Write on: Letters to the editor
Vilifying
Not content with vilifying many of the unemployed, conservatives have moved on to sole parent pensioners.
In Sydney's Daily Telegraph of July 29, Michael Duffy whinged about people "receiving the single parent pension because they or their partners have walked away from their responsibility to provide for their own children".
"The increased taxation this requires has forced many intact families into poverty", he moaned.
The single parent pension costs under 1% of GDP. It relieves vastly more poverty than its financing generates.
Is Duffy seriously suggesting that parents always be forced to stay together? The cost of running two households is considerably more than the cost of running one, and raising children alone can be much more difficult than with the domestic assistance of a partner. These facts mean single parents should receive significantly more government support than parents who live together.
By demanding that both parents from a broken relationship work, whilst only one parent in an intact relationship is obliged to work, conservatives are effectively saying that parents should be punished for the breakdown of their relationship.
Rydalmere NSW
Incredulous
In addition to recent industry-related increases in the price of beer and petrol, we also suffered the GST-induced slug on both these and on cigarettes — three of the commodities whose prices people, in general, have traditionally been extremely sensitive and touchy about.
Following closely on top of this, we were hit with a rise of about 11 cents on the price of a litre of milk, due totally to the federal government's imposition of some new deregulation excise on the dairy industry.
As if all this were not enough, and at a time when people's ire and tolerance is still very raw and abraded, John "I will not introduce any new taxes" Howard decides to impose yet another excise on cigarettes, beer and petrol, which will put an extra 25 cents on the price of a carton of beer and a further 0.7 of a cent onto a litre of petrol.
Once more, I belt my brow in total disbelief and am stunned by the incredulity of it all. If I soon begin to suffer self-induced concussion, I'm going to blame John Howard for it!
Palmerston NT
IVF 1
John Howard and Brian Harradine are defending the "right" of children not to be born unless a certifiably heterosexual father is present.
But if some devious lesbian has managed to become pregnant before Howard and Harradine ban her access to IVF, will they therefore insist on a compulsory abortion to protect the foetus from single parenthood?
Sydney
IVF 2
There are many children living with loving birth mothers. But if there's no father in the household, Senator Harradine sanctimoniously proclaims that the rights of the child are being violated.
The moral outrage seems to be currently restricted to the rights of children conceived in IVF programs, with our Prime Minister and his cabinet ministers trying to change the law to make it illegal for single women to take part.
If it's the lack of a father that's the basis for their concern where will the legislation stop? Will Mr Howard reintroduce the word "illegitimate" into the statute books, and will authorities again pressure single mothers to hand over their babies for adoption into two-parent families? Adoption would also have to be the fate of children whose father dies or deserts.
Let's have some common sense — a mother is a mother and a child is a child, regardless of whether the child was conceived in or out of wedlock or in a test-tube. If the lack of a father is the problem they're trying to put a stop to, they'll need a very large number of chaperones to prevent fornication by the unwed. Or perhaps the IVF scientists will be ordered to redirect their efforts to inventing temporary sterilisation, which could only be reversed by the priest after the wedding?
I suspect that our Liberal ministers just want to selectively punish women who don't have — or don't want — a male "head of the family" in line with Mr Howard's 1950s philosophy.
Woodville South SA
Mafia protests
As the acting president of the Union of Mafia Crime Families and Affiliated Hired Goons, I would like to protest in the strongest possible terms about references to our members made in the article, "Corporate mobsters to meet in casino" (GLW #410).
Our members do not deserve to be compared to such people as we in no way resembles the corporations you compare us to. We in the mafia work hard for our money, blackmail, gambling, extortion, evading authorities, money laundering and finding legal loopholes to escape prosecution are done in an ever diminishing black market, by our members heavily hit by downsizing, while the corporations can do it all legally, yes legally.
These corporate executives have endless lawyers, rub noses with the politicians and have their media buddies to rely on and to add injury to insult, it's all LEGAL, it's a crime, a pure travesty of justice!
Not only that, but their profits are steadily increasing. Whereas we must work hard to attract customers who have less and less money to spend, these corporate types, they just ask ol' Johnny to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich. They don't even consider that this makes it much harder for hard-working gangsters to make an honest living!
We the mafia believe that this travesty must stop, so that the lower class should at least have the choice of giving us their money through the traditional criminal avenues, instead of this legal crime perpetuated by these lazy corporates, who have never had to work hard to fulfil a proper contract in there whole lives.
We demand an apology. Even the workers in the criminal underworld work hard for their money and shouldn't have to be compared with these corporate thugs and their associated parasites.
Don Fetticuni
Acting president, Union of Mafia Crime Families and Affiliated Hired Goons