Tax Cuts Not The Only Way

Instead of more largesse for our wealthiest 3%, let's re-issue Brendan Nelson's posters with "contributing to the common weal" added as a fair dinkum Aussie value. Then we could issue medals each year to our best taxpayers: Taxpayer of the Year (separate wage-earner and property speculator categories), Young Taxpayer of the Year (for beneficiaries of Family Trusts) and Most Improved Taxpayer (for coming clean about off-shore activities). Additionally, we'd have the Rural Resilience Award (for least government hand-outs).

Surely recognition and naming rights for a bridge, hospital ward or school oval would encourage taxpayers more than simple greed. Besides, it would be nice to see people from outside of Toorak with their names on civic institutions for a change.

Melbourne's Livability

Why not simply ask "Where would you live if price were no object?" People vote with their feet - just ask the Grollos of Thornbury (not South Yarra)!

Sunday Age is Women's Business

I sympathise, Benn Selby, with your critique of the Sunday Age (Letters, Sunday Age, 21/8/05). However, you must understand that this is a women's paper. Sure, some men may read it too (because their partners get it), but c'mon: regular articles about competing 30-something lifestyles (last week, an impassioned plea for the validity of being childless, next week, the politics of the Brazilian wax?). Or middle-class fretting about the kids (obesity this week, next week "Is your child in the right swim club?"). Endless glossy pages on Liz Hurley, fashion, light weight pieces on love etc in the lift out. Photo montages of which socialite is wearing which frock to which do.

Sheesh, after browsing that lot I have to dip into an old Tom Clancy thriller and wade through some of his atrocious prose on F-16 dog-fights just to recover!

Outer-Suburban Growth Is a Burden

I reject the claim from Property Council of Australia's Residential Development Council executive director, Ross Elliott, that "The whole community benefits from growth" on the fringes of Melbourne (The Age, 20/8/05). People flock there - miles from schools, hospitals, public transport and other services - to realise the dream of a backyard. They know they can burden the rest of us with the cost of their lifestyle choice, once they're ensconced there in sufficient numbers.

Young families starting out should instead live in medium-density housing in Melbourne's middle suburbs, sharing the ample parks and facilities there, unless they're prepared to fund the true cost of their prized backyard.

Hit With The Doctors' Club

It is disingenuous of doctors to lay blame for the shortage at the feet of the government. After all, the doctors' guild - through their college system - sets the standards for admission to their cosy clubs. They also lobby through their union, the AMA, to keep an iron grip on Medicare and prescribing rights.

I argue that we would be better off with a lot more medical specialists and a broadening of the scope of allied health practitioners - even at a marginally lower level of quality. Who cares about maintaining artificial "standards" if you have to spend two days on a trolley before seeing a doctor?

Bumper Year for Hand-outs

Tell you what, it's been a bumper year for hand-outs to farmers. Once again, hard-working city-folk are propping up failed businesses in the bush, while the urban poor miss out to enable the lifestyle choices of rural voters.

Well, since I'm paying, they should bloody well cheer up about it. On my next country drive, I expect to see scenes of bucolic splendor and pastoral idyll!

The Memorial Reith

Less than 100,000 farmers are about to share in $3 billion of taxpayers' money. Why don't we just offer them a $30,000 phone card? We could call it the Reithy.

Geeks Fight Back! (in Green Guide)

To understand the growth in "home piracy" (The Age, 13/8), one need only consider the contempt with which Australia's massively profitable TV networks hold their viewers. They buy US series on the cheap and proceed to butcher them in a variety of ways. Stokes' Channel 7 is the most egregious: screening episodes out of order (Firefly), out of sync (Buffy and Angel), skipping whole seasons (Scrubs), stopping halfway through (Arrested Development) and repeating the previous week's episode (Stargate). Add the usual timeslot shuffle, watermarking, deleted scenes, months of delay and "crawling" promos during the show - surely I'm not alone in wanting to sack the network!

Ironically, the greedy TV executives are hastening their own demise. The same geeks that favour these cult shows have the wherewithal to cut the networks out of the loop entirely - and share superior product with their friends.

Women on the Frontline

Imagine being charged by Venus and Serena with bayonets fixed - talk about a shock and awe campaign!

Industry Code on Body Image

State MPs are asking the publishing industry to adopt an industry code on body image (The Age, 9/8), to stop glorifying "stick-thin supermodels". This is akin to asking the captains of industry in fashion and media to pull out $50 notes and burn them. Can you see Calvin Klein or Kerry Packer doing that? Hardly.

Putting yet another government-funded program into an already-crowded school curriculum is not the answer either. No, parents should inoculate their children against these dangerous notions with a healthy dose of scepticism: "How does that perfect model make you feel? Inadequate? Well, that's how they make money off you." Sadly, this process must start earlier and earlier each year.

God of the Gaps

Science, by its nature, is open-ended, unfolding, contentious and incomplete. Proponents of Intelligent Design attack science by pointing out these gaps in knowledge, as if that means the whole enterprise is doomed. It's not. It just means there are more puzzles for our imaginative and creative minds to unravel.

A belief system that instead is based on the limits of our imaginations, exploits our tendency to accept without question and relies on the ever-decreasing gaps in knowledge has no place in our schools.

Overpriced and Substandard?

The Age (Editorial, 4/8/05) is worried about "overpriced and substandard services" for rural and regional telecommunications customers. "Overpriced" isn't when a farmer in the back blocks of Mapunga East is charged more than an apartment-dweller in Docklands for a phone. "Overpriced" is when efficient high-density urban customers are paying extra to subsidise the lifestyle choices (or failing businesses) of others.

"Substandard" isn't when that same farmer can't get email on his tractor. It's when the take-up of new technologies is hampered in areas where it is feasible, lest the industry be obliged to offer it (uneconomically) across the board. (Broadband adoption in this country has lagged the world and impacted negatively on our innovation.)

Assuming that prices and standards should be the same everywhere willfully ignores the realities of physics and economics (sparse population + fixed costs = higher prices). Worse, it uncritically buys into the National Party's special pleading: universal mobile phone reception is not a basic Human Right!

Tabloids Shout Shags

Warnie reckons those kiss-and-tell girls are prostitutes (The Age, 3/8/05). But that's okay - if the tabloids are shouting.

Murdoch Clan War

I'm barracking for Lachlan. (We've got bloody Yanks in our family too.)

The Farmers' Ransom

Those agrarian socialists have their hands out yet again - this time over phone subsidies. I can understand why they shamelessly demand free money - but why do we listen? Is the rural gerrymander that blatant that100,000 farmers can extort the rest of us?

OK, cockies, here's the deal: I'll subsidise you to my level of communications access and pricing once I can enjoy your level of air andnoise pollution!