As for paying for the Qld Floods or indeed for all natural disasters in this country a helluva lot can be done to help those in need.
For example the Art Unions could instead of a 5 million dollar mansion for first prize, make available 20 $250,ooo houses, instead of $100,000 cars provide other goods for more people. What I mean is to spread the prizes for the benefit of more than just one winner.
Why not have lotteries which offer annual income rather than some huge useless mansion most winners can't afford to keep anyway.
It would help job creation & lowering unemployment.
This is indeed a time for helping. Helping starts with cutting back on unnecessaries. Now is the time to put a stop to pay rises, particularly public service positions and, yes, that goes for teachers as well. Most of all though for Parliamentarians. If they had any integrity at all, our pollis would now make this retrospective to the last pay rise.
Make the Insurance companies pay for the wage earners before paying out the wealthy.
There is plenty of money out there. It just needs fair distribution.

*There is enough wealth in the high incomes obtained by Gina, Clive palmer and others.*

Merv, your sense of nostalgia is touching, but in your 80s, you
are perhaps not up with the modern world and how things have changed.

Both Gina and Clive would or could own their own Lear jets. So they
can live anywhere for tax purposes really. Monte Carlo, Singapore,
Hong Kong, Geneva. They could flit around with their Lear jets,
popping in to check on local investments, but pay no tax at all
locally, if they chose to do so.

So rather then x milllion $ a year, you would get nothing, if
you decided to screw them and they responded in a logical way.

Hardly smart thinking. But perhaps in your time, they never
flitted around in Lear jets.

In spite of what Merv and his colleagues the relatively well off are not an endless source of tax. What became apparent in the 80s is that when tax rates dropped, the revenue increased, and skills returned to the country.

Australia is in no way the lowest tax country, and there are demands for skills all over the world. People don't look at salaries, they look at what they take home and the cost of living. At a time when the country is looking to attract skills, random and arbitrary taxes are not the message one wants to send.

At $200 000 the $100 p.m. is noticed, and considering that most of the donations came from these people, there is a palpable anger at this impost.

Shadow Minister, you say:

(1) "The tax was actually not at evenly distributed, nearly 50% coming from those earning greater than $200 000 p.a."

SM, can you name the particular tax you are discussing, and the source of the statistics behind your opinion? I'm interested.

and
(2) "At $200 000 the $100 p.m. is noticed, and considering that most of the donations came from these people, there is a palpable anger at this impost."

SM, is this remark based on your personal interactions, or are you basing your opinion on more objective data, that you can share and we can examine?

Sir Vivor,

http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/rich-to-pay-half-of-flood-levy/story-fn6ck51p-1225996719145

As for the anger, I personally am in that bracket, as are many of my colleagues in project management and I and many of them have contributed towards the disaster and are now spitting blood that we are being forced to contribute to the budget surplus top up fund.

Of those I work with, I don't know of any that supports the new tax. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a surge in donations to the liberal party.

Shadow Minister,
Looking at the article that you cited, it appears to me that the money is coming from those most able to afford it.

The article quotes the treasurer:
"Six out of 10 Australians will pay less than a $1 a week for the flood levy ... "

The allocation model was done, the article says, by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling.

The article goes on to say that
"The centre's analysis also reveals the Top 20 postcodes in Australia where high-income earners will be hit hard by the flood tax and confirms millionaire's playground Point Piper, the suburb that Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull calls home in Sydney, will be asked to dig the deepest.

Residents of Mr Turnbull's 2027 postcode, where the average taxable income is $180,000, will pay the highest average levy - $938."

I guess 2027 would include you in spirit, at least - assusming your postcode is different to Malcolm T's.

What puzzles me why the folks you talk to are so keen on giving further money to a political party, after getting stuck for nearly a thousand dollars! (That rounds up to 1% of your income!). Especially, giving it to the the Liberals, who get such generous donations from the extractive industries. What can you really add, percentage-wise to the big offerings by the big players? What's one percent of your income compared to 0.01% of theirs?

Perhaps you could get the National Centre to model a fair and proportional contribution rate, based on income, to the party of your choice at the next federal election.

If the big corporate players shoulder the burden according to their "ability to pay", (including the ones worried about their discretionary income as it might be affected by the feral taxifacators of the Labor Left Wing), then you shouldn't have to donate much more than a tenner, to the party of your choice.