Why not make Canberra the cannabis capital of Australia?
Posted by John, May 6th, 2014 - under Uncategorised.
Tags: Australian Capital Territory, Canberra, Cannabis
Even before the Budget, house prices are falling in Canberra in anticipation of thousands of public servants in the city losing their jobs. It is the only city where prices are going backward.
On Saturday I heard Nadine Flood, the head of the Community and Public Sector Union, speak at the May Day rally outside Old Parliament House. I can confidently predict that under her leadership there will be no industrial action against the 25000 job losses she predicted.
The end result will be 1996 all over again, when the Howard government sacked tens of thousands of public servants and Canberra’s economy went backwards.
So if workers and their unions won’t fight, is there any alternative we in Canberra could investigate to see if we could improve the economy?
I have always been a bit of a left field thnker, looking for odd solutions that might just work. This often means that the culture of conservatism ridicules my ideas and thoughts.
And of course, as a socialist, suggesting a competitve advantage as a solution to problems in capitalism might seem odd. It would be if class struggle were engulfing the world of Australian public servants. It isn’t.
Why doesn’t the Labor/Green government in the A.C.T legalise the commercial production, sale and recreational use of marijuana, just as Colorado did? This out of the box thinking from Colorado has turned their economy around.
The State levies a 15 percent wholesale tax and ten percent retail tax on cannabis transactions. These raised US$2 million in the first month.
Of course the impacts in Canberra other than on revenue would need to be gone through, including for example jobs, housing, health etc.
However if Canberra is to survive the dopes it could do worse than look at dope.
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Comments
Comment from Kay
Time May 7, 2014 at 8:02 am
As you say, perhaps replace the dopes (overpaid public servants) with some other form of dope (cannabis). It would be great to see Canberra supporting its own economy a bit!
I think you will find that very few outside of Canberra will get upset about Canberra public servants being laid off. Tens of thousands of public servants in Health – without contributing in any way to Australia’s health outcomes – only adding to the paperwork required of those actually healing people; ditto for Education, and any other service areas actually managed by the States. I’m an ex-public servant, not from Canberra thank god, but I favour decentralisation of services. My significant management experience in both centralised and decentralised organisations has shown me how much more effectively the taxpayer dollar is spent when decisions are made by those public servants actually delivering the services on the ground. They treat their meagre budgets as if it was their own money, and come up with very innovative ways to stretch that budget to achieve their required outcomes.
Sure, Canberra house prices are high – there are many many tens of thousands on high incomes, and high retirement pensions, who can force up the prices! Canberra may have to learn to be like the rest of Australia. Most cities suffer house price reductions from time to time – like here in Brisbane. Why not in Canberra too?
The Canberra bureaucracy is an overpaid, under-worked bunch who know little, if anything at all, about how the rest of the country is struggling. I for one would like to see a huge reduction in their numbers – and most of those at the SES level or close to it! Parasites.
Comment from Lorikeet
Time May 7, 2014 at 3:19 pm
A trade in cannabis? What a dreadful suggestion.
How many more schizophrenics do we need to have?
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Time May 6, 2014 at 9:11 pm
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