Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston |
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Poker-faced Lying
I feel sorry for Andrew Wilkie. Being the Office for National Assessment whistleblower of the level of Howard Government participation in Iraq never wound up to be giving him the kudos he deserves. Now he's being dumped again.
I've just been listening to last week's Radio National Science Show. At its end producer Robin Williams marked the passing of the show's former producer. Williams spoke briefly and poignantly: "He committed suicide. He was addicted to gambling." The underlying question is this- how many more people have died due to depression and psychological illness triggered by a carefully contrived, addictivness-enhancing percentage-calculated swindling of people's money?
It does sound like some of the measures PM Gillard's been announcing will be of help, and a long way ahead of when Nick X campaigned for clocks in SA Pokie rooms so people could keep track of time. However,that the $1.5 billion (a driop in the ocean of accrued profits and taxes) cost of implementation is being used by the Government as its primary vindication for reneging suggests they've been bought by the lobbyists.
In little old Adelaide there's only a handful of pubs that don't have the machines- mostly the live music pubs. Would Wilkie's measures hurt all the non-no-pokies "boozers"? Going down to the nearest hotel from my home one Sunday night for a packet of fags, I commented to the bartender about an empty bar being open at such a time. She looked towards the pokie room, and responded "You never know when someone's going to walk in and spend five hundred". QED?
It looks too, that the political karma for Gillard will be far from good. The Mad Abbott is already targeting Craig Thompson's seat as the way to eliminate the one vote majority, calling it a "tainted vote". Gillard has left her flank wide-open for such an attack.
Perhaps developing less harmful forms of revenue streams might be a good start?
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Nuh. Couldn't be bothered
Richard: Perhaps developing less harmful forms of revenue streams might be a good start?
Tell me again why the states voluntarily chose not to resume state income tax following Word War Two.
We do know about tobacco deaths
15,000 Australians die from tobacco related illness every year, yet every pub in the country stocks and sells them.
If people want to lose their shirts because they love inanimate objects too damn bad.
There are actually far bigger problems in the world.
Mr Denmore
An alternative reading to Richard's take is offered from the blogsite Failed Esatte, the personal blog of one time Crikey media commentator and former ABC journo, Mr Denmore.
Mr. Denmore is critical of the sort of interpretation Richard and others offer- the problem is not Gillard Labor, or even Abbott, but within the system itself, the take here is that critics vastly underestimate the sheer wealth and power of the Lobbies, particularly given the current gridlock involving minority government, where vastly expensive media campaigns can impact on knife edge marginals- only a couple of seats need to go either way.
He regards the current media focus on the Gillard pokies compromise as not a neutral position, it is a position fundamentally tilted against Labor, since it induces a sort of cynical, defeatist outlook in the public mind, that is favourable to the Abbott opposition.
My take?
Richard's argument stands, as far as it goes, but Mr Denmore's article does suggest a neglected context which when included offers a more nuanced take- we can hardly beleive that someone like Abbott would be any more honest, particularly when under pressure.
All too true