Plain words for hard timesPlain words for hard times
Not everybody knows how well read I am; but first it may be better to speak of my studies this week.
While my mind's bibliography may be a thing to behold I am nonetheless lazy and idle-minded despite a strong social sense of what ails the world in which we dwell.
Furthermore, as a civil man addicted to plain speaking I read my newspapers with a critical eye. Pursuant of news and current affairs, I sometimes alight on the most extraordinary reports in the pages of my local daily.
This week my attention was drawn to the rich harvest from the studious mind of Mr Terry Black — a senior lecturer in that most essential of basic social institutions, the university business faculty.
True to his vocation, Black's short piece settled itself within the journal's business pages, a few column inches short of that day's report on movements in the All Ords. As I am a keen market analyst you'll understand why Black's commentary caught my eye. The day after the Nikkei closed at 20,385 he was in print addressing the proposed Common Youth Allowance:
"The application of the Government's new income test reflects the principle that parents are responsible for supporting their own children, but they are not responsible for supporting other parents' children. This principle is well established in Asia whereby the family looks after its own and its citizens are not burdened with taxes to pay for handouts to non-family members. However, the income test is sending out messages that low income earners are not responsible for supporting their children. Consequently, they have less incentive to restrict the size of their family since their costs are imposed on other Australians."
Similarly, Black goes on to write, a further incentive for parents to avoid supporting their children is the government's rental assistance for students in education or training. "Consequently", writes he, with many more certificated academic honours than those accumulated during my own much shorter scholastic career, "these measures are anti-family. If they were removed, then parents and their children would no longer be placed in conflict. No longer would parents be given the opportunity to off-load their responsibilities onto others."
These are plain words for hard times; words whose syntax boldly assert what other lesser lights (I'm not naming names mind, not yet!) seem unwilling to. Here in Mr Black we have a man who, despite his board room savvy and market nous, has taken the time from his busy lecture schedule to find out what so many grassroots kitchen caucuses are plotting nationwide.
When not abed fornicating in an effort to help make more unwanted 16 and 17 year olds, the nation's hefty share of irresponsible parents are off-loading their ready made offspring in the most devious of ways. Instead of paying their own, say, to rake up the leaves or take out the garbage, today's Aussie mum or dad seem to suffer from the misconception that it is someone else's responsibility to gainfully employ their youngsters.
I admit that I had similarly erred. Friends, I tell you this: my face is red. If not for the studied pen of such commentators as Terry Black, I'd still be under the misapprehension that the youth allowance scheme was all about fiddling the job figures. Now I know otherwise.
Our root problem isn't idle youth: it's their mums and dads!
Dave Riley
Email: dhell@ozemail.com.au