GOD-DAMNED HYPOCRITES - PART 7
POLITICS
State
and religious laws are kept separate for a reason. Normally the issue of
politics is rarely discussed, if ever, in terms of religion and I would simply
move the topic on to the issue of marriage, but recent events indicate that
religion does, in fact, have a role in politics. The hypocrisy and destructive
nature of ‘religion’ when it becomes tangled with politics is not limited to
Islam as many of us so foolishly believe. Modern Western society is built upon
the bones of Christianity (regardless of what you choose to believe), a
religion that has suffered a great deal under the corrupting influence of
Capitalism, and therein lies the problem.
Capitalism
and Christianity are two very different ideologies that often occupy different
ends of the political scale, one being right wing and the other left wing. Anybody who tries to tell you otherwise is a
liar. Christ warned us that we could not serve two masters and that the love of
money was opposed to our duty to God, and yet from the moment Moses delivered
the Ten Commandments as a means to help people coexist in peace and justice, we
have spent our lives manufacturing our own laws to circumvent the intention of
God’s will. The United States appears to have attempted to solve the conflict
by combining God and money. You will find the words “In God We Trust” printed on
the very cause of most of their social problems.
Politics, whether we like it or not, is part of
religion just as religion is a part of politics. The Churches are filled with
ambitious people, usually men, seeking their own glory rather than that of the
Lord, and their behaviour is no better than that of the Pharisees who dedicated
so much of their time trying to defame, discredit and murder the prophets.
Political representation in our society is filled with the same manner of evil,
and this word is used deliberately. How can so many politicians claim to be
Christians when they behave in a manner that demonstrates that they are not?
How can someone claim to represent people with whom they have nothing in common
and no understanding because they are insulated from reality?
At
the time I first wrote this, the Australian people had elected a right wing
Federal Government, and Queensland suffered under the oppression of a right
wing State Government for over a year. These people were elected into office
based on a foundation of lies the majority of voters were either too ignorant
or too stupid to recognise although, in all fairness, they were based on
elements of truth. The former Queensland Government had failed the public
because of that entrenched culture of corruption that infects every element of
the police, public service and Australian society.
The
most disadvantaged, disaffected, discouraged, disassociated, disenfranchised
members of society are easy targets for political opportunism, vilified, and
reduced to targets for the frustration of those self-centred narcissists that
are produced as a result of limited funding and an absence of real regulation
in education and mental health services. The Legal System uses laws, policies
and procedures that too often circumvent justice and reduce legal outcomes to
commodities the most disadvantaged cannot access let alone afford.
The
unnavigable, self-perpetuating, cyclical bureaucracy is a barrier that has been
designed (deliberately or by lack of thought) to restrict access, and those
seeking help from the police, public services, and even their so-called political
representatives are too often subjected to incompetence, negligence,
indifference, apathy, idleness, mockery, insults, unfounded and defamatory
accusations, and intimidation. When confronted by ‘allegations’ of such
treatment, the report is regarded with those same anti-social attitudes and
subjected to ‘internal’ investigation’ often ‘at level’.
This
is a conflict of interest. This is like asking the suspect of a rape or murder
case to investigate themselves and provide a recommendation as to whether there
is enough evidence to proceed. Too many victims are told “there is not enough
evidence to warrant and investigation”, but how do we know what all the
evidence is without an investigation. The “take no action” response too often
leads to victims being placed in harm’s way, violated and even murdered, when a
“take no chances” approach would be far wiser.
All
of this is used to isolate and silence victims while concealing and enabling
predators, crime, systemic failure, and injustice. The Royal Commission into
Institutional Responses to Child Abuse found this very thing and recommended
the practice of ‘internal investigation’ cease because it was being used to
cover-up evil. But the Terms of Reference conveniently excluded and prevented
investigation of the police and public services, institutions that have used
the same practice for decades, for the same purpose, and continue to do so. Nobody
is accountable for their failures and so nothing changes because it is not
exposed, and without deterrent, those at fault are rewarded and learn that they
can get away with whatever they do.
This entrenched culture of corruption remains and
continues unabated even as Governments change. The new Queensland Government
claimed the financial mismanagement of the former Government was worse than
they expected and implemented extreme ‘austerity’ measures, although the
general public was never allowed to see the evidence for themselves. The
Federal LNP Government was elected on the same deceit, and in both cases they
caused greater harm, which appears to have been the intention all along.
Right
wing politics is all about exploitation of the most disadvantaged and making
profit at all costs, and to this end the Newman LNP government sacked
fourteen-thousand public servants. In reality, they made other people sack
their victims, friends and colleagues who did not agree with the action, and
people lost their jobs and their families, and families lost their livelihoods
not because they had performed poorly but because of the ego and moral and
ethical bankruptcy of selfish, greedy politicians. What is the point of budget
surplus when members of the community you claim to represent cannot afford the
basic necessities of life and live in daily terror of being forced to live on
the street?
The
Abbott-Turnbull LNP Federal Government have implemented similar self-serving
austerity measures which have not only caused great hardship to the most
disadvantaged, but have crippled the economy. The unemployment rate currently
stands at almost seven-hundred-and-forty thousand (officially registered) full
time unemployed people, but only about one-hundred-and-forty-thousand (mostly
part-time or casual) jobs on offer. There is no training, just
Work-for-the-Dole programs that pay below minimum wage, provide no
Superannuation, no sick leave, no holidays, and no Union representation to
address the Workplace Health and Safety and Harassment issues. Then there’s the
legalised fraud of Employment Agencies exploiting the most disadvantaged for
multi-million dollar profits. Who does the government blame? The unemployed.
There is a right-wing extremist agenda to defame and vilify the unemployed. Rhetoric and propaganda tells the public that the unemployed are each receiving $30K to $40K a year in Welfare. In reality, they get just $37 a day on full ‘benefits’. That’s just over $13,500 a year. The official poverty rate is anything less than $18,500 a year. The base salary for a politician is $535 a day, and that doesn’t include ‘entitlements’. Then there’s the misappropriation of tax-payer funded revenue for fraudulent ‘entitlements’ to consider, a total of almost half-a-billion dollars in legitimate and illegitimate political perks including family holidays and home repayments using the ‘away from home’ living allowance that far exceeds unemployment ‘benefits’.
There is a right-wing extremist agenda to defame and vilify the unemployed. Rhetoric and propaganda tells the public that the unemployed are each receiving $30K to $40K a year in Welfare. In reality, they get just $37 a day on full ‘benefits’. That’s just over $13,500 a year. The official poverty rate is anything less than $18,500 a year. The base salary for a politician is $535 a day, and that doesn’t include ‘entitlements’. Then there’s the misappropriation of tax-payer funded revenue for fraudulent ‘entitlements’ to consider, a total of almost half-a-billion dollars in legitimate and illegitimate political perks including family holidays and home repayments using the ‘away from home’ living allowance that far exceeds unemployment ‘benefits’.
And all the while, as one-third of all big business in Australia pay no taxes, the working- and under- class are being told to tighten their belts, and the ruling-class is busy telling those with little-to-nothing that the unemployed are to blame, or illegal immigrants (some of whom are legitimate refugees fleeing persecution in another country). But the reality is very simple. The current budget black-hole is the result of LNP Federal Government mismanagement, and it could be filled by taxing big business.
The
fifty-billion dollar tax reduction incentive for big business proposed by the
LNP ensure big business can maintain monopolies and crush small business
operators. This does not create jobs. The reverse gearing scam that allows
wealthy people to artificially inflate house prices, control supply, and
drive-up rental costs ensures the majority of citizens cannot afford to
purchase their own home and must remain subject to cruel, unconscionable treatment
at the hands of the owners from whom they must rent. The under-class have no
ability to influence the employment or housing market, only government and big
business can do this.
But at the same time as the Newman-LNP State
Government implemented these ‘austerity’ measures and spoke about ending the
‘sense of entitlement’ the ‘lazy’ socio-economically disadvantaged members of
the community had, those same right-wing politicians gave themselves a
forty-six percent pay raise because they believed they deserved it. An
additional seventy-five thousand dollars in most cases, and sometimes even
more. The fire fighters had been campaigning for years for an additional twenty
dollars a week, a two percent pay raise. The lowest income wage was barely
thirty thousand dollars and the unfortunates who found themselves unemployed at
that time survived on thirteen-thousand dollars a year.
Child
care staff receive only minimum wage, about one-hundred-and-fifty dollars a
day, and many have to study at university for four years to be qualified in
early childhood. They supervise between six and twelve children whose parents
pay around eighty dollars or more, per child, per day, for the service, so
where does all the additional money go? Stay-at-home parents do the same job
but receive no pay at all for their efforts. Instead, they are regarded as
‘bludgers’, a burden on society, lazy.
Perhaps
the worst part of the whole vile business was not that Premier Newman lied to
get into office and then broke promises not to do what he did, but that so many
of his supporters actually took pleasure in what he did, mocking the victims
and demonstrating the same entrenched culture of corruption. The slanderous
allegations of the right wing LNP Federal Government against the former ALP Federal
Government were more of the same and only fed into that despicable culture,
even continuing into the next election to ensure the LNP retained power, albeit
by only a single seat.
The claims of economic mismanagement were absolutely unfounded for the simple fact that they were not accurate. They were exaggerated, and no evidence was ever provided to the public. Worse, the LNP – despite all the austerity measures they inflicted on the most disadvantaged while maintaining the benefits to those whose wealth protected them from the horrors so many others endured – actually increased Federal Government debt by $192B since they took office, raising it from their unproven claims of $273B to what could only be considered a staggering $465B.
The claims of economic mismanagement were absolutely unfounded for the simple fact that they were not accurate. They were exaggerated, and no evidence was ever provided to the public. Worse, the LNP – despite all the austerity measures they inflicted on the most disadvantaged while maintaining the benefits to those whose wealth protected them from the horrors so many others endured – actually increased Federal Government debt by $192B since they took office, raising it from their unproven claims of $273B to what could only be considered a staggering $465B.
What
made this mismanagement even more shocking was that the ALP had managed to
guide Australia through global recession largely unscathed at the same times as
natural disasters devastated the country with fires, floods and cyclones that
killed hundreds of people, left thousands homeless and caused billions of
dollars damage. The LNP had no recession, and very few natural disasters, yet
still almost doubled debt despite savage cuts to the funding of social
services.
The
ALP also apologised to the Stolen Generation and Aboriginal people in general.
They apologised to the unwed teenage mothers who had the babies legally stolen
from them, most never seeing their children again and, even if they did, it was
decades later. They implemented a carbon tax to curb environmental damage
(which was used by businesses as an excuse to increase costs they passed on to
consumers) and attempted to implement improvements to the education system and
introduce a scheme to provide a better quality of live for the disabled. They
tried to introduce paid maternity leave and there was even talk of improving
equality for the gay community by legalising gay marriage.
By
comparison, the right wing LNP Federal Government that won office did so through
deceit and slander to discredit the former ALP Government and refused to
provide details on their own policies and costing’s until two days before the
election, and still people voted for them. Many of those supporters claimed to
be Christians. One of them even accused the then Prime minister of disobeying
Christ’s instructions over the issue of Gay marriage in order to encourage
Christians to vote against the left wing party. We’ve seen this very same
hypocrisy in the election of Trump in the US, and now we see the LNP
haemorrhaging support to the ignorant, bigoted, lunatic rantings of Hanson’s
One Nation.
Turnbull
and the LNP have addressed this by making preference deals with One Nation, a
slap in the face for the Nation Party they have castrated and assimilated.
Once, long ago, the Nationals occupied the middle ground, the regional voters
and disenfranchised workers that, for a time, supported the Labour Party but
are now turning to One Nation because the combination of ill-education and
hateful rhetoric promoted by LNP propaganda has created a monster, thousands of
self-centred, bigoted narcissists desperate to inflict hate on those they blame
for all the woes of society, regardless of the facts.
But
that’s just part of the issue. The biggest problem is the disconnection, the
drift away from what those politicians claim to represent and what they are.
Too many of them claim to be Christians but are hypocrites. The Marriage
Equality issue reveals this rather well. The Australian Christian Lobby (which
is anything but Christian) hates the very idea of Islamic law being given any
ground in Australia, but insists on forcing twisted Christian rules on
non-Christians, singling out three references to homosexuality from all of the
sins listed in the New Testament and using it to justify hypocrisy and
discrimination.
Christ said that while not everybody could sacrifice the things they wanted to follow him, nobody had the right to discriminate against anybody else. Christ preached peace and tolerance. We may only hold fellow Christians to our rules, not those who are not Christians. The rules for Christians in the New Testament are for Christians, yet too many people claiming to be Christians insist on forcing non-Christians to obey these even as those hypocrites do not, happily voting for right wing politicians who discriminate against the poor, unemployed, disabled, refugees, not-white people, and the gay community.
Christ said that while not everybody could sacrifice the things they wanted to follow him, nobody had the right to discriminate against anybody else. Christ preached peace and tolerance. We may only hold fellow Christians to our rules, not those who are not Christians. The rules for Christians in the New Testament are for Christians, yet too many people claiming to be Christians insist on forcing non-Christians to obey these even as those hypocrites do not, happily voting for right wing politicians who discriminate against the poor, unemployed, disabled, refugees, not-white people, and the gay community.
The
LNP Maternity Leave policy provided women on high incomes with more money than
those on low incomes. This was discrimination. It provided more tax-payer
revenue to the wealthy than the poor. Instead of seeing refugees as an
opportunity to provide jobs and hospitals to remote communities where they
could be processed, and where they could provide labour where it is needed, the
LNP Federal Government wanted to turn back boats and risk armed conflict with
neighbouring countries, or even buy boats that could be used for people
smuggling. This was economic madness hand-in-hand with Human Rights violations.
The
then Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, a man who claims to be a Christian, used
clever words to deny equal rights for the gay community. He planned to cut
funding to public services including education and seemed to be planning mass
sackings in the public services, the reintroduction of work choices and an
increase in the Goods and Services Tax because, apparently, the ‘Age of
Entitlement’ is over. Well, at least for the poor who the politicians project
their own sense of entitlement upon.
And
now Abbott is back in the headlines, latching onto the division within the LNP
in the wake of the split which has seen the right-wing fascist Bernardi declare
independence, and the hypocritical Christian zealot George Christensen threaten
the same. According to Abbott, the Turnbull led LNP has gone ‘soft’, it needs
to get back to its core values and move back on track to the right to avoid
losing votes to One Nation. If it moved any further to the right it would be a
dictatorship. Let’s have a look at just the last few months of LNP
dictatorship, State and Federal.
http://www.9news.com.au/national/2017/02/24/03/55/tony-abbott-warns-coalition-it-will-lose-next-election
On
a State level, the Queensland ALP government has established a website allowing
voters to see who has donated money to which party, and how much, within seven
days of the donation being made. The declaration threshold was also reduced
back to $1000, as promised, after the LNP increased it to over $12,000 to
conceal who backed them and what influence they had. In response, the LNP
claimed the ALP would have Unions provide their donations six days before the
election, to conceal their efforts to control government. It’s a tired
argument, and one filled with hypocrisy, that the ALP is backed and controlled
by the Unions, a source of outrage and implied corruption and has encouraged ill-educated
bigots to inflict their ignorance on the LNP’s victims, while nothing is said
of the LNP being backed by big business.
Which
brings the focus neatly to the LNP Federal government. Just a few short weeks
ago, Turnbull made his infamous attack on ALP leader Bill Shorten during
parliament question time. Instead of doing his job, and providing answers to
questions the voters would like to hear, he accusing Shorten of being a Union
and billionaire sycophant, a dishonest social climber, envious of Turnbull’s
multi-million dollar harbour-side mansion. Turnbull boasted of his wealth and
suggested the way Shorten, and by default, the disadvantaged, should ever be
anywhere near millionaires and billionaires like Turnbull, was on their knees.
But
for all his hypocritical blustering and accusations of a class war, Turnbull
and the LNP remained oddly silent about the remuneration of Australia Post
executives who were being paid close to two million dollars a year, each,
except their CEO, who received $5.6 million, ten times the salary of the Prime
Minister. And as they continued to push forward the $50 billion tax breaks for
big business, and illegally persecute people over Welfare for debts many of
them did not actually owe, the LNP had engineered penalty rate wage cuts for
the most disadvantaged workers, an old agenda alongside eradicating Unions.
Some
small businesses claimed it was long-overdue, allowing them to save money to
hire more staff when others, people who could see it for what it was, pointed
out nobody would hire extra staff they didn’t need and would simply pocket the
savings as additional profit. One fool even stated that 80% of workers would
not suffer any loss of income, so they had no reason to complain. He implied
they should remain silent as others lost as much as 17% of their wages, up to
$6,000, a year. The LNP has a long history of demonstrating poor financial
management of the economy, and this only provided more evidence.
Yes,
small business owners will make more profit through reduced wages, but the
flow-on effect of people suffering income reduction impacts on sales: when
working- and under- class citizens have less disposable income, they cannot
spend it on luxury goods as they struggle to meet basic costs. Lower wages
means the disaffected receive less Superannuation for their future. They
certainly cannot save a deposit for their own home, especially when negative
gearing ensures only the wealthy can purchase properties and artificially
inflate both prices and rents.
But instead of considering the negative social implications for those forced to work on Sunday for reduced wages and Superannuation, right-wing lunatics are focussing on the positive social benefits of owners now being able to employ staff at cheaper rates so they can spend their weekends with their families. And Bill shorten is being referred to as a parasite. What is more parasitic than a business owner exploiting another for their labour and not only making profit, but claiming to be the victim if they do not get leisure time with their family even as they deny the same to their workers? Now that’s hypocrisy.
Meanwhile, so-called Justice Iain Ross of the
so-called Fair Work Commission, an allegedly independent body paid by the
government, has taken leave and cannot be contacted following his decision to
slash the Sunday penalty rates. Turnbull is busy trying to shift blame to
Shorten, who opposes the cuts, by pointing out Shorten helped establish the
agency. Yet he failed to address the rumours that a former legal associate of
Julie Bishop now works in the Fair Work Commission, or respond to the fact the
cuts are something the LNP has been trying to engineer for over a decade.
But instead of considering the negative social implications for those forced to work on Sunday for reduced wages and Superannuation, right-wing lunatics are focussing on the positive social benefits of owners now being able to employ staff at cheaper rates so they can spend their weekends with their families. And Bill shorten is being referred to as a parasite. What is more parasitic than a business owner exploiting another for their labour and not only making profit, but claiming to be the victim if they do not get leisure time with their family even as they deny the same to their workers? Now that’s hypocrisy.
But even as experts warn of the potentially disastrous
flow-on effects to the economy in years to come, and of the economically and
socially crippling impact of the LNP’s adherence to reverse gearing on the
housing market, Tony Abbott crawls up from the sewer to break his promise on
sniping and accuse Turnbull of being “labour lite”. Abbott has insisted the LNP
needs to get back on track, paving the road to the future and hell with more
fascist ideologies: slashing Renewable Energy Targets in favour of fossil
fuels, slashing public spending and social services, getting rid of the Human
Rights Commission to ensure the violations he and his vile ilk commit are not
investigated or even exposed, and more policies that are the wet dreams of
Hanson, Bernadi and Christensen. And yet Abbott insists he is some kind of
super-Christian. Where are the Christian values in his actions, or in any of
the actions of the LNP?
There
is a process of dehumanising the most disadvantaged that reflect the attitudes
of Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf toward
those he encouraged Nazi Germany to blame for their economic woes. The poor,
mentally ill, disabled, gays, foreigners, political rivals and those who
refused to adopt paganism were sent to labour camps where they were brutalised
and murdered in their millions. The right-wing Government of Australia is using
the same methods Hitler did to justify wage-cuts, social service cuts, a ‘debt
levy’ tax that takes up to twenty-percent from low income and barely
one-percent from high income, and a maternity leave scheme that pays wealthy
women the equivalent of twelve times what single-parents and other unemployed
people receive. And they have the audacity to accuse the ALP of waging class
war.
But
there’s more. A co-payment for universal healthcare many cannot afford, prison
camps for refugees seeking asylum, the indefinite incarceration of ‘political
dissidents’ in Australia without charge or evidence for years, environmental
vandalism, reductions in worker’s rights and safety measures, the restructuring
of the CMC and Legal body to reduce them to a weapon for use against political
rivals and other targets, and the list of unjust, fascist policy changes and
corrupt behaviours continues unabated. It is disturbing that so many
Australians actually support these ignorant, bigoted attitudes and ideologies even
as they accuse others of the very behaviours they so willingly inflict.
Fifty
years ago, Martin Luther King made his famous speech about a dream he had for
the future, where all people would be treated with equality and discrimination
would be a thing of the past. Nothing
has changed. Seventy-three years ago
people all over the world celebrated the end of the Second World War and the
defeat of the fascists who ran concentration camps where people were brutalised,
raped, murdered and even worse because they were disabled, supported a
different political faction, or Jewish.
The
Japanese armies worked prisoners of war to death and raped and murdered nurses
and nuns while the Nazis blamed those they violated and murdered for their
economic misfortunes to justify what they did.
In modern Western society, particularly the United States, the banks
steal from people using laws that have nothing to do with justice and everything
to do with greed. Banks loan money at five percent interest or more but when a
mortgage is repaid over the years the repayments are often one-hundred and
twenty percent on top of what was actually borrowed.
Our
political representatives do not represent the voters. Democracy is little more
than a mass delusion. How can people who have nothing in common with those they
claim to represent understand the hardships of the vast majority when their
remuneration places them in a social bracket that can never even comprehend
struggles to just pay for basic necessities let alone survive the misery of
oppression and discrimination?
Politicians who claim that they are Christians should behave as such. Those
who are morally and ethically bankrupt should not be in politics.
God has blessed politicians with the opportunity to
make the world a better place and in such a world, right wing fascism and the
discrimination and self-centred greed that goes with it has no role. If you claim
to be a Christian, you should be opposed to those things that violate the
teachings of Christ and vote against corrupt political parties, be they left or
right wing. The behaviour of a political
party when it is Government will reveal its nature. The State and Federal Governments
include many politicians who make this claim, as do a great many voters, but
their behaviour reveals their true character. The role of the moral and ethical
values of true Christianity in politics is more important than ever.
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