Green fantasy would drive us all to red ruin

THE reaction to the federal Budget from both Labor and the Greens would indicate they want to ensure Australia becomes a nation of innumerate bludgers.

More taxes, not less; more handouts, not fewer. There is no budget crisis, the left-wing parties shrill. But the nation is clearly on a debt-and-disaster trajectory unless tough measures are taken now, and most Australians recognise the need to tighten the belt before the unsustainable cost of the Labor-Green profligacy totally destroys the future. “Well, there isn’t a budget emergency,” Greens leader Christine Milne shrieked about the figures on Wednesday. “There is not an emergency in terms of debt. There is a failure to raise revenue. And this whole budget discussion is completely insulating the revenue side.” When pressed about the third of the population, some seven million, receiving Centrelink payments, Milne switched to the Greens’ default position: “What I think is we have to raise more money, look at what we’re spending, see what we can service in terms of debt.” She wants to squeeze more money out of those already doing the heavy lifting to pay for Labor-Green supporters who don’t want to work and don’t want to move from their leafy retreats to areas where the jobs are. Making it harder for young people to go from school to a life on the dole is a no-brainer. It is not an attack on young people, as Opposition Leader Bill Shorten claims. It is an attack on the welfare mindset that encourages the slothful institutionalisation of benefits. It is about preventing young people from sliding into indolence and encouraging them to learn skills, through apprenticeships, at TAFEs or universities, so they can become productive contributors to their nation. Treasurer Joe Hockey has demanded Shorten explain how he would pay for all of his hopeless predecessors’ big-ticket promises — things like the Gonski program, the NDIS and the ongoing cost of the dysfunctional NBN. Shorten has had nearly nine months now to develop a strategy to deal with the budget holes left by former prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, but so far he has only called for greater spending rather than restraint. He has been so obstructive that he has had to renege on his own party’s promise to scrap its ill-conceived and abysmally executed carbon tax when its abolition would save pensioners and low-income earners more than enough to meet the small increases in the cost of visits to doctors. Hockey put the $7 co-payment charge in context when he compared it to a packet of cigarettes, which costs around $22. “That gives you three visits to the doctor,” he said. “You can spend just over $3 on a middy of beer, so that’s two middies of beer to go to the doctor.” The grandstanding by Labor and the Greens has given the Abbott government the opportunity to highlight the reluctance of the state governments to take responsibility for raising the money they wish to spend. That’s why the state premiers are squealing. It’s far easier for them to portray themselves as victims of a harsh, penny-pinching federal government than to step up and raise their own revenues for their programs. As Abbott has pointed out, there is a tax reform white paper due and there is a white paper on federation in the next 18 months. He says the states and territories are perfectly entitled to argue for change, if that’s what they want, but each level of government should be sovereign in its own sphere. States run public hospitals. States run public schools and, over time, should bear a larger share of funding them. The national electorate finally woke to Labor’s scam last September, but many still fail to understand how seriously the Rudd and Gillard governments, with their Green and Independent hangers-on, damaged the fabric of the Australian economy. It must be repaired in a timely fashion and Tuesday’s Budget goes some way to addressing the problems before the nation follows those across Europe which have suffered from the borrow-and-spend economics beloved of socialist states. Abbott has raised the possibility of a double dissolution should his measures be blocked by hostile Senators although it seems unlikely that will be necessary, despite the bluster of Queensland windbag Clive Palmer and his PUP senators. Former Labor treasurer Wayne Swan never delivered a surplus and he never told the truth about the state of the economy. Hockey and Abbott are being upfront about the bad numbers and are honestly trying to wrestle the nation back on track. They have both taken responsibility for the tough measures they believe are necessary — something Labor still refuses to do. They are not running for office. They are not running in a popularity contest. They are trying to stop the country being run into the ground under the weight of the Labor-Green debt burden. WE HAVE BEEN PENALISED ENOUGH AFTER six suffocating years of trade union-directed Labor government policies it’s encouraging to see signs of real reform occurring within the workplace. Anyone who wants to eat out over a weekend knows just how tough the unions made it for restaurants forced to pay staff absurd penalty rates. Many restaurants just didn’t bother opening. Others built in huge surcharges to pass on costs to their patrons. Ordinary Australians lost out, tourists were left puzzled and disappointed and, as always, young people looking for some entry-level work and hoping to pick up a few dollars to help with their school or university fees were thwarted. The situation is about to change a little but not yet enough. It is encouraging, though, to see the Fair Work Commission finally come round to recognising that the extremely punitive penalty rates cost inexperienced casual workers jobs in restaurants. The tribunal has maintained a still-punishing 50 per cent Sunday penalty rate for regular workers, but it has ruled that an extra 25 per cent loading for casual workers no longer be paid. This is a small victory for common sense but it doesn’t go far enough. There is an army of young people desperate for work but locked out of opportunity because of the penalty rate regime. The tribunal has begrudgingly acknowledged the extra loading for inexperienced casuals was “more than is required to attract them for work” on Sundays. If its members could only hear the young people who are pleading for employment, any employment, they would have thrown out the penalty rate entirely. FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN DECLINE THE greatest threat to knowledge is unfocused information, English philosopher and aesthete Roger Scruton told a dinner in Sydney on Wednesday. Given the dross that clogs the internet, the myths and the conspiracies which abound, it is difficult not to agree. The state-dominated education systems across the West with their increasingly narrow national curricula which stress such social engineering qualities as inclusiveness and diversity rather than literacy and numeracy means students pass through schools knowing less than their parents did. Scruton was brought to Australia by the Institute of Public Affairs, the oldest independent, non-profit public policy think tank in the world, dedicated to preserving and strengthening the foundations of economic and political freedom. Not unnaturally, its support for the free market of ideas, the free flow of capital, a limited and efficient government, evidence-based public policy, the rule of law, and representative democracy makes it an object of hatred for all those on the left. Scruton’s analysis of the state of freedom in Australia is depressing, particularly Labor’s support for censorship of ideas under 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Far better to permit debate than legislate against discussion, no matter how offensive or insulting some views may be, says Scruton, who is particularly scathing of those who try to shut down dialogue by labelling opponents as racist, Islamophobic or homophobic.