The mentality of our government and seemingly of many people in this country is that what we should aspire to on an individual basis is nothing more than personal wealth: so you can afford to send your kids to an elite private school, and a prestigious university, so you can live in a big house in a nice suburb and dull the discomfiting effects of human existence by the fact that you've got an expensive car and your clothes are brand-name.
We can all be rich, if we just work hard enough, Joe Hockey will have us believe. As if acquiring a tonne of money is somehow equivalent with personal responsibility. As if anyone with little money is to be looked down upon - they're lazy, they're entitled, they think they can get a free ride.
They talk about the tax-payer like the tax-payer is a sociopath. Which, maybe some of them are. Maybe some of them truly believe we can all be rich and drive Audis and send our kids to a school that will teach them their superiority to other people - that they're better than state-school educated kids, and single mothers, and the people fleeing their home country for ours in fear of their lives.
I don't. It is not possible for us all to be rich. It is not much of a thing to aspire to, anyway, especially if all you plan on doing with your wealth is manipulating others to make yourself richer.
I pay my taxes so that people who need a doctor can see a doctor, and so schools can pay teachers properly, and so single mothers and disabled people and other low-income earners can survive, and so we can properly welcome asylum seekers into our country instead of killing them in an offshore facility (which is so disgustingly wrong, I could vomit). I am not in favour of taking money away from these people. (I am in favour of taking money away from bureaucracy, which is the hugest and most ridiculous money-suck ever invented. I am in favour of taking money away from extraordinarily exploitative big business and mining.)*
I would so much rather live in a country that looks after its countrymen (and women and other gendered people) than one of revolting individualism that values nothing more than kicking other people down in aid of your own journey to high-status. Because that would be a terrible country to live in.**
* Which is not to mention the across-the-board attitude of derision by Tony and co towards the environment, science, the arts and any degree of egalitarianism in this country.
** (Which is not to disparage all people who are wealthy or private-school educated - because I know lots of lovely, down-to-earth, generous people who are either or both.)
