1998 OVERVIEW
(We're all in the same boat regardless of birthday)

PREDICTIONS
Many of you will become involved with charitable and voluntary activities. This is the cosmic way of saying you're about to be retrenched. Look, it's not their fault OK. It's falling profits, or technology, or the world economy or something. Sorry, try at the next window.

BANKS
You should be grateful that they allow you to leave your money lying around in their vaults. Don't whinge if they must charge a modest fee monthly to knock it all up into neat stacks. Senior bank managers are neat people that's why they need a neat $A1.5m or so per annum to put up with us.

TELEPHONE COMPANIES
Well let's cut the waffle and just say Telstra. Need a number and haven't got a Directory handy? No sweat just dial 013 or 0175 and get a mechanical voice when you know they've got people there coz they answered the phone. Worse still now you have to put up with some clown computer spruiking their new 'direct connect' service where they put you straight through, charge your account, and you still don't know the number.

AMERICAN PRESIDENTS
It's often said, by Americans usually, that the President of the United States is the most powerful man on earth. Unfortunately, Americans also have a national obsession with master/servant sex in the oral tradition. Sorry, this is a family magazine and I can't think of another way of putting it. Bill has told the world that it's just the pressure of keeping the free-world safe that caused him to become momentarily unzipped.
When the going gets tough, the tough get going, there's coming and going all over the place and it's 'watch out Iraq, we're coming for you!'

THE GST
Well folks, this is the recession tax we have to have. The bean counters have done their sums and it don't look good. Income tax has the enormous drawback that if you don't have much income, you can't pay much tax. The prediction is for more people to fall into this category in the near future. A GST on the other hand is perfect. You can't escape paying your fair share on the flimsy excuse of having no money. If you want to eat, pay rent, amuse yourself or anything at all really, pay up or forget it.
It was a sobering sight recently on TV to see Peter Costello painstakingly explaining, as if to a slow-witted child, how the GST was fair in the extreme, to wit: "A rich person will have to pay 10% more to buy a Rolls Royce (a lot of money) while a poor person only has to pay 10% more on a bus ticket (a little bit of money)".
Therefore, says Pete, rich people will be paying much more tax under the GST.
The difference is of course that a rich person can buy a Mercedes at a pinch if money's a bit tight, while a poor person has the option of walking to work!

PRIVATISATION
Flavour of the month in State Government circles. Our government is not now waiting for statehood, it's going to adopt the Jeff Kennett style of economic rationalism as soon as it can.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't recall Jeff saying anything contrite about the Esso gas debacle. These guys are all gung-ho for privatisation when they can see the big cheque in the mail and very quiet when it all falls over.
We elect governments to look after the basic needs of the society in a just and equitable way. 'Eco-rats' miss this point. As a result, we have people like Bob Carr in NSW complaining that his state is subsidising the rest of the country. Once we start allowing 'user pays' as a social philosophy, the bush is really knackered.

PRIVATE HEALTH COVER
This is a really thorny one for the Federal Government. The problem is that Australia's health system works pretty well for most people regardless of whether they have private insurance or not.
Of course there are the well-off who want the best of everything, no waiting, having one's fellow prefect from an equivalent, if not the same school, perform the operation and so on.
The trouble is, our still fairly egalitarian society has lead to a steady decline in these types and there just aren't enough contributions coming in from members especially when elderly people are more likely to join than healthy young 'uns. Funny that.