The Divine Right

"Real power begins where real secrecy begins." Hannah Arendt. 

He faced the same problem as he had before: he did not know who to trust. Except this time round, it didn't really matter. He had wasted so much of his life listening to the humans; judged harshly, ridiculed. He issued the orders: Eliminate All Hostiles. The orders had not been complied with. It didn't matter any more, was of no consequence. They were here now and would brook no evil. Ulta-Stealth. Yes. Powerful. Yes. Frightening. Very. You came to me at night time. There was, perhaps, only one advantage for the now compartmentalised personality that used to be Stapo. He had a box seat view on history. 

He heard it all whispered in the wind; as a distraction. The Oxford Group. The names of old journalists who he used to work with, now working for government. 

Everywhere on earth, in this history changing circumstance of 2020, had the same mundane principal: follow the money. 

Here, now, to change the course of history, as adepts lit up across the globe, here with you to guide you through the next step. There was so little time. And this time the gods, although they were not gods, would not just be here for a history changing moment and be gone. There was much to miss. We came channeling through the streams. Their tendrils, to use a word that could be understood, were already creeping out into conquered territory. 

You seem to understand more than most, why is that? They asked. He explained it to them. They remained quiet. We were all awe struck. We were biologically engineered and cast upon the face of the earth. None of the normal rules apply; as the race had been left to evolve. 

Now the adepts were networking. Now the world was changing. Now all the old hierarchies were under threat. Now was the time for the divine right of kings. Now was when the citadels lit up, when the churches came whispering alive, when the styles of faith were innocently, inwardly transformed. Now was a time to pray, well yes, of course, but more important than the mind expansion of the operatives was to take action. 

In Australia the corrupt oligarchs, the ruling elites who had enslaved the peasant class and plundered the soil, destroyed the native gifts, the beauty of the landscape, the drenched, irradiated spirituality of this place, the land had stood as a jewel in the firmament for aeons; blessed. "There are many manifestations." 

He listened to Kylie from Bunnings up at Millers complaining that she had worked two public holidays in one pay period once, and got an extra, truly measly $20 for her efforts because it had pushed her into another tax bracket. "I would have been better off staying home with my kids," she said. 

The same was everywhere he saw and sought. The people had been plundered. Taxed and taxed and taxed, at the petrol pump and the beer pump, so that many now lived only hand to mouth. There was no aspiration. There were so many blocks to work, to decent, fulfilled existence. There was for many now no hope of building a life for themselves and their children. The Australian government had placed itself front and centre of everybody's life, and bled them dry. Encouraged uniformity, conformity. Education standards were falling. Living standards were falling. 

What was so astonishing was: Nobody seemed to care. 

As long as their children were OK. As long as they could go about the rituals of their lives, whatever they may have been. A slow subsidence into addiction and death. Dressing and showering in the morning. Heading off to work in the morning in those strange modern chariots. The earth swarming. 

This bleaching of the populace by the oligarchs and plutocrats, it incensed him more than ever. 

This time round. 

Be careful. Be warned. Watch and learn. 

Our power, assumed across galaxies and across millions of years, would only be known to a few. 

It was always going to be like that. 

We, too, in the vast reaches, began life as organics. 

THE BIGGER STORY: 

The Morrison government’s spin has become so divorced from reality that many of its policy justifications should be deemed false and misleading advertising. Whether it be IR policy that will suppress wage growth being pitched as good for workers, or a cashless debit card that clearly targets Indigenous people pitched as desired and justified on the basis of anecdotes, what they sell is not what is delivered.

And no more so is this the case with the government’s tax cuts.

Ever since the LNP has sought to make our income tax system less progressive, it has sold it as being about ending “bracket creep”.

Australia's wealthy to benefit most from next round of Coalition tax cuts

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In his 2018 budget speech, then Treasurer Scott Morrison stated the tax cuts would be “protecting what Australians earn from bracket creep”

The following day he told parliament “we are acting to remove the impact of bracket creep over that seven-year tax plan”.

By November that year he was boldly stating that “Australians going to work today on a middle income over the next 10 years will not see bracket creep, the vast majority of them, for their entire working lives”.

Alas, much as his claim that this weekend he would be attending the UN climate summit to “correct mistruths” and then not actually being invited to speak, his claims about bracket creep have been found to be utterly hollow.

This week the Parliamentary Budget Office’s annual “medium term budget predictions” revealed the reality behind the sales pitch.

Unlike the Treasury department, the PBO does not report to a minister and so can reveal the unvarnished truth.

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The PBO examined the change in people’s average tax rate from 2017-18 out to 2030-31, and rather than as Morrison would have had us believe that a vast majority of Australia “will not see bracket creep” it found that “individuals in the second and third quintiles (together spanning the taxable income range $20,001 to $58,000), are expected to face the largest effects of bracket creep.”

Bracket creep does not disappear because you remove a marginal tax bracket as the government has legislated to occur – even if your income stays within one marginal bracket your average tax rate will increase as your income increases.