https://rssfeed.media/@abcfeeds/114233003601141821
Ring the ALARM Bells…. #Privatisation of public transport infrastructure ensures a decline in services and early retirement of infrastructure assets due to cuts made in order to produce profit for investors. Private enterprise strip the assets bare and then put their greedy little hands out for govt #subsidies to get them out of presumed financial trouble (no one is looking at their deep pockets full of stolen $$ here). It has always been so, it will always be so… what’s so hard to understand here? It plain old #StateTheft. Your tax money going straight into private pockets.

After, God I don’t know, one hundred years, govt still make the stupidest decisions and hand over public assets for ‘stripping’ by grifter mates…

Come on Aussies. Don’t vote those fuckers in again… Jezzzz…

I venture to say that the #SA #blackouts is yet another ‘in your face’ example of what happens when the State lets a ‘private company’ look after infrastructure that should, by any measure, remain in public hands.

I’ll also venture to say that such ‘sweet deals for mates’ as selling off infrastructure and services to private bidders only ever leads to deteriorating infrastructure and a constant downgrading of services.

Ergo, I have no hesitation to put forward a lack of maintenance on the electricity infrastructure under stewardship of the private company in question as the sole and only factor for the resulting blackouts.

Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-15/power-restored-yorke-peninsula-amid-bushfire-risk/105052524

A plea for #TaxReform long overdue, if I’ve ever read one. Rod Campbell writes in The Conversation:

“Scrapping the capital gains tax discount, getting rid of discretionary trusts, placing more limits on the types of assets that can be held in self-managed super funds, and increasing tax rates on people with big super balances would reduce the ability of the wealthy to avoid paying tax.

It is hard to reform tax loopholes because most people don’t understand them and the people who do understand them reap the biggest benefits from them.”

In other words, it’s about time we got the pig’s snouts out of the public trough. These tax #loopholes are a form of #StateTheft and a mechanism for distributing wealth to the wealthiest, thereby increasing #inequity in our society. #Grifters are everywhere you look, some blatantly so, many others look like mum & pop, but these people enjoy profits at the cost of those who struggle to make ends meet.

Greg Jericho (in The Guardian) concludes with:

“Right now, the government is choosing to deliver $50bn a year to the richest 10% of Australians for no real, discernible public good that benefits the nation. Maybe that deserves a bit more attention than we give predictions of budget estimates which will soon be forgotten and likely be wrong.”

Come on #AlboPM what are you waiting for? Christmas?

I guess I have now confessed my deep regards for #GregJericho’s economic nous. Ah well, he deserves it. He is in the same basket as #AlanKohler in good company.