ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A local man is pleased today after seeing his tax dollars hard at work for a change.
Mark Montague, of the French Quarter, saw one of the Whooton School’s new coaches out on the highway this afternoon and just had to marvel at how much it would’ve cost to purchase and the small fortune it must be to maintain.
With a taxable income last financial year of $110,000, the 34-year-old structural engineer sits above the national average wage by a good amount. Nevertheless, he paid close to $29,000 in tax last year. Something he says would’ve covered about ten percent of the total cost of just one Whooton coach.
“It actually gave me butterflies,” he told our reporter.
“Like it must be the same feeling those American soldiers would’ve got when they fired a Javelin missile at a Afghan shepherd’s mud hut. A Javelin missile costs about $80k American. So you’ve got blokes who wouldn’t make that in a year shooting it at a bloke who wouldn’t make that in a lifetime. It’s maddening,”
“It kind of feels the same looking at the Whooton coach. As I overtook it on the highway, I was wondering where it was going. Maybe back east to drop off all those brown boot farm boy cunts for harvest. Maybe off to the airport to drop off all the international students that they charge double the tuition and board for. The cash pigs. Maybe they’re on their way to train at the AIS facility in Windorah? Hard to know,”
“But what I do know is, is that Whooton got $19m from the government last year. $19m of our money. I get the Whooton parents pay more tax than the average but $19m is $19m. The fact they have more than one coach is grim enough,”
“You’ve got kids down the road at the State School using dunnies from the 50s and demountable classrooms from the Hawke era. The computer lab is running Windows XP still. The State School bus is the oldest and shittest bus that South Betoota Buslines has. It has a manual gearbox for fuck’s sake. It’s little wonder why kids from there play up. Society puts that much value on them and their education. What’s the point in even trying when nobody cares?”
The Advocate reached out to The Whooton School for comment but were told they don’t comment on operational matters.
More to come.
