Why am I paying for a couch potato

Written by Brian Phillips

Thursday, 30 August 2007

I truly believe that the government have the wrong idea about what Australia’s money is paying for.

They have increased Aboriginal payments, Newstart allowance and Unemployment packages but have completely neglected our army.

Now come on! At the best of time I’m against military and everything they represent but I believe in workers rights, and right now our military is getting treaded on.

I know a few people that are on the East Timor Tour and they are working 19 hour shifts 7 days a week. This isn’t shift work or rotations were are talking about. No two weeks on two weeks off so to speak. These guys are spending most of their time in the field.

Now, if a miner was working these sorts of hours then work place health and safety will be climbing all over them trying to reduce the hours because of risk to the employee, especially with heavy machinery.

I don’t care what people say, but heavy machinery is nothing to having a riffle in your hand, 3 hours of rest a night, being alert for 19 hours and ready to shot anyone who might attack. I’d rather be drunk and driving a train then having those odds behind me. 

So I’ve established that the working conditions are pretty bad. But the pay and work benefits that these military blokes are getting is ridiculous. Not only did they have to pay for buttons, canteens, packs and everything else to go over there, they get paid minimum wages when they are off duty. An average solider gets paid less than what the government is offering the unemployed. Even a worker on long service leave gets paid more then $250 a week.

John Howard has mentioned a number of times that we need to increase our military, but he has done nothing to improve the conditions to make it a more appealing option then going on unemployment.

I don’t understand what our government is thinking of when we are talking about who should get paid what. I know for a fact they don’t need an increase in pay. And if they hold one more party with tax payers money I’m going to there house, inviting myself in and drinking the grog myself.