POLITICS AUSTRALIAN STYLE
Politics With a difference
by Frances Harris
So Australians are still recovering from the effects of the pre-budget
launch, lunch, liver failure or however they decided to treat it. Now the mushroom
cloud is clearing, we are all looking around to reassess what is left after the
fallout. It all depends on your status in life, whether you recognise blue
skies or a blizzard. If you are a super mega-rich mining mogul, with assets and
bank accounts that swing through the Cayman Islands, you will likely be
planning your next luxurious holiday to somewhere on a big boat.
But if you are a middle class parent of three children on $100,001
you will be pouring over the calculator with three or more empty coffee cups
squeezing your writing space. You’ll be deleting items like the Christmas
holiday at Eildon Weir in central Victoria, for the next three years, to cover
future increasing school fees for your children. But if you happened to be the man next door
who is on $100,002, with three teenagers, who like to sleep in and don’t have a
fast paced career in their sites, you will be freaking out. A six months wait
to get the dole, and a six month payment before it cuts out, you will whimpering;
goodbye comfortable retirement, goodbye
middle class life. I suppose cabbage gruel doesn’t taste all that bad, if
you don’t think about it too much! Does it? My plans to start a small coffee
house, or a boat hire business by the sea when I retire I will have to be put
off till the next life.
And if you are a young childless couple with two middle range jobs;
you will be thinking, I wonder how long
we can freeze sperm cells and eggs? Will they still be fresh in our forties?
Then we should be able to put a deposit on a three bedroom house fifty
kilometres from out jobs in the city? Petrol? I wonder if you can dilute it
with ethanol without blowing up the car. Which would be the cheaper?
But, if you are a pensioner, your shaking hands will be pouring
over the shrinking bank statements and replacing them with the overdrawn
statements from the bankcard. - I wonder if we could secretly raise a goose in
our shed and put it in the freezer without the neighbors catching on. Oh, and
I suppose we can live in the front two rooms of our family house, where the
electricity is still functioning. Just hope there aren't exposed wires back
there that could come in contact with the leaky water pipes. I suppose mold
doesn’t smell that bad after a while.
Then if you are someone with a physical, intellectual our mental disability,
you will be drawing the bedclothes over your head and stay in bed all day. There’s
no point coming out of the bedroom if there isn’’t any food in the fridge or gas
or electricity to cook it. Or if you do have food, sleeping out under the stars
can be a good experience if you live in Fiji. If you don’t have generous,
wealthy parents, then hunger and debt collectors will be your permanent best
friends, unless you want to start a crime franchise to avoid despair.
Now these are many of the options. It’s not hard to work out who
fares the best from the Abbott Government budget. I don’t like to call it the Abbott
budget, because the Prime Minister likely had little say in it anyway. His job
is to sell it and deflect any punches that come the government’s way.
So there you have it. Goodbye to family time, family holidays and
one job; social cohesion, consumer spending, a normal retirement and balmy Bali
nights. Hello a couple of nights in a caravan at Ballarat on the way to inspect
the retired insane asylum at Ararat, before throwing a line into the Avoca
River to catch dinner. Oh, regression, I remember the days that was a normal
way to live. Just take care to teach the kids to avoid the pointy end of the
fish hook, and if you want to dinner to reach the pan, that fish are slippery.
Have a good week
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