By John Stapleton
Those Whom the Gods Would Destroy
The Coverage
The Disastrous Legacy
The National Broadband Network — NBN
Indigenous Relations: Constitutional Recognition
Same Sex Marriage
Losing the Outer Suburbs
“Why is the Prime Minister so unpopular in these areas? It’s not just his aloof manner and Harbourside Mansion reputation.
“His policies are hurting working families battling away on the fringe of our major cities.The real problem is not in the relative distribution of incomes in Australia. It’s the way in which flawed government policies are hurting ALL income earners.
“Turnbull’s policies have failed for people living on the edge of our major cities, so not surprisingly, they don’t want him as our Prime Minister. Mark Latham, The Daily Telegraph, 1 August 2018.
- The housing affordability crisis, due to new arrivals under Big Australia immigration flooding the housing market.
- Increased energy prices, as Australia goes further down the path of putting all our eggs in the renewables basket.
- Income tax bracket creep, with Turnbull giving higher priority to corporate tax cuts than an immediate plan for substantial personal tax cuts.
- Sluggish wage growth, again caused by Big Australia immigration that has flooded the labour market and given two-thirds of new jobs to newly arrived migrants.
Epitaph
There are no saviours of democracy on the horizon. Rather, around the world we see a new authoritarianism that is always anti-democratic in practice, populist in appeal, nationalist in sentiment, fascist in sympathy, criminal in disposition, tending to spew a poisonous rhetoric aimed against refugees, Muslims, and increasingly Jews, and hostile to truth and those who speak it, most particularly journalists to the point, sometimes, of murder. Richard Flanagan.
A once plucky, optimistic, industrious country is happy no longer.