Sandwich Politics

Is this what you pay taxes for?

Imagine you live in a house with several other people. It's a crummy house so one day you all decide to paint it, you get together, chip in and hire a painter, leaving for the afternoon after paying him. When you get back you discover that the painter hasn't painted the entire house, the bits he did do are the wrong colour and he demolished the porch because he thought it'd look better that way. Not to worry though, he's still got enough of your money to give you back enough for a sandwich, and he's got a mate who does porch repairs at cost.

Who'd stand for that? Well about 20 million people it seems. The Federal govt. has run a surplus of $13.6 billion * ($13,600,000,000) at a time when our hospitals and schools are a creaking shambles and we face skills shortage and a lack of government investment in national infrastructure. That's your money, you paid it expecting to get a service in return, not a subway sandwich a week tax cut. A few dollars extra a week won't buy you a place in a hospital queue or permanent buildings for your kid's public school. The government takes your money, doesn't do what you expect and then tells you to go pay a third party to provide what you need while it sits on a big pile of your cash. Then it tosses back a few dollars a week and as a nation we go, 'Ooooooh, shiiiiny!' and forget what we were talking about.

*This figure may be closer to $10 billion, depending on whom you ask.