joe.toscano's blog

FAKE: to practise deception by giving a false indication or appearance of something.
PROPAGANDA: the systematic widespread promotion of a certain set of ideas, doctrines or values.

What is publicly good science? Publicly good science is value free science that is accessible to both government and the public. Over the past four decades we have seen the destruction of public science. All state governments and the Federal government have, in the rush to privatise and outsource every service they have traditionally provided, closed down and downsized a whole host of government instrumentalities that provided government with vital value free scientific advice.

Dennis Richardson has had a long and distinguished career as an Australian public servant – 48 years to be exact. He has given “free and frank” advice primarily about national security to a bevy of Ministers and Prime Ministers over five decades. A few days ago he addressed the National Press Club about his experiences. He seems to have a bee in his bonnet about Chinese spooks keeping tabs on Chinese students and business people in Australia. I can understand his concerns about a foreign power conducting espionage in a sovereign nation state.

Budget time is always a revelation. Not the Treasurer’s theatrical performance but where’s the money coming from? Things have changed a little bit over the past decade. Projected revenue for 2017-2018 is estimated to be 444.4 billion dollars (a lovely round figure). It is estimated about 209.6 billion will be squeezed out of individual income tax (that’s approximately 45% of total revenue). Fringe benefits tax will raise about 4.4 billion (1%). Superannuation taxes about 8.5 billion (2%). Customs duty 14.7 billion (3.5% approx.). Fuel excise 18.78 billion (4.5% approx.).

Since 2003 Ellen Jose, a Torres Strait Islander Elder who has lived in Melbourne for over 40 years and whose family comes from Mer, Darnley and Horn Island in the Torres Strait, has organised a yearly Mabo Commemoration in Melbourne at Federation Square to mark the end of the historical fiction this land was uninhabited before it was colonised by the British Crown in 1788 – Terra Nullius.

I'm pretty confident most Australians are unaware of the biggest privatisation CON that has occurred in the history of this country. I'm not talking about the privatisation of the Commonwealth Bank, Telecom, Medibank Private, Australia's airports and a host of other publicly owned assets over the past four decades. At least in these cases the revenue made from the sale of profit making publicly owned assets was absorbed back into consolidated revenue.

Public human interaction can be divided into two distinct components. The cyber age is increasingly allowing us to bypass the need for human interaction in an unnecessary complex commercial setting. The world wide web and automated phone bill paying has not only added a cost to the relatively simple process of buying, selling and paying a bill it has also removed the need for face to face contact with a human being.

Standards of conduct and moral judgement change with changing economic and political circumstances. The privatisation, globalisation, deregulation and corporatisation tsunami that has swept the globe over the past four decades has had a profound impact on the ethical standards that were adopted around the world as a result of the Nuremberg Trials that were held after WWII.

There is sport and there is sport. Sport ranges from any recreational activity to any activity that requires bodily exertion that is played to a set of rules. Sport played to a recognised set of rules paradoxically teaches children to co-operate and compete at the same time. Children are taught to co-operate with their team members to defeat the opposing teams. Team sport is based on the idea both individual and collective effort is needed to achieve a goal. Sport mimics the relationships needed to create a successful society.

The Victorian state government raised 6 billion dollars from stamp duty last year. This tax is paid when people purchase property in Victoria. Billions of dollars in land tax that companies and people owning more than one property pay every year was also collected by the state government. On all available indicators Victoria and Australia is in the midst of a housing affordability crisis. Paradoxically, the Victorian Labor government’s response to this crisis is to destroy what’s left of the public housing sector.