People saved from selves by friendly Government

I’ve written about the Rudd Government raising excise on pre-mixed drinks to, ahem, “curb the binge drinking epidemic”.

Well, it’s official:

The cost of pre-mixed drinks will jump by about $1 a bottle from today after a dramatic move by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to curb binge drinking.

The Rudd Government doubled the tax on ready-to-drink alcoholic beverages from midnight last night.

It’s only around a dollar per bottle and that it’s for the greater good, I hear you say. Perhaps, although this is just the beginning and it’s sure as hell a slippery slope from here. The mind police are back.

Drinks targeted included Bacardi Breezers, rum and coke, Vodka Cruisers and UDLs. Some are equivalent to three standard drinks.

I’ve never come across a pre-mixed drink that contains three standard drinks. The closest I’ve come is along the lines of the Smirnoff Black Label pre-mixed vodka drinks, which have around 7% alcohol and are around 1.9 standard drinks. Also, the fact that these Limited News journalists cannot name a single pre-mixed drink that contains such a high level of alcohol only fuels my curiosity.

The Government could raise $2 billion from the tax hike, which will be put into a preventative health program.

Sure it will. In the same way that my fuel excise and car registration fees are funding road improvements.

I suppose the raising of taxes on pre-mixed drinks — in the grand scheme of things — isn’t so much of a big deal. However, the reason this particular issue irks me as much as it does is actually because of the bigger picture.

I fear that we are living in a time where people are becoming too comfortably reliant on the Government. Whenever a societal issue presents itself, people turn to the Government to see how they should deem, feel or even behave. It seems that just about any conversation that takes place to do with an issue requires Government intervention, and these conversation almost always contain the passionate phrase “something must be done!“

How this fits in with the seemingly common attitude of political apathy and general distrust of politicians I’m not quite sure. But ask any punter about any issue facing society these days and you will almost certainly have a response that contains the words “the Government should…”

This in itself, while innocent, is in my opinion dangerous. First of all, it completely ignores the capability of freedom of thought that we (supposedly) value so dearly in Western society. Secondly, and most importantly, it gives the Government of the day a reason to patrol our thoughts and decide how we as a people behave — which is where the issue of raising taxes on pre-mixed drinks comes in.

Of course, I will stop there because I don’t think it’s necessary to go over old ground. However in light of Kevin Rudd claiming a mandate to legislate for the greater good of this country, I will make a smattering of suggestions that will invariably result in a better behaved, safer, healthier and above all more efficient society:

* Severely restrict or ban all mind-altering substances. This includes alcohol and strong pain medication.

* In line with the aforementioned substance ban, all night spots must:
A) Keep music volumes down to an acceptable level, which will be defined as being less than what could potentially cause hearing damage if there was prolonged exposure; and
B) Close at or before 10pm to ensure patrons are home at a reasonable hour, which will be defined as before or at midnight.

* A new branch of the Police will be created in each State (and administered by the respective State Government) known as the “Citizens Protection Force” will patrol city streets, and as the name suggests, protect citizens from socially undesirable behaviour. Citizens found on the streets after midnight will be escorted either to the nearest Police Watchhouse or their home (whichever is closest) to prevent them becoming victims of socially undesirable behaviour.

* All food outlets must not sell any food items whatsoever that has a fat content of 25 grams or higher.

* Film, television and video/computer game classifications shall be moved to a 3-tier system. The MA15+, R18+ and, in the ACT and Northern Territory, X18+ classifications will be abolished. Any television show, film or video/computer game that exceeds the M15+ classification shall not be granted classification in Australia in order to provide a more well-rounded entertainment experience for children and families.

* All film, television and video/computer games sold, shown or broadcast in Australia must meet new “sensitivity guidelines”, as enforced by the Office of Film and Literature Classification. This is to prevent the spread of cancerous hate speech, racism, discrimination and other forms of social insensitivity that are difficult to enforce under the current classification system.

* There will be one centrally-designed curriculum for all primary, secondary and tertiary institutions. This will promote efficiency, assist in teaching standards and also ensure Australia is among the smartest of the developed nations.

These are only a few suggestions for Rudd’s Australia, and they may come in handy given that these suggestions are more detailed than anything that came out of the 2020 Summit last weekend.

I for one am glad that Kevin Rudd and his Social Crusaders are up to the task of fixing all our societal woes. Damn people can’t be trusted with anything.

Australia’s “best” and “brightest”… Allegedly

My God, I am frothing-at-the-mouth irritated about the sheer tripe that is coming out of the 2020 Summit this weekend. So much in fact, that I’m having trouble forming sentences and that various inanimate objects in my house — who are completely innocent — have copped punches.

I will rant later, because I will need to get it off my chest. But until then, Andrew Bolt blogged yesterday’s proceedings. He also has more this morning. Finally, keep an eye on this post for further updates.

I will be back when I’m calm enough to form sentences again. It may take a while.

Society saved, taxes raised

Young people. Alcohol. You cannot trust any of those words when put together in a sentence, and you definitely can’t trust them when they’re literally together. Young people are simply not fit enough, mature enough, or responsible enough to consume alcohol. The Federal Government — along with the mainstream press — has declared the topic of binge drinking in this country as more than just a “problem” or “issue”, and even gone past such terms as “crisis” and straight to the term “epidemic”. It’s so far beyond a problem that it’s a disease. And it’s young people who are the problem.

Kevin Rudd and his ever-increasing army of do-gooding, society improving bureaucrats are not only fighting these societal woes, but invariably going to ruin life for us law-abiding, non-nuisance people. That is, at a guess, around about 95% of the population. For example, the Daily Telegraph reports that the Government is likely to raise taxes on pre-mixed drinks:

The cost of a case of “alcopop” products such as Bacardi Breezer, Smirnoff Ice and Jim Beam and Cola, would rise by up to $15 a case, restoring the “cost barrier” that the Howard government removed.

Evil Howard. Crushing the workers by making things cheaper and making it easier for them to get drunk.

The Budget measure – believed to have the support of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Health Minister Nicola Roxon – would reverse the price drop brought about by the introduction of the GST in 2000.

While the price of premium beer rose slightly, alcopops fell by 20 per cent, leading to an explosion in their consumption.

Politically brilliant — Rudd can say “no, it’s not a tax hike, it’s saving Australia!”

Give me a break. It’s a freakin’ opportunistic tax hike.

Confidential alcohol industry research obtained by The Daily Telegraph shows, for the first time, the grip alcopops have on young Australians compared to the rest of the world.

Australia has the highest per capita consumption of alcopops in the world, double that of the next biggest consumers, Britain and New Zealand.

First it’s kids that are the problem for drinking too many of these drinks, and now it’s the drinks (and the evil alcohol corporations) who have the grip on young Australians? Here’s a suggestion to all the boneheaded journalists, lobbyists, politicians and general meddling do-gooders: Make up your mind about what exactly is the cause of the problem. Is it the kids? Is it the manufacturers? Who cares, they say, there’s a problem and the Government must do something! That attitude in itself is the source of a big problem I have with nanny-statists, but the end result is always action taken by the Government that creates more problems than it solves.

Forty-five per cent of girls as young as 12 surveyed by the Australian Divisions of General Practice said their last drink was an alcopop, compared to 8 per cent saying it was beer and 11 per cent wine.

Because girls as young as twelve can freely wander into a bottle shop and buy these pre-mixed drinks. Underage drinking is an area where you need to bring quality of parenting into account. It’s completely ignorant and naive to think that the manufacturers market directly to under-18s, while quality of parenting has nothing to do with drunken 14-year olds.

The Australian General Practice Network’s chairman Dr Tony Hobbs said the “alarming” consumption of alcopops had to be curbed.

Give me a break. For starters, there’s a huge market for pre-mixed drinks, which is very obviously why they’re so successful. But at the same time, there’s nothing stopping people from buying the spirits themselves (say, a bottle or two of vodka) and a few flavoured mixers and making their own drinks. In fact, that is arguably more dangerous, because then you’re letting those irresponsible, immature kids decide how much alcohol goes into their drinks. But instead of thinking the problem through, Dr Hobbs has instead decided to go down the ever so easy path of declaring that “something must be done!”

“Drinks need to be priced appropriately. This tax loophole needs to be closed so that drinks become more expensive, restoring the cost barrier to consumption,” he said.

To begin with, there is no tax “loophole”. There is simply a 10% GST component of the product, which just happens to be less than the pre-GST sales tax that was there before. On top of that there is excise which, according to the Australian Tax Office schedule from February 2008, by my own calculation works out to be around 68.8 cents per standard drink. That is just how it is; manufacturers are not avoiding paying any tax or exploiting anything. The very fact that Dr Hobbs would use such a misleading term shows how much he doesn’t understand the issue.

Secondly, pre-mixed drinks range between about 4% to around 8% alcohol, much the same as full-strength beer. However pre-mixed drinks are sold at bars for more than your on-tap full-strength beers. It’s unlikely you’ll get much change out of $7 if you buy one from a bar or a nightclub after 8 or 9pm, and even less likely to get any change after around midnight if you’re not paying more than that. They are the most expensive drinks you can buy at a bar/pub/club if you don’t count what’s on the cocktail menu (or if you’re picky about what wine you drink).

Alternatively, you can pay around $50 for a case of 24 Vodka Cruisers, or about $30 – $35 for a case of 30 cans of VB or XXXX.

Do these people really think that pushing drinkers away from these already comparitively expensive beverages onto Tooheys New, VB or XXXX — which are already cheaper, despite having a similar alcohol content — will solve anything? What planet are they on? Even then, if all else fails, there is always the trusty goon bag.

Consumption slumped in Britain, when the government in 2002 raised taxes on alcopops by 40 per cent amid similar concern over excessive youth drinking.

Was there a raise in consumption of other drinks to compensate? It’s not as if these drinkers were giving up drinking just because their favourite drinks became more expensive. Let’s be realistic here.

Secondly, the problem that extra taxes creates on certain kinds of drinks is that it makes people more likely to buy spirits and mixers seperately and then mix them manually. Ever see a drunk guy responsibly mix his next JD and Coke? I certainly haven’t. There’s always a lot more JD than Coke in that drink. Or there’s always a goon bag.

Drug and Alcohol Research and Training Australia’s Paul Dillon said alcopops allowed kids to get drunk from a far younger age.

Anybody who actually believes that is kidding themselves. Something like a Cruiser or a Breezer allows kids to get drunk at a younger age? Or is it just shoddy parenting and supervision? That such a person could be in such a position to make such a comment is truly astounding. Paul Dillon, you have set a new benchmark for idiots everywhere.

“It used to be that young guys tried beer and girls had a wine cooler or passion pop. They had far less alcohol content and were harder to use to get drunk,” he said.

Sure, beer and wine are acquired tastes. But if kids wanted to get drunk, they would. Also, last I checked, the alcohol content of a standard Vodka Cruiser, Bacardi Breezer or a Smirnoff Ice was around 5%. That is, for the idiots amongst us — and I’m looking at you, Paul Dillon — around about the same content as a full-strength beer or a wine cooler.

The Rudd Government minister responsible for alcohol policy, Senator Jan McLucas railed against alcopops when in she was in Opposition.

In a Parliamentary speech in 2004 the Labor Senator recalled a colleague’s 10-year-old child who described an alcopop drink as: “sweet and fizzy and tastes just like soft drinks”.

I only have one question to pose to Jan McLucas about that: “Why the fuck was your colleague feeding their 10-year old child an alcoholic drink?”

Yesterday Senator McLucas would not comment on whether tax on pre-mixed drinks would be raised in the May Budget.

Let me translate this for you: Tax on pre-mixed drinks will be raised in the May Budget. Considerably.

It’s this kind of reaction to these kinds of societal issues which will solve nothing. It will only serve to annoy most of the population by making alcoholic drinks more expensive (so much for K-Rudd fighting for the workers — taxes will go up left, right and centre), and furthering the impression that idiot bogan parents don’t have to look after their kids because Daddy Rudd and his friendly bureaucrats can do it for them.

Give me a break.

Update: Sure, his post is over a month old — which shows how on the ball I am more than anything else — but Yobbo makes a good point on a similar subject.

Wrong things said

Kevin Rudd’s world tour has in many ways been like a very gradual train wreck. It seems he’s making some gaffe or just being a general arse wherever he goes. The generally Rudd-loving journalists of Agence France-Presse as published on news.com.au have high hopes for his visit to China, however:

Mr Rudd laughed off the original criticism of his salute to Mr Bush at a NATO meeting in Bucharest, saying “it was just a joke”.

He has not yet responded to the latest attack on his protocol and is now in China, where opposition gaffe-seekers might be frustrated as he served in Beijing as a diplomat and speaks fluent Mandarin.

Opposition gaffe-seekers were spared of their frustration within hours of this article being published.

See, Kevin, this is what we call a rookie mistake, but thanks for playing!

Kevin Rudd: Australia’s Daddy

Ever since Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party swooped to power last November, it seems as if the social conscience of Australia that was so brutally chained up and locked away during the Howard years has come back. All of the social problem areas of our society — poor people, children and the incredibly stupid crainially challenged — are now finally receiving the attention that they were denied during the time John Howard and the Coalition were in power. And it’s about time, if I may say so.

Some of you may know that, at occasional moments of weakness, I’ve been perhaps a bit harsh on the less fortunate. And if I haven’t been harsh, I’ve definitely been ignorant. However, thanks to Kevin Rudd and his Social Justice Squad — that is, his Cabinet — I have seen the error of my ways.

For starters, drinking is now bad for me. While some may say that it’s a case of a few bad apples spoiling the fun for everybody else, I think Rudd needs to go further. At the very least, he should insist that the legal drinking age is raised to 21 or even beyond. If not that, then Rudd should either slap some more taxes onto alcohol sales (which he can use to pay for additional alcohol education initiatives) or just ban it entirely. Nobody will ever get drunk and unruly again if he takes it away from us, so there can’t possibly be any down-side. After all, it’s for the greater good.

Kevin Rudd and his Government are also going to clean up the internet. Clearly annoyed by the scurge on society that is some parts of the internet, Kevin Rudd and his not at all bizarrely titled Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy are acting. At the end of 2007 they were talking up censoring the internet to protect the children. And they are right, because children are the future. Under much pressure from critics Conroy immediately demonstrated his skills at silencing others, by labelling them all paedophiles:

“If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree.”

So in order to keep the children safe from paedophiles, Stephen Conroy is going to censor the internet. Genius! What it means of course, is that when folks in the outback finally get internet coverage, they won’t be able to look at much because it’ll all be censored because it is nasty pornography, violence or hate speech.

This Government and its wonderfully talented Ministers are making life so much easier for us all by making the decisions we as a society cannot be trusted to make.

I can’t help but wonder what other initiatives will be implemented before the next election and perhaps even beyond! In the future, when somebody asks and Australian “who’s your daddy?” the Aussie will be compelled to answer “Kevin Rudd”.

Ahem

You know, it’s difficult to get back into the habit of blogging at the exact same time as you begin a new job that actually makes you busy during the day and tired in the evening.

I’m all about giving handy hints, even if they may be somewhat (by which I mean “blindingly”) obvious.

Support lost

Brendan Nelson: Mister 9 percent.

I’ve never really understood these polls that come out only a handful of months after an election. The incoming (or incumbent) Government would usually still be riding the same kind of victory high they had at the election due to not really being there long enough to annoy everybody, and the Opposition usually needs the best part of 12 months to rebuild themselves to a proper alternative Government (if they get there at all).

So what these polls are really saying is “If an election were held at the weekend, we’d have the same result as we had 3 months ago.”

The electorate is fickle, but not that fickle.

Wrong way looked

A fairly ‘nothing’ story has popped up on News Limited websites this morning:

ACTING Prime Minister Julia Gillard says sitting on the government benches in Parliament this week has been confusing.

[...]

“It can get confusing,” Ms Gillard said on ABC Radio today.

“You have a natural tendency to turn your head the other way to look at the Speaker so you find yourself looking towards the clock instead of looking towards (Speaker) Harry Jenkins.

Yeah, whatever. Who cares. Although I love the headline:

Gillard ‘confused’ by new power

Bureaucrats bollocked

Former Queensland Emergency Services Minister Pat Purcell has been in a bit of hot water lately, and quite rightly so. In July 2007, he was accused of striking two top bureaucrats in the Queensland Department of Emergency Services after some kind of dispute.

He released a statement yesterday, emphasis mine:

On the 2nd of July 2007, during a post-cabinet meeting with two officers from the Dept of Emergency Services, I struck both men in a manner which was unprovoked and inappropriate. Comments made by me in the media shortly after the incident, if construed as a suggestion that I did not strike the men were incorrect. In no way did I ever intend to infer anything other than that both officers had always acted appropriately in discharge of their public duties.

Helpfully, the Courier-Mail has this morning re-published his comments from soon after the incident:

July 6, 2007:
‘I gave them a verbal bollocking but that’s it . . . I don’t bloody go around belting people. I would be more inclined to give someone a hug than anything else’

Yep. If taken at face value, one would have a difficult time construing that Purcell did not strike these bureaucrats. At least he’s set the record straight now. Over 6 months later. Under the cloud of legal action if he didn’t come out with the truth.

For some reason, if you’re in public life and you do something unforgivably stupid — like get busted with drugs or slap a few bureaucrats around — you can just say sorry and get off the hook. Playing the Beattie Defence, if you will. Too bad it doesn’t work for punters like you and me.

One final thing to bear in mind is something that Anna Bligh said recently when she fronted the Crime and Misconduct Commission inquiry into the Gordon Nuttall corruption affair:

“These days … Queenslanders can be very proud that they’ve got a system that operates without fear or favour where it doesn’t matter who you are, you are not above the law.”

Seems that way if you’re a Labor MP in the Queensland Government. Purcell must be sacked.

UPDATE: Purcell will not contest his seat of Bulimba at the next election. He’s a lucky boy — after he slapped the two guys, he continued to deny he did it, even pleading not guilty in court. He continued to deny he hit anybody, until after some out of court mediation he made a public admission and apology that he did in fact hit them. But now he denies he has lied about the situation.

Just as well he’s leaving politics; Purcell is a disgrace and an insult to his constituents.

Floodgates opened

As we all know, former Prime Minister John Howard refused to say sorry to Aboriginals for two main reasons. The first being that current generations, and indeed current governments, cannot be held liable for the injustices of past generations or governments. Secondly, he believed that it would open the Government to the liability of compensation claims. So instead, he moved a motion of “deep regret” in Parliament. Of course, this being John Howard, he was still derided as a racist scumbag and the moving of this motion has been glossed over ever since. Ask any left-wing political science student, or human rights activist and it’s as if he didn’t do anything at all.

Come November 24, 2007, Howard is tossed out of Government and Kevin Rudd and his dullard front bench are thrown into Government. Fast forward to January 2008, and Rudd says that on the first day of Parliament, he will say sorry to the Aboriginies. Uh, but there’d be no compo. None. Zip. Zilch.

Regardless of this, before and after Rudd’s apology to indigenous Australians, the calls for compensation have been loud and frequent. But, whether he likes it or not, State and Territory Governments — who have all said sorry in the past — are going to be the ones wearing the claims. And it’s only a matter of time before the Federal Government caves in to pressure, what with Jenny Macklin and her wet lettuce leaf of a spine as the Minister for Indigenous Affairs.

I do not dare suggest that Howard was right (what with the bile and hatred that would inevitably be spewed in my general direction), but I’m certainly thinking it loudly.

Back in business

Hi everybody.

It’s been over a year since I last updated my blog, and I can now come clean about why I suddenly disappeared! You see, it wasn’t so much because I lost interest in blogging (which is perhaps what many of you would consider the most likely reason), but instead because I scored a job working for a Federal MP.

Now, given that on a regular basis I was writing about politics at both a Federal and State level, this would present a potential conflict of interest. Not so much in the good sense — you know, the kind that I would gain financial advantage out of — but because of the fact that it would no longer be ethical to write about (or, more accurately, throw shit at) Federal and/or State politicians given that I work for one.

Given my quite obvious political leanings, I feel kind of dirty to admit that I was overcome by the limp-wristed, pooncy, wet-tissue notion of ethics, but I simply didn’t feel comfortable writing about the sphere that I worked in. Yes, I probably could have gotten away with it if I was careful about what and who I wrote about. But I’m more the kind of person who thinks about that after the damage is done. So in a rare moment of sensibility, I decided to quietly back away from here… Much to the disappointment of my valued reader, I’m sure.

I have recently stopped working for said Federal MP, so you can probably expect me to bust out the phrase “as a former political hack…” from time to time. Try not to hold it against me… I was only a hack for a year. And I’m still alive now…

So there you have it. I’m back now, and while I can’t guarantee regular posting until I get back into the habit of regular writing, I aim to offer the same half-arsed, semi-researched and vaguely-defined opinions that I’ve had on offer since 2003.

C’mon, it’s worth getting excited about.

Car-bans

Do you drive a car in Queensland? Be afraid:

DRIVERS in Queensland will be slugged with heavier fines and penalties from March 1 in an effort to reduce the state’s road toll.

[...]

The measures – announced after a state Cabinet meeting in the north Queensland town of Atherton – are aimed at cutting inattention, aggressive driving and distraction on the state’s roads.

Oh goody.

“The new penalties being announced today are the next step of measures designed to deter people from the silly and dangerous behaviour that puts lives at risk,” Mr Beattie said.

Key changes to about 120 offences include a jump in the fine for failing to stop at a red light, from $135 and three demerit points to $225 and three demerit points.

A driver convicted of failing to keep a safe distance from the vehicle in front will have to pay $175 and lose one point, instead of the current fine of only $30 and one lost point.

I say that the Government just ban cars. Nobody will die on the road if there are no cars.