Political class plumbs depths of greedy depravity

IT APPEARS innocence and guilt are strange things. If you are rich or a politician and guilty, if you have defrauded the taxpayer or the customers of an investment firm of millions of dollars, if you happen to wear a fancy suit and have an education from a flashy university that costs more a year than an average working family makes – you will get taxpayer money and lots of it.

You can maintain the lavish lifestyle of exotic holidays, jets, and helicopters with hundred- thousand- dollar bonuses. You live a life of unchecked greed and have too much in a world where most have too little.

Here is the message received loud and clear from those in authority – if you are moral scum we will take care of you. But if you are poor or without a job, you are in serious trouble. No one will come to help you. You don’t get a second chance. This is what being poor means.

Our history is plagued with controversies stretching back to the rum rebellion in 1808, to the more recent Health Services Union expenses affair in 2010 ( Craig Thomson), Peter Slipper affair in 2012, Grange- gate in 2014 with Barry O’Farrell and corrupt former Labor minister Gordon Nuttall, and today I read our Prime Minister has declared Bronwyn Bishop “on probation”.

On probation? After it was revealed she racked up $ 811,857 in taxpayerfunded expenses last year, including two helicopter trips for Liberal Party fundraisers.

Deary me, it leaves me wondering what will tomorrow bring?

Our inability to grasp the pathology of these oligarchic rulers is one of our gravest faults.

Clearly we have been blinded to the depravity of our political class by propaganda from public relations firms that work tirelessly on their behalf.

Scared by corruption, the silent compliant politician is just as guilty as the guilty, the clueless entertainers we call media hold them up as our leaders to assure us that through diligence and hard work they will correct it.

Vomiting up more lies, smashing up a vision for a better future while we are left to clean up the mess.

Those who have too much fortune, strength, wealth, friends, and the like, are neither willing nor able to submit to authority, they see us as subservient and that is what justifies their greed.

RON WADFORTH,

Annandale.