Merry Christmas to all my readers, all 2 of you! I promise to make more of an effort in 2009 to bring you quality rants. In the mean time, don’t imbibe too heavily, and see you all safe and sound in 2009!
Check out Joe Ludwig’s media statement regarding the alleged stellar effort of the Child Support Agency in making parents cough up for the welfare of their children.
Joe, you are so far out of touch with reality it’s a joke! Sure, a large number of parents have been robbed blind by the CSA, and that’s nothing to be happy about, but you also forget about all the parents who dodge their responsibilities all together by hiding their income!
This is one of the few issues I believe would benefit from a proper, in depth inquiry, as a better system must be found to address these two key problems in the current system;
Firstly, the amount of child support payable should NOT be adjusted based on the parents income. A child of a worker at Big W does not deserve to be treated as less valuable than that of a rich executive. It’s time to set a standard for the minimum level of acceptable care, value that, and make the parents pay that amount.
We also need to solve the problem of parents dodging their responsibilities; Once we have a fixed amount of support calculated, we demand that all parents pay it, regardless of their income. If they want to play hide and seek with their income, force them to do it for the rest of their lives by keeping track of the debt, indexing it for inflation and adding interest to it. Instead of waiting until their kids are 18 and then living the good life, these people will be forced to pay.
I’d go one step further too; Forth those parents who apparently cannot be bothered to generate the income required, the CSA should pay the custodial parent the money, which might motivate it’s staff to more properly investigate how it is that the non custodial parent has plasma TV’s, Playstations 3’s and other luxuries, but no income to pay child support!
Seems our esteemed leader Mr Rudd is searching far and wide for ways to make our lives just that little bit more miserable, and right before Christmas, has found a great one.
Plans are afoot, as noted in the Courier Mail, to force landlords to retain tenants against their will. Basically, once you rent a house to someone, you’ll be stuck with them.
Currently, landlords are generally entitled to give notice to their tenant to vacate the premises, but Mr Rudd believes this is causing homelessness. Apparently, if you evict someone from your home, they can’t find another one.
It’s about time the Labor party stopped meddling in Australians every day affairs. If a citizen owns a house, they should be free to rent it, or not to rent it, as they see fit. It is, after all, their house!
I often find interesting reads over at Violent Acres, and this recent post is no exception. If you can get past the profanity thrown in here and there, it makes a great point. I’ve always liked the writing style over there, pulling no punches and telling it how it is. Let me know what you think.