Re-boot needed on government values

Here are 10 values I think underpin Australian government policy under Prime Minister, Tony Abbott. Please feel warmly invited to add your comments.
1.LET THE RICH GET RICHER
We (the government) have geared the overall budget to this end.
2.WHATEVER IT TAKES
And we’re turning the screw a bit further by defunding charities and children’s playgrounds, and even playing with the idea of extracting money from the estates of dead students.
3.DIVIDE AND CONQUER
The paid parental leave scheme should pretty much spice up the divisiveness.
4.ENDS JUSTIFY MEANS
Meanwhile, we MUST protect our borders, and evil that happens to asylum seekers in the process is not our concern.
5.RUB SALT INTO THE WOUND
To make ourselves clearer, we’ll cut funding to the Refugee Council of Australia.
6.BLAME THE VICTIM
Also, the violence at Manus Island offshore processing centre, involving the death of asylum seeker, Reza Barati, “would not have happened had there been no protest by asylum seekers” (Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Scott Morrison).
7.PILLORY THE ENEMY
At the moment, we’ve got the opportunity to wallop the opposition through the inquiry into the home insulation program, so we’re going to capitalise – by pouring money into it from the inquiry into institutional child sexual abuse. Yes, we know – we’re charming!
8.STIFLE DISSENT
Protestors are just plain annoying, particularly that selfish me-generation of students. Forget the research that indicates young people may well be kinder than older people; the great unwashed should just get a job – with or without a blue tie.
9.ENSURE CONFORMITY
Schools can have chaplains or nothing; we’ll make sure those kids learn obedience, even if they don’t learn much about Christian charity.
10.I’LL SCRATCH YOURS…
Of course we know about sucking up to mining magnates and media barons, but such is our attention to detail that judges for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award have been handpicked to include Louis Adler; we needed someone who would publicly declare that Tony Abbott is not a misogynist, and she’s come up trumps.

Proposed re-boot

1.Social justice
2.Human rights
3.Care for the planet
PRETTY SIMPLE, EH…Joan Beckwith.

(Note: This post first appeared on Facebook on 31 May 2014. It does not include the links I would normally include in a webpost, but it provides a marker of a few days in the Australian media soon after the Abbott government’s federal budget of 13 May 2014 and seemed worth preserving for that reason.)