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This is an interesting editorial on the meaning of his speech by Vitoria Rollison.
http://victoriarollison.com/2014/11/16/what-abbott-actually-said/
A small excerpt:-
‘Two issues in particular that I lay before my colleague leaders: we have tried to deregulate higher education, universities, and that’s going to mean less central government spending and effectively more fees that students will have to pay. We think that this will free up our universities to be more competitive amongst themselves and more competitive internationally but students never like to pay more.’
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought Pyne’s argument was that deregulation of university fees would make fees less expensive? Pyne has also argued that his policy is a ‘good deal’ for students, although this was clearly never the case. How is it a good deal to be paying more for something and having to pay interest you previously didn’t pay, whilst getting the exact same product you used to get? But the point is, Abbott’s government always argued that this policy was about improving the university sector – not about balancing the budget. Yet yesterday, Abbott was using this policy failure (let’s call a spade a spade that has failed to get through the Senate) as one of the reasons he’s finding those revolting peasants in his kingdom so terribly hard to force into line. Because students ‘never like to pay more’. Apparently Abbott’s budget woes are nothing to do with his and Hockey’s incompetence and are instead apparently all university students’ fault and their sense of entitlement that they should be able to get an education without taking out a mortgage on their future. An education, by the way, that benefits the long term economic success of Abbott’s precious economy. Not that Abbott seems to be able to put two and two together in this way. Abbott hadn’t finished yet though, because it wasn’t just the students who were to blame. It was also the sick.
But ultimately, if you were really listening, you’ll have heard that it wasn’t just the students and the sick and hypochondriac Australians who are to blame for Abbott’s inability to fulfil one of his apparent four core promises to ‘get the Budget under control’. Because right up front, Abbott said this:
‘…it doesn’t matter what spending programme you look at, it doesn’t matter how wasteful that spending programme might appear, there are always some people in the community who vote, who love that programme very much’.
Get that people? It’s all of us voters who are so stupidly in love with government spending on programs that are just a complete waste of government spending. It’s all our fault that Abbott can’t balance his books! Us stupid voters refuse to let him send a wrecking ball through our civilised society that we have spent generations building! How dare we block his wrecking ball!
So yes, I was offended, as a member of the domestic audience that was the true target market for this speech. But once I had calmed down and thought about it for a moment, I realised that I was also incredibly proud of Australians. Abbott can blame us all he likes. But the fact of the matter is that the worst of Abbott’s budget – the parts that hit the most vulnerable hardest – like the GP co-payment, like Pyne’s assault on the higher education sector – are being blocked by our democratically elected leaders in the Labor Party, the Greens, various independents and low and behold, the Palmer United Party. So we might be dumb enough to elect Abbott in the first place, but I hope the world leaders, and those across the world who may have been tuning in, can see we’re not dumb enough to let him wreck the place, no matter how hard he might be trying.
