If there’s one thing the new elite are good at, it’s looking after themselves. ’Twas ever thus, of course, but to damn them with faint praise, the old money at least had some vague notions of noblesse oblige. Today’s elites have only one moral compass: gimme, gimme, gimme, more, more, more!
Likewise, the old money were unburdened by hypocrisy, unlike the modern elite. The old money were snobs and proud of it: the modern elite are snobs in denial. The old-fashioned imperialist, as George Orwell noted, does possess one thing which ‘enlightened’ people seldom or never possess, and that is a sense of responsibility.
Where, after all, is the sense of responsibility in an elite class that gifts itself more and more public money at the same time the public are groaning under debt, and their children are facing the real possibility of never owning a home or having a secure income?
Incoming governor-general Sam Mostyn is in line to receive a more than $200,000 pay bump compared to her predecessor when she steps into the nation’s highest office next week, with Coalition MPs and the republican movement uniting to blast the figure as “indefensible” during a cost-of-living crisis.
The Albanese government has justified the generous salary increase – representing a 43 per cent rise on the compensation former army general David Hurley received – because Ms Mostyn will not receive the same military pension as he did, resulting in the remunerations being “adjusted accordingly”.
So, she’s never served her country, only herself, but she expects a Very Special Pension so she can make more money than those who did?
The government said the former AFL commissioner’s remuneration had been set in line with past practice dictating the head of state’s salary needed to be higher than the chief justice of the High Court’s remuneration.
What we have here, then, is an arms-race of elite entitlement complex gone nuclear. It should not be forgotten that Mostyn is a former Labor staffer who was popping the champagne alongside Anthony Albanese at the 2022 election. And of course she prattles the standard leftist attacks on the very nation she is supposed to be representing.
Nationals MP Keith Pitt has criticised the salary increase of $214,017. “In the middle of a Labor-induced cost-of-living crisis, this pay rise is obscene and indefensible,” he said. “So many people are out there who can’t pay their rent, can’t pay their bills and can’t put food on the table” […]
Former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett said most Australians would have trouble comprehending the pay increase for the incoming governor-general.
The Australian
The troughing – and the hypocrisy – doesn’t end there.
NDIS Minister Bill Shorten has accused Liberal and Greens senators of hitting taxpayers with a $1.1bn bill after joining forces and threatening to delay a vote on government reforms to the scheme until after they return from a South American junket during parliament’s winter break.
The Australian
There’s so much hypocrisy to upack in just that one sentence that it’s not funny. Taxpayers are being hit with an annual bill of $36 billion, and that’s rising at an exponential rate, thanks to an NDIS that is largely Shorten’s creation. What’s an extra billion to spend on sex workers and cruises for bludgers on ‘fucked in the head pensions’ (true story, all round)?
Then there’s the Greens: finger-wagging we plebs about our “carbon emissions”, while treating themselves to taxpayer-funded, Business Class luxury. Not to mention just coincidentally buggering off to the Northern Hemisphere in the middle of winter. Ever notice that these ‘study trips’ hardly ever happen during the Australian summer?
Benjamin Franklin worried about the people voting themselves money. He should have been more concerned about the elite realising that they can vote themselves money and the people won’t be able to do a damn thing about it.
