With the US result some friends and I have been discussing who the worst PM was/is.
Edmund Barton. What an arse
For me it was Howard. He was really effective at furthering many neo liberal economic policies to fuck over anyone not born in to wealth. Sure some of the more recent PMS have been more embarrassing and stupid (scummo, abbot) but Howard was an absolute arsehole.
He brought in the capital gains tax discount for real estate which when combined with the existing negative gearing policy was/is a major contributor driving investors to real estate thus making property become unaffordable. Not to mention it’s just so unfair inequitable. Why the fuck should a person who buys existing houses pay less tax on money gained from that than someone who actually produces something of value does on their income?
He was the political equivalent of the FIFO miner spending all his cash on a Malloo, jet ski and glass BBQ party. Howard pissed the early - mid 2000s mining boom proceeds up the wall on middle class welfare. Instead we could have had a future fund like Norway. To be fair every politician we have had since has either been too corrupt or scared to attempt anything like that.
Howard also realised he could fuck over unions by bringing in masses of extra workers via record immigration in order to lower wages. (Added Bonus this increased demand on real estate too) He won’t be remembered for that on immigration, instead he will be remembered for his “boat people” rhetoric. It was like a magicians distraction, look at these bad immigrants, meanwhile opening the floodgate for “good” immigrants.
He sold telecom setting our internet tech back at least a decade.
He dragged us in to the middle east wars like a good little lapdog for George dubbya.
He started the erosion of Medicare to please his private health fund donors.
As a millennial, not born in to 1% wealth, Howard and the liberal parties message to me has always been “go fuck yourself”. I will never put liberal anywhere but the bottom of the ballot. Potato head might be fantasising about winning the votes of the working class by paying lip service to some issues we face and then campaigning against social issues we don’t care about. I don’t think that many of us are so foolish to think that the liberals will ever be anything but the party for the elite. Even then they are only the party for the honest elite, that wear their arseholery as a badge of honour. The other elites have the teals.
The problem with a “Future Fund” is that our politics isn’t geared up to handle it. Imagine a kitty of $50 Billion sitting just there and a new party gets in. They’ll spend it, of course. So even if you get a fiscally responsible PM who establishes such a fund, the other party would get in three years later, spend that money immediately on [PROJECT] and then claim all the credit for it.
I think Norway’s has legislation around the percent that can be used now vs what has to be reserved for future generations. Although I agree with the sentiment that the calibre of politicians we elect couldn’t be trusted to think beyond one election cycle.
@wildwhitehorses I doubt any state has ever had a leader worse than Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
Bloody Jeff.
Sold all our Publicly owned infrastructure to private companies.
Now we have to deal with electricity resellers screwing us over and the government needing to fork out Corporate Welfare in the form of “Energy Relief” to line their mates pockets.
WA still owns its power grid. My power bills in WA are far cheaper than they were in Victoria. These two facts are probably related.
Also, the WA government reserves a stash of gas for local reservation before companies are allowed to sell the rest “at market rate”. That gas belongs to everyone, not just the company that extracts it. This policy also helps to keep energy prices in WA reasonable.
For me it was Scomo by a country mile. Abbott had some peculiar views, but he didn’t seem as totally incompetent.
