So, the budget has been released, and while Joe Hockey dances in his office and smokes a fat cigar the bulk of us are left to pick up the pieces of what once were our lives.

With all of the cuts to services and new taxes and tax hikes that were announced under some strange new titles that the government of no surprises surprised us all with, there were a couple missing.

Usually when a government wants to increase revenue the first thing they do is lift the taxes on tobacco and alcohol. The good ol’ beer and smokes tax hike, it is almost a tradition.

So why not this time?

After all, this is a budget “Emergency” we are being told.

Wouldn’t an extra few billion in income be better than $50 Billion being ripped out of our health system? I would have thought so.

I wonder if the decision not to lift the taxes on smokes and grog has anything to do with the Liberal Party reliance on the lobbyists and donations from the industry.

After all, the Liberal Party was notorious for taking millions upon millions from “Big Tobacco” in donations over the years. The Nationals still accept donations from Big Tobacco.

We have also been made aware that the Liberals fundraising organisation The Millennium Forum is run by a man by the name of Paul Nicolaou who is also NSW Chief Executive of the Australian Hotels Association. It is safe to say that they are one of the biggest lobby groups for the alcohol industry in the country.

Paul Nicolaou you may remember has been called before ICAC recently as the Liberal Party in NSW implodes over a corruption scandal the likes of which we have never seen before.

Despite Abbott’s and Hockey’s reluctance to lumber their tobacco and alcohol pals with a tax hike prices will still rise on these items due to the Coalitions budget.

The increase in the fuel levy will also guarantees these companies freight costs will be pushed up and this will end up being passed on to the consumer, as it will for all of our groceries.

There has been a lot of talk about Abbott’s many broken promises since the budget reared its ugly head.

For those that were surprised by this, maybe they should watch the video below regarding a new tax as a memory refresher.

 

 

Now we are hearing a lot about what Tony Abbott’s main promise during his campaign was, like we are the ones with bad memories.

Apparently his one promise that trumped every other promise was his to bring the economy back to surplus as quickly as possible. Granted that was something Abbott mentioned during the campaign often, however I don’t recall it ever being a solemn promise, let alone a gospel promise.

There were four main promises that I recall which stood out above all else.

 

• No New Taxes
• Scrap the Carbon tax
• End The Waste
• Stop The Boats

 

So let’s look at these now suddenly not so important promises.

No New Taxes 

When Julia Gillard implemented a levy to help out the people of Queensland after a natural disaster, Abbott called it a tax. In fact Abbott referred to virtually any rise in the cost of living as some sort of tax from Julia Gillard.

However when Abbott introduces a levy it is called a “Temporary Budget Repair Levy”, but no matter what Abbott and Hockey desire to call it, most of us call it a broken promise.

I also note that the only part of the budget that has the rich “sharing the pain” has the word temporary in its title. There are no “temporary” cuts to welfare, the pension, education or health, only the new tax for those on over $180K a year.

On top of the “Temporary Budget Repair Levy” we have a hike in the fuel excise. That is a tax rise no matter how you look at it.

Also we will now have a surcharge to go to the doctor, because apparently the country can’t afford for everyone to have fee medical care.

Funny, I seem to recall paying a Medicare levy out of every pay cheque, which in my mind means I’ve paid for my medical needs.

This Co-Contribution” of Abbotts  is nothing more than a sick tax.

Scrap The Carbon Tax

The Carbon Tax that Abbott promised he would “immediately” legislate against still remains in place with no legislation raised yet.

By my calculations we are around 28% of the way through Abbott’s term as Prime Minister and still what he promised to do immediately has not come into effect, nor does it seem to be on the horizon as we head towards the one year mark.

Given that Abbott has not included income from  the Carbon Tax in his budget, I have a hunch that he is glad to see it stay in place so that the Coalition can sneak themselves into a surprise surplus on the back of an outright lie just in time for the next election.

End The Waste

The families of the thousands of public servants who are now set to lose their jobs may have a different view on waste I think.

In fact government spending has changed little in dollar figures, only in what it is spent on.

Some may see the spending on schools a waste, not me. Some may think that securing jobs a waste of money, but not I.

Some of the things I find wasteful are little things such as a virtual library in George Brandis’s office, and spending a few Billion dollars on fighter jets despite us not using a plane in armed conflict for nearly a century.

While Tony plays Top Gun, Granny opens another tin of cat food.

Stop The Boats

The boats have stopped we keep hearing.

What utter crap.

It was only recently that our gutless PM cancelled a trip to Indonesia making up some lame excuses as to why he couldn’t go.

The real reason he didn’t have the balls to front up was because a storm was brewing over a boat that we had just towed back into Indonesian waters illegally. Not only that, it was alleged that there were three extra passengers on board making the Coalition people smugglers.

If the boats have stopped, where did this on come from? Uranus?

Admittedly it does seem that the boats have slowed down, or perhaps it is that we just don’t hear about them anymore due to the censorship of information from Scott Morrison who has seemingly picked up his secrecy tactics from North Korea.

Let’s assume they have slowed down for the sake of argument, and so the right wingers reading this don’t get their cousins knickers in a twist.

I’m pretty sure if I were to tell a policeman that I slowed down to 40kmh when I went through a red light it would not get me out of a ticket and a fine.

Nor do I hear of doctors asking nurses to slow the bleeding down so the patient bleeds to death slowly, they seek to stop the bleeding.

That is because slowing and stopping are two different things.

Apparently that was on an episode of Play School that Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison must have missed.

Border Protection Chief Angus Campbell didn’t miss that episode, admitting that the boats indeed have not stopped and that it will take years to stop them and only via regional solutions.

Hmmm regional solutions rather than slogans… that could work.

Abbott has broken virtually every one of his promises related to the cost of living, welfare and the tax system, and has set the wheels in motion to see a GST rise, which will break one of his last remaining promises.

If the Liberal Party really wanted to bring about a surplus that quickly, why not just take all of their dodgy donations and backhanders being uncovered by ICAC and put them in the countries bank account rather than there own?

Abbott promised tax relief and a better standard of living for families.

He is now taxing us into poverty just so that he can promise us the same lies in his next election campaign.

Don’t be fooled.

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