The Liberal Party has turned the corridors of power into the winner’s enclosure at the Magic Millions – an enclosure filled with the representatives of the gambling, coal, gas and oil industries who win every race before it has ever been run. A shoe in.
How else could a habitual liar and coal-carrying former national Treasurer become our Prime Minister?
Having won two elections through undisclosed donations here in Tasmania, the Liberal party and its hacks renewed the poker machine license in the pubs and the casino on the industry’s terms. The quid pro quo was that the one-armed bandit license deal passed through the state Parliament with barely an amendment, but now assisted rather than opposed by a fawning Labor Party which had completely lost its bottle.
The poker machine elections saw the continued power in Tasmania of companies looking for favourable terms. These favourable terms benefit the Tasmanian gambling industry to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars as a consequence of the matter never going to tender. This blatant use of power exceeded in its temerity all previous attempts by Tasmanian Premiers at corrupting the system.
Even the stellar efforts of such past masters such as the fast trackers through Parliament, Paul Lennon and Robin Gray – the champion, in his words, of the honourable and outstanding John Gay, he who kept his money in the freezer, pale into insignificance.
The one-armed bandits who bought a Liberal victory at the polls are the latest and greatest example of Tasmanian vested-interest politics that always triumphs over the common good.
The federal Liberals gained power under Abbott using the slogans ‘Climate Change Is Crap’ and the lie of ‘Debt and Deficit’. They have now crashed through the trillion-dollar debt barrier making the A$175 billion under Rudd and Gillard look like small change – while the fires and floods engendered by climate change are being felt by all.
Who cares over the printing of a trillion dollars of soon-to-be-worthless paper money which, with nowhere go, has caused a boom without foundations? Certainly not those who use our money to buy and keep power!
Now for the bust as inflation will cause higher interest rates, and then the high-flying Liberal money-printing machine will burn out and Labor will be blamed for the ensuing mess in the next electoral cycle.
The Liberals modus operandi of rorting the system to get elected has been fueled by a never-ending gravy train of corruption. Wake up, you editors of our national newspapers! Show some courage and call these third-rate lying spivs to account before they drive the nation over the cliff of bankruptcy.
Our ABC is denigrated, its budget continually reduced to constrain its independence and ability to inform. Our universities, as centres of excellence, were allowed to fall outside the guidelines for JobKeeper and consequently are rapidly going bust.
As a result, UTAS is planning a bond raising (which is not going well) while aiming to sell a perfectly good campus to the maates now rubbing their hands with glee. How can this be? The answer is that corruption throughout the body politic in Tasmania is so deeply embedded that it reigns supreme.
Independents of any form must control the balance of power at the next federal and state elections.
Anything is better than a rorting, rooting, and rotting Liberal Government constantly on the take as it runs the most powerful protection racket in the country – for the maates.
