Australia – The Lucky Country?

Bringing the cattle in at Kilcowera Station, Outback Australia

We’ve been told this all our lives and maybe it still is.  Australians have loads of public holidays, generally speaking receive good wages, work an eight hour day or less and have plenty of time to check their personal emails and social media during their flexible work hours.  Most have 2 or 3 or 4 TV sets in their homes, 2 or 3 or 4 computers and phones, 2 cars and a fridge and cupboard full of food.

They also have big mortgages on their big houses, are paying off their cars, furniture and white goods.  They probably also have a sizeable credit card debt and not much in the way of savings.  With the Aussie dollar reaching such lofty heights, Australians can flit overseas as easily as we used to go to the Gold Coast or the Blue Mountains, so we are becoming vey global and sophisticated too.

I do realize that not all Australians have it so good, but most of the rest are looked after pretty well by our Government.  With the exception of pensioners –I’m sure our government thinks “who needs them anyway, they’re all past their use by date and not much good for anything.”  Girls are paid to have babies and then can sit around on one of the many benefits paid out from our taxes. There are plenty more benefits to be had from our government too – money being handed out left right and centre.  And where do they get all this money?  From us – the people of Australia who work.

A small business owner said on the radio today “ Small business in Australia is on Morphine, it’s just waiting to die”  HOW SAD IS THAT?  Banks are making billions and hiking up their interest rates, airlines are either going bust or laying off their staff, CEO’s of big companies are also making millions while overseas companies and countries are making a fortune out of Australias’ resources and our governments just keep selling off Australia while all the pollies carry on like a mob of pigs with their snouts in the trough.

We also seem to be very top heavy in all levels of government and big business – get yourself a job in some government department and hang onto it!  A small case in point, in my local town of Thargomindah about three quarters of the population works on the local council.  You go into the office and see six girls sitting at desks gazing raptly at their computer screens or talking on the phone.  Or out the back having a fag.

Why don’t we make anything in Australia any more?  All our clothes, whitegoods, entertainment, cars, fencing materials, machinery, FOOD EVEN!!  Is made overseas.  It seems all we are good for now is raw materials and tourism.  So much work is going off shore, ring Telstra up and see if you can talk to an Australian!  And more workers are being brought in to do jobs the Aussies won’t do – cause they don’t need to work when they can get paid to sit at home from the government!  “Why should little old me stand out in the sun picking shallots or grapes or rockmelons when I can sit at home watching some crap on the TV and shoving pizza down my neck!”

The old Tourism dollar is in for a bit of a shock me thinks with the way the dollar has been – Australia is a very expensive place to visit! Many more jobs will go and businesses go belly up in this sector as people start to tighten their belts.

I’m in my fifties now and it makes me so sad to see the way my country is going to the dogs.  We have all been led to believe we are entitled to an affluence far beyond our means and while we ride the crest of the wave with bright smiles on our faces, our country is being sold out and  given away under us.  Jobs going overseas, foreign workers in Australia, working for their country, not ours and the insidious migration of so called refugees and migrants taking over whole sections of our cities are all issues that I am concerned about.

So many of our clever young university educated workforce are in well paid positions where they gad about the country and the world but don’t actually produce anything.  I wonder when these positions will come toppling down leaving our wonderkids just wondering what the hell happened to the good life?

And just what people in what countries are going to be hungry in the future if we don’t own our country, our farms , our beautiful irrigation areas and sheep and cattle stations that can produce enough clean, safe food for us Australians to eat?

Just who does own Woollies and Coles?  And do they have the right to own so much of the retail business in Australia?  And to under cut all their opposition so that the consumer always ends up shopping at either of these businesses?

Maybe the world is changing for the better or it’s just changing, but it seems all I can do is not think too much about what’s going on here in Australia because it make the future too frightening to contemplate.