It always appears when a Federal or State budget night is – to use the MSM’s current fave word du jour – looming.
I saw it as I was coming out of the turnstiles at Parliament station. The poster for the Herald Sun: TAX SLUG BEER CIGS. Oh. Budget time.
This ghastly gastropod has terrorised the Australian scene for decades. My extensive research (i.e. Wikipedia) has eliminated the common slug, banana slug or even the Red Triangle slug (found in Melbourne snooker halls?) No, this is more of your gigantic mutant movie monster, like the Slugs that Ate Canberra.
The Hun obviously doesn’t approve of the Tax Slug and seems to be urging the citizens of Australia, as in any good B-movie, to band together to fight this mucous menace. Here is how a Hun journo and Aghast of Mt Martha see the Tax Slug:
However! We of the social democratic persuasion see the Tax Slug in a more glass-half-full way:
Something I forgot to add when I photoshopped this Tax Slug… We can haz Paid Parental leave? I hear a weak cry of “yes”. But not until 2011, apparently. Bummer.
Some people of a needlessly literal and nitpicking type might drop in at this point to inform me that Slug is used here in the sense of a Tax Hit, as in taking a hit, possibly from the German schlage? Well, I refuse to believe that, that’s all. Not only have I forked out all that money for a mucus-proof suit and slug gun, but that would require me to believe that all these journos all over Australia, people who are paid to write, just keep recycling and recycling a piece of slang that was out of date when my mum was a girl. Say it isn’t so!
Gastropod?
Is that a snail that eats music? Or an i-pod that makes you sick??
Are these slugs terrestrial? Ethereal? Aquatic?
Ghastly !!!!!
That’s the tax snail.
I have a wistful hope that one of our pundits tomorrow will add a little context to the deficit – place it next to Australia’s GDP, compare it with other countries, explain that a depression would cost vastly more than interest on government bond repayments, maybe try to explain a little Keynesian theory (even if it is counter-intuitive and downright immoral to some). Who am I kidding? The Murdoch empire hasn’t collapsed yet.
We’ll know the era of Thatcher and Reagan is truly over when “redistributive taxation” is no longer a term of abuse. Actually, we’ll know it’s over when “taxation” no longer is.
“TAX SLUG BEER CIGS”
They are losing their touch. That is one word too many. The proper distillation has always been: “BEER, CIGS UP”
BBB
Your slug, Helen, appears to be missing and environmental organ. The environemnt action is the thing that will keep the whole slug fron withering in the heat. It is the thing that makes it worthwhile to be healthy, educated, and mobile, because the world is still worth living in. But then perhaps the “not dying in a ditch somewhere” is the environment organ in disguise.
I wonder how long Charles Foster Kane has left in any case.
Which will go first, media empire or magnate?
But just recently in Gugan province in China local officials ordered the population to smoke 200,000 cigarettes a year (or a similkarly outrageous figure) to help the local economy. The order was rescinded on instructions from on high, on high being the place in China where they’re actually trying to get people to smoke less.
So far, fingers crossed, the worst thing about the budget is cigarettes will go up before my next pension day, so I can’t stock up.
Paul, it is tough love, fella. Your government LOVES ….you. They want you to stop smoking,…for your own good, or you will have a heart attack and die, quickly. Otherwise if you stop smoking now, because you have already done the damage to your heart and arteries, your emphasema will take precedence reducing your oxygen intake slowing you down which will take the pressure off your heart but give time for the dimentia to start to show through which will slow you down even further causing you to reduce weight taking more pressure off your heart and lungs thereby extending your life for another fifteen years of slow hospital consuming caregiver intensive mentally beffuddled, decline. That is how you know that they love you,….they want you to LIVE.
It was interesting that in the China article they pointed out that two thirds of adult Chinese males smoke. You can’t say that they don’t take the overpopulation thing seriously.
ZOMG BilB, you are absolutely right, I forgot “environment” and “climate change”. Must find time today to tweak the image. Here’s hoping they do actually put something into that spending category.
“We’ll know the era of Thatcher and Reagan is truly over when “redistributive taxation” is no longer a term of abuse.”
It would be nice to see the same for the word “welfare”. Right and sometimes even left now speak of it as if it were the plague. Maybe it could be seen in terms of ‘wellbeing’ and ‘a fair go’ like it was originally intended
Bilb @ 8,
Yeah. I know. I’m not really complaining.
Unlike Brumby’s budget, which on close examination spent precisely no new money on the environment (OK some absolute chickenfeed for already committed river redgum parks).
I was thinking this morning that it sounds like the L/NP are planning on opposing the whole budget, with Fielding a loony and Xenophon unpredictable, while the greens will ask for some goodies. I reckon that’ll all be a pretty fair DD trigger which should be pulled. Get these imbeciles out of the way!
Particularly in light of this: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2009/05/11/essential-research-61-39-5/
Since today’s slug is obviously species: richies might I suggest frying it in garlic butter, with a couple of hard grinds of red, white, green and red pepper, a tarragon leaf, then brandy mixed with pan juices & falmbed!
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25465993-5006301,00.html
A billion for solar or something.
joe 2: safety net is still not bad (though Tories want it only a few inches from the ground).
DeeCee
at our place we prefer our slugs flambeed, but we’re willing to try falmbed – is that Scandinavian? Must I’m buying some fangled snow-powered cook-implement from subsidiary off Volvo? Must cooking after rolling snowy sauna with?
Ginja
Actually the greatest state transfer of wealth to the poorest in Australian history was during the Howard years.
You mean the ones who managed to look the poorest because they’d hidden all their wealth in various tax dodges and tax havens?
Well, they can’t defeat the Budget legislation, only refuse to pass it. Convention says they shouldn’t orta, history says they can, but they’ll then have to fight an election for trying to train wreck of Government in the middle of a Global Financial Crisis.
Doesn’t really sound like a winning strategy to me.
“Doesn’t really sound like a winning strategy to me.”
Me neither, but I didn’t think Fraser had a chance when he conspired to sack Whitlam.
OK so you want to back the political nous of the opposition party room? Multiplied by Steve Fielding?
At least Fielding knows his only time in the sun is until next election.
Nope. There aint no “nous” there. What the Libnats do have, is a blind faith that they are the only government and a preparedness to do anything to take back their rightful place. I am still quite surprised that they allowed the annoying election process to get in the way of their ambition. They have shown recently that they would gladly watch and help the economy crash and burn if that is what it takes.
“a mucus-proof suit and slug gun”
Well perhaps. But everyone knows the best defence against Tax Slugs is SALT (Savings Against Laborious Taxation).
Unfortunately it’s also known to be effective against LEECHES (Labor Endorsed Extensive Cash Handouts Encouraging Stimulus).
At the risk of making myself sick I am using the Seinfeld line because for once it is pertinent. This was the Seinfeld budget. It was a nothing budget.
And here we are. Total gutlessness on an ETS and Climate Change + THIS budget = the odd 1% swing this government needs to actually lose Government. Let the pollster begin. They’re legacy? An historic apology, an intital will to tackle climate change with the signing of the Kyoto Protcol and then the biggest dissapointment in Australian political history…this government today.
Happy days with Emo Man The II…
DeeCee @ 11am: wow. Now I truly am hungry and my stir fried blue eyed cod seems ordinary.
Well, something for everybody and the kids will pay for it later, which is what kids are for.
If it wasn’t so bad I’d have thought it was a joke.
Tough – about as tough as the skin on an egg custard.
Debt for decades to come – typical of the ALP.
BilB, tax slug finally updated.
Razor – Turnbull is in favour of, what, $20 bil. less debt than Labor. Just means the economy would be that much more in the hole, without much difference to the deficit. I heard an economist tonight say the average public debt levels for the OECD could be around 70-80%. Ours is headed for a whopping 14%.
Voted out just as the world economy nosedived (after cornering Labor into matching their boom-time tax cuts that will make the deficit much larger) – typical of the LPA.
Reckless and economically illiterate.
Turnbull just tore Rudd and Swan new orifices.
The coalition’s proposal for a Parliamentary Budget Office is a good one. In the run-up to the last election a similar proposal was put to the senior ALP shadows, but Swan and Tanner rejected it because they didn’t want an independent body reviewing the long-term fiscal implications of government policy decisions. The CBO does exceptional work in the US and given the politicisation of Treasury (I know they don’t believe their own forecasts for 4%+ growth in the out years), such an institution could make an enormous contribution to improving the quality of the fiscal policy debate in Australia. I will be interested in hearing the government’s response.
How do you know LO? Did someone there tell you?
The CBO os there to advise Congress, which has a separate but equal role to the Administration in the Budget. In the US, the Reps, the Senate and the Administration each put up their own Budget, and a compromise gets stitched together.
We have a completely different system of government and our Parliament has a different role altogether. You either have a Westminster system of government or you don’t. You can’t cherry pick bits of other systems and graft them on.
If we’re going to radically revamp fiscal policy, a better idea would have to have an independent fiscal authority, like the Reserve Bank. That at least would not bastardise our system of government.
Sam
I know enough people within the official family to know that the forecasts were politicised.
Just because the Australian system of government is different, does not proclude a CBO type of institutions being set up. The legislature still has to vote on issues relating to the budget and policies with broader fiscal consequences and the non-government parties simply don’t have the resources to indepently assess complicated issues. The public is at an even worse informational disadvantage.
Of course, an independent fiscal authority is an alternative way to go about things. But I don’t think the RBA is the best example, unless you want the institution to actually make fiscal policy decisions (as per Nicholas Gruen’s proposal). I’d rather an institution modelled on the Productivey Commission with the mandate to assess the overall sustainability of Australia’s fiscal position, review the long-term fiscal implications of individual policies, and independently assess the costing of the parties’ promises during elections.