View From The Couch - 11/Feb/2016

Barnaby Joyce, Deputy Prime Minister

The world is a cold, hard, cruel place. Then it reveals it has a wicked sadistic sense of humour by presenting us with the spectre of Barnaby Joyce as the next leader of the National Party, and as such will be our next Deputy Prime Minister. I'm sure he's over the moon, but watching this feels more like the lunatic-in-chief has been handed the keys to the asylum. Make no mistake, Barnaby is a 'close friend' of Gina Rinehart and shares her trenchant fascist views. He's a climate change denier and we won't even go into what he thinks about the gay marriage issue.

So it is that you get rid of one Dark Ages throwback Tony Abbott, and somehow the conservatives manage to thrust forward another devotee of Dark Age politics. It's enough to make you lose faith in Australian politics altogether.  It's the one arena where being regressive is rewarded.

Toll Rise, And Opal Hike

The NSW government really has so little control over private roads and public transport.  It's a shame because ostensibly they are in charge, but something strong seems to happen between the high offices of government and the lobbyists who come lobbying them on behalf of businesses looking for a big tender.

Transurban is hitting motorists with a 15% rise in tolls. They're cheering because tollroad operation is the easiest wicket to fleece citizens. Sydney tollroads are the centrepiece of the revenue stream, and transurban ants to build more of these things. It really is the pits.

Meanwhile the government wants to hike the Opal card, hitting up people who use public transport. So if you're lucky enough to have public transport, the government slugs you; but should you live far from public transport and you're committed to driving, the government abandons you to tollroads and tollroad operators.

Sydney is the worst-planned city of its kind in the world.

Work For The Dole Doesn't Work

In other (un-)surprising news, it turns out 'Work for the Dole' doesn't really work.
It's not that surprising really, given that its main purpose is to torture the unemployed and send them to do just anything that resembles paid labour, to justify the welfare being spent. It reflects a very idiotic view of what work is, and what employment truly is.

Now that they know it doesn't work, the government is committed to keep on doing it - which tells you quite a bit about how they think. It's not really all that important for the unemployed to find actual work, it's more important that they be made to do menial things for the satisfaction of people who imagine there is wholesale welfare fraud going on everywhere. I know a few welfare bums, but really, 'Work for the Dole' is just make-work-for-punishment. it doesn't address the underlying issue of why they're welfare bums.

On a more broader note, in the future there will be more unemployment. This is because machines will eat more and more jobs. The robots are coming, AI algorithms are already here. Increasingly, humans will price themselves out of work. There is no plan on how to deal with this phenomenon. You sort of wonder how that is all going to go.