PERSONAL EXPERIENCE VALUES VOTES
RECENTLY a district reader proffered the view that you wouldn’t give a raw 18-year-old free rein to run the family farm and that the country would be in better shape if the voting age started at 50.
Interesting comment but obviously tongue-in cheek.
The point being made was that at election time if we all voted from personal experience Australia would be very different.
On the upside fewer people would be stressing about their looming ability to pay a mortgage or other loans.
Those who dealt with interest rates when they were 18 per cent and up will rarely have bet the bank that money would continue to be virtually free and that asset prices would always keep rising.
It’s easy to blame the borrowers who got in too deep because they believed in magic puddings.
They got the bad habit from recent governments which similarly stopped worrying about debt by simply printing and sprinkling money to buy popularity.
Think Jobkeeper and its massive waste and rorts, when we paid people not to work – and during Covid paying people to “work” from home.
Imagine what the latter did for work ethics. In too many cases it remains an easy con - especially during school holidays.
There’s government paying the able-bodied more and more not to work, pushes for shorter hours etc tec.
And still we moan about widespread vacant jobs and not enough workers to fill them.
The past two years of freebies have taught many that the long list of government support schemes makes work optional.
NDIS costs are out of control, we’re blowing money of green energy fantasies, we’re paying big manufacturers to close down when the power grid is overtaxed – the list goes on.
No surprise that the nation now faces declining productivity and runaway inflation.
The government’s answer? Higher wages that will inevitably make inflation worse and limiting the production of reliable base energy that will have the same effect.
We’re warned, standby for power shortages, higher electricity prices and maybe restrictions or blackouts, like we live in some third world country.
A comedy writer using this stuff wouldn’t even get a laugh.
Not for us the proven sources of energy – coal, gas and nuclear – like most of the nations powering ahead.
We have total faith that wind and sun won’t have slack days – while we wait for a new acceptable form of base power to be invented.
Today, come a hot spell, floods, drought or fires we immediately cite the recent arrival of climate change forgetting, as Dorothea Mackellar wrote, in this country it was ever so, just as climate change has always been with us as well.
As ever emotion and politics smothers rational decision-making.
It’s sad that so few from today’s generation take a serious interest in a government’s record or policies and simply bowl up on election day to vote, based on the few snippets of propaganda they came across on social media.
THE threats of power cuts always bring memory of school years on a dairy farm in the 1950s.
When electricity was off, older pupils had a “holiday” because it was all hands to the pump to hand-milk up to 100 cows if it was unlucky enough to be peak season.
After an hour or so aching wrists and shoulders made us youngsters wish we were back in class.
Doubt if any dairy operators would be without some form of power back-up these days.
Up to the 50s country people didn’t rely on electricity as much as we all do today.
Most farms had wood stoves for cooking, probably an old kerosine lamp hanging in the shed and we could live comfortably for a few days from spares in the pantry or garden or from surplus livestock without visiting the grocers.
Now, if power was down for a few days, there would be riots because many of us wouldn’t be able to re-charge our i-phones.
WITH another year over much of the rural community should be reasonably content.
Whether you flourished, held the line or struggled would depend on where you were based or what industry you were in.
We obviously feel for those in flood-ravaged country trying to stay positive.
Our thanks to advertisers and readers who have supported this publication in 2022.
Here we see ourselves as promoters for the rural community on a Western District level.
Here’s our wish for a happy and blessed Christmas - and a healthy, safe and prosperous New Year for all.
