We pay our taxes to government, & councils to a lesser extent, so they do the community thing.

In the 74 flood a bloke I know received government compensation when he had major damage. The disruption to his family's life was massive, but when it was all over, his house had been raised, repaired, & slightly improved.

We payed for this, & for hundreds of his neighbours assistance through our taxes. This is what we pay taxes for, not for thousands of useless pen pushers.

In 64 I paid 7.5% tax. In 74 I paid a little over 12%. Now it's a bit over 30%, & I get less for that tax now, than I did back then.

Now I see the start of an effort by government [of any colour] setting up to wriggle out of another area of responsibility.

Join me in the bitch, it just might slow down the "pay more get less" that has been a feature of our governments for the last 46 years that I have been watching.

At this time.
My concerns are focused.
On the victims.
Those we lost and who lost.
Our country and its future.
If my list was ten pages long.
It still would not contain costs to me as an issue.
Individual, you say I Begin to understand, unfortunately you never will.
Hasbeen focus on demanding accountability for every dollar spent, not on costs to help an Aussie in need.

We do pay more in taxes and for that we get more stuff we don't really need in the way of grants, top heavy departments, pork barrelling, subsidies etc, while the stuff we really want and need in the way of community and health services has reduced although it is still vastly better by comparison to other nations. This is true of both the major parties.

The catch-22 is that any cuts to government spending to help pay for the floods will be at the coalface and it will affect even more of those services that we assume as part of a social democracy.

Courageous leadership is required to ensure cuts are not applied to those public service focussed areas but to the top layers of the APS. Will it happen? I doubt it.

Belly it is time you woke up. It is just at such times that our politicians chose to start such rip offs, or complete them.

I think it was a pommy politician who said "we must never let a disaster go to waste". He was talking about the opportunity to slip some other rip off through, while everyone was preoccupied.

WE have seen what some have to offer.

Julia's initiative was to start a committee to maxamise industries contributions. Thanks love! Don't call us, we'll call you, perhaps.