Hmmm, Commission of Audit has come out with the goody-bag of savings measures.
List from
Sydney Morning Herald:
HealthIf you're rich you don't get to access public health care, you have to pay for private health care as well as funding the public system too. Also nobody gets free access to health care anymore, there's a copay for every service, even emergency room visits if they are judged to be non-urgent. You'll also pay more for drugs, and they'll scrap the laws that say pharmacies have to be owned by a pharmacist so Coles and Woolworths can buy out the small business market there too.
EducationThose greedy students living large on the government benefits should pay 14% more for their University education out of pocket, because investing public funds into this is just a waste of money. Also why set a limit on the cost Universities can charge, since it's obvious rich students can pay more for their education and poor ones shouldn't be trying to get a University degree in the first place. Of course we should scrap paying for vocational education for the poor too. We should also charge more interest on University debts after students graduate, since that's a good system in the USA, and make sure the crushing debt kicks in as soon as they start earning the minimum wage. Oh, and don't forget to scrap funding for schools and make the individual states pay for it themselves. But we will separate the funding into three different pools so those greedy state schools can't spend all the money that should be going to fund private schools instead.
Aged Pension & Aged CareOld people are costing too much money and living too long. If we can't recycle them into Soylent Green, let's just keep raising the bar on the pension rate and hope they die sooner from working longer. Also it's not fair these old people saved their money and bought property with it, so let's add that into the tax pool too and give them the choice to sell their house and pay rent that the pension can't cover, or live in their own house and not have any pension money to pay for food. Also it's obvious that it only takes one person to look after an old person, so only one person should get carer payments, and none at all if they have money already.
Unemployment and the Minimum WageHaving a standard national minimum wage is undemocratic! Let each State decide it for themselves. That way, if a State wants to drive poor people out, they can lower theirs below everyone else and get rid of those bludgers. Speaking of making the poor somebody else's problem, if you can't get work you'll be moved somewhere else or cut off the dole. That's gonna work great out in the Northern Territory where large Aboriginal communities have the highest unemployment rates in the state.
Family PaymentsThe Family Tax Benefit Part B supports the cost of raising children compared to remaining childless, but since children are a drain on public resources let's scrap that and hope people stop having them.
Welfare and DisabilityIt's annoying that those old people who don't die fast enough end up disabled instead. Since we already moved the bar on the pension, let's do it for disability support too. We can slow down national disability support, make sure they have to sell their homes before they get a dollar of it, and then sell off the whole payment system to a private company so we can deny responsibility when we stop paying them.
DefenceLet's just roll over and admit America owns our military, it's not like we'll need it anyway.
Paid Parental Leave and ChildcareSo that big election promise of paid parental leave we made to get into government? Screw that. Too expensive. Plus it's not fair unemployed people should get funding to put kids into childcare, since, you know, all employers love when a single mum applying for a job tells them she can't start work until she can get her kids into daycare, but she can't get them into daycare until she starts work, but she can't start work until she gets them into daycare, but...
Foreign AidScrew everyone else.
Public BroadcastingScrew the ABC too.
Transport and InfrastructureCharge heavy vehicles more for using the roads. Because it totally
won't pass on the cost into increased cost of goods transported, which means increased cost of goods sold, which means increased cost of living, which means increased inflation, which means increased income bracket creep. Also forget to fund infrastructure development because future planning for growth is a dumb idea.
Indigenous AffairsDid I forget the Aboriginals? It's understandable, we try our best to keep them out of sight. We should take 150 separate programs that work with them and condense them into no more than seven, since everyone knows that
all aboriginals are alike.
Government AgenciesTake a bunch of names off doors and put new names on them, spend some money changing the stationary, and end up with pretty much exactly the same people working for the same amount of money.
PrivatisationsSell off any program that a private company might want to buy, which are pretty much anything making an actual net profit for the government instead of being a money pit.
But wait...
Why don't we see any strategies here, AT ALL, that target medium or large business tax deductions? I mean, there was
an article just this month about Google Australia suddenly paying an extra $7 million in tax. Surely if the government is looking to reduce the debt burden it would make sense to also include the corporate citizens of Australia in the shared responsibility we have to pay back our debt?
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Topic: Reudh's Hilarious Australasian politics thread! (Read 228008 times)