Have you ever been accosted at a bus stop by a junky who wants $5 for food? Can you afford it? Yes. Does he look like he needs a good feed? Yes. Is food a righteous expenditure of your $5? Yes.
So what held you back? You did not know he was a junky it was merely your analysis of the situation? If he is a junky then so what, he is still hungry and it is a little cruel that you did not give him the money.
The problem is that this person shows no capacity to prudently deal with money, and therefore has none. What the junky does get is wasted and will continue to be so until he decides that he must change his ways to survive.
What is the point of you supporting his bad habit with your funds even though it is a minor amount? He will spend vastly more than the $5 he wants from you on his dealer tonight, and you have given money to a myriad of cases and friends when you have a belief that it is well managed and there are no alternatives.
Your federal government last week extended the gross debt by $4 billion. That is only slightly less than the estimated cost to the Government for the floods and, vastly more than they will get from their flood tax.
Things are getting worse not better. While Rudd was Prime Minister your government borrowed $95 million every day. Since Julia took over your debt has been growing at $145 million every day. At some point every one of us will have to work harder, to earn the money, to pay the tax, to pay back this debt.
So when you look at the wash out of where funds will come from to rebuild after the floods, you have to realise that the money you have just raised from the levy will now allow them to waste money in other areas. Whilst they are telling you that it is so important for you to put your hand in your own pocket, they are still going to borrow tens of billions of dollars for a second telephone line. They will piously ask you for funds to support the levy whilst they are borrowing for the complete stuff up which is their financial management. Do not be so comforted when the commentators who have never run a business tell you it is not a problem. Their belief is that if you can not pay it back now you just borrow more for the interest and pay it back later.
If you are paid by the public purse it may well be your job when it finally does hit the fan, and it will definitely be if they keep borrowing like this. What is the point of a provision if you have to borrow to get it; provisions for the future are best harvested from excesses not to exacerbate the deficiencies and propped up by borrowings.
There is now the talk of "putting money aside for a rainy day" so we escape the shortfall of funds in the future. The paradox, however, is we had money put away, tens of billions of dollars. The Labor Party supported now by the wise and noble Greens and Independents spent it all, or using the Australian idiom put it up against the wall.
So as you go to work in Canberra, think of how this is all going to finish. The government keeps borrowing and you are paid by the government, or you rely on people who are. The Government is going to keep borrowing billions of dollars even though large sections of the nation that make the profits that pay the taxes, like the “evil” coal industry, that pay your wage can not make money because of the damage of the floods.
So Canberra, in closing, very soon your nation will have to go back into the Parliament to extend your nation’s credit card. I remember them initially saying that this wouldn’t happen until 2013-14. Well it is happening in 2011. No doubt Labor will sell this as getting the job done early. I hope it doesn’t cost you your job.