Australia can do better things.

Dear readers, in this blog, we have written several posts about D.I.Y. articles that dealt with building works. Having done that, now we are writing posts about social issues. We have started with this post, Farming today is still a risky business, we want to talk about social issues that can affect all of us. We will start with Australian social issues that we have already written in the past, when these things happened; then we will follow with what is happening these days. This is only our views of what we see happening, so, we hope we can say something that can be helpful. Today we are going to talk about the political parties, and how Australia can do better if they pass better laws. 

Anyhow, you can also find this article at, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com, 

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To see more visit links, The Australian Political Parties, Australia Can Do Better

This is the house of representative in Canberra, it is where the Australian parliamentarians discuss and pass their laws, sometimes their laws or budget are poorly made, so, they need reviewing, like the assets test that we will talk about in this article.  

Australia can do better than this. 

People in power need to put people first

Welcome to our article,  Australia Can Do Better, 

Dear readers, this is another article about the Australian political parties. We believe that the Australian government can do better if the politicians in power think about the people first. Therefore, whichever party is elected from the people to form government, when they budget or make new laws, they must put people first, because that is their job, since that is the reason they have been elected to parliament. Of course, the political parties have their own beliefs, so, they help some groups more than other groups. So, let us look which political party is better for which group:  

The Labor Party helps the workers and the have-not. They also have idealistic ways to help all communities; so, it is like the communist party, in the sense that they don’t like the rich and the large enterprise. They like the government to be the big spender, which is good, but they easily run out of money and that is their biggest problem.

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Now let us talk about the coalition. The coalition like to make laws and budgets to helps the rich; they also help the poor and the have-not, but they are not their priority.

In this article, because the coalition is in government and we want to say things that they have done, let us talk about them a bit more than the Labor Party.

The coalition likes large enterprises and the rich people, they are more willing to help the employers, the self-employed and those that own properties, in the belief that these groups will employ people gainfully, which will help run the country without asking much help from the government; so, the coalition government let the country run on its own, as much as they can from these self-driven people; which when the coalition is in power, they are more willing to use their own money to run their business. But even this system misses a few things, because there is no help for a large section of the community.

Anyhow, what we want to say here is that both parties are not looking after those people that are neither rich and no poor, they are left on their own to do what they want to do, because they are self-employed, are farmers or own properties; but that is not all, they turn to these people only to tax them, and worst still sometimes they make laws or pass budgets that penalize them badly. Anyhow, let us look at what the coalition did, when they did this mathematical heartless budget that has hurt many people.

The mathematical heartless budget. 

To understand what I am saying here, we need to go back to Joe Hockey budget 2014; this budget must be the worse budget ever made, because it penalizes those people that work hard and look after themselves. If you ask me what I think about Joe Hockey as a politician treasurer, I will say that they made a mistake to put him there. Whoever becomes a treasurer must be somebody compassionate, he must think about how his budget is going to affect the people, especially the poor people, the pensioners and the family man; but Joe Hockey has no compassion in him, he thinks only about the government bank account that is overdrawn, so, he wants to brink the government bank account to surplus.

The then prime minister Tony Abbott did not understand the situation any better himself, he thinks that Joe Hockey budget is good; I remember Tony Abbott smiling and laughing at budget night, when people were shocked at this tough budget. In my opinion the PM should have at least be apologetic to the people that were affected adversely, but he kept smiling and laughing, as if what they were doing was great.

There were many mistakes in Joe Hockey 2014 budget, but in my opinion one of the main mistakes was the change they made to the assets test. Because treasurer Joe Hockey and PM Tony Abbott made a disaster, when they changed the assets test, from $1.50 per thousand to $3.00 per thousand, when people in most cases cannot earn that sort of money from their assets. Perhaps I feel this way, because I have been affected and I have many friends that have been affected by the assets test badly, so, we hate Joe Hockey, because he has robbed us of our fair share of money that we were entitled to have. This is what we want to talk and explain in this article, and if this article is not enough will write another article, to show you what we mean.

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Let us start talking about the assets test.

The assets test and the pensioner the way we understand it.

Here we are forced to repeat; people work hard during their lives and save money, so that, when they retire, they can use this money or use the earnings from the assets that they have bought to live a better life.

But this does not work right all the time, because politicians introduce laws or taxes that hurt people that have worked hard and saved their earnings, like the change in the assets test of 2014 budget, that has cut off the pension to many pensioners, other had their pension reduced so much that they can hardly live on it, in fact, these people have to live on a budget that is a lot less that the government pension. I believe that people that work hard and save money don’t deserve to be treated this bad.

I don’t know why the politician cannot work it out themselves, it is not that hard to add a few numbers together; anyhow, it maybe that they are too lazy to do that, so, we need to write down examples to show them what they are doing, because they need to be explained the consequences of what they have done. So, let me write a short example hereunder on how the assets test has affected these pensioners that own two houses, one is their residence, the other is a rental property.

We are talking about rental properties, because rental properties are at the top of the list of the disadvantages that have resulted from the increased assets test. So, let us talk about some friends of mine that will call, Mr. and Mrs X in a shortened version, we will write a longer version in our next article.

Mr and Mrs X, after the assets test was introduced, they informed me that the new assets test has affected them so bad and in such a way that that they could starve, therefore, they must withdraw money from their savings to live a modest life. You see, they receive very little money from their government pension to live on, because of the assets test. Their pension has been cut to $120 each per fortnight, so, they receive $240 for both from the government pension, plus their house rent that is about $13000 a year net, after expenses. This works out at about $450 per fortnight for both, So, their income is now; $240+450=690 per fortnight for both, which is a lot less than the normal pension, which can be about $1200 for both.

What is wrong with the people in Canberra? Are they blind and can’t see that they are punishing the people that have worked hard during their lives? They worked hard and saved their money to live an easier life when they retire, but now they are punished for having done that; this does not sound right to me, this should not happen, if all citizen were treated equal, but that nasty budget broke all rules, when they changed the assets test. I believe that the government, before they change anything financially, they must ensure that all citizen should receive, or they should be able to earn a minimum amount of money to live on. Therefore, they should not bring out laws or budgets that make it impossible for their citizen to achieve that themselves; but if they bring out laws like that, they must reimburse the citizen for their loss, it is only fair.

But there is more to worry about, if this trend of punishing the self-driven hard worker continues, they will be killing the will of the hard-working people to earn and save money and own a second property. You see, once this group of people realize that there is no point to work hard and save money, because they will be put in a disadvantage financial position from the government. They will stop working hard and the looser will be the Australian government, because they will run their business in such a way that they can collect the government pension when they are old. I hope you see what we mean. I believe that Australian government can do better than this, but they need to fix the mistakes they are making, and most of all fix the assets test.

This article is becoming too long, so, see you in our next article, where we will write a few articles, starting with how the Australian pensioners are alarmed, and about how the rental properties have affected the owners adversely, because of the overrated assets test and to what degree. See you soon.

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