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My attack on the prime minister is based on his belief in prosperity theology, not just because he belongs to a particular faith. If you want to dismiss that as
by manicdee 7y ago
My attack on the prime minister is based on his belief in prosperity theology, not just because he belongs to a particular faith. If you want to dismiss that as “not cool” then knock yourself out. In the meantime we have a ruling class who believe that poor people are bad people and God has punished them by making them poor. This is demonisation of the middle and lower classes institutionalised into a religion.
The RoboDebt system has continually been refined but it is still broken, issuing debt claims that are wrong 20% of the time (where “wrong” is defined as “the recipient complained and upon review we found it to be an incorrect claim” rather than “we reviewed all claims and found that 80% of them were correct”). Nobody involved in the system believes it is fit for purpose, there is plenty of expert advice at all levels of government and welfare support stating that the system will lead to hardship and suicides. The government persists, so it can only be assumed that their intent is to cause hardship and drive people to suicide. This is not a matter of compromises being made, this is direction for the Minister that RoboDebt notices should be issued without review, knowing full well that doing so will have these outcomes.
Nothing that this government does is about efficiency and fairness.
- tomhoward 7y agoSeriously, HN is not the place for charged political rhetoric like this. Like I said, I'm no fan of this government or its leadership. For what it's worth I literally handed out how-to-vote cards for the other side in the last federal election, not that it should matter in this context. But partisan, ideologically charged venting like this makes it impossible to have constructive and/or interesting discussions about the way government works.
- manicdee 7y agoWithout understanding of the ideology behind RoboDebt there is no way to discuss either making it work or mitigating the damage it does. The ideology drives the definition of “working”.
- tomhoward 7y agoIt’s a simplistic and narrowly-judgemental take on a complex topic; exactly the kind of commentary that HN participants are asked to avoid.