Now that ‘Back In Black’ has transformed into ‘I See Red’ Australia is waking up to the fact that after years of Coalition mismanagement ‘The Honeymoon Is Over’.
Although many of us would like to think so, elections are not won from the left or the right, they are won from the centre. At the end of election day, it is the swinging voters that will decide the immediate future direction of the country.
And so it went in 2013 when as a nation we were afflicted with this Coalition government.
Sure three leaders have knifed their former colleagues to get to the top, so the impression is of three governments, however the caucus members have remained largely the same.
It was Tony Abbott who succeeded in bringing the Coalition election victory back in 2013, and they have remained there since.
Abbott did so campaigning heavily with what he called “Our Action Contract”. This ‘contract’ was made up of four simple points which the Liberal’s thought would have the most impact on swinging voters.
These were simplified further later on by the Party of the simple, but it is the first and main promise in the action contract I want to focus on today.
The first promise in the contract was reworded to “End The Waste” at a later stage but interestingly Abbott and the Liberal’s concluded that wasted taxpayer dollars were the number one concern in the electorate. In the ‘Real Solutions Contract’, it was promise number three.
I wonder how those swinging voters must feel now after voting for their federal members on the back of a promise to end the waste.
Since then of course the Coalition have set staggering new records in wasted taxpayer money.
We have seen land purchased from a prominent Liberal Party donor for a cool 30 Million taxpayer dollars, a real bargain at 10 times the land’s value.
There’s been the Sport’s Rorts saga that saw taxpayer money used to prop up Coalition member’s election campaigns just in time for a federal election.
Another $660 Million was spent funding car parks that for the most part don’t exist and never will exist. A fine investment in the Minister, Alan Tudge’s eyes I’m sure, but probably not the average swinging voter.
In the lead up the 2013 election, there was a lot of focus on the perceived waste from what was known as the ‘BER Scheme’ implemented by the Rudd Labor government as part of its stimulus package in response to the Global Financial Crisis. This focus on any perceived wastage was spearheaded by Tony Abbott and was pushed heavily by the Murdoch Media and the shock-jocks on Macquarie Radio.
The Building the Education Revolution, or BER Scheme saw $16 Billion invested in schools as part of stimulus to drive the building sector during the Global Financial Crisis. It was a major success, even praised internationally. 95% of school principals saying the scheme would be of ongoing value to their schools and school community.
Coalition MP’s however decided to focus on what they saw as waste within the scheme. Things like work that costed more than quoted, buildings that were not necessarily needed at the time but are certainly in use now.
Those same Coalition MP’s that slammed a successful scheme for a tiny percentage of perceived waste are the same MP’s that are singing the praises of the JobKeeper scheme which through mismanagement has seen an estimated $25 Billion in wasted taxpayer funds.
To put things into perspective, that amount of waste is more than the entire BER Scheme. In fact, it is more than 150% of the BER Scheme.
What the Coalition described as waste back then is now essential education infrastructure and what they describe as essential spending through JobKeeper is $25 Billion largely sitting in Millionaire’s bank accounts.
If JobKeeper has shown us anything it is that Josh Frydenberg is Australia’s unchallenged King of Waste, Lord of the Deficit, Boss of the Budget Blowout, a virtual infant in the world of finance.
Malcolm Turnbull was always happy to display his confidence in Frydenberg’s well hidden abilities.Image- 9 News
JobKeeper was meant to keep workers in jobs during a health crisis, and there was no doubt it worked until the Morrison government turned off the tap. However under the gross incompetence of an inept Treasurer, we have witnessed the taxpayer fund the holiday homes, yacht’s and bonuses of CEOs while those struggling stacking shelves at supermarkets or shoving a ventilator down a covid victims throat find themselves funding the shareholder dividends of billion-dollar companies.
The Morrison government did however make an effort to retrieve any payments they percieved as more than necessary from those on a pension and others who are barely scraping by.
If wasted taxpayer dollars could be piled up in a stack it would be hard to see the waste of others from the moon as the stacked up waste from Frydenberg would obscure the view from every angle.
‘What A Fool Believes’
As if waste from this Titanic of a Treasurer wasn’t bad enough already, last week we learned of the government’s plans to sink and squander a few billion more on some submarines that many of us won’t see and far less of us ever need.
At least $2.4 Billion has been sunk into non-existent French subs that will never be delivered and the only shot they’ll ever fire in anger is into Australia’s credibility as a trading partner. This $2.4 Billion is expected to be just the tip of the iceberg also with most commentators predicting the wastage to exceed $3 Billion.
Then we have the new nuclear subs that we are apparently ordering. We don’t know what they are, where they come from, or certainly how much they cost. All we know is that no matter what the cost they are going to be ordered and for the next 18 months we’ll spend a few more million dollars on a task force to talk about them.
The government that won’t commit to net-zero emissions to help save the planet because they don’t know what it will cost, is happy to commit to nuclear subs that help destroy the planet with no idea how much they cost. A lesson in Liberal Party logic.
One can only hope that those swinging voters that were so concerned about fictional waste in 2013 have been keeping up with current events.
Those who have would be as appalled as most of us about the obscene levels of rorting and wastage that has spewed forth from this government that has yet to serve anything other than its own self-interests.
To those who still believe the Liberals are the financially responsible party, a reminder to check your text messages. There’s probably one about a DHL delivery from the Nigerian Royal Family that you’d better get onto before they cut off your Amazon access.
Alternatively, you could just wake the fuck up.Follow @madwixxy
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');
The post Bone Broke – New levels of debt and despair with the Morrison government appeared first on Wixxyleaks.