Fielding fights for rural poor's right to luxury cars

Family First senator, de facto Liberal Steve Fielding, is opposing the Rudd government's luxury car tax. His failure to vote for the bill means it will fall in the Senate. The Greens and Nick Xenophon have already pressed for and received some worthwhile alterations to the bill in the form of exemptions for hybrids and other very fuel-efficient cars, but Fielding has got his knickers in a knot about 'tourism and farmers'.

He got some rather extensive airtime this morning on ABC Newsradio, and when he started bleating 'tourism and farmers, tourism and farmers' over and over again, I fully anticipated that host Glen Bartholomew's obvious next move would be to ask how the luxury car tax could impact upon the tourism industry, let alone farmers. But no, expecting some basic journalistic line of enquiry came second to letting Fielding spout his stuff. Though due credit must go to Bartholomew for a nice jab in the form of a reminder that Fielding is blocking the legislation of a government elected by a strong majority of Australians even though Fielding himself was only elected on the back of 56000 votes. Fielding's huffy response was "I think Family First got A LOT more than 56000 votes!", but Bartholomew simply batted him away with the cold hard fact: "Actually, your primary vote was 56000". Heh.

Anyway, try as I might I wasn't able to uncover Fielding's reasons for blocking the luxury car tax on any of the usual media websites, so I steeled myself and went to Fielding's own website (ugh). Of course, Fielding's blocking of the luxury car tax wasn't on his front page, in his list of brightly coloured populist platforms (for which he has done very little). But there was something in his media releases section:

"Family First wants exemptions from the extra tax for commercial vehicles designed to carry seven or more passengers in tourism operations"

Well, ok. A special exemption for tourism businesses. Sounds fair enough. Worth considering.

But this was followed by:

and also an exemption for four wheel drive vehicles that are registered in a rural area, in recognition that families in rural and regional Australia are doing it tough.

Excuse me? What the fuck? So if some rich guy who happens to live in Guyra or Augathella wants to buy a BMW X5 or a Porsche Cayenne he should be exempt from paying a few thousand extra in tax 'in recognition that families in rural and regional Australia are doing it tough'. Does Steve Fielding really need it pointed out to him that anyone in a rural area who is buying a $60000+ luxury car is not one of those who is 'doing it tough'? Is he really that out of touch with what life is like for people in rural Australia that he thinks that the worst the poor darlings are suffering is that they will no longer be able to afford a fucking luxury car? I refuse to believe that he can be so stupid. My theory is that Fielding knows that the Labor government is likely to acquiesce to the first, more reasonable request to exempt tourism operators. But because he is a Liberal stooge and really wants the bill to fall he has thrown in this patently stupid demand that he knows Labor cannot and will not accept.

I also predict we'll see Fielding making a song and dance about an awful lot of bills over the next couple of years, even those that match his stated position on an issue, simply in order to get exposure in the media. He has next to no support in the public (something like 0.9% or 1.9% of the population supports Family First), rode to his current position on the back of a stupid, stupid preference deal made by Labor (!) and knows he's dead meat at the next election unless he can score massive media exposure and suck up to the Libs in the hope of a preference deal at the same time.

UPDATE: Isn't this interesting?

Senator Steve Fielding voted with the Opposition to defeat the bill at the second reading stage. He made no attempt to amend it.

LIBERAL. STOOGE.

C'mon Kevin, give us a double dissolution election. The quicker we get rid of that two-faced deceptive moron the better.

I Paid for your Folden

Good for going sideways making lots of smoke, burning shitloads of petrol and not much else.

And so did you if you bought a car not built by what we laughingly call our automotive industry. Thanks to the tariffs placed on imports, Holdens and Fords cost less than imported cars. Of course this is because putting together pre-manufactured bits of prehistoric automobiles built by companies rapidly going the way of the dinosaur is a deep part of our national image and makes us who we are as a nation, at least if you read the marketing.

We've just had a review of the moribund 'industry' completed by Steve Bracks and, big shock, it recommends that we keep subsidizing Folden to keep making crappy cars for not very much money, only dropping the subsidy to 5% in 2010. And what are Folden doing with the $20 billion in subsidies they get from the taxpayer? Are they trying to catch up to European car makers who are making more efficient, more powerful engines that emit less greenhouse gas? Are they trying to catch up to Asian car manufacturers' hybrid technology? As if. It's just giant, petrol swilling engines and ever more desperate advertising. These guys should know better, they're part of the same companies that spent decades wringing money out of the US government to protect them from leaner, smarter, better European and Asian cars, only to spectacularly implode recently. Propping the turkeys up over here will have the same result.

I don't give a stuff about this manufacturing industry bullshit. We don't even make computers here and they're a damn sight more important to our economy than the Holden Commodore. why should I shed a tear if they're forced to get their act together and, gasp, actually compete with other companies? Are we to keep every car industry employed forever? Despite truckloads of government cash they've been shedding jobs for years (still managing to fine executive bonuses though). Why can't the people we've got build Toyotas or something? Of course that won't happen, because Holden mean$ a great deal to Australia.

Top Gear burned in VTAY comments

A fellow hater of Top Gear left a comment so scathing (and so spot on) on a post I made last year that I thought it worthy of giving it an airing on the main page:

Top gear are a bunch of right wing fucktards with no sense of perspective.

They kiss celebrity ass shamelessly and propagate ignorance. Naturally appealing to stupid laddish idiots who are easily impressed by flashy cars and lame gimmicks like the stig.

Whats sadder is that they are anti speed cameras (which save lives) anti public transport and generally right wing silver spoon fed fucktards. Jeremy Clarkson doesnt believe in education (read his colummns from the sunday times) and has some pretty reprehensible backward views in regards to homosexuality, and other issues.

but instead out society rewards egomaniacs by pouring money on them.

Ouch!

Petrol price whinge?

Jeremy at Anonymous Lefty has a rather good post up on the petrol price situation.

Trading in the old Audi 2-foot

Gam and I picked up our new car on Thursday evening. I came down with a horrid cold on Monday evening, after feeling it on and off last Saturday and Sunday mornings, and after crawling into work for a couple of hours on Wednesday, crawled home again and decided not to go on Thursday. I made it into the city ok to meet Gam after he hopped off the train from Beenleigh, and we took a train to the Valley and then walked to the dealer at Newstead.

Tartan seats... I have a thing for tartan... not reason enough on its own to buy a car, but a definite plus!

After signing away our financial futures (my parents helped us out with the deposit... thanks yet again, Mum and Dad... not that they actually read or know about this blog) and bidding farewell to our rather practiced but nonetheless refreshingly honest salesman and the oily-stereotype dealer principal we braved the road home in our new ride, wishing right from the word go that we could just walk or hop on the damn train. And thanking our lucky stars that Gam's commute will not involve driving from Newstead to the Riverside Expressway. Seriously, anyone who does that as part of their commute is nuts. It would have been faster to walk. Took us 45 minutes, at a snail's pace, and as the car informed us, was using an average of 40L of petrol per 100km, a far cry from the 7.8L/100km average. From the start of the Riverside Expressway to home took us another 15 minutes, quite comforting considering that's what we anticipated will be the worst part of Gam's daily commute. So it looks like the 4 hours per day of commuting for Gam will be reduced to at most 2 hours. Thank god.





Today we took some photos of the car to send to my parents, and Gam's, and although I didn't want to use the car until tomorrow, when we have plans to buy some big bags of kitty litter and a bag of hay for Keith Richards and a few other things we can't manage on foot, Gam nagged and nagged to go for a drive together (Why? Where?) and settled for a trip to the video store in Toowong to pick up a movie. Now, while it was nice to get to Blockbuster and back in under an hour, I still can't help feeling rather dirty. You see, it was a beautiful day here, lovely for walking, and using the car to nip down the road for something entirely frivolous goes against everything we'd promised ourselves we wouldn't do once we got the car. So I'm fessing up here in order that if Gam and I suddenly turn into everything we despise our shame will be there for everyone to see! No using the car for frivolous purposes!



I've also been enjoying the fact that Gam is so rapt in his new baby that I can say things like "Ooh what's that noise? Maybe something fell on the car!" and he'll scurry down to the garage to check, fretting all the way. It's frigging hilarious. I must have done it about 100 times in the 24 hours or so since we got the car, and it's worked every time. Hehehe. We also took Feifei down to the garage this morning to 'meet' the car... he wasn't so thrilled, but he gave it 'Fei love' with his tail just as he does with all our guests in an effort to convince them not to eat him. He looked suitably nervous and was in a little bit of a hurry to leave.

'Diary' entry: why we're getting a car

Today we got up at 6am, left the house at 7:10am to walk to the CityCat, caught CityCat at 7:22am.
I arrived at work at RCH Herston after having been left behind with all the other people at my bus stop because the first bus was full: 8:10am.
Gam arrived at work- Beenleigh- just before 9am.
I left work just before 3pm. When I was on the CityCat to Toowong I checked the time on my phone: 3:41pm. I did some shopping in Toowong, checked to see if there was a 412 that I could catch home (the next one listed was in 14 minutes, and they often don't show up), and decided to walk home. It was about 4:50pm by the time I got home. Just in time to call the car dealer's finance guy and ask a couple of questions.

Gam left work at 5pm. Caught the train to the City. Some 'police incident' meant the train was stopped for 20 minutes or so. Then forced to wait half an hour for a CityCat home because they only come every half hour after 6pm (or is it 6:30pm?). I walked to get him from the CityCat at 7:17pm. Arrived home just before 7:30pm, meaning it was more than 12 hours since he left home and he'd done over 4 hours of commuting.

4 hours commuting x 5 days a week = 20 hours a week... or two and a half working days, pretty much. Madness. Public transport is fine going to and from the CBD, it's just to everywhere else that takes so much time (Herston is only 1-2km from the CBD!). The RM at our unit complex was recently transferred from a position in Queen St Mall to a position in Fortitude Valley, meaning her daily commute more than doubled to 2+ hours. Longer when a bus just doesn't show up. Gam has promised to drop her in the City in the mornings when we get our car...

And thankfully that looks to be pretty soon- this weekend, hopefully. Not the colour we wanted (white or red- it's 'graphite blue'... more ugly and less safe), not the car my parents wanted us to have (a diesel), but at least Gam won't be commuting 4 hours a day for 3 months... it's not so bad for me because I can leave work early to miss the worst, most crowded commuting times, but Gam really needs that car!

Buying a car sucks

Gam and I have been looking into buying a car lately because Gam needs one for work. Gam did most of the research and kept me informed, I asked questions on safety features and fuel efficiency, we came to a decision to buy a petrol Golf GTi, and now my parents have decided that we need a diesel Golf even though it costs almost as much and comes with fewer safety features, presumably because petrol is really on the way out... and because we're relying on them to help us out with part of the deposit we have to take their opinions seriously and not dismiss them out of hand, even though we're pretty sure our research is sound... and Dad has convinced himself that because we decided on a GTi we want a high-performance sports car. Sports car? We're practically the little old ladies of our generation when it comes to driving. WTF? This has turned soooo stressful.

UPDATE: Not only that, as a kid I was always the one nagging Dad about speeding and overtaking people because they annoyed or somehow slighted him, and getting roused on for it. I think my brain just exploded...

Bi-Xenon

Apparently it's not some sort of Swedish kink. We're thinking about getting them as an option for our potential car (depending on a lot of events happening). Do any of our readers own cars with bi-xenon lights? Are they any good? More importantly, are they worth $2000 in terms of resale value and daily use? Let us know in the comments.