Super needs to be sorted out though. There's a lot of revenue not being collected by the government when it comes to how some are using their contributions to super. Rich blokes use it as a massive vehicle to dodge tax.

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2014/s3985282.htm

LOUISE YAXLEY: But Ian Yates from the Council on the Ageing questions the fairness of making pension indexation less generous if superannuation rules are untouched.

IAN YATES: Yes, pensions are costing us about $40 billion a year. So are the concessions on superannuation, but in terms of the superannuation concessions, about a third of those - that $40 billion - is going to the top 10 per cent of earners, and none of it is going to the bottom 10 per cent.

So if we start playing with things like pension indexation rates, we're actually hitting people who are dependent on the full pension while we're subsidising the superannuation of our highest income earners.

Thanks for the reply! Makes a bit more sense now

The mrs & I get a little confused with our bill too. In our house it's just us two plus our cat. We don't have a dryer. No pool or anything like that. We have 2 wall-mounted aircon boxes but never use both at the same time, and honestly don't use either a lot. Our hot water & stoves etc all run off electricity, we have no gas. The only thing we'd have constantly running is a small fish tank filter. We're not necessarily diligent with turning things off either. We mostly aren't home during the daytime, only the night. I would say we use electricity mostly in peak times. We've been in the house for 2 years now and our electricity bill has never been over $300 for a quarter - which is apparently unheard of in my friends circle.

^^^ Ours is $600 a quarter and is always roughly the same. That's a family of 5 with a pool filter running 8 hours a day.

The bloke up the road is a family of 4 with a pool and his bill is $1200 a quarter.

We're very diligent when it comes to not wasting electricity and turning everything off. Go up the road and every TV, light, ceiling fan, aircon and stereo is on in the house 24/7. Guess who whinges the most at a BBQ about the gubb'min not doing nuthin' about rising electricity prices?

Kinda hope negative gearing doesn't go tbh lol

-PB

Yay $800 a year more tax for $80k+ earners. What an idiotic government.

Didn't Abbott say he wouldn't tax pensioners during election time or am I remembering something else?

-PB

The problem with the $6 co-payment is it will clog up our emergency departments where the cost of seeing a patient is higher.

If they do it for gp visits, they need to do it for ed visits too.

I must say the debt levy on high incomes surprised me. Its a fairly left wing policy after a few years of fairly extreme right wing rheotric from abbot. Equally surprised Labour is arguing against the tax on anti tax principles rather than keynesian grounds (the argument that we shouldn't balance the budget until either europe or the usa rebound stronger and interest rates creep up).

In normal times Labour would be afraid to raise taxes on the rich out of fear of being called socialist and yet here the liberals do it and labour are attacking him from the right.

I think this is one of the most bizarre days in politics I have ever seen....:-k

Communism brah.

-PB

Waiting for rusty to explain how this isn't really a lie and that Gillard should be in jail.

That's just it, both sides of politics realise it's really not all that bad a policy when trying to address the deficit, and if it wasn't electoral poison both sides would happily implement it. So I can see why the Libs would go down this path once all the politics is stripped away from it.

But I don't begrudge the Labs for putting up a fight either, when they are given a free kick like this to permanently brand the Government as liars...not that they don't have enough evidence of that already.

They haven't released the budget yet, so we don't know if this is just media speculation or there's more to it. In any case I think it would constitute a "lie" if it goes through (applying the same moral standards used for Julia), but the Coalition will try to spin it as a white lie, one which will pay down gross debt and relieve taxpayers of the interest burden, currently sitting around $10 billion per year and rising. The problem with the carbon tax is people never wanted it and were reminded of her lie every time they opened an electricity bill. That and the carbon tax did nothing to help the environment. So it costed people money and achieved nothing positive, naturally the opposition exploited those collective sins to win the election. The deficit levy however, while initially met with scorn, will eventually be accepted as a "necessary evil" that only applies to "well off" people to reduce everyones interest and debt burden. Do you think that in three years time when taxpayers see that debt is going down and that we are on the path to surplus that they will give a shit or even remember Tony's "lie"? Besides, it's a levy, not a tax. Spin.


Edited by rusty: 30/4/2014 10:44:07 AM

The other left wing policy nicked by the Liberal party is the paid parental leave scheme. It's completely arse about from a political philosophy point of view.

It really is a Labour type policy and I find it quite funny to see the Liberals arguing for it (who would normally be against it) and the Labour party arguing against it (who would normally be for it.)

Strange times indeed.

It's not really a Labor type policy, almost all of the OECD nations peg PPL to INCOME. Australia has one of the lowest female workplace participation rates in the developed world, it makes sense to invest in your female workforce as best you can to help grow the economy. The money SPENT in encouraging mothers back into the workforce will be recouped tenfold in income taxes later on, as well as the multiplier affect of higher population growth. You also encourage more educated intelligent women to have families as opposed to the current scheme which only encourages low income earners and provides no incentive to return to the workforce once PPL is over.

I thought i heard the spin being "we didnt break a promise because this is a TEMPORARY levy"

temporary being the key word apparently.

Personally I support higher taxation to help fund social programs and welfare (provided both the tax and the welfare are targeted correctly) but a temporary tax that's in just to reduce our debt does nothing to actually fix the structural problems that have been causing us to go further into debt in the first place.

I have no issue with the opposition calling them liars. They promised "no new taxes" and now they're breaking that promise. It was a ridiculous claim and they should be held to account.

Layers of spin. Cool.

I understand the theory for PPL. I'm for it. Just not the ridiculous amounts Tony is proposing. (Australia is one of only 2 OECD countries in the world that doesn't have paid parental leave.)

In my opinion if you asked the average man on the street who didn't know who was behind the policy it's likely they'd pick it as a Labour party policy. After all, one of the main philosophies of the Liberal party is to let the market decide / sort it out. (I.E. If business thinks it's a goer then business should pay for it.)

Liberal party position:

TONY ABBOTT (archive footage, July 22, 2002): Voluntary paid maternity leave: yes; compulsory paid maternity leave: over this Government's dead body, frankly. It just won't happen.

John Howard. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/08/18/1029114051226.html





Edited by munrubenmuz: 30/4/2014 01:15:18 PM

Bob Hawke took a whole chunk of dry economic policy and used it to great effect.

If the debt levy/tax is applied to get us out of the economic mess and is for a fixed period then I'm all for it.

I agree.

The facts are, despite all the whinging from poor bugger me STRAYA kaarnts, Australia is the 6th lowest taxed country in the OECD. This, and I'm a Labour man through and through, is a conversation that has been coming for years and is not before time.

http://comparativetaxation.treasury.gov.au/content/report/html/02_Executive_Summary.asp

Stuff costs money. You either don't spend it or collect enough taxes to pay for it.

It's pretty simple really.

Personally if I have a big dose of cancer I want the best treatment available. If that means a few extra bucks leave my wallet every week then I'm bang up for that.

Maybe calling it a tax is a bit too far... how about a 'colossal salary-grab'?

Isn't that also what income tax is? :)

My main gripe is with politicians (certainly not a Liberal only thing) trying to use any other word other than tax to describe increasing revenue. Levy is virtually a synonym for tax anyway. This $6 medicare "co-payment" is really a flat consumption tax, though by definition as it never touches the governments hands they can get away with it.

I do agree with your original post btw, wasn't really intended as a contradiction to it. Just adding some stuff and putting my own spin on things :)

Temporary for how many years?

If it's meant to be 'temporary' past Jan 2017 it's not exactly temporary then is it, it's just a permanent policy for the current government.

The voting public will decide how temporary the levy is. If there's significant backlash both major parties will pledge to remove it at the next election. If it's bringing in lots of revenue and gross debt is still high they will probably keep it.
But I don't think there will be too many people who will have a problem with high income earners paying a little bit extra every year so we can reduce debt and have more sustainable services. The fear I have is Labor getting back into power and going on another spending binge and seeing tax increases and levies as the solution to unsustainable debt rather than structural reform and spending cuts which is more important.

So it's bad if labour does it but ok if LNP does it?

-PB

Finally I understand! This is just Abbott's way of trying to stick it to the Wanderers for getting that handout from the ALP!

[youtube]C2VSu6_sVOQ[/youtube]

Let the voters decide.