Some of you will have heard that as of today the tax on pre-mixed alcoholic drinks has risen substantially. Since I work in the Liquor industry I thought I should come on here and voice my opinion.

Frankly this reeks of short sighted politics to me, now instead of buying those drinks kids will simply buy larger bottles of straight spirits, which no doubt pose more danger to kids.

If binge drinking is such a problem, then where are the parents, why are they not held accountable for their children. I see parents everyday come in and buy alcohol for their children, and everyday I must refuse them service which then leads to a big argument over the fact that they [the parents] think they have a right to buy their kids alcohol (which they don’t, its actually illegal in Victoria and strictly enforced).

The government turns around and tries to blame everyone for this problem, well I ask you this Mr Rudd, where are the police when kids are running in the streets, drunk and without supervision (happened Friday night in Dingley Village), why do the police simply give these kids a warning and let them continue their dangerous behaviour? Why weren’t parents called? and more importantly why wasn’t alcohol confiscated?

The reason is Mr Rudd your and Mr Brumby’s government fail to provide enough money for the effective enforcement of the law, you fail to provide suitable working conditions for your current police force and you aren’t increasing the size of the police force enough to be able to fix some of these problems.

And to Consumer Affairs Victoria (aka. Liquor Licensing), your also responsible, the signs you have warning parents about secondary purchase are pathetic, they are not very clear and far too small to have any impact. Why don’t you spend those nice taxes the federal government is now raising as of today on getting larger and more understandable signage, a public awareness campaign making parents aware that if they purchase alcohol for their children they are breaking the law and after that is done we will be able to spend the left over money on increasing the capacity of the Police force to respond to alcohol related incidents.

Finally we need legislation changed to create a blanket rule on underage drinking. At the present time it is perfectly legal for parents to order their children an alcoholic beverage if they are in a licensed establishment partaking in a meal, so why can they do this? Why this rule for restaurants and a different rule for liquor stores?

Frankly Mr Rudd I’m paying taxes on my income, on every thing I buy (GST) except fresh food, on alcohol, on petrol and with all this money you get from every working Australian, the best you can come up with raising taxes. I cannot wait to vote you out at the next election.

Well a couple of days ago (April 1st to be exact), a Haileybury student emailed a bomb threat to all members of the Haileybury staff and student population. Now it was obvious that this bomb threat was fake however naturally as a precaution Haileybury initiated a full evacuation across all campuses. The police were called and a Police Helicopter was dispatched at a cost of thousands of dollars to the taxpayer. This was all the result of the idiotic actions of a student, who thought it would be a funny April Fools Day Prank to play. Now how someone could be so foolish to send such an email in this day and age astounds me, and I frankly am quite pissed off at this persons actions. As a taxpayer I think this person (and his parents) should be made to pay all costs incurred by Victoria Police in responding to such a threat, obviously this person didn’t think about the possible consequences of such an action, what if the police chopper was required at another ‘real’ emergency, what if police were required at another such emergency. This stupid action could of led to at worst the death/s of innocent civilians, and at best cost taxpayers a small fortune. Here is a link to The Age article.

In other news this afternoon a member of staff left Haileybury. Now I have always liked this staff member and thought that they did a fantastic job. It is of course disappointing to see them go (I will name them once I cleared certain things with the relevant people). It seems to me that it is always the good guys that seem to leave, but unfortunately these things can’t be changed. But I wish this person well in all their future endeavors and I am truly sorry for their leaving.

Today the Australian Prime Minister, Mr. Kevin Rudd apologised on behalf of the nation to the Indigenous Australians. Everyone of course has an opinion on this event, some people agree with the Prime Minister’s apology and say that it was long overdue, some disagree on the grounds that the current government should not have to apologise for a previous governments actions.

I personally agree with the apology on the grounds that I think it will move us forward, enable us to tackle the important issues like health and education and in the eyes of the rest of the region, will remove the view that we were the ‘colonialists that won’, which in the past has hurt our trading relationship with many Asian nations that were previously colonized themselves. So to the Indigenous Australian’s, sorry for the past injustices.

Mr. Kevin Rudd will become the 26th Prime Minister of Australia. After a huge defeat at the election Prime Minister John Howard has lost his position to Labor leader Kevin Rudd. It has been a momentous day for Australian politics and it will see the Australian Labor Party returned to power for the first time since 1996. I congratulate Mr Rudd on his win and I look forward to the “new leadership” that he brings.

Unless you have been living under a rock you will have no doubt been flooded with political messages over the last 6 odd weeks. We’ve had billions of dollars thrown at us and the promise of continued economic prosperity (but not low interest rates) or chance to have new leadership. I of course decided today who I was going to vote for, being a politics student I took this decision quite seriously and I weighed up who I thought was the best candidate (well actually the lesser of the two evils would be a better analogy). So tomorrow many of you will be going to the ballot box and voting for the party whom we want to run our country and I have this request of you, don’t vote the Greens!

Well it is finally Spring which is certainly my favourite time of the year (maybe not so much this year due to those inconsiderate people at VCAA). I’ve spent the last week doing school work as I have 3 SAC’s next week (one of them is a 3 day math SAC) which has meant that I haven’t updated this blog as much as I should. Once exams are over I will be making some pretty cool changes to this blog which will overall make it a more exciting place to visit. One thing I would like to talk about is my sociology excursion on Thursday to an organisation called Urban Seed. They run a lunch program for the homeless in the hope of giving them a safe environment and someone to talk to. It was a pretty interesting excursion (not really relevant to the sociology course, but was good nonetheless) and I encourage you to have a quick look at their website and donate some money if you can.

I’m amazed that bushfires that are hundreds of kilometres away manage to fill my backyard with smoke. However it wasn’t all that bad, It meant that I spent the last two days indoors watching movies. I ended up watching United 93, which I was rather disappointed in (The Seconds From Disaster - Flight 93 documentary was much better), and an Australian film ‘Kenny’, I must admit it was one of the best Australian films I’ve ever seen (it however can’t quite compete with ‘The Castle’). I then spent today watching the ‘Make Poverty History’ concert DVD which I was rather impressed with considering it came free in a newspaper. After this I spent the rest of the day watching CNN newsclips, and watching music videos on Bigpond Music.

Heres an update as to how my weekend has been:

On Saturday I headed down to school to take photos of Girls Touch and Softball, so after spending two hours at school I headed home, and then decided to walk up to Chadstone to pick up the bi-monthly Foreign Policy magazine. I of course forgot the fact that it is a little over a month before Christmas, so I was expecting to be in and out in 10 minutes, well of course I had the usual idiots in the queue whom were asking the advantages of a Gift Card over Cash (answer; none, give them cash). So after half an hour in line I finally got served and was bombarded with the usual questions, would you like to join our email membership full of exciting offers? (answer: already a member), could I please have your postcode (answer: foreign visitor don’t have one - I find this answer more amusing than the usual 3163) and the final question, would you like a bag? (answer: yes, but only if its a made of a class 4 recyclable material).

Also if you aren’t a Victorian resident (46.7% of my blog readers are interstate or overseas) Steve Bracks won the election, now hopefully he can do what he has promised to do, or will he conveniently forget what he promised like last time.