The always reliable James J relates in comments that the latest Newspoll result is 53-47 in favour of the Coalition, up from 52-48 a fortnight ago. More to follow.
UPDATE: Primary votes are Coalition 46% (up one), Labor 34% (down one) and Greens 10% (down one). Malcolm Turnbull’s personal ratings finally appear to be levelling off, with his approval down two to 56% and disapproval up one to 24%. Bill Shorten is up one on approval to 27% and down one on disapproval to 57%, while Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister is 61-18, which is little changed on the 63-17 result last time.
UPDATE 2 (Essential Research): The latest fortnightly rolling average from Essential Research finds the Coalition losing the point it gained on two-party preferred last week, putting its lead back at 52-48. Primary votes are Coalition 45% (steady), Labor 35% (up one) and Greens 10% (down one). The poll includes Essential’s monthly leadership ratings, which have Malcolm Turnbull’s approval up nine points from his debut on approval to 56% and up three on disapproval to 20%, while Bill Shorten is down three to 27% and up five to 47%. Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister widens substantially, from 48-19 to 55-14. Also featured:
• Forty-three support mining and exporting of uranium with 30% opposed, while support and opposition for nuclear power plants in Australia are tied at 40%. However, only 31% support development of nuclear waste storage facilities, with 50% opposed.
• If it’s taken as a given that revenue needs to be raised, 27% favour increasing the GST, 26% favour increasing income taxes and 14% favour expanding the GST to cover food, health and education. If it’s taken as a given that the GST needs to be expanded, 54% favour increasing the rate from 10% to 15%, and 46% favour removing the exemptions.
• Seventy-seven per cent oppose changing the voting age, with only 14% agreeing it should be voluntary for sixteen and seventeen year olds, and 4% believing it should be compulsory for them.
• Sixty-three per cent approve of the decision to end the knights and dames awards.
crowe –
[ A radical approach to superannuation has been moved to the top of Malcolm Turnbull’s tax agenda in a bid to create a fairer way to encourage retirement savings while generating $6 billion in new revenue to support wider reform.
The federal government is stepping up work on new rules that offer the same super tax break to all Australians, regardless of their income, while giving those on low incomes a greater incentive to build their nest eggs.
The Prime Minister has discussed the proposal in recent days to make it a favoured option within the government, as he fights attacks on a potential GST increase by declaring it “inconceivable” that his reforms would hurt the vulnerable.
The Australian can reveal that the government is turning its focus towards super taxes amid the growing dispute over the GST and as Liberals warn against a “lazy” hike in the consumption tax when other reforms should be considered.
In another sign the government is cooling on a GST increase, MPs told The Australian that Industry Minister Christopher Pyne told a private meeting of Coalition MPs yesterday that they would not be taking the reform to the next election.
“It stopped the crowd,” one MP said of Mr Pyne’s remarks. “He said what a lot of us have concluded. I think it reflects an emerging view.”
Mr Pyne’s remarks were a reassurance to backbenchers that no decision had been made on the reform and there was a long way to go before it was finalised. The minister’s office denied last night that he had said the government would not seek a change to GST at the election.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/treasury/malcolm-turnbull-targets-super-for-fair-tax-reform/story-fn59nsif-1227602441310?sv=e07c5f2bcde652a39ba8aaaada40a4e0%5D
Sorry it’s a the wrong link or sorry it’s by Paul??
[WWP – I’ve got no problem with super contributions also being taxed on the way out.]
Just thinking about the ideas this morning perhaps a four tiered system (yeah we have computers to do admin it shouldn’t be a big deal)
– tier 1 – payment of any HECS debt to Commonwealth
– tier 2 – a pension replacement fund, strictly capped, almost all of the tax benefits should be focused on building a single, largely untouchable pool, that is targetted to generate income of 1 to 1.5 x the pension (and thereby replace the pension)
– tier 3 – the primary residence – the plan is to get people to a retirement with a house roughly in the median house price range (and anything above 1.3 x median house price counting in the asset test) less concessions than tier 2 but more than tier 4
– tier 4 – perhaps here you have Martin’s zero tax concession in, but you lock away the capital and get a flat rate of tax say 15% on earning in tier 4. Capped at an amount that would earn say 4 x the pension.
More restrictions in the retirement phase, with some heafty withdrawal taxes, except from tier 3 where you would be allowed to downsize and move the gain from downsizing into tier 2.
You would also have either exit taxes or a requirement that tiered retirement amounts transferred directly into the tiers of the beneficiaries on death.
Anyway just throwing around some ideas, trying to look at wealth accumulation and management for what it is, not lose it behind fairly meaningless annual income flows.
dave
Why float the idea and then backtrack. It leaves the door open for Labor to say what is stopping them implementing a GST after they are re elected. Why should the public trust this mob
[“It’s not like a court, it is not subject to the ordinary kind of rules that a court would be subject to and it’s a real concern]
Whether that’s precise or not doesn’t excuse the TURC’s blatant political move it pulled on Friday night. I see it has apologised to Shorten for that but it should never have happened in the first place.
[In another sign the government is cooling on a GST increase, MPs told The Australian that Industry Minister Christopher Pyne told a private meeting of Coalition MPs yesterday that they would not be taking the reform to the next election.]
So Malcolm’s taunts of Labor’s questioning in parliament yesterday were all for show and effectively amount to nothing?
Must say I was expecting newspoll to be stagnant. Seeing it move further in favour of the coalition is rather disappointing
On the GST an e-mail arrived from Chris Bowen
$172,638 – 8.8% hit on disposable income
$26,131 – 20.1% hit on disposable income
I should say I’d deliberately link my tiered super policy to the pension rate, to put upwards pressure on the pension.
I want to understand why the voters are rewarding this govt. I understand getting rid of Abbott was welcome, but nothing that has happened since would indicate any improvement in the running of the place
I am totally opposed to the family home or principle residence being counted as part of the asset test to determine the pension
[So Malcolm’s taunts of Labor’s questioning in parliament yesterday were all for show and effectively amount to nothing?]
The game at the moment is to pretend to consider a GST rise, to leave it in the mix without actively considering it. It isn’t policy, it isn’t the policy direction, just a good economically responsible team (ie the libs and not labor) would be considering it. Refusing to consider it has been a mark of bad economic judgement in some circles for sometime, this meme is deliberately being spread.
Vic
[Why float the idea and then backtrack. It leaves the door open for Labor to say what is stopping them implementing a GST after they are re elected. ]
pyne has done his usual disingenuous trick. Makes a claim then denies making it ?
[ Why should the public trust this mob ]
Yep. As we have been saying for yonks here.
[I am totally opposed to the family home or principle residence being counted as part of the asset test to determine the pension]
Because whether you have a home or not makes no difference to your retirement lifestyle …
[In another sign the government is cooling on a GST increase, MPs told The Australian that Industry Minister Christopher Pyne told a private meeting …]
Anyone who believes a single word of anything Christopher Pyne says on any given day is a complete and utter fool.
Yet he keeps on being quoted as some kind of “authority” on everything.
To Pyne, the truth is a malleable piece of plasticene that he squeezes through his fingers. You can make it look like anything you like. Ultimately it just becomes a grey blob.
AussieAchmed@111
It would mean most people of pension age in Sydney, Melbourne and many other places who own their own home wouldn’t get a pension – unless they raise the amount of assets you can have – further problems with that.
Electoral poison.
WWP:
If they’re prepared to push the notion that increasing the GST is itself tax reform and any economically responsible govt should be considering it, only to back away when things shit starts to get real, it only reinforces my view that the coalition is only interested in creating a re-election ‘reform’ pitch, irrespective of whether it’s reform or not.
It’s hollow man stuff.
Victoria – Shorten improving slightly in the PPM is a green shoot, since most of the Lib popularity is anchored to Lord Ballcup. I assume the survey occurred before it was widely known that shorten is off the TURC hook.
As the saying goes: We all go mad together, and we wake up one by one.
BB: Pyne is a lying little shit, but he has a PhD in political survival. What he tells his own party room may well be spot on. Surely the libs have all sat down and realised a GST is not worth the pain.
http://www.domain.com.au/news/singapores-vertical-village-named-worlds-best-new-building-20151109-gku8p0/
Pretty odd design! But I wouldn’t mind living in one of these of I wanted to live in an apartment.
The libs toyed with a GST because they saw it s a great way of secretively putting money in the hands of the rich (where it could trickle down to the poor). Now they realise that is not such a brilliant strategy and will have to think of something else.
Now they are going to say: stuff the deficit, here’s a fist-full of cash.
In other words, the libs are going to say: here’s some moolah – you want any services, go and complain to the states.
[
I am totally opposed to the family home or principle residence being counted as part of the asset test to determine the pension
Because whether you have a home or not makes no difference to your retirement lifestyle …]
“Punishing” people because they have had the good fortune to buy a home is the “broncs” and through luck it is now a highly valued property is unfair.
If you want to count the family home how would this be addressed.
Home purchased in a regional are to live in. Bought during a boom period. Home has now gone done in value by 33% as the boom went bust, and now worth less than the mortgage. How does that get treated in the mix?
I know a guy who is retired. His investment adviser said that if you’ve got a home and about $500,000 the best thing you can do is take the $500,000 to the races and put it on a 10 to 1 shot. You lose and you’re on the pension (I assume there are disposal of asset issues!). You win and you’re in easy street.
victoria
[Why float the idea and then backtrack.]
It’s the stalking horse. Read View from the Street this morning. Street has nailed it.
Good morning all,
Floating a GST increase and then backing away is not a sign of a good economic manager.
If the Libs do not take a GST policy to the next election labor will be able to say they were right all along, it was not good policy and was not a good way to remodel the tax system in this country.
So, who would be the better managers ?
The party that opposed any change to the GST as bad policy or the party that raised it as a option, is tied to that in the minds of the public and then ran away because it was all too hard.
Labor has not been sitting on itscarse forbtwo,years doing nothing. A strong and fair policy mix will be presented by labor in its own time.
BTW, once again this morning Morrison has stated indirectly that Australia does not have a revenue problem and directly that overall tax increases are not on the cards.
What does that mean ?
In simple terms cutting of expenditure. In simple terms cutting of health and education expenditure. In simple terms putting pressure on the states to find alternative sources of revenue. In simple terms private investment and the end of universal health and education.
Cheers.
KEVIN-ONE-SEVEN
[. His investment adviser said that if you’ve got a home and about $500,000 the best thing you can do is take the $500,000 to the races and put it on a 10 to 1 shot.]
What a shonk.
One of the reasons that the elderly hang on to their homes is that they might need the capital to buy themselves a place in a nursing home. Unbelievable how expensive this is becoming – rising in line with house prices.
AussieAchmed:
It’s not “punishing” anyone. One of the positive benefits would be to free up housing stock for younger people as older people were forced to liquidate their assets to live. Not a bad outcome at all. If old people don’t like then more space could always be found on Manus Island or Nauru.
Victoria
You’re showing your political bias as this government has been different in a few incidents to what we were use too from the Abbott government.
We only need to look at the tone in response to the terrible events at Christmas Is, or the downing of the plane in Egypt.
This government is acting and sounding more like an adult government than the Abbott government ever did. despite that this government is still firmly on probation.
Kevin
Hopefully that adviser was joking but that is unacceptable advise and he/she deserves to be reported to ASIC for that.
AA
I agree with you about the family home, why punish Someone who in the 1960s or 1940s brought into a working class suburb that is now seen as an upmarket suburb with upmarket prices whilst someone in a rural community that has only seen a small rise will be treated differently.
By all means treat investment properties in a different way.
Poroti – I think the adviser was being tongue-in-cheek. But there is (I understand) a real issue underlying what he was saying. What is the difference between being on the pension and having $500,000 in the bank?
StephenD
It punishes the working class
[Hopefully that adviser was joking but that is unacceptable advise and he/she deserves to be reported to ASIC for that.]
Sounds to me like they were joking, but it does reflect the extent to which a certain amount of assets can actually trap someone. Most people with a few hundred thousand in super will spend it on stuff like renovations or world cruises, rather than subsidise their pension reduction. Which is why I was opposed to the government measures to reduce eligibility for the pension when the richest people still had their outrageous super scams.
(I am not eligible for the pension and, hopefully, never will be. This is just an observation on the unfairness of this Coalition government).
TPOF
I agree, although if you put $500k on the horse that won the Melbourne Cup then maybe it wasn’t as bad sounding.
I don’t understand why Labor is still backing the cruel treatment of asylum seekers. They should start to criticise the LNP decisions more forcefully even if they still support the ‘Sovereign Borders’ story.
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/un-human-rights-review-countries-line-up-to-criticise-australia-for-its-treatment-of-asylum-seekers-20151109-gkusj4.html
Why do I say it punishes the working class
Cremore Richmond was once slum central, so if you brought there in lets say 1940, and held the property until now, you could receive a pretty big number, potentially more than you had earned over your working life, why shouldn’t you benefit from that.
mexicanbeemer:
http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2015/11/adani-kicked-in-the-nuts-again/
[The latest legal challenge to federal environmental approval of Adani’s $16 billion Carmichael mine is likely to further delay the project by a year and could seriously threaten the future of the Australian resource industry if it succeeds.
The Australian Conservation Foundation yesterday filed the landmark challenge to last month’s renewed approval, claiming that Environment Minister Greg Hunt had failed to consider the impact of “climate pollution’’ on the Great Barrier Reef from the touted 60,000 million tonnes a year of exported coal from the mega-mine.
…ACF president Geoff Cousins described the application for a Federal Court judicial review as the first of its kind in tying the production of fossil fuel to the nation’s obligations to protect the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef.]
[victoria
Posted Tuesday, November 10, 2015 at 9:33 am | PERMALINK
I want to understand why the voters are rewarding this govt. I understand getting rid of Abbott was welcome, but nothing that has happened since would indicate any improvement in the running of the place]
Vic
I know where you are coming from and to some extent I agree. But I still feel good about the fact that the prime idiot Abbott has gone. Whatever we are getting now has to be better than what we had under him, even if so far it has only been a change in the atmospherics. (no more knights and dames, no more death cult, no more Credlin etc etc).
Turnbull cannot go on for ever talk, talk, talking about what’s on the table without actually doing something about it. It shouldn’t be long before we start getting a clearer idea of what he has in mind – and then the polls will start to have a greater meaning than they do right now.
[. If old people don’t like then more space could always be found on Manus Island or Nauru.]
TBA has had a name change – again
mexicanbeemer
Please tell me where this govt has changed since Abbott dumped?
The talk here about Super is most confusing, I think because some do not really understand how it works post retirement and/post 60 years of age.
For the record, Super funds run two types of accounts …… Accumulation Accounts which deal with ongoing contributions by workers. And Draw Down Accounts from which manage retirees funds.
There are many points in the Super process where tax does or could come to bear.
1. Salary sacrifice / personal contributions from income, where those $s if put into Super by “workers” incur only 15% tax. This is the lurk that high income earners use to minimise the tax on income down from the top marginal rate to 15%. This is currently a major target for Labor.
2. Tax on actual Super funds. (a) Accumulation Super funds, holding people’s contributions during their working life are taxed. (b) Super Fund Accounts holding the funds of retirees in the Draw Down phase are not taxed (ie Allocated Pension Accounts of the Fund in question)
3. Retirees post 60 years pay no tax on any draw downs of Super, either in lump sum or weekly/ fortnightly/monthly regular payments. (Note here Mex Beamer last page “you could make super completely tax free” ????????)
It would help the discussion, and also lurkers who come here for (accurate) info if comments could indicate what part of the Super processes they are referring to when discussing or speculating about tax on Super.
The topic can be additionally confusing when Centrelink comes into the discussion. They count in the Income Test only some of the income from some Defined Benefits Pensions, all the income from other Defined Benefits Pensions, and only deemed income from the capital funds from which a retirees allocated pension comes.
Stephen D
Except if that person had a bother who had worked in a La Trobe Valley coal mine thus lived in lets say Mowell then they would not have received the same benefit from rising property prices.
If we had a more uniform property market then yes you could maybe consider the family home or you could set a very high threshold such as $5 million plus which might provide a ring fence for those who benefited from the post 1950s property market price rises.
Using the home as an asset in determining pension only punishes the less wealthy. So the righties are all in favour of such a punishment.
Make the oldies sell up, move further away from all the connections they have established in the neighbourhood, force them further out into the outer suburbs that will provide more inner suburb housing for the kids of the wealthy so they can be close to all the services they don’t need, and Mummy and Daddy
Victoria
Its not my job to sell the government but it has been a different government
Its less focused on death cults and more focused on the economy
Its no longer anti science and innovation
Its no longer hiding behind 15 flags and Knights & Dames
Its still firmly on probation
For all you ABC haters look at this:
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/radio-ratings-smoothfm-hands-lead-back-to-kiis-abc-surprises-everyone-20151110-gkuvf3.html
[55
ifonly
Senators elected in a DD in 2016 who get long terms have their start date backdated to the previous July ie July 2015 which would mean the next election could be in the first half of 2018.]
Quite right.
Truffles love continues in voter land.