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Monday 15th September 1997
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The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) paid the Liberal Party Au$53,518 for the seat of Oxley even though Ms Hanson had been disendorsed by the party and won the seat as an independent.
Ms Hanson has already promised to contribute about Au$20,000 towards the payment of a motor car badly needed by an Ipswich charity and would use the balance of the money owing to her to recover her expenses.
Queensland Liberal Party director, Greg Goebel, said that they had offered to return the Au$11,000 to Ms Hanson but she had refused claiming that the entire amount paid by the AEC was due to her.
Goebel said that Ms Hanson should take the Liberal Party to court - and Ms Hanson took up the challenge with a spokesman saying it was immoral for the Liberal Party to keep the money.
Under electoral commission rules candidates who poll more than 4% of the ballot receive Au$1.57 for each primary vote... as Ms Hanson was an Independent candidate at the time of the election the funds were clearly meant to go to her.
Nearly twenty per cent of Australia's Federal MP's enjoyed their winter break in the northern hemisphere - courtesy of the tax payer.
In all thirty eight MPs including a party of eleven who flew to Ireland to "study the economy and to evaluate the reason for Ireland being the destination for some 80,000 Australian tourists each year".
Of the more relevant tax payer funded trips were those by South Australian (Labor) MP Chris Gallus who spent three weeks in Europe and the US in June to study industry policy "particularly on the car and textile, clothing and footwear industry". Gallus campaigned against the tariff cuts on his return - just before the Government decided to freeze them.
For the others like Labor Front Bencher Simon Creane who went to the South of France to enjoy a taste of the wine regions... well he just typifies what is sick with our political system.
Making the
news" -Just weeks ago Primary Industry Minister John Anderson was hammered when his department said that farmers in certain areas no longer needed drought relief... he subsequently reversed this comment when the backlash started reverberating throughout rural Australia.
Under Prime Minister John Howard's package farmers would now be free to give their children up to Au$500,000 in property as gifts and still qualify for the aged pension. The government will also provide grants of up to Au$45,000 to help farmers who cannot make a go of it to establish themselves in the city.
The four year package replaces Paul Keating's Rural Adjustment Scheme with the key change being the ability for farmers to hand farms from one generation to the other as a gift.
Before this change was implemented farmers lost their rights to pensions if they gave away more than Au$10,000 to family as gifts.
Here is a summary of the Coalition's new rural policy package:
People are far too thin-skinned these days. In fact they're totally wussy, and it seems to be government policy to encourage a general sense of victimisation. Is this the secret of modern government? - to distract citizens from public issues by encouraging an exaggerated sense of personal 'hurt' and 'offense'?
Does it boil down to, 'Sue (or at least threaten to), and ye shall be soothed?'
If human beings truly were the delicate and fragile creatures modern elites insist we are, then human beings would never have colonised the whole planet from the tropics to the artic wastes. No, we're not a hot-house species, we're a rampaging weed of a species. We're actually very tough.
But given that the 'delicates' have greater credence than the 'weeds', I was not surprised to read (Sun-Herald 14/9/97) that a South African schoolboy rugby team has been forced to apologise to a touring Aboriginal schoolboy rugby team for racial abuse. Apparently after the Aborigines lost 32-7, one of the victorious South African schoolboys gleefully said the victory proved, 'whites were superior to blacks.'
This puerile remark was certainly in bad taste. More lamentably it demonstrated bad sportsmanship. But was it really worthy of the intervention of the South African High Commission? I would have thought that such an institution had more important things to deal with. But no, not in the Age of Wusses.
As a little child I indulged in similar behaviour. At primary school when the girls beat the boys at spelling we'd exultantly chant, 'girls are better than boys!', at the hapless boys. It didn't affect my longterm interest in, and love for, the opposite sex. But I suppose these days such politically incorrect behaviour - even by 8 year olds - would also be brought up before some adult tribunal.
See what I mean?
Antonia Feitz
The world has gone crazy, I am just surprised that the world sees it not. When I was a kid the pressures I faced were all about discipline - if I misbehaved I had three straps across the backside without any questions asked. It was a simple system that worked. Boys stayed in line, did not abuse teachers and were polite.
Today a student can abuse a teacher without the disciplines of the past but say anything that can be mildly termed as "racist" and he/she could find him/herself in deep water. As Antonia correctly points out - are we all "wuzzes"... where is our fibre, or does that description best define the politically correct ferment that we now find ourselves in....
Editor.
The news comes as Telstra prepares for the public float of 50% of its shares.
Telstra's chief has also foreshadowed a further cut of nearly 7,000 jobs by the company which once employed nearly 100,000 people.
Yesterday I went for a canoe up the Brisbane river... absolute heaven on earth.
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