At breakfast yesterday with Nick Xenophon, a decent, mild, unpretentious and well-balanced man who does not much care if he is defeated next year or not, I put to him — and he did not much like — a plan to solve everything.
This was to confiscate, this year and next, seventeen billion dollars from Gina Rinehart, and with it balance the budget, bring in free universities for five years, universal uncosmetic dental health care, and so on. She was an enemy of our civilisation, I said, digging out of soil we owned overmuch wealth and banking, in a day, as much as Barack Obama earns in two terms and giving nought of it back to Australia.
Nick said person-specific legislation was a bad idea and possibly unconstitutional. I said it wasn’t when used against David Hicks. He said he’d think about it.
Twenty-one million Australians would be in favour of it, and a couple of hundred, three hundred perhaps, against it.
Labor won’t do it of course, for fear of being sent up to see Matron or whatever it is they’re currently scared of, or being reproved by Gittins or Grattan, or stared down by Leigh Sales, and what idiots they are, or seem to be.
I want argument on this. A much disliked woman with bags of gold we could wrench out from under her fat arse and spend on good works and our future, saving a generation from underachievement, misery, suicide, smashed communities, and so on.
Any takers?
Name:
This post clearly shows a terrible suppression of intense sexual attraction to Gina.
Do it already Xenephon and stop your whining. My wallet’s sick of talking about it and is looking for some action.
What happens after 5 yrs when she’s milked dry? The programs wither and you greedily cast your eyes over anyone else successful in society that you can rob of their work? (the Jews, perhaps, Herr Ellis?)
Meanwhile investors are spooked from the country and others fear doing too well or saving too much of their money. And a stinking sense of entitlement creeps into the hearts of all - expecting hand-outs and a living from a country that they’ll always despise.
What perhaps is most offensive is the assertion that material wealth, unearned, is the answer of any and all problems - including underachievement, misery, suicide and smashed communities…. Um, have you actually ever seen an Aboriginal community up close? Awash with generous wealth, they cannot help but sink further into the exact problems you claim that more hand-outs will solve.
Have you gone mad, sir?
[Xenaphon wants Priests to be legally compelled to divulge confessions to the authorities - a sacrament for whose binding confidentiality priests have endured imprisonment, torture and death for over centuries and centuries and centuries. What does he imagine will happen, anyway? Souls will simply never confess their crimes to anyone, but endure the eternal damage and never hear a safe, sensible voice of reason that, in serious crime, tells them that their redemption lies in turning themselves in...]
You silly, silly boy. Did they excise your sense of humour at baptism?
How can she be milked dry? She earns a hundred thousand dollars in an hour. We want only six months wages once. Twice maybe. That leaves her with thirty-four billion dollars for those two years plus Christ knows what else she ‘s saved, or invested.
…If I may: While taxing ‘the 1%’ in a special category might be a good idea, hitting GR up for half her wages for two years is obviously untenable. You don’t have to be a quantitative analyst to get that. And there’s no need to ban me for life.
That can’t work Bob.
But nationalising the sector would be a good start.
If your premise is true Bob and she is not well liked by most people, then the questions you ask should be put to the likes of Abbott, Morrison, Joyce, Abetz, Pine and in their joyful defense of Rinehart (who is now on this blog site under the name of Broomhilde by the way) will do themselves a disservice in their trenchant defense of the Oligarchs. Although in my opinion they to should be aware that her ambitions do not stop at hindering the election of the ALP to Government at the next election, she has ambitions to run the country via the Lib/Nats. Every morning Tony Abbott is going to be dinking Gina on his handlebars around Canberra taking advice and worrying about his calves.
Every morning Tony Abbott is going to be dinking Gina on his handlebars around Canberra taking advice and worrying about his calves.
That’s the ad campaign right there, look a likes of GR and TA, she on the handlebars and him schlepping her up Constitution Avenue or around the lake. As they pass the High Court, Gina gives the two fingered salute, past the National Gallery she gobs, TA indicates a left turn, but Gina insists on going right and Tony accedes to her request. Passing the Chinese embassy she tries to stand and salute, the whole time it is silent, as they head downhill Gina lets out a joyful wheeeeee!. Bergman would be the ideal director or Marcel Ophuls.
I can’t believe that you would actually put such a ridiculous idea to a serving politician. Maybe the ALP types would laugh it off (‘good ole Bob again’) but seriously? Nobody can expropriate her proprietary rights without compensation and taxation cannot apply unequally (all the miners for example and many ALP donors wouldn’t like that), so where did this idea come from or actually be except as a thought bubble for the blog?
Free universities? So you want the rich kids who monopolise the uni places to get it for free now? As they said years ago, student politician activists can tell the handful who are from underprivileged backgrounds: they are the ones they didn’t go to school with.
Yes I am one of the couple of hundred.
that would buy quite a few woks indeed.
Gina responds to Bob Ellis:
“If you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just sit there and complain. Do something to make more money yourself - spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising, and more time working.”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/gina-rinehart-tells-whingers-get-out-of-the-pub/story-e6frf7jo-1226461328341
Bob Ellis are you listening?
Mrs Rinehart also suggests the government should lower the minimum wage of $606.40 per week and cut taxes to stimulate employment.
All good ideas.
I’m sure Tony Abbott is taking ample notes.
Oh - and bring in WorkChoices II, the Rack and water-boarding for starters and then we’ll move on to jailing old-time socialists and communists like Bob Ellis who want to snatch the spoils from working families like Gina’s…
Spot on! All for it! “Gina’s Law”.
Great idea Bob. Bloody Hawke wrecked free tuition for all which revolted Whitlam, Pre Whitlam if you didn’t live on the north shore or eastern suburbs of Sydney the chance of a university education was bordering on nil unless your family won the lottery regardless of hoe smart you were. This was the Menzie elitism of those who came from a wealthy background who thought it was their god given right to have a tertiary education, The overhang of this is the Liberal party of today.
Make tertiary education free for all those whose families earn less than $102,000 as in the free dental scheme. Let’s have a smart country with diverse opinions. This would be much more productive than attacking workers benefits a la workchoices. I know the Libs will say . How will we fund this. If more are educated the funding solves itself. More innovation and productivity The Libs don’t want everyone sharing the pie more equally As Howard did so will Abbott. He will reduce funding for education virtually dumbing down the country so they can follow the hate media’s B.S. Howard reduced funding by 40% during his time whilst every western country increased their’s by up to 50%. We can’t fix this overnight. He set us back ten plus years.
M8, the value of a degree has plummeted anyway. Free degrees and HECS haven’t really delivered outstanding dividends to society. Rather, instead of getting on with our lives, we’re now expected to arse around a bigger highschool for 4 or 5 years, flooding academia with an ocean of apathetic, indifferent, even resentful slobs who have no clue what they really want to do anyway. Add this to the fact that an influx of foreign students (who barely speak English) is essential to pay for all this, then standards plummet, everyone passes and employers only really know that you could stick it out.
The real boon is for Ellis’ ilk, who have found a safe-haven in the universities, sheltered from the realities of the world, happily able to absolve themselves of responsibility for events and always play the morally outraged victim while nurturing muddle-headed youngsters with their muddle-headed garbage which the world stopped listening to about half a century ago - the perfect role for their cowardly feminine sensibilities.
We should cut out the middle man and return to an apprentice system for almost everything. Work your way up, learn the ropes and institutional knowledge slowly. That’s a man’s job.
Who’s with me??
M8? What?
This boy is ill.
Nationalise the bastards. It is truly obscene.
The mineral wealth if it is owned by anyone belongs to each and every Australian citizen, not whoever wanders along with a digger and cajoles some cash-strapped government into granting a “lease” to exploit the resource.
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!”
I must say you have some sound arguments Peter but those intelligent enough should be able to develope an organized and analytical mind regardless of their economical background without having to go into debt for the rest of their lives in a weathy society where much of our bounty is held by semi morons
You may need an eye test.
After 7 decades of cogitating, this is your best is it, Bob Ellis ? You have the ear of Nick Xenaphon, Bob Carr, BIll Shorten, et al, and that is the kind of nonsense you espouse ? Seriously ? You are pissing the rapidly diminishing capital of your past marginal notoriety down the toilet. Shame.
I was hoping it wouldn’t be said out loud, such is my shame for the Old Man,
but God damnit spleenblatt, you explode from the shadows with a godawful veracity and ferocity,
Welcome back!!
You still owe me a gin,
It’s ok, I’ve got change for 10 grand.
Say, Spleenblatt, why she deserves a hundred dollars an hour, and the nation’s poor do not.
I don’t think we’re talking anymore, and I don’t think you pay much attention, regardless.
For what it’s worth ..
She doesn’t deserve 100 thousand dollars an hour. Nobody does while people go poor. That does not lead to the conclusion and policy response that we very specifically and discriminatorily confiscate her wealth.
It is a shame that your very genuine and deeply felt compassion and sense of equity is not channeled into developing more mature policy responses that could help the ALP address these kind of social distortions and inequities in a more meaningful, substantive and long-term fashion. Instead, by these kind of patently absurd public comments, you leave yourself exposed to being very easily dismissed as a joke, a fringe dweller, an irrelevance - and will ultimately find yourself excluded from the debate that needs to take place about progressive policies in this country.
I am not saying this to criticise you or even to judge you (how could I presume to, after all I am a shit-stirring troll), but in exasperation that such a clearly intelligent, compassionate and politically passionate person has put themselves into this situation.
50/50 split on profits after all costs of exploration and on-going operations between the mining companies & Aus. gov forever and a day. Simple enough resolution. The rich get richer, the Nation benefits.
As far as I’m concerned, Xenophon did his dash with his union-bashing comments the other day.
He is said to have links with one of two major political parties here in SA, and one of these isn’t the ALP.
As for ‘Gina No-heart, she is another not worth feeding and her case this would bring her physical benefits as well as finally acquainting her with the facts of life as they apply to the Great Unwashed.
Lucky Julia. Bob is going feral on her.
Pity poor Gina - latest report in the Financial Review is that she has “lost” something like $10 billion in the last three months.
She only has $20 billion left.
Two more hits like that and she will be on the dole. I would think she would then have a very different perspective on life
Twiggy will be shitting bricks.