Warped welfare wailing

Contrary to what we are told by politicians and the media, the cost of welfare is not a major element among the issues that we face in achieving and sustaining the financial viability of Australia.

Currently, the crippling costs to the economy are:

• Corporate handouts and concessions
• Tax Avoidance, particularly by multi-national corporations
• Negative Gearing
• The costs of Direct Action on the environment which should be paid by a tax on polluters
• Gross waste and inefficiency with Defence
• Superannuation tax havens
• A hugely bloated Public Service
• Enormous duplication costs between Federal, State and Local Governments
• The totally unnecessary costs of perpetuating racism at Nauru, Manus and Christmas Island

Added to these will be the proposed tax cuts which are based on the blatant lie that the benefits will trickle down from the rich to the poor. It never has and it never will.

Nevertheless, too many politicians have always believed that there are lots of votes to be won by belting citizens who are old, handicapped, unemployed or homeless. So, they commit perjury every day as they blatantly dig deep to reach the darkest elements of the voting public.

Yet, the facts of the matter are quite simple.

There is no such thing as a perfect world, nor are there many people who do 'the right thing' for society, mainly because there are a hundred definitions of what 'the right thing' actually is.

There will always be a shortage of jobs and too many people who can't or won't work.

An ever expanding ageing population will perpetually be with us and most of them won't have adequate financial resources to meet the fundamental necessities of life.

Even if Australia survives for a thousand years, there will never be a time when there a no people who are handicapped or homeless and there will forever be children who are deserted by parents as well as there being too many people in prisons.

And we are light years away from integrating indigenous Australians into a society of equality.

So, we must accept the blatantly obvious. There is an inevitable expenditure involved in maintaining a civilised nation and this must be peacefully and wisely accepted as a fundamental cost of a mature society.