Mike O’Connor: Sad joke that sacrifice has been replaced by handouts

We’ve become a nation hooked on an insidious rise in government handouts, wanting something for nothing and not willing to sacrifice, writes Mike O’Connor.

Once upon a time in Australia there lived a tribe that worshipped at the altar of self-reliance and thought that the road to success was paved with hard work and sacrifice.

Its members are dying out now and I’m attending the funeral of one of them today, honouring the life of my mother-in-law Beverley who passed to her reward last week.

She started work at 16 as a clerk in an oil company, where she met her husband-to-be Rod, who worked in the mailroom.

Not a university degree between them. No higher-education loans from the government – just grade 10 schooling, ambition and energy.

She was married before she turned 21, with Rod moving on from sorting letters to becoming a sales rep for the oil company, a role that saw him transferred around the country – Maitland, Naracoorte, Adelaide, Darwin, Melbourne and finally to Canberra.

Beverley followed him, setting up house in every new posting with the two kids who had arrived in quick succession.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the jobs and skills summit in Canberra last week. Picture: Getty Images

There were no childcare subsidies and no preschool classes. She stayed at home and raised the kids while Rod worked as long and as hard as needed to support his family.

Eventually, tiring of the constant moves, he bought a service station in Canberra in the days when servos actually offered service and he filled his customers’ tanks and cleaned their windscreens while Beverley did the books out the back.

The kids were now at school so she headed off to the servo after they left and was waiting to greet them when they got home.

Rod built the servo business into a money-spinner and then sold it and got a job managing a shopping centre, working his way up the company ladder to become managing director of one of the largest listed property groups in the country and sitting on the board of directors.

They got nothing from the government and didn’t expect any handouts, yet by virtue of little more than a belief that if you applied yourself, you could achieve your goals,

Rod rose from the mailroom to the boardroom because he gave everything his best shot.

I wrote Beverley’s eulogy in between watching developments in Canberra as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese conducted his well-choreographed talkfest on the future of industrial relations in the country, a barely disguised platform for the unions to tell the government what they demanded in return for the money they had poured into the campaign.

Beverley’s husband Rod rose from the mailroom to the boardroom because he gave everything his best shot, and did not rely on handouts, writes Mike O’Connor.

According to the Australian Council of Trade Unions, what people who elect to have children want – it’s not compulsory, I understand – is 12 months’ paid parental leave for six months is simply just not good enough.

We also need the government to pay for childcare with 90 per cent subsidies for the first child with the insane situation of families earning up to $530,000 a year able to put out their hands for childcare payouts, as promised by the PM.

Apparently, a family can’t manage on $10,000 a week without a handout. What a sad joke.

The generation that is now slowly being extinguished by the passage of time displayed a strength and resolve that has sadly been lost.

When things don’t work out now, it’s because the government hasn’t done enough.

Nurses now want free degrees and if nurses, then why not everyone? The government can pay. It’s your right, surely?

Not enough workers out there? Free TAFE courses are the answer.

You bought a house on a flood-plain and guess what? It flooded.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wraps up the jobs and skills summit last week. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gary Ramage

Obviously, the government should buy you out.

You built a house surrounded by bushland and it burnt down. It’s the government’s fault for not doing enough.

During the pandemic, people walked away from their jobs because they could make more money sitting in front of the TV at home and taking a government handout. Work ethic, anyone?

Beverley’s story is not unique. It’s typical of her age.

My grandparents arrived in this county with nothing and found success through hard work, the cane knife that hung on a nail beneath their house a rusting testament to my grandfather’s years of backbreaking toil in North Queensland’s cane fields.

The steady creep of the government handout is insidious, every election campaign able to be condensed into a single slogan – “Vote for me and I’ll give you something for nothing.”

It’s too late to stop it now. To paraphrase Karl Marx, it’s become the opium of the people, a need, which like all addictions, can never be satisfied.