Steve Price: Australia becoming a nation of handouts
The notion of a hard day’s work for a fair day’s pay has been lost in a vote blitz buying circus of handouts and freebies we all have to pay for. Our ancestors would be rolling in their graves.
Opinion
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Australia once labelled itself the lucky country. These days the lazy country might be a better way to describe us.
The handout nation even.
The notion of a hard day’s work for a fair day’s pay seems to have been lost in a vote blitz buying circus of handouts, freebies, grants and schemes that we all pay for.
And guess what? All sides of politics are guilty of turning Australians into a nation of takers expecting governments to give them everything from free medical care, taxpayer funded places to live and even a handout to pay your power bills. Our ancestors would be rolling in their graves that they paid for with a lifetime of work, sacrifice and financial caution.
Cash was king and you didn’t buy a new car or big house with a giant TV until you could afford it. A household budget meant just that, you didn’t spend what you didn’t have.
If only people like Jim Chalmers and Josh Frydenberg before him had some of that financial discipline.
Examples are not hard to find and this week’s coverage of Labor’s fourth budget in three years proves the point, and every Australian seeing a smiling Chalmers, takeaway coffee in hand, laughing his way through a vote buying, pretend fiscal plan, for our country knows it.
Problem is these days what politicians do is target their voter base, give them some money, and then design a new giveaway to potential voters hoping the bribe works. It usually does and the vicious circle continues.
So, it was no surprise off the back of the Chalmers five dollar a week tax cut a year or so from now to see Peter Dutton joins the giveaway game.
If elected at the May election he promised to cut in half the fuel excise you pay, with an estimated $750 a year saving on a one tank a week top up.
Both policies feed the narrative that governments are here to give us stuff and Australians now expect as much. Lucky or lazy let’s have a look.
Take the housing crisis as one example with housing construction targets hopelessly behind after the ambition to build 1.2 million homes over five years remains an impossible dream.
This self-inflicted shortage – driven by out of control and unnecessary record immigration numbers – has seen a policy promise for 42,000 Australians to be able to buy an existing or new home partly financed with your money. It’s called the Shared Home Ownership scheme and or Help to Buy and is set to cost us the taxpayers $800m.
The scheme in simple terms means those eligible co-own their house with Canberra or with you and me.
Gee what a great idea that is! On Tuesday night they upped the salary you can earn to qualify for this crazy idea, a couple can be on $160,000 a year jointly and buy a house worth $1.3m, and you must promise to keep it in good condition. If you sell Canberra takes back its 40 per cent even if house prices in that area have spiked or renovate.
Not sure about you I only want MY money to pay for MY own house I’m not interested in being part of a national home ownership scheme. Seriously if you want to buy a house it’s simply get the deposit, have a job that satisfies the bank and get a mortgage.
Dutton’s Opposition has a plan to allow first home buyers to use a percentage of their superannuation as a deposit top up. I’m not sure I like that either but at least it’s the buyer’s own money not yours and mine.
Our handout mentality of expecting taxpayers to fund our lifestyle choices has now spread into all areas of Australian life fuelling this notion that government owes us a handout. It is rampant in health care and the NDIS has become a money pit so big and so rorted that is costing us more than what we spend on defence.
If we end up with a minority Labor government after the election and the Greens have any arguing power, they want Medicare to cover for free the cost of dental care at around $7bn a year. And where will that money come from? Well the Greens have some have baked idea of taxing big corporations more risking of course them relocating offshore, hiking the prices of what they make and sacking people.
Dental care is a personal responsibility, and I don’t want to pay for your back teeth being filled.
At some point this country and both sides of politics must accept they have to stop spending what they don’t have and break this handout expectation. Take energy bill relief as another example, with Chalmers on Tuesday puffing his chest out and spending $1.8bn to give everyone including families and small businesses a $150 bribe to extend power bill help.
I don’t need that, so explain why this isn’t means tested – if you ask that question you are told that would be too complicated to manage. Are we really to believe giving millionaires electricity discounts is smart, when all it really is about is covering up a promise of cheaper power bills Labor made last election.
The list goes on and on – 20 per cent discount for every university student’s HECS and HELP debt wiping off $16bn in student debt, free TAFE for everyone, a minimum three days of subsidised (that means you and me paying) childcare for couples earning up to $530,000 without even checking on how much they work each fortnight. Labor wants universal free childcare meaning no-one pays for any day.
We are living in a government-funded dreamland. On Tuesday night we learned that the cost of 900 medicines on the PBS will – or at least 80 per cent of them – drop in price from $31 to $25 – again no means test. Another $8.5bn of your taxes will be spent encouraging GPs to bulk bill an extra eight million consultations.
Labor will even use your money to shout the entire nation cheaper beer – a $200m cost dropping alcohol excise – good luck and cheers.
Dislikes
Melbourne CBD bike lanes still empty even at 5.15pm rush-hour in Exhibition Street.
Melbourne Airport terminal one renovations include non-gender branded toilets whatever that means.
Social media influencers invited into the budget lockup this week giving us an insight on how this election will be fought.
Being nabbed twice in 20 minutes by a speed camera in a 60 zone on Boxing Day.
Likes
Plans to ban foreign buyers of existing houses in Australia.
Taking part in a good-natured roast of TV and radio star Carrie Bickmore for Fox FM at the Comedy Theatre.
Port Power selecting Tom Cochrane a Tourette’s sufferer for his first senior AFL game.
Finally we have an election date – let the campaign begin.
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Originally published as Steve Price: Australia becoming a nation of handouts
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