The Prick’s disdain for the current Labor government is, by now, pretty well established. But what I hadn’t quite realised until Wayne Swan handed down his latest (and perhaps last) budget is how much the feeling is mutual. It’s not enough that anyone who’s not a methadone-addicted single mother with three kids by four different fathers living on the wrong side of the tracks in Penrith is now considered a wealthy up-himself bastard from the big end of town who needs to be made to pay his fair share. No, it’s worse: The bastards are taxing bacon. Specifically, they’re more than doubling something called the “pig slaughter levy” (because, of course, you shouldn’t be allowed to kill a pig without the government taking a cut).
Put simply, this means that we will all now pay more for our beloved pork products just to save Wayne Swan’s surplus-promising bacon.
Other victims of this year’s no-fun nanny budget: smokers, drinkers, and travellers. Tobacco lovers will now only be allowed to bring in a measly two packs of cigarettes duty free when they return from overseas, a move that the government, in a touching fit of naievete, believes will save the state $660 million per year in otherwise lost tax revenue.
And before you can say, “first they came for the smokers, and I said nothing, for I never indulge in tobacco beyond the occasional Montecristo #2”, they’ve also rejiggered the “Wine Equalisation Tax”, which presumably means we will now pay even more for Australian wine at home than our friends do overseas.
More tomorrow. For now, I’m off to figure out how I can put my kids’ “education bonus” towards a bulk bacon buy that will lay in supplies until a Coalition restoration. Oh, what’s that? Of course. I don’t get the bonus. Because they figure that at my rate of pay, I am presumably not dumb enough to vote this mob in again.
UPDATE: A tax or not a tax? Interesting discussion in comments. Everything else I write stands, especially the bit about the PM’s mindless class warfare:
As the rhetoric of class war raged yesterday after a federal budget that redistributed wealth down the income ladder, the Prime Minister responded to Mr Abbott’s criticism of the government’s mean-tested Schoolkids Bonus by targeting his home turf. “Mr Abbott’s got to get off Sydney’s north shore and go and talk to some real families and get himself in the real world,” she said. Later, in question time, she targeted him again: “It is only those who are cosseted on Sydney’s north shore that could fail to realise working families need relief.”
We’re all Australians. We’re all in it together. Depending on your postcode, of course.
Prick With A Fork 
Just be thankful you aren’t a white anglo-saxon Christian who is on the disability support pension waiting for a set-top box with no kids, a dog or cat, a super fund etc. I can’t even afford to go buy a bacon burger at Maccas Bankstown. It’s so expensive there, they’ve taken it off the bloody menu
It also takes pork-barreling to new dimensions
You may be inadvertently telling porkies
http://www.news.com.au/money/federal-budget/twitter-highlights-little-known-bacon-tax/story-fn84fgcm-1226350428205
Erm, no. I took a copy but can’t remember which part of the Budget I took it from. For your edification:
…Rice levy: maintained the rate of the rice levy at $3.00 per tonne beyond 1 January 2012 and removed the listing of specific varieties in the current regulations so that the levy applies to all varieties of the rice species Oryza Sativa.
Pig slaughter levy: increase the rate of the pig slaughter levy from $1.35 to $2.25 per head over three years, commencing on 1 July 2012. The levy will be increased in three 30 cent tranches.
Dairy service levy: increase the rate of the dairy service levy from 2.6075 to 2.8683 cents per kilogram of milk fat, and from 6.3558 to 6.9914 cents per kilogram of protein, with effect from 1 July 2012.
Wheat export charge: decrease the rate of the wheat export charge from 22 cents per tonne of wheat exported from Australia to zero, with effect from 18 May 2012. This rate will remain in place until the wheat export charge is abolished on 1 October 2012. Abolishing the wheat export charge was announced by the Government on 23 September 2011 in response to the Productivity Commission’s report on Wheat Export Marketing Arrangements…
I wonder when the Latte sippers wil twig to the fact their Latte is also set to go up in price…
Hey, we’re all friends here – I said “inadvertently”. Did you read the link? It acknowledges the levy increase but claims it is revenue neutral for the govt as they pass the levy straight to “Australian Pork Ltd” for R&D and marketing and wotnot.
Having said that, it’s still taken from producers and given to somebody else and will decreases their margins, especially in the short term. It’s a bizzare form of collectivist thinking that increasing the levy has no impact because it goes to the industry body; the producer still has less cash and to the extent they can demand a price increase to compensate it may increase the price of pork products.
(I suppose there’s a counter argument that the R&D or marketing is intended to increase sales or margin, but that sort of thing is uncertain, whereas the levy increase is right there in the Budget papers so is certain (I assume since you quote that chunk).
I am now more symathetic to the view that it may put upward pressure on the price, so we’re in violent agreement!
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I know what I’d like to do to Swan – it involves pork(ing) and the terminology “hot, dry & hard”.
You know, the same thing those f@#kwits are doing to this country….