Community Law Association

Stop Thief!

How they have stolen our rights, our liberties, our public wealth - and gotten away with it.
Until now.

Federal Government's Theft of Legal Tender

Legal Tender is currency issued by a government which may not be refused in settlement of a debt, and which may be demanded in payment of all debts or dues. For example, if a debtor offers you a cheque - or a Pole or an alpaca - you can say 'No thanks, I want cash', ie, legal tender, and this must be complied with.

As another example, let's say that a car yard advertises for sale a $500,000 motor car for $250,000, as a 'false advertising' gimmick to win publicity, reckoning that they won't have to sell because they can refuse credit cards, cheques, and everything else that people use these days instead of legal tender. They would possibly also reckon that if somebody turns up who is foolish enough to carry $250,0000 in cash on his person, they can say that they have already 'taken a deposit', thereby terminating the phoney offer, while retaining the opportunity to bop the moneybags on the head and relieve him of his purse in a more traditional form of pursuit of their calling.

Once electronic banking became generally available and acceptable, it made sense to use EFT to send paycheques and other payments direct to peoples' accounts. Unfortunately, the various Governments of Australia adopted this practice and in doing so, quietly - most appropriately like a thief in the night - they stole our entitlement to be paid our due in legal tender.

So now one must have a bank account to get paid. This saves the Governments quite a substantial wedge of currency in cheque printing, postage and so forth, for which the recipients of the tax breaks for the upper income bracket mob must surely be grateful. If you are a public servant, you most likely had your bank account already, so EFT payments are actually a convenience as against having to personally lodge your paycheque in the bank.

However, the pensioners and other unwanted riff-raff of this neo-conservative Golden Age may have a different take on this. Instead of receiving legal tender, the pensioner now must have a bank account. This requires payment of substantial - and totally unjustified - 'account opening' fees to the banks, as well as monthly 'account keeping' charges, as if the burden of handling the pittances these people are begrudgingly allowed in order to barely survive was such a demanding task for the banks. Account keeping fees of $10 per month out of a total $500 available for living is quite a chunk.

But the banks are not finished yet - the poor, which classification certainly includes pensioners and the unemployed, have the greatest exposure to running out of funds in their bank accounts. All it takes is a monthly EFT account to come in five seconds before the dole cheque, and Whammee! - the bank dishonours the transaction, and zaps the dole bludger with a dishonour fee of $50; the creditor sends a very dirty letter to him threatening to cut off his electricity or whatever, and adds $75 to the previous amount owed for 'dishonour fee and associated administration costs'.

So you see, everybody is happy. The bank has scored $50 for nothing, the creditor has scored $75 for writing a nasty letter, and the Government at least notionally scores a bit of tax from the $50 here and the $75 there. GDP has visibly increased. Of course the unfortunate and defenceless pensioner, who has just had a full week's food ripped out of his mouth by this process may be excused for seeing this economic miracle at work in a somewhat different light. That is, as long as they haven't gone ahead and switched off his lights already.

The second problem area caused by this theft is in commercial exchange - many services, working through the internet, actually refuse to take cash, demanding EFT access to our bank accounts or credit cards. Once again, this leads to account keeping charges, transaction fees, dishonour fees and all the other not-funny-joke charges that these people invent, and once again, it is the poor who are most likely to be hit by them, since they are most likely to not have enough funds in their accounts at 2.03am Sunday morning, when the creditor looks for it, as is his entitlement clearly outlined in the 2-point print on page 493 of Terms and Conditions on his Internet e-Form.

Let's fight to get back the protection of legal tender!

Government theft by Numbers

Until you thought about it - and you may not have come to that painful imbroglio yet - you could be forgiven for wondering what was the point of the little numbers called CPI. Let me tell you a little story ...

The Consumer Price Index was an internationally accepted way to establish a country's rate of inflation by measuring how the price of a particular 'basket of commodities' rose from one year to the next. The 'basket' would consist of things like a collection of food items, one box of Rinso, one G'n'R CD and 1.5 Tom Clancy novels. It was intended as a 'representative' consistent sample of what most households consumed regularly, rather than any absolute to-the-last-cent record of spending. Point was, it remained constant year to year, and it gave an acceptable measure of inflation. And CPI increase - inflation - was the measure on which peoples' pensions were increased annually, and was a component in annual salary increases.

Of course our smarties in Government, bless 'em, saw this and that it was good. A bit too dam good, one ultra-cutie thought, and impressed his boss no end by showing him how, by adding the annual cost increases of Rolls Royces and 200-meter luxury cruisers into the basket, the annual rate of increase actually reduced!

"Gadzooks!', cried the boss, 'we can cut zillions off what we pay them pensioners!',* and told his boss, who told his boss, who spread the word at the next Heads of Government meeting, and next thing this new standard is put into place in most western nations, and with the smallest possible fuss, so as not to disturb the slumbers of the good folk of the media, who are so tireless in keeping an eye on our interests.

And so next annual adjustment day, when those people of Australia who are obliged to actually read the price tags before stuffing things into their shopping basket saw food prices had gone up 20% overnight, they were pleasingly compensated by a 0.35% increase in pensions and dole payments. When in Sydney rents had increased an average of 85%, rent subsidies for the unemployed and pensioners increased by 3%.

Of course, the unemployed could console themselves with the awareness that pin-striping of their BMWs has actually dropped 18% in price.

Most insidiously, this theft-by-numbers is continuing and cumulative; if instead of an average of 5% annual CPI increase, the Government can make it look like 3%, it's only going to increase your pension payout by 3%. Over ten years, that difference in compounded value reads thus: should be @ 5% - 62.89%; hocus-pocus @ 3% - 34.4%. That's close enough to a 100% difference in only 10 years.

You are being robbed, both today and into the future. Let's get these thieving bastards into court, then jail.

Government is supposed to be for the people, not against them.

* Some public services are less fastidious than others when it comes to grammar.

More cases coming soon!

Responsibility for Political Comments herein is assumed by
Peter Gargan, PO Box 457 Glebe 2037, and he authorizes their publication.