joe.toscano's blog

I'm sure most, if not all, of you don’t remember the campaign Jean Ely and I conducted in Melbourne in 2012 when I stood as Lord Mayor of Melbourne and Jean as Deputy Lord Mayor. We came last of the 6 or 7 candidates and collected a massive 1.5% of the vote. Considering we spent $625 on the campaign and the Lord Mayor Robert Doyle spent over $300,000 on his campaign, the amount of votes we received isn’t as pathetic as it first seems.

If you call me fat, stupid or a megalomaniac, I’d shrug my shoulders and say that’s your opinion. If you call me a wog or dago, that’s a different matter. Why? Simple. Terms like fat, stupid, megalomaniac are individual terms of abuse. They’re directly related to me. Terms like dago and wog (although we like to kid ourselves they’re part of the national vernacular) are terms of abuse that are directed at a whole group of people. The fact I’m Italian descent is nothing I can change. To be abused because of my nationality or race is different to being abused for who I am.

The Federal government is hurting as a result of the “Unfair” Work Commission’s decision to drastically reduce penalty rates for over 700,000 poorly paid workers in the hospitality and pharmacy sectors. In their latest obscene attempts to direct the public gaze from their responsibility for this decision, the Federal government has launched legislation to criminalise trade unions and employers who do deals that disadvantage workers.

Just in case you’ve been taken in by the propaganda being spewed out of the office of the Minister for Housing, Mr. Martin Foley, regarding how private public partnerships are the way forward for public housing, think again. If the Ashburton public private partnership debacle is anything to go by, continuing to promote these policies will be a disaster for all Victorians.

Equality of opportunity – it’s a lovely phrase that’s regularly trotted out by those who wield power in society. Equality in 21st century Australia isn’t a topic many people raise. It’s always “equality of opportunity”. Those people who trot out that phrase with monotonous regularity seem to have forgotten life is a handicap race.

Poor Sally McManus, the new Secretary of the ACTU. She’s been pilloried from pillar to post by the corporate owned media, the government gelded ABC, the Turnbull led coalition government and disowned by Bill Shorten, the leader of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition for stating the bleeding obvious, the Trade Union Movement should consider breaking unjust laws.

Death and taxes may be inevitable for mere mortals like you and me, but it seems they don’t apply to the corporate dominated mining sector in the land down under. Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd soon found out, character flaws or no character flaws, no one tries to squeeze an extra cent out of the mining sector in the land of Oz. Brendon Grylls, the former leader of the National Party in Western Australia, has just lost the safest National Party seat in Western Australia, Pilbara, to the Labor Party at the Western Australian election last week.

You’ve got to hand it to the Victorian Labor government, they’ve finally realised their political survival is dependent on them improving housing affordability for first home buyers. It looks like they’ve thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the problem. Just a few of the schemes they’ve put in place include: stamp duty savings for first home buyers who buy homes that cost less than $600,000. A 50 million dollar pilot program will give around 400 Victorians the ability to co-purchase their first home with the state government. The state government will take up an equity share of 25%.

I'm pretty confident you’ve sat behind a car with the Australian flag with the words “Love it or Leave” printed next to the flag. Bumper stickers give an insight into the mindset of the driver. “Love it or Leave” is pretty cut and dry. Love it or fuck off somewhere else. That’s the problem, isn’t it? Unconditional love, irrespective of the behaviour of the individual. It’s one or the other, nothing in between. Take it as it is or piss off.

The story goes something like this. Voters are flocking to Divided Nation (the political party registered as Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party) because they stand up for the little people. Well if you're one of the 33% of Australians who receive a social security benefit or if you're a part time poorly paid worker, nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is a little different. Divided Nation sided with the government in three out of four recent Senate votes.