Death and Taxes

By trade I'm a Information and Records Manager. What that means is that I make sure the government is meeting their legislated records management requirements, and then providing those records when requested by a member of the public, a lawyer, a minister etc.

It's a tough job, it's pretty thankless, and nobody likes you because your job is to nag them about doing paperwork (or ePaperwork, as the case may be) and nobody likes paperwork.

I earn some decent bank for what I do. I'm not bragging but I can pay my bills AND go to a movie once a week if I want to. I live the high life.

And for that high life I pay some tax. Actually, to be fair, I pay a FUCK LOAD of tax. I don't have a lot of deductions, so I really pay my fair share, and a little extra to make up for the folks that don't earn what I do.

I actually pay enough in taxes to cover the disability payments by sister receives from the government because she can't work. Ever. She's been on disability just about her entire adult life, and will be on disability for the rest of her life. And the taxes I pay cover her government payment which keeps her, just barely, above the poverty line.

It doesn't cover any of her care, her doctors appointments, her medications, her psychiatrist, the many many times she ends up in the emergency room, that's something the government pretty much gives her for free under Medicare. And she'll probably get even more services made available to her under DisabilityCare.

And I pay taxes to cover that. So do you.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, a person I like to quote any time taxation is in the media, said something really fucking smart:

"Taxes are the price we pay for a civilised society"

What you get for the taxes you pay are things you enjoy. You get to drive on the road. You get to have a road. You get footpaths that are safe to walk on. You get streetlights. You get people who come to your house to talk to your neighbours when the music is too loud. You get cops to protect you. You get firemen to save your house. And you get an ambulance at your door if you need help. 

Those are just a few of the things you get for the taxes you pay. There are hundreds and hundreds more. 

And soon, you'll pay (if you live in Australia) 0.5% more into the Medicare Levy that you did before. 

That 0.5% equates to $250 annually if you earn $50,000. 

If you earn $100,000 it's only $500 a year. 

If you're an average Australian you probably earn about $50,000, or a bit less, so you're going to be stung $4.80 or so a week. 

That's an extra large cup of coffee. 

2l of milk. 

A small piece of rump steak, if you're inclined towards steak. 

A loaf of fresh bread from the bakery (the fancy one). 

What you get for losing that $5 a week is the chance to help my sister to have a better life. 

The chance to help many thousands of Australians have a better life. 

You miss one coffee and you give someone a chance to have critical medical help that they probably can't afford on their own. 

Why on earth would you begrudge that small amount of money to give someone the opportunity to not have to choose between eating and getting the medicine that keeps them going?

In this society the people that can afford to pay taxes help the people that can't. 

And you know what? It's a fucking privilege to be able to help those people, so if you don't like paying the extra $5 a week maybe you need to spend a week with someone whose life will be changed by this $5 so you can understand just how lucky you are. 

The times, they really are changing.

This election showed clearly that people are ready for change. We want equality for everyone. Women should have choice in their bodies, decisions, future, the right to earn as much as men. We want people to marry who they love, gay or straight. We want people to be able to afford to go to the doctor without taking out a loan. We want a good economy and a fair chance at the future we dream about as children. 


And we want a government that can deliver that for us. 

Be proud, America, you're showing us the way forward.



And it's not just America that is moving forward. 

Locally we have a government that is moving forward with intentions to bring marriage equality to Canberra. We also have a greater representation of women in elected positions in the Legislative Assembly than we've seen before. We have a Chief Minister committed to making equality a reality. Which makes me incredibly proud to be a Canberran. 

We have a Prime Minister who is standing up and identifying misogynistic behavior from the Opposition and saying "enough", but is disappointingly not progressing marriage equality at a national level (I'm going to live in hope about that one). 

In Australian, and in the US, we are seeing a trend to reject entrenched hate and values that limit the rights of people based on their race, gender, sexual preference, education or economic position. 

This move forward gives me a long denied hope that we are getting better as humans. We are starting to see that love, passion, belief and community can beat out the lies, and negativity offered to us by the conservative agenda. 

I can finally believe that the children I'm yet to have will grow up in a world where it won't matter if they're boys or girls, gay or straight, they'll have the same opportunities regardless. I won't need to worry that when my daughter becomes prime minister, or president, that she'll be identified as "female" in articles about her, because her gender will be irrelevant, it will be on her performance and policy that she will be judged. 


When my daughters* are old enough, I will talk with them about how important it is to vote, because this time in 2012 women had to fight every single day just to keep the right to make their own medical decisions. I hope, so hard, that they'll look at me like I'm crazy, because in their future that concept is totally ridiculous, because we are truly all equal. 


*please note, I reject the possibility of having sons, not because it wouldn't be cool to have a boy, but because I'm pretty confident my punishment for giving my mum hell is ending up with a daughter just like me.