Tax

Australian governments have a long history of offering taxpayers’ money to private businesses in an effort to get them to come or stay. Liberal and Country League Premier Tom Playford elevated it to an art form after 1945 when he set out to build an industrial and manufacturing base in South Australia. Tax holidays, grants, cheap land, incentives, and cheap public housing for the industrial workforces through the Housing Trust.

In fact, the use of public money to convince car-makers goes back even further. My attention was drawn to a question asked in the South Australian Legislative Council on 14 August 1935. The LCL government was asked “what steps has the government taken to encourage General Motors Holdens Limited to remain in South Australia?” The answer: “The government is much concerned about the possibility of losing that industry and is doing everything possible to retain it”.

That question and answer could describe the current decision-making process concerning both GMH and Ford. The Federal, Victorian and South Australian governments are embroiled in trying to work out just how much taxpayer money will be needed to keep both functioning in Australia.

Continue reading "Is it really worth propping up the ailing car industry?" »

The Government gets a piece of totem legislation through the House of Representatives and immediately turns the victory into an extraordinary case of excessive executive secrecy.

In partnership with Greens Leader Bob Brown, the Government decided it was perfect reasonable to deny Parliament, its own MPs and the general public details of how it would pay to ensure support for the mining profits tax legislation.

If a private individual tried this, offering cash in secret to get a law passed, they would end up in jail. Probably they would share a cell with the member of Parliament who took the money.

Continue reading "Labor and Greens did a dodgy deal on mining tax" »

The Government is transparently attempting to bore us to death with tax talk as part of this sop to Rob Oakeshott. So far the biggest surprise has been unions and business disagreeing with each other.

It’s safe to assume Prime Minister Julia Gillard would prefer to commit hara kiri with a blunt old pair of Tim Mathieson’s scissors than create more headlines that tie her and tax together, so they’re really hoping to fly under the radar. Treasurer Wayne Swan went so far as to warn any reform would be ‘painstaking’, a ‘slog’. Nothing to see here folks.

Well here at The Punch we think he’s underestimating the appeal of taxes. Look at the shenanigans we saw from the GST, the mining tax, and the carbon tax. Gadzooks, fun times! And while they’re off the cards at the Canberra gabfest, there are plenty of quirky and interesting taxes to talk about. Australia only has around 120 taxes, so there’s room for more. See here, we’ve put together a list for you.

Continue reading "When too much tax is barely enough, here’s some more" »

“The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades” was a 1980s American Top 20 hit for a husband-and-wife-led band called Timbuk3. They went on to release six albums but - sadly for them - they were one-hit wonders.

The Gillard Government is about to put 180 economic and social policy wonks into Federal Parliament’s Great Hall for two days, feed them rubber chicken and red cordial and ask them to sing for their supper by chorusing about tax reform.

The Tax Forum has modest aims - so let’s hope it doesn’t go the way of Timbuk3.

Continue reading "Don’t adjust your glasses: It’s a tax forum" »

I get so frustrated with Government talkfests. Their fancy name is a “Summit”.

Whenever there’s a big issue facing this country which the politicians don’t know how to resolve without offending someone, they hold a “Summit” so they can “consult” with the community.

A whole lot of associations and lobby groups with vested interests are thrown together for the Summit, recommendations are made which politicians say they’ll “consider” and which are then promptly shelved, never to be heard of again.

Continue reading "Help Kochie talk some tax sense into the government" »

If the people looking after the nation’s bank account can’t estimate what it costs to take wealth with one hand and re-distribute it with the other, we are in trouble.

Millions of Australians interact daily with a system of swings and roundabouts called the Transfer System. It’s a complex network of welfare payments, concessions and benefits that involves all three tiers of government.

Retirees and families with children receive 63 percent of this pie so the changes that are inevitably made around Federal Budget time have a broad impact.

Continue reading "The big scary labyrinth at the heart of the tax system" »

It’s a little unfashionable to come out in favour of taxation these days.

If you read the debate about our tax system, you’d think the only issue is about how quickly we can cut taxes and get this thing called government off our backs.

The debate about tax has been skewed towards the views of business, and a view that the national wellbeing is nothing more than the sum of corporate balance sheets. A view that if it’s possible for a small percentage of the population to earn big salaries, then everyone else must be doing okay.

Continue reading "Attacks on tax lack facts" »

Apologies in advance to those with fixed views on a carbon tax. It is time the majority of Australians had a say. Well over half of us have shifted from supporting carbon pricing leading into Copenhagen to now opposing. In early 2008, my seat of Bowman had the highest carbon trading scepticism of seats polled by the Climate Institute; at 16 per cent. It now runs at nearly 70 per cent and it helps to remember why.

Let’s deal with the shame issue up front. Most Australians have little interest in national shame, be it border policies, the apology, shame about our live exports or the fact we mine and smelt.

Most Aussies are tired of being told by the elite we should be ashamed of our per capita emissions. We don’t leave our vehicles on in the garage at night. Our emissions correlate perfectly with our wealth, our energy intense export profile and that with the world’s second lowest population density; we travel further. I see no shame in that

Continue reading "No guilt, no shame in rejecting this tax, Australia" »

Alcohol. The anti-alcohol lobby say just one drink increases your risk of cancer, and news yesterday was that cigarette-warning-style labels will start appearing on bottles of booze. The social costs of alcohol are often cited as an additional reason to crack down on it. Here, Dr Eric Crampton casts a sceptical eye over how that social cost is measured.

If I told you that surfing cost the Australian economy a billion dollars and that we consequently should make life jackets compulsory, you could be forgiven for thinking that the number represented some real cost to the community; perhaps the cost of rescuing surfers caught in rips or medical care for those injured in accidents.

But if you found out that the vast majority of that figure was the combination of surfers’ expenditures on their boards and the costs of holidays they took heading up to Yallingup, you might think twice about endorsing the policy recommendation. And you might wonder a bit why anybody would have thought those costs could matter for policy.

Continue reading "Don’t base policy on crapulous alcohol statistics" »

It’s been a long journey, people, from the days when there was not going to be a carbon tax to now, when there very much is going to be a carbon tax. So what will it all mean?

Ask political reporter Gemma Jones in this Cover It Live, or head to news.com.au where they’ll have all the details and analysis.

Share your thoughts above in the live blog, or below.

Continue reading "Carbon tax: Open thread and live blog" »

When 150 business and union leaders, academics, accountants, bureaucrats and politicians gather this October for the long-awaited tax summit, few believe it will result in rapid change. This is tax policy after all. As someone once observed: “it’s not rocket science, it’s more complicated”.

While the summit, or “forum” - as the Government now calls it having been dragged to it in the deal with independents to form a minority government - will be more substantial than Kevin Rudd’s celebrity-heavy 2020 ideas summit, only the sunniest of optimists expect actual measurable change to come from it in the short term.

Rather, the hope now is that approaching four years since the then Treasury Secretary Ken Henry started the process, the Government will map out the field.

Continue reading "Taxation 101: Not everyone can get a tax cut" »

Every time you pay tax or rates you are subsidising other people’s religion. These include mainstream religions, and cult-like groups opposed to the values of normal Australian life.

Put simply, less than 20 per cent of Australians are seriously religious and the rest of us subsidise their religious organisations. There are a lot of wonderful people who do good work in the name of their particular belief, but do we need taxpayer-funded bureaucracies for them to be effective?

Australia is one of the few nations that make all investment earnings by religious bodies tax free, regardless of whether these are spent on charitable activities. And all the property they own is free of rates and land tax.  If they sell these assets for a profit they pay no capital gains tax. And often these are properties that were gifted to them many years ago by government.

Continue reading "Rich men in the tax-free kingdom of God" »

It is well known that in politics you don’t interrupt your enemy when he is busy making a mistake. Yet it is a rule routinely forgotten.

Coalition MPs were surprised when Julia Gillard suddenly bobbed up on February 24 to announce Australia would indeed have a carbon tax as a prelude to a full emissions trading scheme.

Much of the commentary since has been about the bizarre politics of the announcement rather than the substance of the policy. This is because there was no substance (beyond it being a blatant broken promise) and because the whole event raised serious questions as to who in the PM’s inner sanctum is in charge of strategy and who, beyond the PM’s office, is shaping policy. As to the latter, the Opposition’s claim that the Greens are the tail wagging the dog was hardly contradicted by their presence in the PM’s normally exclusive courtyard.

Continue reading "Gillard’s half-baked carbon tax stink bomb" »

The Gillard Government has declared its carbon tax won’t be included in the Federal Budget in May - and that’s not a surprise.

The real shock is why we’re even talking about a carbon tax without a debate about broader taxation reform.

There aren’t many Australians who wouldn’t like to pay less tax, but reforming the system goes way beyond that.

Continue reading "Let’s get rid of the rats in the tax system" »

Julia Gillard has staked the future of her government on winning the political battle over a carbon tax.

She claims to be standing on principle, strong in the belief that “carbon pollution is a threat to our country and our future”. And she accuses Tony Abbott of being opportunistic and irresponsible in opposing her two-step proposal for an emissions trading system.

It is strange to recall that just 10 months ago Gillard was demanding that then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd shelve plans for an ETS.

Continue reading "Carbon tax, climate change, credibility and a cynical con" »

The resounding response to the flood levy has been: We want to donate of our own free will, not be forced to cough up. We pay enough f(#*&*king taxes. We want to know where all our money went.

By all that’s unholy, Australians hate paying taxes.

Clearly, it hurts when you see your payslip and feel the plasma-shaped hole left by the taxman. More seriously, the “working poor” phenomenon is real, and some people are finding it much, much harder to meet their everyday living expenses.

Continue reading "Get angry. Then get over it." »

Julia Gillard today extracted herself from the sucking political quagmire of the past two months with a package of flood recovery money which appeals to the heart as well as the exchequer.

Gillard was bogged down in the response to the three-state inundation while just about every other public figure associated with it had their standings enhanced.

She was always seen by critics as a superfluous figure distracting from that nice Anna Bligh, or annoying flood victims with intrusions. Her clothing, hair-do and even her emotional commitment were savaged.

Continue reading "Both sides have a history of imposing levies" »

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has appealed to emotion and a sense of nationhood to sell her flood rescue package, which will include a year-long levy. Someone on $60,000 will pay under $1 a week, while someone earning $100,000 a year will pay just under $5 a week..

In a measured speech to the national Press Club, Ms Gillard described Australia as a nation grieving in the wake of a tragedy, and announced that people affected by the floods will not pay the levy, which will raise $1.8 billion.

Read what Leo Shanahan said about a levy here, and Penbo’s take here. What’s your take?

Continue reading "A levy? A tax? A necessary evil?" »

It’s not entirely clear what Julia Gillard is softening us up for following the Queensland flood disaster.

But if a Prime Minister is given the chance to deny the fact they are considering to introduce a new tax and doesn’t take that opportunity, well, you can safely assume that the revenue raising exercise being considered is not a talent extravaganza hosted by Sophie Monk.

Gillard seems to prefer the words “levy” to the more politically suicidal “tax”, but the Government appears to be committed to keeping its promise the budget in surplus by 2012-13 even if it means we pay more in tax at the next budget.

Continue reading "Should we pay a flood tax?" »

Over recent years, Australia has doubled its financial commitment to foreign aid.

Yet our aid program has remained starved of attention from the government, media and community at large.

On Tuesday, Kevin Rudd sought to rectify this by announcing a five-month independent review of the effectiveness of Australia aid.

Continue reading "Australia’s foreign aid is starved of attention" »

It being Melbourne Cup day yesterday you probably started drinking at about 10 am and missed this story, but in another shock horror study researchers have found that we as Australians are drinking more than ever.

Contrary to some studies that began to indicate a decline in our habit, the National Drug Research Institute has found we’re apparently putting it away like Brendan Fevola at Brownlow night. This increase has been attributed to the amount of wine that we’re drinking, because apparently we’ve just worked out how much alcohol the stuff has in it.

One might think that such a finding would elicit some kind of response from the Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon. Like an abusive PE teacher she frequently reminds us that we’ve been drinking too much, eating too much and we’re slob of a nation who will never make the athletics squad. It might even be an opportunity to look a bit further into something that every major health body in the nation and the Henry Review has championed: that is a volumetric tax on alcohol.

Continue reading "One tax you won’t hear the Government wine about" »

I was at a pub a couple of weeks ago and a friend asked my prediction about the election. Not much into making predictions I speculated that Abbott would do better than anyone expected and the ALP were running a campaign that could ruin them. One of my other friends jumped in and said, ‘it’s the tax, the mining tax, the idiots should never tax the one thing that makes us rich’.

An interesting debate followed that only ended when someone reminded me that it was ‘my shout’. Being a Saturday night and with the footy on the big screen, I think we simultaneously decided that this discussions about tax do not make for an ideal night out.

While the country remains in political limbo and the power brokers are cutting deals, the mining tax is one of those issues that seem to be bubbling below the service.

Continue reading "Why the Independents should dig the mining tax" »

In an election campaign marked by both sides saying as little as possible about tax reform, yesterday’s National Press Club showdown continued the pattern of inertia.

Treasurer Wayne Swan and Opposition spokesman Joe Hockey talked about stimulus packages, waste and costings. They talked around tax reform. They mostly avoided talking directly about it.

Coalition leader Tony Abbott had already flagged that a Coalition Government would re-visit the Henry Review, with a view to announcing a plan within a year. That’s just a plan for a plan.

Continue reading "Both the Coalition and Labor are bottling it on tax reform" »

Not since Paul Keating introduced compulsory superannuation contributions in the early 1990s has there been such an important opportunity to change the way Australians think about saving for their retirement.

This urgent need for change is magnified when Australians are asked how much they actually know about their superannuation. A recent survey by Suncorp Life found 49 per cent of us don’t understand our super, and 30 per cent of us don’t believe our super is even our own money. Annual changes to the superannuation system are also a constant and frustrating occurrence. That’s why it’s vital for the Government to get it right this time.

The results of the much-anticipated Cooper Review announced last week urge a range of sweeping reforms to superannuation, and herald an exciting new era for the industry. The question is whether the Government is prepared to do what’s needed to simplify the system, and restore Australian’s confidence in superannuation.

Continue reading "We might save more in super if we knew where it went" »

For the second time in five days one of the nation’s political leaders has gone MIA in 7.30 Reportland.

It was Kevin Rudd’s turn last week, with the robotic PM overriding his own software with an uncharacteristically human snap at Kerry O’Brien over the failure of the Copenhagen summit: “It might be easy for you to sit in 7.30 Report Land and say that was easy to do,” Rudd spat. “Let me tell you mate, it wasn’t.”

But tonight, it was Tony Abbott who found himself entangled in a protracted and excruciating exchange about “the two Abbotts” over his different positions on new taxes and maternity leave. And if Kevin Rudd lost his cool last week, Tony Abbott simply got lost - and he’s given Labor some great negative material ahead of the campaign.

Continue reading "The curse of Kerry: now Tony has a 7.30 meltdown" »

Royalties and mining taxes are the price mining companies pay to the people of a state and/or country for the right to mine and sell the resources of that state and /or country. Seeing as they can only be sold by the state once, it’s important to make sure that we get the best price we can.

However, if you set the price too high, no-one will buy what you’re selling. The Rudd government’s Resource Super Profit Tax (RSPT), as it is proposed, drives the price too high.

A well designed rent tax is a very efficient and even business friendly tax. With a rent tax, you only pay tax when you are making a decent profit while the government still receives a fair price for its resources. But there is a clear need for three major changes to the RSPT.

Continue reading "A Labor MP speaks out against the mining tax" »

Ignore the pre-budget spin and the denials to the contrary. The document unveiled by Wayne Swan tonight is every inch a pre-election budget, just not in the traditional sense of the word.

It has none of the handouts and give-aways traditionally used to entice voters in an election year – there’s no money left to pay for that kind of extravagance anyway, and there are plenty of niggly little cuts to offset the impact of the stimulus splurge.

But this budget provides a clear rhetorical blueprint for the looming election campaign. And it’s framed around a sense of pride, almost cockiness, at the performance of the Australian economy versus the rest of the western world.

Continue reading "The smartest guys in the room" »

While the Government’s new taxes on the mining sector and tobacco are central to bringing the budget back into deficit over the next few years, there are a lot of nasties in this budget in both cuts and taxes that will bring in a tidy sum for Wayne Swan. Here’s the top 10 with a few bonus ones at the end. 

Child care rebate cap reduced: This is going to mean tens of thousands of families around Australia will be paying more for childcare - it’s that simple. The Government is set to reduce the cap on the annual Child Care Rebate from its current rate of $7778 to $7500. They will also pause of the indexation of the maximum that can be claim. This cut will save the Government a whopping $86.3 million in tax.

Increased fuel tax on ethanol: In the truly indecipherable language of the Rudd Government this has been named “an energy content-based fuel excise system.” This entails an excise on ethanol fuel of 25 cents per litre from 1 July, and will bring in a tidy $276.5 million over the next four years. The Government claims that this is to off-set the grant payment to domestic ethanol producers, which is to be reduced from 22.5 cents per litre from July 2011 to nothing by 2015. But interestingly this doesn’t mean that the tax will be abolished by 2015, with tax only go down to 12.5 cents over the same time period.

Continue reading "Slash and burn: 10 sneaky cuts you might have missed" »

It was never going to be a bread-and-circuses affair but Wayne Swan’s third budget offers a little showbag of policy trinkets everyone gets to keep.

Just like the rise in cigarette tax, they are the kind of concrete changes that can make a government a real talking point in offices and over dinner tables. While not multi-billion-dollar headline initiatives, they offer voters little improvements that are, it has to be said, broadly agreeable.

First is the eHealth initiative. If you sign up it will put an end to the usual round of 20 questions about your medical history any time you see a new doctor. It’s totally optional and you can manage it yourself, so there’s little ground for the typical privacy objections raised against this kind of initiative.

Continue reading "For families, the little things count in this budget" »

Since the release of the Government’s response to the Henry review on Sunday, Tony Abbott and other reform opponents have repeatedly and falsely claimed that only small businesses that are companies would benefit from the proposals. Mr Abbott said it again yesterday, and it’s an out-and-out lie.

Here’s the truth – every one of Australia’s 2.4 million small businesses will get a tax break under the Rudd Government.

Sole traders, partnerships and incorporated small businesses will all be able to deduct instantly the cost of assets valued at up to $5000.  And these 2.4 million small businesses will be able to pool assets costing more than $5000 (other than long-lived assets) and write them off at a single rate of 30 per cent a year.

Continue reading "Abbott has upended Liberal support for small business" »

It’s becoming apparent that the Rudd Government has slaughtered the goose that laid the golden egg – all for one grand pre-election meal.

It’s not so much the $16 billion that was shaved off the share price of resources stock within the first three days of Rudd’s shameful tax-grab-masquerading-as-reform.  That was bad enough and thankfully for the moment stocks have at least stabilised.

Much more significant, however, are the rolling announcements of projects being shelved, expansion plans being abandoned and billions of future investment potentially heading overseas. Of course, we won’t see the effects of these decisions until well after the next election – so hang the long-term consequences for our nation.

Continue reading "Mining tax makes a meal of our future" »

Pssst? Heard about the good tax? Hopefully after the release of the Henry Tax Review this weekend you will.

It’s called the Resource Rent Tax and, for those of us who want to see the development of frontier mining towns into sustainable communities, it is a thing of beauty.

It is always reassuring to hear the mining industry cry poor when new ideas are put forward to share the benefits of the resource boom.

Continue reading "Why a resources tax can build a better nation" »

It’s a political phenomenon as inevitable as a Troy Buswell indiscretion. Mention tax and people smell a rat.

As the Rudd Government prepares to release the Henry Tax Review, new polling from Essential Research shows what a tough time our leaders face when they want to review the nation’s revenue base.

Sixty one percent of Australians say they pay too much tax while just four per cent say they way too little. And even when you offer to the fix the problems that people want fixed, the majority would rather have the dour status quo than pay more moolah.

Continue reading "Tax is still a four-letter word" »

So who will be first to support the international ‘Robin Hood Tax’ – Kevin Rudd or Tony Abbott?

We can leave Mr Rudd to Gordon Brown to persuade. The question is whether a modern day Friar Tuck could tap into Mr Abbott’s policy pragmatism (or idealism, depending on your point of view) to persuade him to commit the Coalition to this great idea. Or perhaps Angela Merkel’s conservative lead on the proposal would be enough.

Continue reading "Who’ll move first to support the Robin Hood tax?" »

IT’S not just that Health Minister, Nicola Roxon has acknowledged that taxes may need to increase to fund Labor’s health policy in the longer-run. Or, that Treasurer Wayne Swan has admitted a full federal take-over of the nation’s 764 public hospitals could yet be pursued.

Such frankness should be welcomed in our political leaders. It’s just that in both cases, the comments underscore the fact that in complex reforms, there is many a slip `twixt policy cup and delivery lip.

Put another way, there is a huge distance and many hurdles between Kevin Rudd’s radical health reform promise, and the tangle of changes needed to make things better for patients. Those ``slips’’ are already apparent.

Continue reading "How the health overhaul became a big stink over tax" »

The experiments went like this. Scientists took pairs of people and gave one of them a big wad of money. Then they wired them up and watched what happened as more cash was handed out.

“People who started out rich had a stronger reaction to other people getting money than to themselves getting money,” Colin Camerer, one of the study’s coauthors, told the Freakonomics blog. “In other words, their brains liked it when others got money more than they liked it when they themselves got money.”

The science part: the circuitry of the brain’s reward centres is sensitive to inequality. The basic finding is that regardless of how much money you have, humans respond better to poor people getting money than rich people.

Continue reading "Are people hard-wired for income redistribution?" »

Well it won’t have the same political impact as the Hewson birthday cake answer in 1993 but it was almost as unintelligible. 

It’s likely to go under the radar today with the Opposition releasing their own carbon reduction policy, but if anyone saw Kevin Rudd’s interview on the Today show this morning you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Asked by Karl Stefanovic how the ETS would affect the price of a loaf of bread, milk and petrol the Prime Minister managed to mangle all three answers.

Continue reading "Kevin Rudd cooks up a John Hewson birthday cake" »

Taxation reform as a political issue may not float many people’s boat but in an election year it promises to be as entertaining as a day in the life of Jack Bauer. We have two political leaders - Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott - who are equally unconvincing on the economy and who must grapple with a political hot potato.

The Rudd Government will soon respond to the final report of Australia’s Tax System Review Panel. The Panel, headed by Treasury Secretary Ken Henry, will recommend the most comprehensive reform of the tax system in a generation.

Taxation reform is a policy challenge more complex than quantum mechanics.  Australia’s existing tax system has outdated Commonwealth-State financial arrangements and effective marginal tax rates that discourage people on welfare from participating in the workforce. Australia also faces significant economic challenges that are intimately related to the taxation system, such as an over-reliance on mining for national wealth; an aging population; and the need to reduce the carbon output of the economy.

Continue reading "Tax reform: It’s a lot like 24, only in years" »

The Federal Government should immediately remove the Church of Scientology’s tax-exempt status. Why on Earth (or anywhere else in the Galactic Confederacy) should taxpayers be supporting the dream of a wacky science fiction author? Why, when governments are struggling to adequately fund emergency departments, should it be neglecting to collect a share of money from this pseudo-scientific behemoth?

This outrageous loophole for religions must be closed. For all religions. The Government should bite the bullet and take tax-free status away from the Catholics, the Christians, the Muslims, the Buddhists. It must start taxing religions.

South Australian senator Nick Xenophon and a bunch of brave ex-Scientologists have made some allegations of appalling behaviour by the Church of Scientology under the protective blanket of Parliamentary privilege.

Continue reading "Scientology scandal shows we should tax all religions" »

Treasury secretary Ken Henry should spend less time hanging around with hairy-nosed wombats and more time talking to working families in suburban Sydney.

That’s not to bag wombats, especially hairy-nosed ones. Nor to question the right of anyone to take a holiday, and to do what they like with their leave.

As Dr Henry said last year amid criticism of his five-week wombat-rescuing odyssey into Queensland’s far-flung Epping Forest National Park, there are 10 times as many pandas in China as there are hairy-nosed wombats in Australia.

Continue reading "Ken’s muddle-headed car tax will hit Labor’s Sydney seats" »

Last week we saw two new Labor tax ideas floated in the media. First, a “slug the rich tax” – if you earn $150 thousand a year, the Rudd lot consider you are rich so they think a surcharge of 3% on those earning $150 thousand would raise some billions of dollars.

Secondly, a “lets slug everyone tax” with a capital gains tax on the family home. The family home is sacrosanct but not to Labor.

They first wanted to tax it as far back as 1980 when in opposition. In fact we did not have a capital gains tax till Paul Keating imposed it in 1986 (retrospective to September 1985).

Continue reading "The family home is sacrosanct, but not to Labor" »

IT has become so hard to be a smoker. At a recent wedding I was the only person nipping outside during the bad songs for a quick gasper, and I’m sure the smell of tobacco was following me around the room. Lately I’ve noticed security guards starting to move us on when lighting up outside certain buildings. The next logical step in this “ban creep” is for councils to outlaw smoking in public spaces such as parks and on footpaths. The only place you could smoke would be inside your own home - which would be the end of smoking for me, as there’s a ban there too.

Anti-smokers now believe a fresh round of punitive tax increases could wean a million Australians off the cancer sticks. The price of some packs would be headed for around $20. This is exasperating. If everybody knows the dangers and costs, as the latest unnecessarily revolting ad campaign says, why is this state-sponsored suicide still legal at all? Why don’t we just outlaw cigarettes?

This graph, in its unedited form, shows the relationship between consumption of tobacco and the price of a pack. It demonstrates that price rises work, but I’ve added in what I believe to be an additional force on consumption - the dramatic fall in the social acceptability of smoking that began in the 80s and has more recently fallen like a ciggie butt to the footpath.

Continue reading "Stop being polite about smoking, and just outlaw it" »

As of yesterday about one-million hard-working Australians discovered that Kevin Rudd’s campaign promise to stand up for “working families” came with an invisible asterisk.

The asterisk denotes - “promise does not include all working families”.

Especially those families who work a little bit too hard, who pay a higher rate of tax because they hold more senior jobs, work longer hours, have taken risks starting businesses, employing other people, and have got themselves into a position where with their super, their private health care, their choice of hospitals and schools, they are constantly taking pressure off the public system.

Continue reading "Class war budget betrays hardest-working families" »