I'm a self-funded retiree who has never asked the old CES or Centrelink to find me a job - nor have I ever been on the dole in my life.
I worked for a living from the time I left Ag College until retiring.
My parents, relatives and forebears all worked for a living - including my Auntie Molly who's husband (a dairy farmer) died of cancer during the Great Depression leaving her with five little kids to look after and a debt-laden dairy farm back in the days when there was no 'Parenting Allowance'.
She had two alternateives - get tough or go under so she got tough. She did a man's work all day and a woman's work before dawn (when milking began) and after dark when she had finished the second milking.
Without government assistance of any kind, single-handedly my Auntie Molly raised five children and ran that farm 7 days a week for 12 years without a single day off until the mortgage had been paid.
I loved visiting my Auntie Molly. She never complained about her lot in life - but I knew (as a kid) that you never gave any 'lip' to Auntie Molly. (vbg!)
In her spare time, she'd go to CWA meetings to help women who were less fortunate than herself to cope with the ups and downs of life.
Her five children (my older cousins) all became wonderful generous, vibrant, warm human beings.
So I'm a great believer in autonomy, self-reliance and free enterpise.
The complete opposite of autonomy and self-determination is 'socialism' - a system where the government makes all the big decisions and you get savagely punished for acting without its permission.
Now for my question:
If John Howard says that HE will decide who will come to this country and the manner of their arrival and that any person who exhibits autonomous, free-enterprise tendencies will be sent to prison (with their kids) on a HIS sayso with no trial, no judge, no jury for as long as HE pleases...
... is John Howard a supporter of 'Free Enterprise' or is he a national socialist who gets his jollies from exercising totalitarian power?
But, but, but (I hear you cry) what about the HOARDES of refugees who will use our front lawns as public toilets if we tolerate 'Free Enterprise' by the WRONG sort of people?
If the price of anxiety reduction is for children to be kidnapped and shoved into electrifed Ruddock cages and left to rot...
... please Mr Howard can I have my anxiety back - I can live with anxiety - but I can't and won't accept child-caging as my Social Valium!
It's not my job to solve all Australia's social dilemmas, but any 'solution' that involves child abuse HAS to be junked and re-built from the ground up!
If the propounder of child abuse (as Social Valium) won't or can't let go of that obscenity then HE has to go and his policy junked and re-built from the ground up so it excises caged child abuse from the formula for harmony.
