Budgetary and other matters.

I contemplated a few things as I smoked my pipe this afternoon, while watching my dogs fighting in the drizzle. The single most important concern I had at that time was that I had no brandy.

I did start thinking about some other things though.

Tax cuts are not welfare. They are an apology for extorting so much tax in the first place. They are also are a way of refunding a very small fraction of the surplus to the people who paid for it. It is a curiosity that instead of thanking their lucky stars that low income earners don't have to contribute their fair share of tax, Labor and welfare groups argue that people who have tax liabilities higher than the average wage are ripping everybody off by getting a pitiful little rebate.

It is very clear that low income earners aren't getting a lot out of this. Two thirds of fuck all, to be precise. This is because there simply isn't a lot of potential for tax cuts at the lower end of the scale, as not a lot of tax is paid to begin with. Welfare is (Justifiably on the most part) done via Centrelink.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A small note on East Timor. Arguments can be made about the fairness and morality of Australia's extraction of gas from the Timor Gap, and those are for another time. It is being said that Australia's position on this is a violation of International Law.

This is not misleading, this is not a half truth. This is a no-frills, card carrying, blatant lie.

International law recognises that Australia's northern border extends as far as its continental shelf into the Timor Sea. This continental shelf carries all the way to an ocean trench just short of East Timor's southern coast. The gas is ours. The continental shelf principle is just one of a number of ways that ocean borders can be determined. If East Timor (A sovereign nation) lay inside Australia's continental shelf, then the border might be drawn at an equidistant point. In that case, the gas might be theirs.

Once again, using a technicality to deprive a poor nation of natual resources they can almost see from their beach seems to be a fairly underhanded thing to do, but it isn't illegal. (There is also a dark corner of international law that can compell nations to contract out resources that they can't exploit on their own, although this compulsion would be diffilcult to achieve in practice.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Regarding blood/breath testing in the Eugene McGee case. The arresting officer was reported to have smelt alcohol on McGee but "Didn't think of testing him". This is because McGee was arested six and half hours after the accident, and police aren't allowed to test suspects more than two hours afterwards. The cop who "Didn't think of testing him" actually never considered flouting the rules and risking the entire case being thrown out.

There has been talk about lifting this two hour limit, and really this is another thing that Mike Rann does when he thinks the end (Him getting re-elected) justifies the means (Him totally fucking with the legal system). The two hour limit exists for a very good reason . Police have to determine if the driver was intoxicated at the time of the collision. Tests more than two hours afterwards- even if permitted- would be unreliable. It would be very easy for McGee to say that he hadn't been drinking at the time of the crash, but when he got home and understood the gravity of the shit he was in, he opened a bottle. It might have even been true, I mean it's what I would do.

Well, actually what I would do is not flee from the scene in the first place, but that's another matter.