

Sounds right.

The Greens have consistently had an aura of deep red about them.

 

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Oh Dear, Barnaby

15 Apr


From the Daily Telegraph:

BARNABY Joyce is kidding himself – and all the Australians planning to vote for the federal Coalition at next year’s election – with his latest policy thought-bubble of $10,000 baby bonuses for stay-at-home mothers.

Nobody would deny it’s hard work being a mum, or that the financial pressure on families is increased with every new baby.

But the Nationals Senator’s idea of handing $10,000 to women who choose not to take paid employment is a social policy nightmare.

It would be a tacit encouragement to women to stay at home instead of maintaining their careers with part-time or full-time work, contributing to the taxation system and building up their own superannuation balances in preparation for retirement.

It would, without a shadow of doubt, create a generation of women who opt out of the workforce.

Australia can’t afford that luxury.

Indeed, it is a social policy nightmare in the view of your humble blogger also.

But for the polar opposite reason of that propounded by Neil Breen, editor of the Daily Telegraph, who clearly thinks the biggest problem with the Nationals’ policy is that it would encourage mothers not to go back to doing their “modern” “enlightened” “liberated” duty … their “equal right” to be binary-digit earning, tax-paying, interest-paying lifelong debt slaves of The Machinery of “modern” society.

Back to that in a moment.

First, some balance.

All the lamestream media commentary I have seen on this subject fails to consider context and nuance.

As usual.

First, they are automatically, in typical knee-jerk style, sheeting home all responsibility for this policy suggestion to Barnaby Joyce. Even though it is not necessarily his personal suggestion – it is a revived Nationals policy:

Fearing a backlash over the generosity of the Coalition’s proposed paid-parental-leave scheme, which would offer wealthy working women up to $75,000, the Nationals have proposed a better deal for stay-at-home mums.

“It’s an incredible sacrifice for women to stay at home. You can see it in their superannuation and everything else,” Senator Joyce said.

“We want to make sure people don’t lose their house. Because everything is based on two incomes these days. All policies have a cost. But it’s a substantial sacrifice for people not to go to work.”

The Nationals first flagged the policy at the 2010 election …

Nationals leader Warren Truss stressed the plan to double the baby bonus was a policy of the Nationals rather than the Coalition and had not been endorsed by Mr Abbott.

It is clear to any thinking person that The Nationals revived policy suggestion is motivated primarily, if not entirely, by the gross inequality of Tony Abbott’s paid parental leave scheme, whereby working mums would receive 6 months paid leave at full pay for those earning up to $150K pa – meaning, up to $75K of taxpayers’ money for a high earner – while stay-at-home mums receive nothing.

Barnaby Joyce is nothing if not fair minded, and genuinely concerned for the many who get overlooked and left behind by the popular (social-engineering) politics of the day – witness his attempts to see justice done in the abhorrent Heiner Affair. So I applaud him for wanting to see a rebalance of the Abbott policy.

However. This is not the way to do it.

In my personal view, the baby bonus is bad policy. As with so many (all?) government “solutions” for society, it is classic good intention, bad outcomes. Indeed, the baby bonus is one of several major criticisms I have of the Howard government era.

Why?

For all the good intentions, it is my view that cash handouts for having a baby simply (1) encourages by reward the “handout” / welfare state dependency mentality, and (2) encourages the very young, the vulnerable, the desperate, and the foolish, to fall pregnant just to “get the cash”.

I have personally witnessed numerous examples of both those outcomes.

And so, for those reasons, I oppose the idea of a “baby bonus” as a matter of principle.

If Barnaby Joyce and/or the Nationals want to see government encouragement for, and a better and fairer deal for stay-at-home mums, that I strongly applaud.

Indeed, quite unlike Neil Breen of the Daily Telegraph, this blogger is all for a society where parents are actively encouraged to stay home and nurture and raise their children themselves – for the long haul, not just 6 months – rather than push their babies onto (government-regulated) “carers” a.s.a.p., so they can get back to “earning money” and “pursuing MY career” a.s.a.p.

Having witnessed many friends with young families who have followed the ever-growing trend in so-called “modern” “advanced” society to do exactly this, I see the results in the little individual horrors that others raise for them, and wonder at the collective horrors we may all face within a generation or two.

Back to Neil Breen, editor of the Daily Telegraph one last time:

It would, without a shadow of doubt, create a generation of women who opt out of the workforce.

Australia can’t afford that luxury.

Yes, we can.

The entire world can.

All it takes is a transformation of our “money” system.

From being our master … to being our servant.

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“Selfless Shine Above The Selfish”: Barnaby

8 Apr

To a humble blogger whose most fervent core belief is that “PRIDE is the root of all evil”, Senator Joyce’s column in the Canberra Times resonates strongly:

Selfless shine above the selfish

Easter, Queensland’s state election is over, Parliament is out, time to relax with the family.

Relaxation is essential but in so many careers our life is like climbing a cliff continually reaching for that next foothold or crevice to pull us further up. If you stop too long you will cramp and fall off and if you have reached your top, well then, it is all downhill from there.

At the triathlon in Mooloolaba last week the general aim of competitors was to do a PB. At work, a career implies aspiration, as the alternative is regret. How many colleagues in the coffee room tell you that they are aspiring to a lesser job on lower pay? Spiritually, have you ever come across someone who told you they actually did find enlightenment but got bored with it in favour of banality?
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Relaxation, like sleep, is an elixir on so many levels. So I am in Forster-Tuncurry ”relaxing”. At church on Sunday the local parishioners asked what I was doing. I told them I was ”relaxing with the family” which can be an oxymoronic juxtaposition. Some of the parishioners were ”relaxing” as well; some had been relaxing for years.

There are a lot of businesses that are very busy here helping people relax. To relax, apparently you have to consume lots of stimulants such as coffee, served at many shops up and down the main street.

You have to be eternally vigilant that you don’t go from purposeless relaxation to exercising as you go for a walk. Just as dangerous is reading the paper in which you may find a philippic written by some column troll and you will be taken back to work to write your rebuttal against this oxygen thief.

Then there are the questions you ponder as you stare at the ocean – what is the right proportionate mix of all these component parts; career goals, physical health, spiritual depth and how does one make sure that it is does not crowd out the most important responsibility to your family. How much is the appropriate amount of guilt you should feel before you are stirred from the slumber of ”there is more that I can do but I really cannot be bothered”.

Senator Judith Adams was a great example of an unselfish determination to serve. While some at Judith’s stage of life would have been content with relaxing, Judith instead took on board the major challenge of federal politics. Judith would have known her fate, but she worked until the end.

Born in Picton, New Zealand, she migrated to Australia and worked as a nurse. Judith began serving in the Senate in 2005 at the age of 62. I started then, too, I was 38. She was pro choice; I was and am pro life. Judith was a regional Lib, I am a regional Nat.

On so many levels we were likely to lock horns, but we didn’t. In 2008, I was honoured to attend the funeral of Judith’s husband, Gordon, a former Royal Flying Doctor pilot. Judith was a very matter-of-fact, practical and driven woman.

Politics is a job where you have the unfortunate experience of working with colleagues who die. Good people. It is the flip side of people like, and I will say it, Craig Thomson. I will say it because some drag the office down while others raise it up. A person can respect their public office while being completely at odds with a lot of what you believe in, but they conduct themselves in such a manner which deserves nothing but respect. Judith was such a person.

My recollection of Judith will be her intense interest in the lives of regional Australians. She committed to the task knowing she was never going to be a senior office holder. The reality is that many of the wider public would probably not even know her name. The strength about Judith was that this was not what was driving her.

She just wanted people to have their lives affected in a way which made things better for them. She didn’t want the fuss and the bother of the laurels. Even when she was going around on her electric wheelchair in Parliament, she always said that this was only temporary and that she was getting better. I have a sneaking suspicion she realised the truth but just didn’t want the attention to distract her from her job for others.

Barnaby is right.

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