Politics – Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey

Another post this week in the lead up to the election. Who knows, maybe this will actually become a habit.

Politics is lacking in many areas, and the most glaring is truth. Why is it so hard for these people to tell the truth? Why do we need spin doctors working the angles?

It's because they do not serve you the tax paying public.

Every election I hear a dreaded plea from all sides, the promise of “Tax Cuts” and the people just eat it up. I do not believe in tax cuts. Tax cuts mean less money for the government to do their job. I don't want to pay more tax, but I want to pay the right amount of tax. In fact, I think they should change it from tax to subscription.

Each fortnight I have an amount of money taken from my pay to be used by the government to build roads, expand, replace and maintain infrastructure, provide health care and social services, law enforcement, border protection, and dozens of other services. I consider this my subscription to live in this society. If you do not pay this subscription the services disappear or are replaced by private providers at an increased cost directly to the user.

When I am happy with how the government utilises my subscriptions I take the minimum tax return, when I am unhappy I take back as much as the system will allow me. I consider this my monetary protest against the government. Sadly, this only works for the federal government and not the state.

I have had many discussions with people regarding a range of topics to do with government services where people don't believe they are getting value for money. I agree for the most part that our governments squander the funds of the people. Over recent decades there have been bouts of outsourcing and privatisation that have almost always lead to an increase in costs on the community at large, and often with a reduction in quality of service/product. There have been bouts of downsizing and streamlining, which again has usually resulted n increased cost and poorer service.

In this state election, both sides have said they're going to cut back the public service and I wonder why? The Public Service has less people in it now than when the population was smaller than today. Labor have hired a private firm to analyse the Public Sector for ¾ billion $ in savings. Liberal have said they want the same saving but are going to work with Senior Public Sector employees to gauge where the reductions should be. I can pretty much tell you where they'll come from – Administration. Administration is the easy target in all downsizing of the Public Sector and the public will get behind it because Administration aren't Doctors, Nurses, Police, Fire, or other 'Uniforms'. Administration are the people who do their typing, answer their phones, do the filing, and generally enable the 'Uniforms' to be out of the office doing the job their paid for. There is a great deal of paperwork associated with these 'uniform' functions, and plenty more as Parliament legislates extra reporting for this that and the other.

For some reason the public don't seem to get this side of the equation. There seems to be a general opinion in the public that Public Servants are paper pushing bludgers, and I admit there are a few out there but they are the minority. Like anywhere, there are people employed who just aren't right for the job. Like I said, they are few. Should the many be penalised because of a few the rort the system? No, I don't think they should.

What is needed is a hard look at who they have and why they have them. An example of this is my recent trip to Melbourne. I ate out a lot and found that the quality of the service staff was generally of a very high quality. Competition has forced a higher standard of service. Here in South Australia we take what we can get. This attitude is true beyond hospitality and permeates every industry.

Tax cuts also mean increases in other revenue areas such as licensing, fines and stamp duty. Never trust a government that says that they'll give a tax cut and take nothing away elsewhere. It's all lies. No government will harm its revenue stream in such a way – If they give with one hand, they'll be taking with the other seven. On the radio I heard an ad by someone to do with the election that some party is promising to lower taxes for businesses to allow them to hire more staff. This made me chuckle a little as a number of companies that I've worked for would just take the extra profit and run and not worry about hiring any more staff (or at least not unless they actually needed to because of workload and not doing so would impact profits).

A large area where the truth is somewhat lacking is regarding employment figures. Today I saw some propaganda regarding job creation in South Australia. Currently Labor says that it has been responsible for the creation of 110,000 new jobs. What they don't report is ho many jobs have disappeared nor the ration of full time to part-time positions. I think these are vital pieces of information to contextualise these 110,000 jobs especially in light of the Government removing 1200 Full Time equivalent positions last financial year with at least another 200 Full Time equivalent positions to go in the next financial year. I think it's important to declare these jobs as equivalent to full time employment. It gives shape to the statistic. For example, if the 110,000 jobs were actually part time positions at half time, that would mean the equivalent of 55,000 FTE. It's a stark difference in the power of the numbers, and it is all about numbers.

To win at politics, you need to control the information, or more specifically the interpretation of the information. You need to ensure that the words you use take on the meaning you want with the public. If everyone interprets what you say differently then there is chaos and no accord can be reached. If however you control the language and make your opponents use your words, terms definitions, it puts you up a step because they have to try a take that power from you. No easy task.

When you control the language, the truth become malleable and loses any meaning beyond what you give it.

I would like to see this change, but I know that it won't until people reclaim the power they have given away, until the government is forced to listen to the people and do as they demand. People need to take back the truth and demand better of their government. They need to destroy the spin and make politics straight.

Like I'm fond of saying, I'm an optimist.