Yes Joe, and surely these par for the course shenanigans are the proof we need; that there really needs to be a serious discussion about long overdue tax reform and simplification!

To #1: Wind back tax avoidance and the means that support it!

#2: Make it fundamentally fairer for those who currently pay a disproportionate and unfair share/imposte!

#3: make the cost of doing business in our fair country far less costly/complicated!

The average bottom line is ravaged by around 7% imposed as entirely unnecessary tax compliance costs!

And in a tight market, often only the difference between staying afloat, prospering or going under!?

Why do we need so many taxes, when one single stand alone unavoidable expenditure tax, would collect far more tax!?

And thereby replacing reverse tax margins, with the currently missing tax volume!

Plus end the structural deficit and guarantee surplus after surplus year in year out; and without unfairly overloading those with the least capacity to pay; or those currently carrying the entire load!
Rhrosty.

Sounds all good to me, so why has not any of this long ago policy come up before. Abbott says they have done lots of work on it, Or is this another abbott secret mission. My guess is he thought of it yesterday.

The thing about this is Abbott is not known for his truthfullness, about anything which would make for a hard sell.

Abbott's so called budget savings are not real, it is saving from one thing to start another which gets you nowhere. In other words they are broke.

Did this bloke back the wrong horse in the past QLD election because he sure doing a lot of whining about it.
Christ knows where QLD would have ended up under Reich-fuhrer Newman and his merry band of crooks called the LNP

Come on Joe, stop monkeying about & call it as it is.

We all know the unions want some big projects & the huge pay packets & membership increases they provide. We all know Palaszczuk is not smart enough to make change for a bus ticket, so she is doing what she is told by her union bosses.

You are certainly right about any GST increase too. It would be a disaster for Queensland, as most of the extra money raised here would soon be flowing down the Darling river to South Australia, & a little to Tasmania, leaving Queensland even shorter of money. Any GST increase would be a net loss to Queensland.

For any equity to apply, all the money raised must go back to the state, & preferably the region where it was raised.

What we need to do is rescind all spending bills passed in the Rudd/Gillard years, & start again. Now that would be fun.

The history of such big projects in Queensland is enough to make one suspicious of these proposals. Overspent and underutilised.

I once went to a lecture by Professor Fairburn in which he went into great detail how taxes can be avoided/evaded/rorted because money is fungible.

This leaves only land. An Australia wide tax on land has many virtues.
Land cannot be moved overseas.
Collection is near costless. Paid with the municipal rates, remitted to the government.
Progressive. It is a wealth tax The inhabitants of expensive land in Toorak are not going to relocate to Braodmeadows to reduce their tax.