Definately sounds like an approach worth trying. I'd love to hear what the governments objection to this approach is.

The states and the Commonwealth have this exorbitant "never-never tax" or the GST. They are all swimming in cash, suddenly neither can afford to look after it's citizens. I have paid taxes for decades, no super in those days. Now I find after assisting to make this nation prosperous I must exist on the aged pension of about just $200 a week.I know a lot of today's workers would contemptuously say that I am a bludger and do not even deserve the miserable $200 a week.I get hungry, need clothes, petrol and other necessities - just like the younger people. When I was a tax payer I readily and willingly paid knowing that some of this tax money would be used to educate those who became today's workers. Now these same workers that I helped do not know and/or do not care about aged pensioners and others who need help. Funny old world eh? numbat

Numbat I don't receive one cent from the govt. Our family pays more than $40,000 a year direct tax and then there is the GST, Fuel, Council Rates, mortgage repayments and then there is the hidden taxes that companies pass on to consumers when deciding on prices. Most of our earnings finds its way back to the government. I reckon about 2/3rds of our pay end up back in the government coffers or mailed back to us as propaganda and "conspicuously compassionate" fridge magnets. My family and friends don't begrudge for one second our taxes (actually you have already paid your way) going to assist the less well off. You also need to consider that the $200.00 a week that you have earned for your retirement is going straight back into the economy and most of it will end up in the tax pool; in the portfolios of share holders who do very little to earn their dividends (I don't begrudge people who invest shares but if we are going label those on welfare and pensioners as bludgers then it is only fair to remind those with disposable income to invest that they are mostly earning their income off the backs of employees) and it also ends up in the pockets of wage earners and business (most of which goes back to the government). Get my drift. I think the real bludgers are the government. All that income yet our infrastructure is lagging, dams haven't been built, hospital waiting lists as long as Grandma's yarns, Department of Public Prosecutions can't afford to support its own officers, homelessness, can't (won't) pay a proper pension to the elderly. Andrew Leigh the ideas you propose are great but once again it will only increase the turn over of workers and further skew the unemployment figures. We must also put taxes back into productive things like nation building and create fair working conditions and the jobs and motivation will follow.