Polly Watch
Instead governments pay to prop up the favoured rich via secret deals using public property and tax breaks, while ordinary workers and small business owners stumble through life working longer hours for less money as they are told to “work smarter”, as their work prospects are being dismantled because of globalised trading on supposedly “level playing fields”.
We have reports of favoured mates in Tasmania being assisted by government tax breaks and peculiar crown land transfers and other deals to monopolise our forestry assets and waterways whilst forestry workers are losing their jobs.
The Lennon Government is an opportunistic exploiter of the people, wasting millions on minders to peddle spin that appeals to the base instincts of the most gullible.
Good financial reporting requirements would highlight the amount of public money that is being spent on minders and mates’ deals in Tasmania, at a time when governments should be leading people instead of appeasing them with lies and hiding current world trends in marketing.
I overheard a conversation this weekend between a shop assistant and her customers. She was extolling the virtues of shopping online. She had saved thousands of dollars by purchasing ipods, the latest movies “that haven’t been released here yet”, even her diamond engagement ring was purchased in another Asian country via online shopping – saving her partner “about two thousand dollars”.
She obviously saw no contradiction between, on one hand, her job, the wages and weekend penalty rates she received, and on the other hand, not supporting traders here by buying overseas. I doubt she even considered the pittance workers in other Asian countries receive, the hours they work, and their poor standards of living.
Our governments should be pointing out the contradiction and should be making it more expensive for such goods to be brought into the country.
Instead governments pay to prop up the favoured rich via secret deals using public property and tax breaks, while ordinary workers and small business owners stumble through life working longer hours for less money as they are told to “work smarter”, as their work prospects are being dismantled because of globalised trading on supposedly “level playing fields”.
We have reports of favoured mates in Tasmania being assisted by government tax breaks and peculiar crown land transfers and other deals to monopolise our forestry assets and waterways whilst forestry workers are losing their jobs.
Australian company directors are taking salaries and perks in the millions while workers are being retrenched or are working longer hours for the same money, share dividends are plummeting, and in the case of Telstra, the company’s market share is sliding backwards.
Shop at Wal-Mart?
Wal-Mart, a US company, is rumoured to be trying to take 40 per cent of Australia’s supermarket business by buying Coles. It was reported on this morning’s television business reports that US business directors earn 200 times the salary of their workers. Combine an exploitative business culture like this with the new federal workplace rules, and workers should be very worried.
And then we have reports of the Tasmanian Government secretly supporting the development of a huge shopping complex at the Hobart airport that would undercut current retailers. I wonder what incentives government would give the developers, out of the public purse, to justify risking profits in such a small economy?
Small population (and we like it that way), more shops than shoppers, mates’ deals, global on-line trading, selfishness and consumerism encouraged by government policy, and the general public wandering along with their eyes shut. Frightening stuff.
Does this under-educated government have grandiose visions that Tasmania can be the new Singapore? Or perhaps the seamier Hong Kong?
In comment on Investigative Journalism: A Consumer’s Perspective David Obendorf observed that:
“Lennon and his spin doctors know what other recent incumbent State governments know too well. Give the people bread and circuses and the majority will be content.”
Today the ‘bread’ is the familiar catch cry of ‘Jobs, jobs jobs’; and the ‘circuses’ are likes of gambling, sport [racing, footy, Targa], the vast consumerism options [big box stores, supermarkets; restaurants, good food and plenty of alcohol].
The vast majority of voters — lets face it — aren’t concerned about how governments cuts its deals, until it affects them financially or personally.”
Well we urgently need to be aware of what this government has in mind for this state, and forcing it to fully report on its financial dealings is an important first step. Meanwhile, a dose of bipolar disorder medication for some of the pollies may help.
