Gear(ing) as a way of making things equal for everyone. And then there's the word "negative" which is a term your dotty maths teacher was inclined to use all the time and you never understood what he was going on about.

Fortunately, there are people in today's adult society who are prepared to spend millions of dollars to explain the way that negative and gearing can be combined to create what is known as an innovation, something that they claim to be good for all of us, truckies and golfers included.

Let's leave negative gearing for a moment and talk about something completely different: fox hunting. I realise it is something which mainly concerns our betters, and is not a major worry for the ordinary citizen. But bear with me.

It appears that too many foxes are getting away, so the Masters of the Hunt (MOTH) proposed a way of making things more fair for the hunters: they suggested that foxes should have the tendon in one of their rear legs cut and they even offered to carry out the operation on the public purse.

The idea was to slow down the fox a little and give the hounds a bit of help in catching their prey. The MOTH are enthusiastic supporters of the concept, suggesting that it will bring more people into fox hunting and will be a big incentive to tourism and employment, or as they put it "a win-win for jobs and growth". The hounds had a big get-together and after some initial aggression, much barking and a certain amount of orifice sniffing, decided that they would employ advertisers to put the case for tendon snipping.

The MOTH were quite happy with this decision, even suggesting that in the future the foxes might aspire to joining the dogs and engaging in the sport themselves. Normally, you would think that this last proposition would be met with mockery and derision, but the problem is that many foxes see themselves as inferior animals and think that MOTHS would never tell them lies or pretend something was good for them when it was the opposite.

A few brave foxes tried to show that if a tendon in their rear leg was cut they would be seriously disadvantaged in their chance of survival, but not everyone was convinced. Still, you have to wonder why every night the cities and towns of Australia are not rocked by the sounds of foxes and hounds laughing themselves silly at the idea that cutting a tendon in their rear leg was good for the country.

Let us return to our truckies in low gear, golfers with short putters and maths teachers trying to get across the concept of the number line. Negative gearing is the process whereby a hard-working couple, their tendons cut, find themselves outbid at auction by clever hounds. There is little they can do, except try again next week. And the week after.

However, we should admire how tendon snipping is used as a way of concealing what is a not very sophisticated Ponzi scheme. It works like this: the fox gives his money to the bank and earns 2 per cent interest; the bank lends this money to the hound for 4 per cent, so the bank is ahead; then the hound claims the 4 per cent from the government against his tax, so he is ahead also. The only loser is the government which is unable to provide hospitals or schools or roads for the foxes.

The MOTH try to put a good face on the whole caper by saying that this is how things have been done for a hundred years, a huge length of time in their world. Interestingly enough, it is the kind of three-card trick that is not allowed in the US or in backward places like Britain, Germany, Canada and France, where they would never justify something by saying that it was a mere hundred years old.

Oh, you have been hearing laughter and jollity at night, have you? That's not the foxes, however, that's the banks and the real estate industry.

Frank O'Shea is a Melbourne writer.