A law lecturer and former National Party officer wants to challenge the Rudd government's economic stimulus payment in the Australian High Court on the grounds that it's unconstitutional. For what?
There is zero reason why the practical issues facing us today ought to be a function of elusive, curly arguments and the super-fine splitting of legal hairs.
This is mere gamesmanship. It's likely motives are either ego-strutting or political aims. Whether or not the handout is unconstitutional will be a matter of opinion, anyway. Why should we give the ghost of a damn what some legally-obsessed minds think?
It's a fair bet that the arguments on each side will be so nearly equal that only the most minutely discerning legal brains could pick a difference. We need to give those legal brains a pink slip. DCM!
Why should a judge's opinion of the translation of current life issues into the bygone word-meanings of a bygone era be a decider of whether or not the federal government can make such a payout?
The legal intellectual giants maintain a stance that their acutely insightful interpretations of the wording of statutes ought to govern every single action humans undertake. Little wonder! That's what keeps them employed at a premium.
It doesn't take acute insight on the part of a layperson to realise that the further legal decisions become removed from plain, ordinary common sense the richer the legal profession gets.
To Hell with High Court opinions. This is our country. Our lives and our livelihoods are at stake. The law cannot decide whether the stimulus is fiscally right or wrong. It should keep it's nose out of what doesn't concern it.
What do you suppose will happen if the US government bail-out of financial institutions is declared unconstitutional and is scuttled?
We would be rapidly brought face-to-face with the extreme folly of allowing the law to be the master instead of the slave!
This sh*#-stirrer has his own hand out for something. We should do to it what school Headmasters formerly did to the hands of disobedient children!
But then, he might sue!
Some heated discussion has arisen over the defeat of the Rudd Government’s alcopop tax. Many people viewed it cynically as a mere tax-grab.
I believe that alcopops, like poker machines, are the product of highly insightful marketing technology. They result in young drinkers losing sight of both the overall amount of alcohol consumed and the total amount of money spent on them.
It's fair to argue that alcopops don't cause binge-drinking. That is a result of many social factors. However, these lolly-water drinks do cleverly capitalise on the binge-drinking tendency of the young and furthermore, they appear to encourage it. Profit–driven marketing has always worked like that. It also gets ever more wily and ingenious at subliminal exploitation.
Defenders of these designer drinks have pointed out that in response to the tax young people are now buying spirits and mixing their own alcopops, making them even stronger.
That is not necessarily a negative step. It is exactly what older generations did for decades before these drinks were created. We at least knew how drunk we were getting. Today's night-clubbers and party-goers don’t seem to.
Mr Rudd's tax strategy may or may not have been the best move, but at least it was aimed at a sensible outcome. It sought to undermine a socially questionable new development in an area where direct government intervention and control wasn't an option.
What should he have done? There are many alternative suggestions, but most of them have a personal motive or private agenda lurking somewhere behind them.
Even if mere revenue–raising had been the government's true goal, it ought to be remembered that the looming general revenue cost of binge drinking through the provision of physical and mental health services and facilities will almost certainly be way in excess of what this tax would have netted.
