Families Minister Mal Brough today mooted the extension of arrangements which would limit the capacity of some welfare recipients to waste their money on alcohol and drugs, often while neglecting their children at the same time.  In some cases, rent wasn’t being paid, electricity was cut off and children weren’t attending school regularly.  The government’s proposal is that in certain cases, families’ Centrelink benefits would be direct debited to pay directly for housing, food and utilities, before the parents got their hands on the money – hence they could only waste what was left after the essentials are taken care of.

I don’t have a problem with this.  As someone who pays plenty of tax (more than I think I should be), I want to see governments spend that money wisely.  People on welfare should be looked after, but only to a point.  If they can’t be entrusted to make responsible decisions, and allow their children to suffer the consequences of their irresponsibility, I believe its entirely reasonable for the state to make some of those decisions for them.  I expect people on welfare to be using the money to keep themselves and their families housed, clothed and fed – not to be spending it on slabs of beer, buckets of KFC, cartons of cigarettes, TAB tickets, and with the local  drug dealers.

I think there’s room for Centrelink, or other government agencies, to manage some welfare recipients more aggressively.  For instance, people who are so scruffy looking they’ll never get off the dole – clean them up, give them a haircut, shave, get them some decent clothes.  For those who want to look weird, make them conform to community norms – freedom of expression and individual flair, fine, but don’t think you can do it long term at my expense.

Something that really irks me is people who breed while on welfare (a relative of mine really got up my nose doing this).  If you’re on welfare, surely you can’t afford to have more children, and should be responsible enough not to.  If you want to have children, fine, but I’m not happy to pay taxes so you can breed up when you ought to be making all out efforts to get yourself a job (let alone the fact that if you’re not financially able to support a child properly you should take account of this before choosing to have one).

Of course it goes without saying that the welfare industry is against what the government is proposing,

Technorati Tags: welfare, Centrelink, child neglect

…for the Logie awards.  What song/s will they play?  “Howzat”, “Summer Love”, “Slipstream”?

Will they still know their old songs?  Do they still have the hair?  Will they fit into their 70′s clothes?

Will Sherbet being on the Logies make me watch this normally terrible awards show?  No!!!

Technorati Tags: Sherbet, 70′s music, Logies

I’ve noticed this ad being served by Adsense the last few days. I’m worried, are Google onto my surfing habits and suggesting I need some legal help?

Technorati Tags: Adsense, Google, drug crimes, child pornography, internet sexcrimes, lawyer

Tegan Wagner, who spoke out recently after the appeal by the men who raped her was rejected, has raised a valid point again, concerning their sentences. This comes as the DPP has initiated appeals against the leniency of their sentences.

She said the sentences were unfair and did not acknowledge individual victims.

“It’s like when you buy in bulk, you get it cheaper – like if you buy soap powder in bulk. So, rape in bulk and get the discount on your sentence, too. It’s crazy. You should acknowledge individuals,”

“What kind of message is that sending out to young males? They’re going to be, looking at that and say, `well, we can rape three and get the same sentence … and people are stupid enough to think like that,”’

Good point! Why should criminals not get the full sentence they deserve for each individual crime? If one rape is worth 14 years, why shouldn’t 2 be 28 years, 3 42 years etc? The criminals should have thought of the consequences before they did the crime. Maybe we’ll get some of the ludicrous sounding sentences we hear from overseas, like 700 years, or even thousands of years (what happens when they die, do their bones stay in their cell?). Dish out the full sentence the crimes deserve, and if it runs past death, good riddance to them from decent society. Why do we have concurrent sentences …. they just strike me as total bullshit? Commit 50 crimes, pay for 50. Committing a crime is a voluntary, discretionary choice of the person who commits it, and those choosing to commit them should do so in the full knowledge of the consequences to themselves. Oh, he/she had a tough upbringing, dear me, he/she was under the influence of drugs – too bad, stiff shit.

Technorati Tags: concurrent sentencing, crime, punishment,

My son and I went to the movies this afternoon and saw “Eight Below”.  Given that I only went for this as a compromise on “Scary Movie 4″ which he wanted to see, and that we were only going out of lack of anything better to do and the fact that it is “tightwad Tuesday” at our local cinema, it was much better than I expected.

No great acting or anything, but a nice story, and some beautiful scenery – its set in Antarctica (but I think it was filmed in Washington state, or Oregon … somewhere around there anyway).  Beautiful and well trained dogs, together with the scenery, were really the stars of this movie.

Its obviously a kids’ movie (being made by Disney), but there was one moment I just about shat myself.  I won’t spoil it for those who might be inclined to see the movie themselves – you’ll recognise it if you do.

Technorati Tags: 8 Below, Antarctica, dogs

Anzac Day in Canberra usually marks the beginning of the cold part of autumn and then winter. Today its absolutely beautiful so we took advantage and went for a walk in a park near us. I love the autumn leaf displays we get here, its my favourite time of the year.

Hopefully the warm (ish) weather’s going to stick around a few weeks more. We’ve already had a week of cold weather a few weeks back, and I’m in no hurry for winter to start. 

At 7.09 am this morning, #10, 000 was someone from Queensland.  (what were you doing surfing blogs at 7 o’clock in the morning on a public holiday?)

So, its taken from 19/9/05 to 25/4/06 to get to 10k.  How long for the next 10k?  I’m currently getting approx 100 visits a day, so should take about 3-4 months at that rate.

Technorati Tags: visitor statistics, milestones

Something that really shits me is seeing executives of failed companies and owners of businesses that collapse owing creditors hundreds of thousands or millions, even hundreds of millions, but still maintaining substantial personal assets and continuing to enjoy lifestyles way beyond what the vast majority of us consider normal.

Some examples:

• Alan Bond went bankrupt in 1992 after what was then Australia’s largest corporate collapse. After he was released from prison, it became apparent that he had managed to hide property and other assets worth millions of dollars – some estimates put the figure as high as $100 million – from his creditors, who received only $3.25 million towards personal debts of $500 million. He defeated attempts by the corporate watchdog, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, to recover the money, using lavishly funded court challenges and Swiss banking secrecy laws. Bond now lives in a $4.6 million house in Perth which is in the name of his son, is building a $12 million maxi yacht, and is planning a return to the corporate world.
• It emerged last August that Ray Williams, jailed former boss of the collapsed HIH insurance group, had entered into an unusual financial arrangement with his wife, Rita, in December 1998, three years before the company’s collapse. Williams bought a 25-hectare waterfront estate on the NSW Central Coast for $2.5 million, and the same day gave his wife a $6.85 mortgage security over the property. His trustee, Mark Robinson of PPB, is investigating the transaction, which, if valid, would put the proceeds of the sale of the property beyond the reach of his creditors.
• Two days after One.Tel collapsed, one of its founders, Jodee Rich, signed a property agreement under which he transferred $5 million in assets, including his share in their house, to his wife, Maxine, a corporate lawyer. ASIC failed in its attempt to get the Family Court to set aside the agreement, meaning creditors get nothing.
• Malcolm Edwards went bankrupt in 1993 following the collapse of his Essington group of 279 companies, which at the time had more than $1 billion in property developments all over Australia. The brazen Edwards turned up at one creditors’ meeting driving a 560 SEL Mercedes which was owned by his wife – as was the house in Balgowlah in which he continued to live. None of his other assets, which included a string of racehorses, were in his own name and his creditors had to settle for a payment of one third of a cent in the dollar on the $180 million in personal debts for which he was liable.

These people are just saying “fuck you” to their creditors and the community in general.

Now, I accept that many of these people do take risks and shouldn’t be wiped out if things go wrong for normal sorts of business reasons. I’d be happy for them to even continue to retain above average assets and income – but why couldn’t it be (say) a living standard enjoyed at an annual income of $100k or so. Thats pretty good, but not excessive. Allow them to keep say $500k (maybe $750k for the benefit of Sydney people) of real estate and cars – but liquidate anything above that for the benefit of creditors. I’m happy to wipe out those whose business failures come about through fraud or significant negligence – they should pay the full price of their wrongdoing.

Our laws and courts should simply see through and overturn shams where assets and income are diverted to spouses, children, relatives or friends. Someone tell me a legitimate reason for doing these sort of things – not associated with tax or sheltering from creditors. Our lawmakers need to have the guts to legislate that these arrangements are overturned in the event of liquidation and bankruptcy – put the onus of proof that there was a legitimate reason for the transaction on the debtor. That can’t be too hard.

While on my one of my hobbyhorses, lets get rid of trusts too. Can anyone tell me a genuine reason anybody needs one, other than to minimise tax, or shelter assets? I’m keen to know. Why don’t our politicians legislate them out of existence? (oh, yeah, most of them have them, and certainly their mates do).

Family companies – who needs them? Companies should exist only to operate genuine business enterprises, not artificially gain tax and other benefits for individuals and their families.

Negative gearing – I’ll get off my soapbox now …. and tell you about my objections to subsidising other people’s speculative investments some other time.

Technorati Tags: bankruptcy, liquidation, business failure

Thats what the Australian Family Association calls Big Brother, about to start for another year on Sunday.  To be precise, they call it:

Given the strife BB got into in 2005, it seems we’re in for a slightly toned down version this year.  Still nudity and sex talk, but less in the way of “Cleveland Steamers” and “Dirty Sanchez‘s”.

I’m always fascinated by those who complain about the smut or otherwise the content of a TV show.  Simple solution …. don’t watch it.  Doesn’t their TV have an off switch or more than one channel.

BB is really crap, but in a fascinating way.  I like to watch it a couple of nights a week to keep tabs on the housemates, particularly if they’re interesting.  Most aren’t, most are self obsessed famewhores desperate for attention.  Like kids – “look at me, look at me….”.  Hopefully there will be some unpredictable turns in this year’s show.  I think they make the house too much of a holiday house – for a change they should go for squalor, and cramped conditions, with minimal mental stimulation for the housemates.  Really mess with their heads.

We have joked at work about going on BB and just going nude the whole time, and swearing constantly.  This would have the effect of turning the daily PG show into a blur and beep fest.  Also, if you’re going to fuck on the show, don’t try to sneak it in under the sheets, go for it in exaggerated porno movie style right on the lounge room floor.  Make any footage completely unusable.

Speaking of TV, what about this?  Technology that freezes the channel during ad breaks so you can’t channel surf during the ads.  Any TV station that even thinks of using this can just go and get fucked! 

Technorati Tags: Big Brother, smut, porn, filth, nudity, sex