John Roskam from the Institute of Public Affairs highlights the failures of the fourth estate to hold our politicians (and other institutions) to account.
Sometimes things are brought to your attention that leave you gobsmacked.
It happened to me this week thanks to an email from an Australian Conservatives member and concerned citizen.
This particular patriot used to work in a Centrelink call centre. One day, a particular call left her knowing there had to be a better way.
This specific query was from a migrant woman enquiring as to why her Family Tax Benefits (FTB) had been reduced.
The operator looked up the individual’s records and saw that the claimant was on Parenting Payment Partnered (PPP) of around $495 per fortnight. Her husband was also in receipt of Austudy for a similar amount. The couple’s ten children entitled them to a further $2850 per fortnight through FTB ‘A’ and FTB ‘B’.
All up, nearly $2,000 per week in welfare payments and that figure doesn’t include other subsidies or ‘bonus’ payments if certain government requirements are met. It ignores any childcare benefits, housing assistance and medical benefits too.
Now there are several alarming aspects of this story.
The first being: how is it in anyone’s interests to have an immigration program that allows people to come to Australia to effectively live on welfare?
It also raises the question about how our welfare program allows people to access so much money, with little – if any – accountability or expectations.
Little wonder our country is slowly going broke and so many think the system itself is broken.
The statistics tell a damning story.
More than half of Australians receive more in benefits than they pay in tax. Some groups of migrants are 95% reliant on welfare, even after five years in the country. We are running billions of dollars into debt every year and still cannot support those truly in need.
Our pensioners and veterans seem to be given short shrift in favour of an imported underclass that many think are gaming the system.
Such an approach doesn’t pass the common sense test and that’s why Australian Conservatives know there is a better way.
Australia truly is a land of opportunity. However it is slowly strangling those opportunities under the yoke of regulation, bureaucracy and the entitlement mentality.
Our generous and caring culture is being taken for a ride and politicians are facilitating it by refusing to confront the truth.
We cannot allow that to go on. We simply cannot afford for it to go on. We need to make changes across the whole of government, including reforming our immigration and welfare offerings.
To ignore the problem so evident within our midst is tantamount to not acknowledging the elephant in the room.
Whilst our national living room is large, the elephant continues to grow, fed to a level of morbid obesity by decisions of past and present parliaments.
Cory Bernardi is the author of seven books and has been a member of the Australian rowing team, a publican, an investment portfolio manager and spent nearly 14 years as an Australian Senator.
