Big Business Budget Blues

By Pearl Bullivant on June 10, 2016 in News

On handing down the recent federal budget, Scott Morrison has implored Australians “not to think of themselves” and “to stop being selfish”. Instead, we should be thinking of the “nation as a whole”, the ‘whole’ being the nation’s largest companies and those individuals earning more than $180K.

According to the ‘philosophy’ of Scott Morrison (an evangelical Christian who insisted on labelling asylum seekers ‘illegals’) handouts are not for losers. Instead, handouts are for winners, like ‘small businesses’ with a turnover of up to $10 million. Handouts are also for those fortunate people with an earning capacity of $180K-plus who are unfairly encumbered with large mortgages, private school fees and the expense of luxury holidays; all high-end expenses that are the key to our nation’s economic survival, unlike the menial day-to-day expenditure of the masses.
Handouts (i.e. taxpayer subsidies) are for the likes of the Commonwealth Bank, Coles and Goldman Sachs, not pensioners, not welfare organisations, not Indigenous programs, and not the arts.

Indoctrinated as we are by the press, Australians know there are dire consequences if we aren’t prepared to prioritise big business over the common good of the masses. The ‘rights’ of big business must come first if we are to protect our jobs and the economy. We don’t want those obscenely profitable companies being forced to operate offshore if we aren’t wholeheartedly supporting them through budgetary sacrifice. If Scott Morrison had structured the budget for the “bunch of individuals” most in need (pensioners, low income earners, disabled) “we would run each other into the ground”.

Our government may be democratically elected, but there is something monumentally awry when those who govern do so for the sole benefit of donors and big business. With big business surreptitiously running Australia, we, the electorate, have become consumers existing solely to be marketed to regardless of the health, welfare and financial fallout.

Large food companies can tout any crap they want, sidestepping the financial burden of subsequent national health issues. Gas fracking and coal mining companies are given precedence over the nation’s water and food supplies, with the government dismissing legitimate health concerns raised by doctors and scientists. Developers can erode our standard of living with one fell swoop of the wrecking ball, gaining planning concessions, destroying green space and impinging on the immediate community for their own financial gain.

Any attempt to advance our nation through the adoption of alternate energy and the construction of public transport is immediately sabotaged by a government protecting those with vested interests in fossil fuel and road transport.

The Turnbull government prides itself on transparency and its motives to Pearl are as clear as a glass of Billecart Champagne. Just as Scott Morrison sent out a Christian-style warning to asylum seekers that “they’ll get no sympathy”, Pearl is sending out a similar warning to all Australians. When you wake up to find education and health are no longer funded by taxes, but instead in the hands of big business, Pearl will have not sympathy.