There's Even More Not To Like

Future Brain Drain

Last night I went out to dinner with Walk-off HBP and his family and eventually the conversation turned to the politics of this budget. His daughter's finishing up high school this year, so tertiary education and its cost became a hot topic for conversation. Fortunately (and I use this word loosely), Mrs. HBP is from Denmark, so up for consideration was the possibility that the younger HBP might be better off claiming her heritage and citizenship, and heading to Denmark where tertiary education is free. It occurred to me that there might be a lot of this sort of thing going on.

The logical ramification is that Australia might be about to witness  great brain drain in the not too distant future, as well as an acceleration of the aging population issues. Consider for the moment the number of people who could devise a way back to the countries of their heritage to get a less expensive tertiary education. Places like Ireland and Scandinavian countries are not the only places that offer up these option. Then think of the likelihoods they meet their spouses and setup families elsewhere on the planet and not Australia. It's like Australia is willing to give up its younger, smarter population when in fact they're the people that are going to be needed to support the aging baby Boomers and eventually Gen-X.

In the mean time our universities will be filled with stupid rich kids who will be there only because they can afford to be there, so this notion of more competitive universities seems like a pipedream on the part of the Coalition. Walk-off HBP thinks it's more of a smokescreen to entrench privilege in such a way that only the Liberal voting types get to go to University.

I've already covered the problems of carrying a 100k student debt into a professional career - you're worse off than not going to university and getting a tradie's job. We may actually be looking at a future where the ranks of varsity graduate professionals will be much lower in quality than today. I don't know about you, but I don't think these rich types are going to enjoy going to doctors and lawyers pulled from the third best minds of their generation.

Nepotism As A Way Of Life

One of Tony Abbott's daughters got a 60k scholarship. The people who gave her the scholarship claimed it was purely on merit. Another one of Tony Abbott's daughters has a plum job working fro DFAT in Geneva. A lot of people have pointed out how unqualified she is for the job, but no, her boss is an old Liberal Party member who has told us that Tony Abbott's daughter got the jobon her own merits.

In each instance the insistence on the merits of Abbott's brood seems to stretch the definition of the word 'merit'. It' a really bad look when your government is about to make tertiary education more expensive to then have a daughter get a freebie. It's a really bad look to have your daughter get a plum job in DFAT over other genuine candidates of actual merit, when your government is about to cut off 16,000 public sector jobs. Both instances speak volumes to the absence of character in his daughters, which, by extension reflect badly on the parents, who in this instance happens to be the Prime Minister. These are big favours being handed to his family.

When you consider that there is a Royal Commission into Julia Gillard's conduct as an IR lawyer and claims of $7000 for renovations of her house coming from a union slush fund; and how Abbott himself hounded Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper relentlessly through digging up dirt; not to mention the fact that all it took was for a $3000 bottle of Grange Hermitage to bring down Barry O'Farrell, it seems abundantly obvious that Tony Abbott should quit. $60,000 worth of scholarship dollars and a plum job at DFAT seems far in excess of what normal people would consider a favour for a mate.

Really, Tony Abbott should quit on this alone.

But he won't quit. Which means he's an unabashed crook. now he's saying he wants family kept out of it. I think it's a bit much that a man who would go after Julia Gillard with a Royal Commission, and hounded Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper in the manner that he did, to want his family kept out of it by the media.

No, no, no Mr. Abbott, it's much too late for that. You lowered the bar forcefully - you can try doing your limbo dance under it.