Kate McCulloch

From the front page of today’s Sydney Morning Herald:

Am I the new Pauline Hanson? I hope so

No love, you’re just another community clown who thinks bringing mockery and contempt upon yourself and shame upon your family are a price worth paying for 15 minutes of media celebrity. But maybe you’ll get lucky and score an invitation to Dancing with the Stars, or even to join another outstanding Australian Corey Delaney as a guest on Big Brother.

Christ there are some pathetic people in the world.

Ah the Gold Coast … no feminism allowed

I enjoy reading local newspapers in Australia. They provide a unique insight into the things that really matter to people (I mean let’s face it, most of the stories in the MSM occupy the attention of the bulk of the population for about 35 seconds max. Apart from the sport of course.)

We’re spoilt for choice where I live. There’s the Northern Star, based in Lismore and covering the whole Northern Rivers area, and the Gold Coast Bulletin. Then there’s the Daily News, which nominally covers the Tweed Shire but since even on a broad definition of ‘news’ not enough happens in the Tweed Shire to fill a daily newspaper, it also tends to have lots of Gold Coast stories. The best thing about these local rags is that they don’t even make a pretence of being politically correct. They know they serve a readership that’s mainly old and conservative and they give the customers what they want.

Fortunately, to save having to pay good money for local gossip, there are a couple of free papers that are a kind of compendium of the week’s highlights. Needless to say they’re not online yet but I wanted to share this week’s front page story. The headline (in very large font) is:

The story concerns an argument about pensions - you know, those things that the Liberal party is now desperate to see increased without bothering to explain by how much or why they never got around to it during 11+ years in government. First there’s this nice line:

Since last year’s federal election, the pair are now among the most prominent women in Canberra.

Go on, try to think who TF Elliott and May are without cheating. Well done anyone who came up with Justine Elliott, a junior minister in the Rudd Government, but I doubt if anyone named Margaret May who’s an opposition MP from the Gold Coast. But that’s the nature of local media, they love anyone from the district and if they can boost them into national prominence they’re proud as punch.

But it’s the minor headline that I really loved:

Claws come out as Budget cat fight gets up close & personal

Can you imagine the reaction if Kerry O’Brien referred to an argument between Julie Bishop and Julia Gillard as a ‘cat fight’? But political correctness is pretty generally despised around these parts. If we see a couple of women arguing we pull up chairs and wait for them to start throwing crockery and pulling each others’ hair. That’s just the kind of old-fashioned folk we are.

Lord make the roads safer … but not just yet

Two interesting stories about road safety yesterday in the Sydney Morning Herald*.

The first tells us that it is now technically and economically feasible to install a device in cars that prevents the engine being started if the driver is pissed.

The devices were originally developed for the most dangerous drunk drivers: high-breath alcohol content or repeat offenders. But anti-drink-driving advocates are lobbying to get interlocks in every car driven by an adult over the legal drinking age. Some carmakers have developed technology to help stop drink driving. In Japan Nissan is trialling its on-board breathalyser with government authorities but Nissan Australia says there are no plans yet to bring the technology here.

I cannot think of a single initiative that would do more to reduce the road toll than mandatory installation of such a device in all vehicles (retrofitting existing vehicles at government expense). it would have the associated benefit of saving the millions of dollars spent on random breath testing and freeing up scarce police resources for other duties.

Yet I confidently predict that if anybody proposed such a move in Australia, there would be howls of outrage all over the place. We would be bombarded with the usual far-fetched objections like ‘it will cost lives cos people won’t be able to rush their mate to hospital when he’s been bitten by a brown snake on a fishing trip’ and ‘it will get confused when I’ve been eating me mum’s wine trifle’ and of course the would-be killer: ‘devious crims will find ways to beat the system so it will only end up penalising ordinary mums and dads’.

I personally know of a few people who would be alive today if such devices were compulsory and writing as someone who used habitually to drink and drive in my youth and only avoided tragedy by sheer good luck, I wish such devices had been around when I was young and did stupid things. However as I say, my prediction is that the opposition would be vocal and sustained and governments won’t go near the idea.

The second story concerns efforts in NSW to ensure that drivers actually have a bit of experience before they are allowed to drive by themselves. Again drawing from personal experience if I may, this seems like a great idea. I vividly remember hitting another (stationary) car the second time I drove solo after getting my licence as a 17 year old; at the time I had been behind the wheel in my lifetime for a cumulative total of oh, eight hours at least.

In NSW learner drivers are now required to keep log books showing that they have driven at least 120 hours with a licensed driver before they can take their full licence test. The reasoning seems obvious and compelling - contrary to shrill objections it’s not because it takes 120 hours to teach someone to drive but the learned skills need considerable practice before they can be applied properly. Having a licensed driver in the car for the first 120 hours means that learners are more likely to get that practice while sober and free of the temptation to show off to peers. By the end of the 120 hours, they might even have acquired a basic understanding that it’s dangerous out there if you don’t concentrate and take a bit of care.

This is not idle deductive reasoning.

In Sweden, which lifted driving practice hours from about 45 hours to 120 hours, the number of crashes involving young drivers fell by 40 per cent within two years, according to an OECD report in 2006.

Yet such empirical evidence is dismissed out of hand in the face of objections like these:

• 120 hours is, like, a long time. ‘It has taken Mr O’Brien 10 months to give each of the boys 25 hours behind the wheel. For all three triplets, he has done 95 hours of lessons - and has 195 to go. At one hour a week each, it will be more than two years before the boys can sit for their licence.’ Ummmm yes doofus, that’s the idea. However it’s not really good policy-making to base it on the circumstances of a father with triplets, a wife who doesn’t drive, a job that means he can only spend three hours a week with his kids and no other licensed driver apparently who can make a contribution to the load. I mean it’s hardly a typical case is it, and as we all know, difficult cases make bad law.
• It costs too much. ‘The lessons cost the family $30 to $40 extra each week in petrol, to which the triplets contribute.’ Ummm they are not ‘lessons’, they are practice. Here’s an idea - why not let the kids drive to places dad was going to go to anyway? That means there’ll be no extra cost at all.
• People will cheat. Ah the hardy perennial - there’s no point doing it cos it just penalises honest folk and the crims will find ways around the law (see also: why there’s no point regulating gun ownership). Of course some people will cheat but some people will also comply, leading to better drivers on the road and fewer deaths and injuries.

The opponents aren’t convinced. It’s all just another assault on Working Families as far as they are concerned. The NSW opposition has the answer:

Andrew Fraser, the Opposition road safety spokesman, agrees. “The system is flawed. It’s not the hours that count, but the quality of education.”

Instead, he wants compulsory driver education in schools. “The cost [of the new regulations] is huge for families.”

Brilliant! Why didn’t the government think of that costless solution? Reasons why teaching driving in schools is a terrific idea include:

• schools have vast gaps in the school day because of the reduced demands from the community to teach things like literacy, numeracy, Australian values and vocational skills;
• teachers are all expert driving instructors who can provide the quality driver education demanded by the opposition (especially the librarians and history teachers - they’re practically formula 1 aces);
• schools can provide driver education in a variety of conditions such as highway driving, night driving and peak hour congestion because teachers are sure to volunteer to take classes out of ordinary school hours;
• schools have plenty of spare vehicles that can be used for driver education, or if they don’t, the local P&Cs will soon have a cake stall or something and buy a fleet. Or maybe teachers will be happy to let pupils practise on the their own cars, I mean why wouldn’t they?

The steady reduction in the road toll over the last 30 years has been one of Australia’s stunning public policy success stories, one which is insufficiently recognised and applauded. Yet virtually every measure from compulsory seat belt wearing to random breath tests to harsher penalties to radar and speed cameras has been bitterly opposed on all sorts of specious grounds by interest groups who still regard their cars as their own private toys which they ought to be allowed to use however they like and to hell with anyone else in our increasingly crowded urban jungles.

*I modified my new ‘no MSM’ policy by getting a SMHerald every Saturday. The magazine inserts are a good read and besides, I realised I use newspaper for all sorts of practical household purposes that have nothing to do with reading the contents.

Olympics bleh

There was a time when I watched the Olympics with suitable patriotic pride and interest. Then came the baloney of the Sydney bid which I observed at first hand on behalf of businesses desperate to jump on the gravy train, and got an appreciation of the unbelievable snobbery and preciousness that afflicts so much of the ‘Olympic family’, as they are pleased to style themselves. When it takes the person you are going to visit on business 10 minutes to make a cup of coffee in a $200 plunger while he talks about blends and brews and other nonsense, you know you are in the presence of gold medal wankers.

Then of course came the deluge of drug stories and the ugly jingoism that was rampant in Sydney and subsequently, and now I couldn’t give a continental if we win a single medal in Beijing. They could cancel the whole event for all I care. I’ll get much more fun watching the local school athletics carnival.

Maybe I’m in a minority, however, because today we get this story:

The Federal Government has been warned that Australia will slip out of the world’s top five Olympic nations if sports funding is not drastically increased.

The speaker is John Coates, who admittedly is not such a prize Olympic snob as Kevin Gosper but that isn’t saying a lot. My reaction is to ask why anybody would be disappointed if we are not in the top 5 Olympic nations; indeed to be amazed that anyone would expect Australia to be there in the first place. I would have thought that the great Australian inferiority complex which compelled us to be the best in sport cos we have beaches and stuff was well and truly on the wane. All other things being equal, sporting achievements should roughly reflect a nation’s share of the global population and the amount of money it is prepared to devote to coaching and training programs.On that basis Australia should expect to win an occasional medal along with Finland and Iraq unless it wants to spend an entirely disproportionate amount of national wealth on sporting programs … which of course is exactly what has been happening.

But not enough to please the sportocracy. There is never enough for them.

“It is a very big challenge and I don’t expect that there will be more money forthcoming in this week’s Budget for sport, but gee there’s got to be more money sometime not too far into 2009 if we’re going to get good results in 2012.”

If sportspeople had at least to participate in a HECS-type scheme to fund their endless demands on the public purse it might be a good start to reforming the system and justifying more taxpayer support, but any suggestion along those lines is invariably met with howls of outrage. They even protested loudly about a ruling that their winnings should be taxable income. Hints that sporting celebrities are just making a living like anybody else and should be treated accordingly are greeted with gasps of horror. They are representing their nation, don’t you know, and making incredible sacrifices in the process.

Self-serving garbage. They’re like the students who expect special consideration in assessment because they’ve been ‘representing the university’ at some games somewhere, when in fact they’ve been having the time of their lives at a terrific social event subsidised heavily by the student’s union (although not so heavily as when membership was compulsory).

Coates maintains that ‘the Australian public will not put up with being unsuccessful at the Olympics.’ Well I wonder if that is really the case, especially if the Australian public knew how many hundreds of millions of dollars are devoted to elite sport and what else that money could buy if it was spent on other public services. I’d like to see some proper research rather than rely on John Coates’ assertion.

I think Coates would be well-advised to STFU and be grateful for what he gets now. Stirring the pot and making vague threats to try to extract even more money from us might prove to be a very counter-productive move.

School improvements

It’s taken a while, but the improvements to the school in the Philippines are slowly being done.

Some practical aspects of the exercise proved to be quite difficult. For example, Filipinos don’t build things like this using Australian contractual arrangements. They buy some materials and pay workers 200 pesos a day to build what they want. When the money runs out they just stop and the project sits there until they can find some more, when they’ll build another bit. So it took a while to get a reasonably precise description of the works and a firm quote.

Once that had been accomplished it took more time and effort to work out how to transfer the money. I had naively suggested sending it to the school bank account but they don’t have one, or at least not one that they can use for this kind of transaction. I transferred some from my bank to the school principal’s bank but the bank fees were horrendous: $20 at this end and a cool 10% of the total sum at the other end. I ended up sending it through a commercial transfer company which was reasonably priced but not something a firm of auditors would have liked.

Anyway it’s up and running now as you can see. At least the kids and teachers won’t get wet and muddy now when it rains, or at least not as muddy as they used to get. I’ve also sent 300 bags so all the kids will have something to use to carry their bits and pieces, and I’ll send some other stuff soon. Again the cost is appalling - about $30 flag fall plus $10 a kilo via Australia Post - so I’m being very selective in what goes in the box.

Many thanks to all who were so generous with donations. I can assure you that the money has made a significant impact and will continue to do so.

I hate the ATO

The Australian Tax Office and the system it administers suck.

For years now I have submitted my own tax return, using the eTax online software. I ask for my refund to be deposited direct to my bank account. You would think therefore that it would occur to the ATO that I don’t have much use for snail mail.

But no, yesterday 2 May I collected one of their regular harassing letters from my PO box that I clear about once every 10 days. For whatever reason, they didn’t adopt normal 2008 business practice and send it electronically … they didn’t even have the courtesy to email me and tell me to expect a letter. No, they just sent a letter out of the blue, dated 15 April, telling me if they hadn’t got my response by 29 April I’ll be in deep shit.

Wankers.

The letter queries the work-related expenses that I claimed in 2006/07. I got a similar one a few years ago. It demands that I explain why I believe I am entitled to claim these expenses and detail the evidence I have for the expenditure, giving a space about the size of a postage stamp to respond. The letter is peppered with invitations to admit that I am a fraudulent liar, but if I make a full confession the ATO might graciously reduce the penalties that they inflict on me.

Arseholes.

In fact, for as long as I can remember, I have deliberately understated the deductions that I claim on my tax return for the explicit purpose of avoiding this kind of petty bureaucratic badgering. The whole income tax system is designed to make it hard for ordinary citizens to claim all the deductions to which they are entitled. Every time I fill out a return I am made to feel guilty because I want some of my own money back. Yet the methodology of the ATO is clear: anybody who fails to make a tax agent rich and/or who dares to exceed the absurdly low ‘normal’ limits on work-related expenses will be hassled and harassed until they conform to their preferred practices.

Over the last 15 years I’ve worked as a self-employed consultant and as a casual/contract employee. I paid virtually no tax on my earnings as a consultant; consultants can claim just about anything as a legitimate business expense. If i had had a dog I reckon I could have claimed the Pal Meatybites as a business expense because the dog was guarding the office. Being self-employed in Australia is a formula for freeing yourself of income tax forever.

At all costs, however, avoid doing the same work as a casual employee. As a casual employee you will be expected to drive in your own car to work at various locations - all of which would be legitimate business expenses if you were self-employed - but as far as the ATO is concerned, any claim for work-related use of your private vehicle is highly suspicious. You will be expected to work from home, because the ‘office facilities’ that your employer makes available are appalling or non-existent, but the ATO will want you to produce receipts for every last pencil and printer cartridge. Not only that, but you will be expected to produce detailed logs of your telephone and internet usage to justify a claim that some proportion is work-related. And even though my doctoral studies are funded by FEE-HELP, all details of which are available to the ATO because it has to calculate how much I have to pay back each year, I am still expected to produce documents proving how much I have spent on my doctoral studies.

Fuckwits.

The thing about this which really pisses me off is that permanent employees get all this stuff laid on for free. They don’t have income tax problems. Not only do they get to do all their work on their employer’s telephones and office equipment and internet, they also get to use it for half their private business too. Where I work, permanent workers get their postgraduate fees paid by their employer - it’s only casuals who have been employed for 6 or 7 years on a series of short-term contracts who have to go into debt to pay enrolment fees. So casual workers get hit twice: once by having to fund all this crap themselves instead of getting it as a work perk and again when the ATO comes blundering in officiously hinting strongly that the casual worker is a lying bastard trying to rip off the government.

They really give me the shits.

Of course the long-term objective is the one that Cut’n'Run Peter Costello wanted to achieve … cut out work-related expenses altogether. Give permanent workers yet another tax cut to compensate them for their non-existent losses, and cut out work-related expenses for casuals and contract workers, which at a conservative estimate would cost me at least $4,000 a year. That’s how much I would end up subsidising my various employers by providing office equipment and services used for their purposes when they have to provide the same things to permanent workers at the employer’s expense.

The system stinks. And you know what? I reckon after Kevin’s ‘comprehensive review’ it will stink even more.