Monday, July 03, 2006

It isn't any better at home

As a resident of the US mostly I write about US political stupidity. That's not because there is any shortage back home in Australia. Here's one from The Courier-Mail, daily paper of my former home town of Brisbane, full of stupidity from both the Feds and the state government in Queensland.

Firstly, I was staggered to discover that the Queensland Government is subsidising the production of the local version of Big Brother. State governments in Australia are always complaining that they can't raise enough revenue because the Constitution severely restricts the types of taxes they can levy (which is true). But it can't be too bad if they can waste money on this. Premier Peter Beattie's justification? "If you destroy television production in Australia . . . then all we do is import American crap." Of course. I'm sorry Peter. We must produce our own crap. with taxpayer's money. How silly of me.

Then there's the Federal government. I think the Prime Minister and his mates have been chanelling George W. Bush and his Republican friends in Congress, because they seem to be obsessed with stuff like saving us all from sexual antics that take place in the Big Brother house in the wee hours of the morning (and weren't even broadcast). Just like the Republicans this is all they're left with now that they've won the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, got the Israelis and Palestinians sharing group hugs, hunted down and killed bin Laden, secured future supplies of low cost oil, reversed global warming, fully funded the retirement of all their citizens, provided high quality low cost healthcare for all, and finally found a better way to decide soccer matches than the penalty shoot-out.

No comments: