Mr and Mrs Thurston Howell 111. Amused that the Australian Government gives tax incentives for plutocrats to amass property portfolios paid by the taxpayer.
The verdict of Barrie Cassidy after Scott Morrison’s first budget was damning with very faint praise. The headline said it all ‘the election will be won and lost elsewhere’.
Winner 2016 Mr and Mrs Thurston Howell Look- alike contest.
Elsewhere is the place vision, ideas, action and equity were, as a do-little fiscal plan was released to a non-engaged electorate. Meanwhile Malcolm Turnbull, ever more resembling Thurston Howell III in his pastel shades and silver fox tan, is quietly confident that the budget will lead him to victory. Declaring that Labor is simply interested in class warfare, his kind of warfare is limited to guns that fire empty canisters. Meagre funds for education, a tiny $50 million to act as some kind of incentive for infrastructure, a cap on how much the very rich can salt away in superannuation, and an increase in tobacco excise.
Treasurer admires Marcel Marceau stunt pulled off by P.M Malcolm Abbott
It reminds me of the old TV commercial of a fake Marcel Marceau walking a dog when you don’t have a dog, tying a dog when you don’t have a dog, and pouring a drink when you don’t have a drink. It’s a Clayton’s budget. With just enough of a whiff of the policies that Labor has proposed, it is supposed to anesthetise the electorate on the economic future of the country, ignoring the real threat of a housing bubble where the price to income ratio in Sydney is now 12.2 times the median salary and in Melbourne almost at a multiple of 10. In Ireland, on the eve of the GFC it was at a factor of 8, while in the USA where the crash was arguably more dramatic it was 5. No action in the budget on what is now readily identified by everyone but the Property Council of the prime cause: Negative gearing. Even the government’s own member for Bennelong, John Alexander, calls the housing market a Ponzi Scheme. But according to Thurston Howell III Labor’s reforms would send the housing market into drastic decline, devastating Mum and Dad investors, nurses, mechanics, teachers and the rest.
No action either on Climate Change. That is not an issue for this government or apparently for Thurston. His deputy, Barnaby Joyce, fulminated in the house on one environmental issue, infecting European carp with a herpes virus to eliminate the menace, and made it clear he would, if he could, apply the same approach to the opposition and voters who oppose the coalition. Christopher Pyne in his sailor suit ready for the submarines that he hopes will save his sinking fortunes chimed in. Forgive me, but the thought of Christopher and Barnaby giving fish herpes makes my skin crawl. And as for Asylum Seekers? Well in that odious way that he has perfected Peter Dutton has now accused those who agitate for reform as the cause of the second self-immolation on Nauru. The total absence of any sense of shame in making such an accusation leaves no hope of redemption for this government.
The photograph captured by Alex Ellinghausen of Dutton says it all.