Politics

Political subject matter.

"War On Drugs" Epic Failure

Submitted by craige on April 3, 2012 - 09:39

You know things are really bad when the establishment comes out and states the obvious:

"The Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr, is among a group of prominent Australians who have declared the 'war on drugs' a failure in the most significant challenge to drug laws in decades."

Hopefully we're one step closer to treating drugs as a health issue, not an alarmist political football.

What gave me a chuckle though was this line:

"The key as I see it is to try to reduce substantially the profit potentially able to be made by criminal activity in the drug trade and the only way to do that as I see it, ultimately, is to legalise, regulate, control and tax all drugs."

Nothing better than government regulation to kill profitability ;)

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Politics

Forestry Conflict Comes to Town

Submitted by craige on February 20, 2012 - 21:16

The forestry conflict in the Huon Valley appears to be spilling over into unrelated businesses.

We awoke this morning to the unpleasant surprise that someone had stickered our goat's milk soap shop in Geeveston with "No Greens" stickers. Suddenly we've moved from having no involvement in the forest conflict to being labelled as the "enemy" by some poor, scared forestry worker.

I don't blame the individual for this misguided attempt to intimidate us but I instead look towards our representatives, Paul Harris and premier Lara Giddings, who have failed in their leadership roles to unite the community. With their partisan positions, they are driving a wedge through the community to create an "us vs them" mentality that ultimately harms the community but increases their chances of getting re-elected.

  • Where is their initiative to provide trade schools in the Huon?
  • Where is the encouragement and support for business diversity?

The fear of the Ta-Ann workers that they have no future outside forestry is directly the result of the failure of our elected representatives to provide education and employment opportunities for the Huon, not of someone who had the initiative to start dairy goat farming and a soap business.

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Politics

Swan's Song on Cutting Executive Salaries

Submitted by craige on April 19, 2009 - 11:35

Our beloved national treasurer, Wayne Swan, was bleating to the media yet again about how our latest demons, CEOs - who appear to have supplanted terrorists, should be cutting their salaries to share the pain with "average Australians".

I couldn't agree more that executive salaries ought to be cut, particularly as their salaries are great examples of the wanton greed that has lead to this current financial crisis. I have a real problem though, with people like our treasurer or any politician for that matter, calling for others to take action while they do nothing.

Wayne Swan calling for executives to cut their salaries is just a cheap political stunt on Swan's behalf until he and the Labor Party show some real leadership and cut parliamentary salaries. Imagine politicians leading by example, it's almost getting what we vote for.

The ineffectual management of this nation by both the Liberal and Labor parties is abhorrent. Their parliamentary salaries should be reduced dramatically and become a performance based arrangement.

You look after your electorate and state/nation by meeting set performance expectations and we'll give you free-loaders extra pay. Provide some leadership parliamentarians, it's theoretically why you're there. It would be great to see it in practice.

Until politicians cut their salaries and introduce performance based pay scales, telling others to cut their salaries  just smacks you in the face as the most blatent "pot, meet kettle" political gamesmanship that treats the Australian people as though we're simpletons.

We don't want words, we want leadership and action.

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Politics