It is called "maths", not "math".
Keep your hands of my hard worked for and earned superannuation. Save some yourself.
As far as single parents are concerned if you can`t feed them don`t breed them. Make both parents support them. The taxpayer wasn`t there for the fun bit. Why should they pay for the hard bits?

Other workers work hard as well; But they are paying more tax proportionately so the top 5% enjoy tax concessions worth $10 billion a year - and growing. Gonski and NDIS must be paid for. Even Abbott supports the NDIS. And Gonski would improve the quality of state education - potentially saving them tens of thousands every year.

Your arguments about sole parents are disturbing. There is the rights of the children at stake for a start. Then there are parents who have been abandoned by their spouse, or even whose spouse may have died. Cutting sole parent payments once the child turns 8 is expecting a lot out of an 8 year old! Help sole parents find appropriate, flexible work, yes! And even then maintain some kind of payments to subsidise these families. But don't hold the proverbial gun to their heads...

Tristan, your comments on superannuation sound like Gillard spin. In other words, they have no factual basis. The $45 billion assumes that all the money currently taxed in super at 15% will be taxed at 46.5%. Obviously no one would lock money into Super at those rates and the after tax return would be less than inflation. High income earners would probably just invest in real estate.

A much fairer super system would have no tax on contributions or fund earnings and tax the withdrawals as normal income. Low income earners would get a much better deal and high income earners would be discouraged from putting too much into super. Remember that super is a 40 year plus investment and personal situations can change radically in that time.

Increasing tax on savings and Super is idiocy.

The problem is with the design of the taxing on inputs to super in that there is no differential on the taking money out.

For example, other countries have all super or retirement sacrifices as tax free. However, when the money is taken out, tax is paid at the normal rate. This would mean that those taking out $20k p.a. would pay zero tax, while those taking out $100 000 would pay considerably more, but still less than the marginal rate they would have paid if they had not saved for retirement.

This would greatly simplify the super system but the problem for the budget is that the tax only surfaces much later.

To be specific what we're talking about is *removing tax concessions* (as opposed to new taxes) that deliver an estimated $10 billion every year to *the top 5 per cent* income demographic. What the government is currently talking about is some marginal reform that might deliver only $1 billion. It appears the government is not 'holding its nerve' after all. And this raises the question where the money is coming from for Gonski and NDIS. Tax concessions for the top 5% income demographic is worse than 'middle class welfare' - it's 'welfare for the rich'.

Of course the same question could be asked of Tony Abbott... Where is the money coming from for his sweeping tax cuts; his generous parental leave for upper middle class women; his 'direct action' on climate change; his 'aspiration' to increase Defence expenditure... We know low income earners will have their super hit for a start... And we know the restructuring of income tax will be reveresed - also hitting low income earners. And we know he wants to hit the unemployed even harder - despite the fact we already have one of the most frugal and punitive unemployment insurance systems in the world...

Ttistan,

The top 25% of earners already pay 70% of tax and receive about 2% of the benefits. Labor and the greens treat them as though what they take home is stolen. "Removing tax concessions" is actually exactly the same as raising taxes, the difference is purely semantic, similar to Whine Swan's savings which consisted almost entirely of increased taxes.

The single biggest danger to the coffers of the state is that increasing taxes increases the incentive to avoid tax or simply transfer earning to tax havens. There are numerous examples where increasing taxes reduced tax receipts. I know of more than one consultant that "lives" in Singapore and pays 20% marginal tax to Singapore rather than the 46% in Australia.

The interest that we pay on Labor's cumulative debt could easily have financed the NDIS on its own