By Garry Linnell
So there I was in the bunker beneath our home earlier this week, adding to the stock of canned food and bottled water, about to start boarding up the windows around the house, all the while anxiously waiting for smoke to begin filling the street, carrying with it the shouts of an angry crowd railing against the government and its latest attack on our privacy and civil rights.
But, as usual, there was only silence. If the meek really do end up inheriting the earth then one thing is inevitable. Australia is sure to become the world's greatest superpower.
That's your money the government is talking about - and your right to spend it however you want.Credit: Bloomberg
So gentle and unassuming, so complacent and law-abiding are we, that after an influential public official came out this week and said it was time the federal government placed a limit on how much of our cash we can spend – you know, that old-fashioned folding stuff – there wasn't a whiff of protest. We just gave our usual collective shrug and looked elsewhere.
Michael Andrew, the head of the government's Black Economy Taskforce, said it was likely we will see a limit placed on cash transactions of more than $10,000. That's your money he's talking about – and your right to spend it however you want. In the most over-governed nation on the planet, riddled with petty bureaucracy and a comically growing list of regulations, you will no longer have the right to buy that car or boat upfront with a wad of notes.
Of course this move, along with others, will be cloaked with the excuse that billions of dollars are going undeclared as Australia's cash economy chugs along without everyone paying their way. Fine sentiments – usually from politicians without the stomach for overhauling our outdated and often unfair tax system.
Who among us hasn't willingly paid cash for something in return for a discount? And who among us hasn't watched at least a portion of that black money being pumped back into the economy? The old crackdown-on-the-cash-economy is a favourite sleight of hand by elected officials to camouflage the hypocrisy that clings to them as closely as their thick aftershave and fake smiles.
But by casting the same shadow of suspicion on our nation's army of tradies as they do on our drug lords and bikie gangs they conveniently lead us away from their most obscene failure – their inability to confront and prosecute those responsible for the greatest theft ever staged in this nation's history.
For decades a huge network of corporations – many based overseas but plenty of others headquartered in this country – have stolen untold billions from this country by minimising and avoiding their tax. From recent marauders such as Google and Facebook through to the rapacious oil multinationals, money that should have been ploughed into our roads, schools and hospitals has been greedily sucked up and spirited away offshore.
Yes, every now and then one of our esteemed leaders will bleat and begin beating their chests and promising tough action. And the Tax Office will dutifully salute and say it will follow through. But we all know how this works by now, don't we? The big boys threaten to pull their business and jobs out of the country, everyone eyeballs one another and then both sides return to how things were.
This decades-long refusal to confront blatant corporate thievery, turning the focus instead on the black cash economy, is symptomatic of the small-beer malaise that has afflicted Australia in recent years. We're no longer prepared to talk about the big things – or make the big decisions.
Better to crack down on tradies and a bunch of knob-headed, weed-toting bikies in order to save a couple of billion dollars, rather than overhauling our outdated welfare and taxation systems and raking back the hundreds of billions big business has fleeced from our bottom line.
This thinking now operates everywhere. Better to throw huge police resources to nail drivers slightly exceeding the speeding limit on double-demerit weekends instead of improving response times when someone reports their car stolen or house burgled.
Better to fine naughty citizens for not buckling up their pets in their cars, or for failing to wear a bicycle helmet, than working out a way to avoid the ever increasing number of truck-related fatalities and crashes on our roads.
Remember an Australia where we dared to think big? What about that long-forgotten nation that left its citizens alone to concentrate on their lives while government did its best to stay out of them? You might even remember a country where you were allowed to use your cash for any transaction.
We left that Australia long ago. We've allowed big companies to pull off an obscenely large heist. So good luck to the meek hoping to inherit the earth.
The greedy will have to give it up first.
Garry Linnell is co-presenter of The Breakfast Show on 954 Talking Lifestyle.