Up to 34,000 workers at the Australian government’s Department of Human Services (DHS) are scheduled to hold rolling strikes over the next two weeks. They include staff at Centrelink, the agency that oversees welfare payments, along with Medicare and Child Services employees.
The limited industrial action has been called by the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) in the face of protracted opposition by public sector workers to the government’s demands for cuts to wages and conditions. There is also immense popular anger over the government’s draconian “debt recovery” scheme targeting current and former welfare recipients, which Centrelink workers are being forced to implement.
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(Clue: The quote has been falsely attributed to Thomas Jefferson)
5 comments:
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have … The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases..."
Yep.
If only people would heed the wisdom before finding out the hard way.
People in countries such as NZ take their liberty for granted , they don't appreciate it. They like a gov't that acts like protective parents.They like to enjoy the largesses from gov't. It wont be until the govt gets so big and oppressive that they may then realize that they have become subjects who are completely controlled by the state machine not unlike livestock, but by then it will be too late.
Our freedom is the most important thing we have.As Patrick McGoohan says in the prisoner.I will not be pushed,filed,stamped,indexed,briefed, debriefed,or numbered.My life is my own.
"I am not a number, I am a free man " said McGoohan's character and they replied to his questions about who was in charge with "I am number two, there is no number one"
This program and Orwell's 1984 seem rather dated and dreary now considering our new age of enlightenment.
We have become numbers and surrendered privacy on a scale unimaginable 30 years ago.
My passport, drivers license, car registrations, tax information, power, phone, rates demands, insurance, voting papers and hospital records to name but a few of the items now controlled by bar codes via the information super highway which is at the fingertips of whomever wishes to take the time to browse.
Someone, somewhere is probably shaking their head and rolling their eyes as I type.
Numbers control our lives, start work at 8, finish at 5 and be in front of the TV at 6 to watch the official news.
Everything will be fine as long as we obey the rules.
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