Gus comes in to kick Johnnee's sand castles...

Under attack from the labor party in Parliament, Johnnee reiterated that Australia enjoyed unprecedented wealth for which he, Himself and his government had been responsible for...

Nice try.

In fact one has to consider the whole world picture. Should we not be importing cheap Chinese goods, inflation in Australia would be running at 15 per cent. Same in the US (11-12) . This fact alone has tilted the true picture of manufacturing/employment/gross domestic product equation. In the US one of the major problem they are faced with is illegal immigration from Mexico... Why? The appeasement or containment policy towards China — encouraging it to be part of the world goods major provider without being linked to the money market vagaries — has created a major part of this situation. A few years ago, many factories started to close in Mexico. Already providing cheap goods the Mexican could not compete with the cheaper Chinese imports. The US know they now have a huge problem on their doorstep.

On the environmental front this has created major (huge) problems. China is now providing one third of the world's cheap furniture, sourcing its raw material from illegal logging in South-East Asia. Deforestation is massive... Not to deny China's legitimate rights for comfort, we ourselves have over consumed cheaply, thus we have induced the problem...

On the oil front, the war in Iraq was the biggest lie ever concocted by a US administration. Oil is traded in US dollars worldwide. When Saddam started to trade "his" oil in Euro, the US administration got into a massive fizz. This was the thin edge of a wedge that could undermine the dollar's "influence" (read US right for selling dollars that do not exist — understand massive deficits) for years to come. Hundreds of thousand trillions of future dollars are at stake. Had Tony Blair shifted the Pound to the Euro, the US dollar influence would have sunk even further. Vaguely speaking the same language as in the US, and still weary of Napoleon and the Kaizer, Blair held onto the Pound, playing two camps at once... It's still creating unease in the EU... to the US delight...

But back to having more marbles to play with than ever before.
Aussies do not realise this, but they are paying more tax than ever before... The GST is a great cash cow. Even Paul Keating knew that, but Johnnee wanted that sacred beast with his name on it so when Keating tried to implement it, Johnnee and his men in tights fought against it.

On the making-money front, the average earning has gone up, sure. But the median earning has fallen. and will fall further due to the new industrial relation laws. That is to say there are some people making a crap-load of more money than ever before but the average worker is losing out. Same in the US. See cartoons that show such comparison graph with analysts thinking it makes more sense upside down...

Whether the government makes or lose a few billion dollars on its budget is irrelevant. (Any more can become a problem...) What is relevant is the destruction of services the government is suppose to handle... This Johnnee apparatich has flogged most of its social responsibilities onto the private and the charitable enterprises, or dismantled or tiered... Look at medicare and the way things got tilted in favour of private hospital funds... Another example shows, on one hand mothers being encouraged with a hand-out of 4000 bucks to have kids while in the long run, university fees for these kids become astronomically unaffordable, a hundred fold. Education has been more privatised than ever before.

Under Johnnee's influence major utilities have been sold off... This trend was started under Keating mind you... But where Keating was cautious, Johnnee appeared to be "callous" and "generous"... AWB was sold off. Ministers of the crown bought shares in the process... Isn't that insider trading? nah... is it? And so on... At the moment, following the Iraq food for oil scandal, the "private" wheat market has been "rescued" (not yet according to some) by Governmental intervention (trip by Mark Vaile to Iraq) at a cost to tax payers.

Mums and dads who have bought a slice of Telstra T2 at 7 buck-plus are now fuming with the telco hovering below 4 bucks... In real term this means, for them and the government, a loss of 50 per cent in value! Massive! How come the government that owns half of the bloody thing let it go like this — and of all things let the telco borrow money to pay dividends? This would nearly be fraudulent? Careless?

One of the major factor that contribute to our wealth is that we dig more holes faster... Sure the government can help manage create more holes by inducing more companies to dig and sell the dust from them but most of the profits are shifting overseas and we only collect the crumbs — in the form of employment with promises of less wages and more hard work due to Johnnee's new unfair industrial relation laws... (which we should suspect to be amended further not in our favour).

More could be said here to kick Johnnee's mud pies, including his lies about the war in Iraq and its long term cost not so much in money but in human lives...

But finally here for today, I would suggest the price of fencing material must have gone through the roof (bad image) under Johnnee's stewardship as we've come to be more mean spirited, suspicious and fearful. Fences must have gone up a couple of metres more than ever before...

And now your phone, my phone can be bugged like in the US... who cares! I have nothing to hide, not even my contempt for the lies and clever manipulation of untruths that will take thirty years to unearth. In the meantime the damage will have been done.

Have pleasant dreams... Johnnee may be so cunning as to place concrete blocks inside his sand castles.

From the ABC

Civil liberties group damns phone tap laws
Civil libertarians have raised concerns about new laws allowing crime agencies to access the phone calls, emails and text messages of people who are not suspected of committing a crime.

New legislation passed by Federal Parliament yesterday allows the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), Australian Federal Police and some other government agencies to get warrants for information stored by telecommunications companies.

Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock says the laws are needed to allow full investigation of serious crimes.

Cameron Murphy from Australian Council of Civil Liberties says they are an invasion of privacy.

"The legislation does nothing to protect the rights of innocent people," he said.

"These new powers allow police for the first time to tap the phones of innocent third parties, people who are not themselves even suspected of a criminal offence."

from the ABC

Business accuses unions of IR scare campaign
The head of Australian Business Limited has accused unions of mounting a scare-campaign by highlighting cases of people who have been sacked since the introduction of new industrial relations (IR) laws.

Addressing a Sydney University conference on workplace laws, Australian Business Limited chief executive officer Mark Bethwaite pointed out that in a workforce of 10 million, it is not unusual for people to be fired.

"Trade unions would like everyone to believe that employers this week have been indiscriminately firing people all over Australia," he said.

Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Greg Combet was also a guest at the conference.

He denies unions are trying to scare people.

"What we have been trying to do is to identify the real cases, where people have been terminated under the new laws," he said.

Mr Combet says he hopes the examples highlight what has changed for workers.