The week that was

March 4, 1992
Issue 

By Kevin Healy

The interests of the True Blue Aussie With the Big Red Heart people were certainly taken care of this week by the world's greatest worst ex-treasurer Paul — particularly those True Blue Aussies With the Big Red who happen to be very rich, and are now destined to become very richer.

What another brilliant socialist ploy, this surreptitious, atheistic, republican push to destroy capitalism with kindness. And the silly bloody capitalists are likely to fall for it.

It goes like this. These atheistic republican socialists believe that the public sector leaves the private sector for dead, and they also believe that the best way to expose the deficiencies of the market and capitalism is to let 'em have their head: that is, hand over the public sector to the private sector, and watch them stuff it up.

The poor innocent business class is led like lambs to the proverbial, telling the government it wants the government to do exactly what the government wants to do. "We will take over the public sector bits that are highly profitable, getting these burdens off your back, if you'll be good enough to give them to us and provide us with the profit and a few royalties, that sort of thing", the poor innocent business class says to these international conspirators.

"We'll think about it", the government say, and then fall about pissing themselves laughing all over their plush suites after the poor business leaders have gone back to getting this great country working again and providing jobs for all those who want them, because the business class cares about nothing else but providing jobs for all those who want them.

Then the world's greatest worst ex-treasurer Paul closes the trap. "Okay", he says, "you can have what you want. We'll fix up the railway lines, so Sir Peter Abeles-to-get-the-government's ear and Lindsay Fix-em-up can take it all over in five years. And we'll fix up the roads for their trucks, and we'll let you build and own all these freeways and roads which will choke the cities, but we'll actually pay for them. But you will have to cop the public flak by charging the public to use them.

"And we'll let you have the development rights of the land around them, and then when urban sprawl sprawls, and when all these cars and trucks choke the metropolis, and when it's apparent our commitment to greenhouse is a joke, then the people will blame you and say to us, 'We want the public sector to take over'."

Except that Paul didn't say this last bit out loud, and the poor old business class is now wandering off happily, in ignorant innocence, to build and own all these public things with public money, not knowing it's all part of their demise plotted by these dreadful socialists.

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