additional recommendations for the Commission of Audit

The stern face of a man who understands a good service slash ...

Last week the Australian Federal Government’s Commission of Audit released its recommendations about where it believes the fat can be trimmed in government spending in the aim of having the budget reach a consistent and sustainable surplus.

            The report suggested significant spending cuts to family payments, childcare, health care, education, unemployment and pension payments, aged care, and the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Moreover, it also recommended the privatization of ten major government entities—like the Australia Post, the Australian Mint and the Australian Submarine Corporation (I know, I didn’t know we had one of those too)—along with changes to the way the Federal and State governments tax and, in general, do their business.

            Predictably, the report came under heavy fire (primarily, it seems) from the liberal media, for its clear advantaging of numbers over humans.  Indeed, there is almost a cartoonish aspect to the apparent villainy of the recommendations: an image of some rich, fat cats, in black capes and crisp suits, sitting high up in a mansion, gleefully slashing Medicare and the ABC, while, with brandy tinged breath, chortling about raising the retirement age. One can only imagine that after releasing their recommendations, the members of the Commission of Audit retired to the dining room for roast Bengal tiger and rhino horn soufflé.

            But this image is far removed from the truth and the valour of these Commission gentlemen. They had the unimaginably hard task of addressing the maths of government spending and they performed their task with only a minimal, but utterly necessary, prejudice against the lazy poor. Why cast this report as the antithesis of the Bible, as the unholy document of Abbott and Hockey’s budget? When, I believe, it could have gone fruitfully further; that they only scraped the surface of what it is possible to chop and change in terms of government spending and revenue …

            Here are my suggested enhancements and amendments of the Commission of Audit report (these are largely mutually exclusive, but some can work in tandem):

Privatization

Simple really: keep committing to a gradual privatization of Australia itself. We’re a solid investment for any alert entrepreneur. We have an identifiable brand, multiple strong assets (from mining to, um, the Reef), an existent, solid labor pool, and a prime location near Asia.

State/Local Government Responsibility

The Commission recommended a significant shift of government service delivery to those closest to the people actually accessing these services. This would mean, essentially, that State governments would have a more hands on role in supplying things like health and education; that, to speak generally, they’d be largely responsible for their own taxation, funding, models and standards of these things. This is problematic considering the general ineptitude of State governments (see NSW for the last, I dunno, 50 years?). Thus I suggest eliminating State governments all together and returning to a more practical competitive feudal model, where swathes of land would be the responsibility of a new class of knights and lords who would be tasked with supplying the inhabitants of these lands with health, education and public transport services, while also having the option of taking over neighboring lands through negotiation or conflict. The Federal Government would primarily serve in the role of mediator that would set down a set of loose and centralized ‘rules of governance’: they would be the final authority, but have little practical say in the shaping of borders and the supply of services. As the Abbott government seems to desire a mineralization of government size, this makes some sense. The beauty of this model is its inventive orientated base: the knight or lord of a land could refuse to supply services to his/her workers of the land, hording taxes for their own nefarious means, but this would leave them vulnerable to competitive knights and lords intent on pinching their lands with subjects loyal to their benevolent ruler. It encompasses exactly the free-market, capitalist ideology that the Commission of Audit seems to be leaning towards: a Darwinian economic and social system.

Pension

The report recommended raising the retirement age to 70. I recommend eliminating the idea of retirement all together. When someone becomes too feeble—bodily or minded—they should promptly be eliminated; their remains used to fertilize the crops, thus symbolically implying that we never stop working. This also has the benefit of answering to the problem of how to cater for Australia’s ageing population.

Disabled People and Carers

See above. Even the disabled can contribute in my model. Carers would need to find another job (see below).

Employment and Unemployment

We need to become self-sufficient in regards to feeding ourselves. I recommend dismantling the Daintree Rainforest, and any other spare land, for the sake of a new neo-agricultural face of a full and happy Australia. Anyone without work would be sent to work the land formally known as the Daintree, growing things like wheat and corn. Unemployment and pesky unemployment benefits would be easily eliminated.

Childcare Payments

The Commission of Audit recommends decreasing childcare payments for all families; I recommend removing the payment and putting the children to work in Western Australian mines to pay for their own childcare. To make this is even more beneficial, I would suggest exempting Gina Rinehart, and other mining magnates, from occupational health and safety standards—effectively making them immune to child death litigation—for the simple exchange of a slight lift on mining taxes: we’d make more money from our resources that would then not go into problematic things like childcare.

Medicare

Destroy it. Paying for your health is a blatant waste of government funding. If you’re sick, you can’t work, and are thus useless in contributing to stabilizing the budget and should be crop fertilizer. Indeed, anyone who takes any more than three days off for the sake of illness should be eliminated.

School and Higher Education

Privatize ruthlessly. If you can’t afford an education, you probably don’t deserve one.

Rural Disaster Relief

Abolish. Shit happens.

Tax Suggestions

Charge GST at soup kitchens, tax pocket money (and associative costs like Tooth Fairy donations), tollways for cyclists, a 10cent cost every time the word 'mate' is uttered, a beard tax, and continue to raise the price of beer.