Let's not forget the new UTE tax!

(Utility vehicle To Encourage contracts tax)

*Those in the worst conditions, earning little money and having to obtain social security benefits are slugged with up to 85% tax on any earnings by way of reduction in support.*

Err not so. They pay no tax on the first 6k$, then 15% on anything
up to 34k$, just like anyone else.

If you are saying that some find it easier to milk the Govt welfare
system rather then get off their butts and earn their own money,
yup many do. That leaves less money for pensioners, hospitals and
all the rest.

But you are correct, some find its not worthwhile earning their
own money, if its easier to screw the generous taxpayer. We can
stay in bed, watch the morning show or go surfing, for as you
say "its not worthwhile" to provide for ourselves. All pretty
sad really.

Shadow Minister,
My memory is not so selective as you may think.

The Snowy Hydro wasn’t actually sold.
Howard (who was very keen to quietly sell the Federal Government’s 13% share while NSW and Victoria took all the political heat) needed to secure the Governor General’s permission so any sale would have been illegal. To challenge this would have drawn attention to himself so he backed down and the States had to follow.

The sale of NSW electricity was only stopped by O’Farrell because he wants to sell it himself on his own terms. He simply doesn’t want Reese to have a cashed-up war chest for the next election.

You may be paying a lower rate of income tax but about 10% of the (already taxed) money you are carrying in your wallet and bank account is actually uncollected GST so you may not be quite so well off as you suspect. (Unless you plan to never spend the money).

The overall federal tax revenue increased from $123 billion in 1996 to $235 billion in 2007. That’s not all down to economic growth. If we are all individually paying less tax, it must be coming from somewhere.

Costello’s overall change in the tax mix (a growing dependency on Company tax) plus those vote-buying middle-class handouts were being funded by the resources boom and that’s the main reason we’re facing such as drastic a collapse in revenue now.

Also, a lot of the public hospital problems stem from previous Federal budget cuts in their agreed share of funding (which was separate from the GST agreement) as well as increased pressure due to funding cuts in bulk-billing and aged care facilities, both of which place huge demands on the public system. Paying subsidies to the private insurance sector don’t provide as much relief to the public sector as much as it simply increases private sector profits. It may help with the queue for facelifts but does nothing for the growing numbers in the Emergency Ward or the sick elderly with nowhere to go.

Yabby, I deal with unemployed people in my work, once they earn $31 a week, their newstart allowance reduces by 50 cents in the dollar. Above $125 a week, it reduces at 60 cents in the dollar of your gross income. Considering people have to pay rent, food, transport and all the other things involved with working, it makes it very hard for them to survive in the work force. It's only a very few who don't want to work, but since the Lab/lib coalition sent most jobs overseas, work within the area you can afford to live in, is very scarce.

As for unemployment, it's a farce they use figures produced by the BOS, which is determined by ringing a few people in certain demographics to get a picture of the situation. They refuse to calculate unemployment with centrelink payments, which shows we have almost a 3rd of our population who could work and hidden under various guises and payment schemes, because there littel real work except in a couple of areas. I spend a lot of time in rural area's, the amount of hidden unemployment is horrendous and all the fault of the Lab/lib incompetency.

Costello is a backer of reducing company tax and raising the GST, now that's about as smart as jumping of a cliff. They seem to forget you can only have economic growth by consumption, if you make the burden to big for consumers, they stop spending as we are seeing. The best way to grow economies is to reduce the burden on the consumer so they have more disposable income, instead of less. To do that you have to change the system so it represents income growth through sustainable technological advancements, economic stability and sustainability. Economic growth is unsustainable for anything but the very short term, a good treasurer, would plan for that rather than create the opposite, as Costello did and Swan will continue doing.

I can't understand why people support these complete fools, but denial does go with ideological fallacies I suppose.

*Considering people have to pay rent, food, transport and all the other things involved with working*

Stormbay, people pay the same rent and food, if they are working
or not. Many say that they want to work, but have you ever tried
to employ them? Unless you are offering cash, few are interested.

The electorate made its decision. If a job hasn't got bells and
whistles provided, they don't want it. They voted down work choices,
fair enough, so many small time employers, who hire huge numbers
of people, simply won't bother employing them. Let the community
learn the hard way.

Next they will be running Govt deficits to finance job creation
schemes etc.

Funny that the meat industry never could find Australians who
wanted the work. Without 457 workers, they would have been totally
stuffed. Aussies want cushy jobs, not in meatworks or picking
fruit etc.

The problem Stormbay, is that too many Aussies have had life on
a plate and now expect it on a plate.

Yabby,

In the US, they now consider jobs in abattoirs work that "Americans won't do", just as you do here, but before the immigration laws were relaxed and there was a big influx of foreign workers prepared to accept low wages, Americans used to line up for these jobs. See Roy Beck's testimony to Congress

http://www.daveschultheis.com/Files/Consequencesguestworker.pdf

"Perhaps nowhere is the role of foreign labor importation in collapsing an occupation more vivid than the meatpacking industry. Numerous studies have detailed how jobs in this industry by the 1970s were high-middle-class industrial jobs with great safety protections and benefits that allowed the employees to raise families on one income, take vacations and send children to college (many of whom came back to work in the plants because of the high income).9

Today, after 25 years of pouring foreign workers into the occupation, nearly every journalist and politician commenting on these jobs calls them “jobs that Americans won’t do” because the pay is so low that taxpayers have to provide public assistance to many of them, and the accident rate is among the worst in the nation."

Dare I suggest that there ought to be decent pay and safety conditions for hard, dangerous essential jobs, even if the rest of us have to do without a few consumer trinkets?

Back to the topic - 50 years from now, no one is going to care about what proportion of the population had plasma televisions in 2007. They are going to care a lot about what Costello and his friends in the Labor and Liberal wings of the Property Party did to the environment. Here Canada is compared to 17 other countries, including Australia, for detailed environmental performance. Australia ranks 2nd last.

http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/environment.aspx#context