That's politicians for you! Subsidize the rotters who would undermine the people who provide Australia's wealth, and cover the expense by putting up taxes.

Never mind that the much more powerful and influential dig it up and chop everything down as fast you can "charity", or more correctly propaganda factory, namely the IPA is also a registered "charity".

Which enables those who "donate" to it to claim their donations as a tax deduction. This probably includes the "donations" of powerful businesses and business groups too.

Which is also to say that the ordinary taxpayer is also funding and thus paying the salaries of the outfit that drafted much of the privatization (and much more) agenda(s) of the Abbott government, and probably the various Liberal party state governments too.
As far as I can make out Malcolm Turnbull has uncoupled his government from this nexus.

I reject vehemently religion and all it stands for. Does that mean religions should be taxed as well?

1. On the one hand a conservation charity feels all good, warm and fuzzy for doing "something about the environment". Such "charities" being populated by upper-middle class "bright young things" who aren't looking for mining-energy jobs.

2. On the other hand big mining and energy gets political decisions, tax right-offs, state and federal subsidies, now no Resources Tax and is big enough to exploit tax loopholes and send profits offshore.

Who is right?

ttbn, correct & the tip of an iceberg, there are 15 local charities for the homeless in my suburb. What are they all doing? are they competing with each other? are they duplicating services?

Daffy Duck, thank you for proving the point of the article, i propose closing down EVERY charity, now, except for traditional Christian Churches.

mikk, Christian churches gave you EVERYTHING that you hold dear & have been doing welfare, social work & community development for 2,000 years.

plantagenet, they are both wrong, corporate welfare is just as sick as upper, middle class welfare in the form of feel good jobs for the luvvies.

PS: Once upon a time the purpose of charities was to provide support services for all kinds of disadvantaged human beings. And for trying to stop or diminish cruelty to the non-humans. Hence the RSPCA - the R standing for Royal or the British Royal family.

By contrast we now have the situation, in the case of the IPA, of a "charity" which promotes the interests of big business corporations which are quite often predatory in their actions. And whose principal purpose under law is to maximize profits, which they used to, and still do, by externalizing the negative environmental and human costs on to society at large, with the tab having to be picked up by the ordinary tax payer.

And of course some/many small "charities" are more or less money making scams whereby the people that run them do very nicely - thank you very much.

Mikk,

Your "vehemence" against religion suggests that you have been dealt a blow by 'religion'. Is it all religion, or just Christianity? You don't seem to vehemently rage against Islam.

Our Western, liberal democracy would never have got off the ground were it not for Christianity. Our entire way of life is based on it (even the lives of athiests if they, as millions of them do, live in the West) Most of our laws have a Christian basis - less so now, as Socialists enact uneccessary laws that are totally at odds with natural law. What do you base your moral standards on? Feelings of right and wrong are not inborn; they have to be learned. How did you learn right from wrong? I'll bet it wasn't from anyone who made who made up a set morals and beliefs arbitrarily. You don't have to like, hate or be indifferent to religion to have it be part of what you are.

You forgot Greenpeace Daffy.

Why is that?

tt and moderate
What bollocks. I remember the last 2000 years of you xians as the dark ages, the denying and impeding of progress, the crusades(the old ones), the inquisition, murder and killing on a grand scale, first across Europe and then all across the rest of the world, the genocide of indigenous peoples from Africa to the Americas, and everywhere in between, numerous wars and fatwahs ordered and payed for by the church, the utter subjugation of women, a large hand in slavery, the sexual abuse of children, filthy amounts of wealth.
Do I need to go on?

And yes ttbn it is all religions. Foolish weirdos who pray to their magical superfriend in the sky. Sorry DANGEROUS, foolish weirdos who pray to their magical superfriend in the sky. Who are all the same and need to keep their insane beliefs to themselves. Please.

You xians really have tickets on yourselves.
Our secular laws are nothing like your godbotherer sharia laws. No law on adultery or sex outside marriage, no chop your hands off for stealing, no law against divorce, no law saying you must attend church service or "keep the sabbath day holy". No law saying gluttony or greed or lust or slothfulness are crimes. No law saying you must pray three times a day. No law saying you must eat fish on Friday.
Which laws exactly are these so called xian based ones?
And dont say murder or rape or slavery. Because your holy books specifically state those things are all ok and not illegal.

Basically none of our laws have anything to do with you xians. You did not frame the laws. You did not have any input into framing the laws.
And good thing too. Dont want you xians "natural"(sic) law any more than the mussies and their sharia law.
Is there any difference?

Lastly tt I get my ethics and morality from thinking! About the things you lot never THINK about. Because you cant think. It is all dogma and unchanging, mindless ideology. No thinking needed.

Daffy Duck, the IPA is a part Libertarian, part Conservative, think tank. Are you suggesting that ANTI-socialists like you should not be able to have any communist think tanks?

ttbn, your right about mikk, to be as nasty with his lies, he was either abused as a child or is a communist.

Jardine K Jardine, good point.

mikk, 1, the dark ages was caused by the islamic crusades.
2, the enlightenment was 100% conservative, protesting Christians complaining about corruption in the Roman Catholic church & being tortured or burnt at the stake for their troubles.
3, the Christian crusades were defence against islamic attack which continues to this day.
4, the inquisition was Catholic, not Christian.
5, the entire 6,000 year year Judeo/Christian death toll was exceeded by atheists, in just one atheist nation, in just 4 years.
6, there was no indigenous genocide or there would not be any of them left to talk about it & heaps of white people were killed too.
7, fatwahs are islamic & no protestant church ever paid for a war.
8, Christian women were never subjugated.
9, slavery was ended by Christians & brought back by atheist, ANTI-socialists.
10, more atheists abuse children than Christians.
11, the Catholic church has plenty of assets but most Protestant churches don't.
12, Scottish Common Sense Realism, also known as the Scottish School of Common Sense, is a school of philosophy that originated in the ideas of Scottish Presbyterian philosophers Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson and Dugald Stewart during the 18th century Scottish Enlightenment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Common_Sense_Realism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_Scots_Invented_the_Modern_World

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100247847/how-we-invented-freedom-and-why-it-matters/
13, there are NO secular laws in the land of OZ, our constitution is 100% Christian & based on Christian Cannon law.
14, Protestant churches never had laws against divorce, adultery, gluttony, greed, lust, slothfulness or not attending church.
15, the Bible clearly forbids murder, rape & slavery but a book cannot force people to abide what is written in it.
16, sorry darling but 1 constitutional drafts-man was Jewish & ALL the others were Christians, majority Protestant.
17, are ANTI-socialists capable of free thought?

Mikk,

imacentristmoderate has dealt very well indeed with your comments. I wil just make a few remarks. Your rambling about 2 millenia of Christian activities overlooks the fact of massive change by Christianity well within that period and the fact that it still applies to Islam in the 21st Century.

You are the "dangerous foolish weirdo". Christians have never had 'sharia law', and the 'chopping off' carry on has always, and still is, Left to the Muslims. The Saudis hold weekly public demonstrations of the art to this day.

Most of all, nobody MUST be a Christian on pain of death. You can take it or leave it.

Our laws have EVERYTHING to do Christian ethics.And there is a world of difference between natural law andhideous sharia law.

You are so ignorant of just about everything in life, that you should not be loose.

And, congratulations on on being the only human being who did not learn anything from his parent, family, his friends, his school and society. You 'thought it all up'. You ar so unusual that museums will be clamouring for your body on your demise.

These so called "charities" are an abomination. Political activists are getting tax free money to push ideologies that have no benefit to anyone else but themselves.

Yet another left whinge rort.

mikk

You're ignoring your own religion, the State.

"No law on adultery or sex outside marriage"

What about the law against bigamy and polygamy?

"no chop your hands off for stealing"

What about rape in prison? About 25% according to the magistrate David Heilpern who studied the subject. This is the de facto punishment that ALL statists threaten with ALL legislation and policies they advocate.

"no law against divorce"

How about the compulsory marriage laws of the Property Relationships Act?

"no law saying you must attend church service"

How about compulsory child indoctrination at special State concentration centres for children, where the state claims the right to take children without their or their parents' consent, the right to uniformise and regiment them, train them to salivate at the sound of a bell, and teach them anything it wants, including all the beliefs that you have uncritically swallowed in favour of the state:
- it makes services "free"
- it can create wealth out of nothing by printing paper
- it can cure the sick
- it can control the winds that blow
- it knows what everyone else's values should be.

If that's not a religion, nothing is.

"No law saying gluttony or greed or lust or slothfulness are crimes."

How about the laws against drug consumption? And the laws against prostitution, homosexuality, or consensual sex of sexually mature persons under an arbitrary one-size-fits-all age determined by the State? And the laws requiring bicycle helmets? And the laws criminalising publications except with the State's approval?

You're looking at loads of evidence of the belief in a superbeing over and above society, religious doctrines and rituals of the main established religion of all - the State.

It's just that you're not recognising them as religious, because you've been brainwashed into docile credulity towards the State.

That is what is behind, for example, your belief that the State knows that the temperature of the globe should be, what the distribution and abundance of species should be, and what people's subjective preferences and values should be. All complete bullsh!t.

Think about it?

The trouble with the conservation foundation is their our way or the highway stance.

If the Queensland prospect is not mined, the Indian power producer will just souce their coal from far dirtier sources, which at the end of the day will produce far more carbon far faster!

The solutions include clean coal, and no I'm not talking about geo-sequestration ;just natural sequestration that if done on a large enough scale will remove or capture all the carbon created by burning the coal; and then provide an endlessly sustainable source of low cost endlessly available biodiesel/ethanol/high carbon, thoroughly sanitized fertilizer/reuseable water.

Given around half our carbon production is from transport and the other half from power production?

It seems reasonable to turn that which is produced in our power stations be converted to endlessly sustainable biofuel.

Which as the very first outcome, would literally halve our carbon emission and the very best example, [along with developing cheaper than coal, carbon free thorium, and the half price power that can produce,] we can give our coal burning Indian counterparts!?
Rhrosty.

JKJ

The state is not a religion. Who is the god? Who worships them, prays to them, where is their place of worship? You are off youre trolley calling the state a religion. All your examples are complete bs and you know it. How have any of those "laws" (rape in jail is not a law) got anything to do with you godbotherers and your idiot beliefs?

None of you xians have shown any single law directly coming from your insane beliefs in your magical superfriend in the sky. imacentristmoderates reply is just garbage and lies that I cant be bothered to go into but is typical of the grasping, dishonest way you godbotherers try to justify your hatreds and evil.

JKJ I dont support the state any more than I support the rest of our authoritarian institutions of oppression and exploitation. i.e. capitalism and the church.
The state, capitalism and the church. The unholy trinity that conspires to keep the plebs in line.

A committee of the Upper House of the WA Parliament has recently reported on fracking and its report is even handed, balanced, science-based and well worth reading: http://www.parliament.wa.gov.au/parliament/commit.nsf/%28WebInquiries%29/74E61E739E39E57748257EF9002150FE?opendocument