The first thing that struck me was his voice. Like NRL caller Ray Warren, who always sounds like an ocker turning on a posh accent for his prospective mother-in-law, Tones was clearly putting it on.
Sugar-coated by this sentence:
‘My three children are still in the education system, and Margie, my wife, works in community-based childcare so my family knows something of the financial pressures on nearly every Australian household.’
Apart from the limos and the lunch stuff.
And who the hell are the ‘forgotten families of Australia’? Is it me? And who has forgotten me? Is it government? I don’t think so. Not Treasury that’s for sure.
According to the Tonester, he’d like to provide and ‘alternative budget, but instead he’d really prefer to set out an ‘alternative vision’. Sort of like Carlos Castenada. In a suit.
Tones also ventured he would observe the
‘…first maxim of good government; namely to do no avoidable harm.’
Let’s have a little look at that sentence. I can see three problems: Do; No avoidable; Harm.
It wasn’t me: I couldn’t help it; what? It’s for the common good.
I love this bit:
‘The smart way to improve the environment is not to impose a new tax on the way every Australian lives and works but to reduce emissions via common sense environmental improvements that every one can support; by planting more trees on otherwise marginal land, by boosting the carbon content of soil into an input into the production of stock feed and bio-diesel.’
Where do you start? Who wrote this crap?
I heard Cory Bernadi on the radio the other day alleging subscribers to his twitter feed were attracted by his ‘common sense’. It’s code for ‘if you don’t agree with me you are stupid’. It’s an insult. It’s also an out.
And Tones’ environmental centrepiece:
‘…planting trees on marginal land.’
Well, it’s marginal.
Has Tones ever been to rural Australia? Apart from in a sleeper cab. When the sheep die, plant a tree. It’ll be fine.
And how, exactly, do you boost the carbon content of soil? Put the coal back? Defrack?
And then Tones is going to turn this carbon-enriched dirt into cattle feed! That’s up there with temporal deity stuff. We will feed the cows! And, as it turns out, under the Coalition, the same dirt can power your Hyundai.
Far out.
‘As thing stand’, alleges Tone, ‘we have a Parliament that can’t make decisions people respect’, like NDIS, and worse, ‘a prime minister who looks like she is not up to the job.’
