Having a go is our national sport so drop the cheer squad

Stop calling the Socceroos brave and face it, we’re not winning, writes Paul Murray

WIN, lose or draw the media keeps using the same cliche about the Socceroos.

I love seeing Australia in one of the world’s biggest sporting competitions, the World Cup.

But I’m bored of the media’s reaction to every result we get. When we lost to France we were “brave” and when we drew with Denmark the Socceroos were “brave”.

I understand why we look to pump up our national team. But part of growing up as a football nation is taking the results as they are. Not as we want them to be.

The Socceroos are great, but just as ripe for criticism as all our national teams. After all, if we are honest, having a go is our national sport.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT PUT TO TEST GET ready for another year of gender division as the most innocent of behaviour is compared to the worst crimes one can commit. This week the Turnbull Government signed up to a year-long study into sexual harassment in the workplace that will no doubt conclude what these things always do: all men are the problem and a new term, sexual misconduct, will be punishable with the sack.

The people trusted with this new test are the Human Rights Commission. These are the same people who thought Bill Leak’s cartoons were acts of racial discrimination and the same organisation that produced taxpayer ads that only showed white men as the racists among us.

We all know where the line is between co-workers. It’s changed for the better over the years. If you don’t know where the line is, you are part of the problem. But if you think the line should be drawn by the most aggressive anti-men activists out there, then you are the bigger problem.

We all know what sexual harassment, assault and discrimination is. Just beware the types of people who want the world to be redrawn in their image.

That’s just as dangerous as the blokes who want to get away with anything.

It’s a shame the Government thinks so little of our collective ability to show common sense and respect.

TAX CUTS PUT PARTY BACK IN THE GAME NINETY-SEVEN per cent of people are about to pay less than 32.5 per cent income tax.

The Senate voted for the Liberal-National Party’s biggest budget idea, one that gives them a massive chance of winning the coming election. This has changed the mood of the Government and is clearly a campaign point for the PM, who is promoting it as something that will change workers’ fortunes.

Admittedly, the full range of cuts will take too long to kick in, but it puts Labor on the back foot. In the space of just a couple of days, Labor is back in the hell Kim Beazley found himself in promising to roll back the GST after John Howard made the change back in 2000. Shorten now finds himself arguing against a tax cut for all workers in favour of a bigger tax cut for some workers. But the truth is while just 10 per cent of workers earn more than $87,000, they pay 65 per cent of all income tax. The same logic that says someone on $50,000 should get the chance to spend more of their own money is exactly the same for someone on $150,000.

It’s our money and the more we spend on stuff the more we all pay GST and the more government will get in the long run.