Mates Don’t Tax Each Other
[/custom_frame_left]‘Mateship’ is one of our Australian traditions that makes us a great nation. It involves the deepest bonds of generosity, sacrifice, community spirit and the ability to deal with hardship in the face of adversity. It’s an ethos that pre-dates Gallipoli and the Kokoda track, one where the greatest sin in life is to let your mates down.
Although some seek to deny the existence of the Australian tradition of mateship, the contrast in community spirit in the aftermath of the recent flooding in Brisbane compared with that following the flooding of New Orleans demonstrates that the Australian ethos of mateship is alive and well.
In 2005 when Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, the city plunged into lawlessness. Anarchy and chaos reigned as armed gangs roamed the streets, preying on the helpless, pillaging & looting homes and committing murder & rape. In the aftermath, a tourist asked a police officer for help and got the reply; “Go to hell man, it’s everyone for themselves”.
In contrast, following the recent Queensland & Victorian floods, ‘armed gangs’ roamed the streets, but these gangs were made up of thousands of ordinary mums & dads and volunteers from all walks of life, and they with armed with mops and buckets and brooms, but most of all they were armed with their Australian ethos ‘mateship’. It made me proud to be an Australian.
However the concept of ‘mateship’ should not be exploited by the Gillard/Greens government as a smokescreen to slug Australian families with a new tax to prop up a budget bleeding red ink from reckless and extravagant spending, with billions wasted on misguided schemes such as Grocerywatch, the Pink Batts fiasco and the B.E.R just to name a few.
But the real danger of Labor’s unnecessary “flood levy” or “mateship tax” as the Prime Minister likes to call it, is the harmful affect it will have on the Australian tradition of ‘mateship’. Millions of Australian’s have donated generously to assist the victims of recent floods, simply because they didn’t want to let their mates down, but they now feel double-crossed, forced to pay a compulsory donation in the form of a new tax. Therefore next time we face a major disaster, the memory of Gillard’s unnecessary flood tax will dampen Australian’s spirit generosity in the future.
Gillard fails to understand the fundamental economic principle, that if you tax something you get less of it – and her unnecessary “mateship tax” will simply result in less ‘mateship’ thereby undermining one of the very building blocks that makes Australia the great nation that it is.
Gillard must can this misguided new tax, and simply reign in her government’s reckless & extravagant spending.