Welcome to the Tea Party

Les Heimann writes: Re.”The good and the bad of Hockey’s Commission of Audit” (yesterday).  This conservative government follows many before it. There is nothing new with a conservative government, and there never is. All that is needed is small government, delivering surpluses and allowing full rein to the market place. Never does or will it change and so life is easy.

Cut back on anything that someone else delivers — like education, health and so on — under the guise of duplication. Introduce nothing new and remove all low-hanging fruit such as the NBN becoming a less worthwhile exercise — but much cheaper.

There are of course some very meddlesome and costly issues that bedevil this overzealous ideology-driven government: The parental leave scheme is absolutely over the top and unaffordable. but the government will introduce it. A price on carbon is still the most important action item, but the government will scrap it. And there are other issues to tackle.

However, ultimately, this government will quietly and with purpose deliberately dismantle much we as a society have grown to accept — and that includes ( perhaps fortunately) too much selfishness and not enough patience.

“I want it and I want it now” was not an expectation shared in any society before Gen X arrived.

All in all I am concerned that we will absolutely copy the mad Tea Party Republican group in the USA, and that makes me sad. Sad because even now when bushfires and floods as well as other extreme weather conditions scour Australia we have a government that is, effectively, saying, “We don’t care about the future, we don’t care about our kids, it’s not anything to do with us — better we do something to stop gay marriage.”

Crazy, isn’t it?

Peter Matters writes: The appointment of the chairman to the review panel is a clear indication of the Tea Party government at work.

What about property lobbyists?

Ailie Bruins writes: Re.”Lobbyists are all born equal, so regulate the lot” (yesterday). Most everyday citizens of NSW would be unaware that the self-confessed biggest property developer lobby groups in the country — such as the Urban Development Institute of Australia and The Urban Taskforce — do not fall into the NSW definition of “lobbyist” and are not required to comply with the NSW Lobbyists Code of Conduct of openness and transparency. According to Planning Minister Brad Hazzard they are “not-for-profit organisations representing their membership … the same as the  Nature Conservation Council”. Hazzard fails to comprehend the obvious difference that property developers are commercial, profit-making enterprises.