Furthering family values


Edition 1SUN 02 MAR 1997, Page 132
Furthering family values
By RICHARD FARMER 

FAMILY values have taken on a new meaning since the Government of John Howard became dependant on Senator Mal Colston to achieve majority support in the Senate.
How to keep the valuable dollars within the family is the example being set.
First of all, employ your wife on the secretarial staff and when she suffers an unfortunate accident which requires compensation from the public purse, bestow the job upon a student son and bring his spouse in on the payroll for good measure.
That makes it easier to share the drive-yourself government car around the family in a way that maximises its use because Deputy Senate President dad can always get a chauffered one if he really needs it.
Above all, do not stint on the living-away-from-home allowances.
There's a nice little earn on the difference between the daily allowance for a Senator and the cost of a flat across the border in the struggle town of Queanbeyan.
A little bit of creativity and there might even be a way of proving that the family home in Canberra is not really home at all so that son and daughter-in-law are eligible for living-away-from-home allowances as well.
Then the family that is paid together can stay together on occasions when those horrid photographers and cameramen are on the prowl.
If the prospect of an extra $16,000 a year as Deputy President was enough for Senator Mal to leave the Labor Party then surely it was reasonable for his staff to be upgraded in salary as well.
They too, after all, would have to suffer the attention of those journalists and the taunts from former colleagues of being Labor rats.
A couple of days before the vote on Telstra's privatisation seemed an appropriate time for the adjustment in compensation to happen, and so it was.
Mr Howard's generosity made it one big happy Colston family for Christmas as he put the extra value into the family's values.
How pleased the unemployed must be to know that there is such a caring family man in charge.
Mr Howard even sacrifices living in the Prime Ministerial Lodge in Canberra and puts up with Kirribilli House on the shores of polluted Sydney Harbour so that he can spend more time with his own wife and children. Now that's devotion for you.
How wicked that the horrid Labor Party is venting its spleen on those champions of family values by suggesting that there is something more than a little sick about all these shenanigans. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is Scott Morrison getting ahead of Malcolm Turnbull in the GST debate?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison under pressure as the question about knowledge of a rape gets embarrassing

Remembering that Labor only lost last time because of Bill Shorten