Probably not much doing in the land of polling over Easter, but The Australian as always takes advantage of the situation to unload Newspoll’s quarterly aggregates, providing breakdowns of the combined polling so far this year by state, gender and metro/regional. The results strongly suggest the Coalition’s recent downward movement has been driven by Victoria.
Also of note:
• The Australian has results from a privately commissioned poll by MediaReach which suggests Bronwyn Bishop would suffer a heavy defeat if Dick Smith ran against her as an independent in Mackellar, as he says he will do if she again wins Liberal preselection. The poll of 877 respondents showed Smith on 54% of the primary vote, compared with just 21% for Bishop. Sixty-nine per cent of respondents said Bishop should retire, and she recorded a net favourability of minus 30% compared with plus 59% for Smith. A report in the Daily Telegraph this week said support for Bishop was rapidly waning ahead of the preselection vote on April 16.
• A poll conducted for Sky News by Omnipoll, a new venture involving former Newspoll director Martin O’Shannessy, suggests the federal government will have a difficult sell with its mooted company tax cut. Out of four budgetary options offered, this one was most favoured by 3% of respondents, compared with 46% for fixing the bottom line, 27% for spending more on education, and 25% for personal income tax cuts. Respondents also faced a forced choice question on whether Malcolm Turnbull had lived up to expectations and Prime Minister, which broke 62-38 against. A table at the Sydney Morning Herald features breakdowns by age and, interestingly and unusually, income. The results suggest the most indulgent view of Turnbull’s performance is taken by the young and the wealthy.
• An intra-Coalition stoush looms in the rural Victorian seat of Murray, following Sharman Stone’s retirement announcement on Saturday. Stone gained the seat for the Liberals upon the retirement of Nationals member Bruce Lloyd in 1996. Rebecca Urban of The Australian reports candidates for Liberal preselection will include Duncan McGauchie, “a Melbourne-based communications specialist and former policy adviser to previous Victorian premier Ted Baillieu”.
I will admit I do not understand the Coalitions strategy, calling a DD and focusing on Union corruption seemed like a good plan, but a new tax is going to be a real hard sell unless they can convince the States of its merits and even then the Australian people are not going to want a new Tax, and the way it just dribbled out through the media, it should have been trumpeted out with heaps of fanfare, the whole strategy seems haphazard with no direction. We could stuff this up if we are not careful.
[Turnbull seems to think politics is all about finding someone else to blame. Which is pretty ironic from someone who hasn’t done anything he has to blame someone for yet.]
I commented on this earlier. It is reflective of how this proposal is about models and theories and not real people – and it is from a uniquely politicians’s perspective – that they see this proposal as fixing ‘the blame game’. There is nothing in this proposal about actually fixing hospitals and schools. These people are truly out of touch.
The fact that the tax plan is meant be revenue neutral exposes it for what it is, a taxation blame diversion.
Do they deny there is a funding, revenue shirt fall (Morrison certainly does)?
Is there any detail (any at all?).
Have they consulted with the ATO as to the impact on their systems?
Have they consulted with Centrelink, as to their impact? A lot of benefits are tied to accessible income.
If they accept there is a revenue problem, what is their solution?
confessions @ 1650: A good slogan for the Turnbull government would be “The Future Lies Ahead”. Quite elegantly ambiguous, and I wish I’d thought of it myself – it was the title of a Mort Sahl record from the late 50s.
Arthur Calwell used the slogan “We are Labor because we are Australian, and Australia because we are Labor”, which one commentator (can’t remember who for sure, might have been Alan Reid), described as “heroic in its meaninglessness”.
Steely @ 1701
[We could stuff this up if we are not careful.]
As someone who has followed Australian politics for 40 years, this is one of the most addle-headed politically stupid proposals I have ever seen. And that is not from a Labor perspective, but sheer political common sense. If a Labor leader had proposed it, I would have an incredible headache from the number of times I slapped my head.
As has been commented earlier, it might have been worth floating very early in the term of a government to see whether the wide range of obvious problems could be worked through (assuming the proposal itself was good, which it isn’t) but with an election date virtually announced, it is sheer political suicide. There are enough legitimate questions to be worked through to absolutely make it electoral poison to even float it. And you don’t need an Abbott-like hysterical mantra of great big new tax to get the average taxpayer very worried about what it all means.
Trog
[To put it up after an election, particularly a DD, has in effect been called, is politically naive in the extreme]
It’s like we’ve entered some sort of altered state. Rush, rush, rush and towards what end. I’ve never felt like the government is more directionless, adrift, visionless and in disarray.
TPOF @ 1702,
There is nothing in this proposal about actually fixing hospitals and schools.
Exactly. At least Kevin Rudd’s Hospitals plan and Julia Gillard’s championing of Gonski were were actually about fixing hospitals and schools!
[1701
Steelydan
We could stuff this up if we are not careful.]
lol
lol
lol
Too late.
It’s a Turnbull-sized stuff-up already. A Malificent wreck.
T has met his destiny and its name is humiliating failure.
pedant,
I’m sure there is a Tom Lehrer song title that would be appropriate for the Turnbull government. 🙂
Maldemort seems to have taken seriously my joke about him negative gearing his political capital.
Of course, the first rule about negative gearing is that your investment has to make a loss … so he is now hell bent on investing all his political capital in a losing proposition.
As Bug Bunny would say … “What a maroon!”
briefly, so you think the election is won then, put it out there.
[It is reflective of how this proposal is about models and theories and not real people]
It’s reflective of an inability to see interconnections between issues. The “Blame Game” is a problem, this is a solution to that problem, let’s do it. But no conception of the follow on effects.
I can’t even credit it as some evil right wing plot to destroy the basic equality we enjoy in Australia thanks to horizontal fiscal equalisation. It’s just too ham fisted and stupid. When even Tony Abbott can see it’s a dog of an idea you really have to wonder where this Turnbull is so smart idea comes from.
If I live in a higher tax / higher service state, but work (via the Internet) for a company in a lower tax / lower service state, is there a constitutional impediment to collection of the higher rate?
A little diversion for folks
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/mar/30/donald-trump-or-mark-latham-who-said-it-quiz
[A good slogan for the Turnbull government would be “The Future Lies Ahead”. ]
Except after the last month or so you could be forgiven for thinking that kind of future is no kind of future I want any part of for this country!
The Gretchers still have some comeuppance coming eh Mal
The ALP should pay the best tax experts it can afford to come up with a list of gotcha questions about double taxation with which to hit Messrs Turnbull and Morrison when they have to front their first Question Time after 18 April.
[If a Labor leader had proposed it, I would have an incredible headache from the number of times I slapped my head.]
If a Labor leader had proposed it I would just wander off for three years and come back to see if they had gotten their shit together enough to be within cooee of an election win in the next election.
It’s off the reservation madness.
And Steely, I put it out there back when Turnbull walked away from his GST plans that Shorten would win. Today just makes the margin of his win bigger. The question you should be asking yourself is who will be the PM he beats. Turnbull’s constant fuck ups are going to have a lot of his team looking to save the furniture.
Steely
[briefly, so you think the election is won then, put it out there.]
On the performance of the Government to date, even under Turnbull, with the gross disunity, the complete lack of direction, Turnbull’s pandering to the right wing of his party on the very areas on which his positive public image is based, and the waffle, waffle, waffle – why do you think the average swinging voter in a marginal electorate will vote for more of the same?
1713
E. G. Theodore
Indeed. For corporations, the question will be where – in which State or Territory – do they earn their income? Will they be able to offset losses in one jurisdiction against gains in another? Imagine the Commonwealth Tax Act multiplied by 8.
This looks like a trick, smells like a trick, sounds like a trick. We can conclude it is a trick.
If there is one thing voters are entirely sick of it is tricks. The T has likely just tricked himself into comical defeat.
[The ALP should pay the best tax experts]
Why pay? They are already flooding the airwaves and the web pages with free material.
Confessions @ 1712
“The Future Lies Ahead”. –> “Future Lies Ahead”. Fixed!
C@tmomma @ 1709: “The Old Dope Peddler” and “The Masochism Tango” spring to mind, while the Abbott regime could have had “Send the Marines” or “The Vatican Rag”.
http://foreignminister.gov.au/releases/Pages/2016/jb_mr_160330.aspx?w=tb1CaGpkPX%2FlS0K%2Bg9ZKEg%3D%3D#.Vvu02JnfZU4.twitter has this government gone stark raving mad uranium to Ukraine?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-30/palaszczuk-praised-for-australian-invasion-stance/7286434
[Aboriginal academic Sam Watson has labelled Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk as courageous for saying Australia was invaded rather than settled.
Queensland University of Technology guidelines say it is incorrect to say Captain Cook discovered Australia, because Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders were here for at least 50,000 years before Europeans.]
TPOF,
The polls still say that a lot of swinging voters are still held captive by Turnbull’s “charm” or at least are still desperate to cling to the Liberals and believe that any day now, Turnbull will prove he’s not Abbott.
[1711
Steelydan
briefly, so you think the election is won then, put it out there.]
I reckon this about equals the 2014 Budget for Completely Ludicrous Attempted Political Stunt.
Voters will reject this idea and they will reject its author.
I have spoken to thousands of voters in recent months. There is one thing they will all say without any prompting and that is they are sick of political games. They will see right through this in about two seconds.
Voters don’t necessarily expect a lot. But they do expect not to be taken for fools. T has done exactly that, in the very same way that Abbott also tried the same thing. Really, the Libs act as if they think people are suckers. They are making themselves appear totally ridiculous. If there is one thing voters will not vote for it is a ridiculous Government. They will vote to change such a Government at the very first opportunity.
Voter attachment to T looked very inflated. But it is and always was paper-thin. voters can and will distinguish between a persona they find likeable and ideas they find idiotic. T is turning out to be a likeable idiot. Voters absolutely will not support an idiot for a PM no matter how much they may like them.
Joe Hockey when Treasurer had a house in Sydney, lived in the family home in Canberra when there, worked in Sydney and Canberra as a local MP, and in Canberra (or, on another view, nationwide) as Treasurer. To which governments would he pay a state/territory income tax?
CC @ 1726
My expectation is based not on current polls but on the fact that the election is still some weeks, if not months away. The swinging voters will focus when an election is actually imminent. And Turnbull has done absolutely nothing to meet the expectations swinging voters – and a great deal to frustrate those expectations.
[The ALP should pay the best tax experts it can afford to come up with a list of gotcha questions about double taxation with which to hit Messrs Turnbull and Morrison when they have to front their first Question Time after 18 April.]
Who needs tax experts. Just the questions raised here like Red Teds last one.
“My question is to the Prime Minister. Under the Prime Minister’s double tax thought bubble, if a person is employed by a company in a lower income tax state but works remotely via the internet from their home in a high taxing state which tax rate will apply to their income?”
“My question is to the Prime Minister. Under the Prime Minister’s double tax thought bubble, if a person is a FIFO miner who lives in a low income taxing state, but works in a high taxing state which tax rate will apply to their income?”
“My question is to the Prime Minister. Under the Prime Minister’s double tax thought bubble, if a person is contractor that works in several different states each year which states income tax rate will apply to their income, or will they have to declare how much income was made in each individual state and territory to the ATO to have each component taxed at a different rate?”
“My question is to the Prime Minister, under the Prime Minister’s double tax thought bubble if a person moves interstate during the financial year presumably they will need to pay their income tax at two different rates pro rata. Will the Prime Minister confirm if the taxpayer can claim the tax free threshold in each state? If not how will the tax scales be worked out to calculate the tax at two different rates?”
etc, etc. Labor can spend three weeks just asking these sorts of questions in QT unless Turnbull abandons this clusterfuck fast.
What do you call the LNP MP’s standing side be side?
A wind tunnel.
What do you call the LNP MP’s standing in a circle?
A dope ring.
Tom
pedant @ 1728
I am guessing you would either have to nominate your state of residence based upon where you spent most of the year or where you were based on a certain date.
If it was based on employers location you would have some serious issues regarding how it would be worked out if including deductions when you changed jobs and moved states during the year!
I wonder if there will there be a different tax rate for the Cayman Islands under the governments new “free for all” tax policy?
Address on electoral role is probably be what would be used…
https://twitter.com/Ageinvestigates/status/715133954039263232
[Nick McKenzie @Ageinvestigates
BREAKING: Massive global oil industry corruption scandal. Legal injunction threatened. Share this story! http://www.theage.com.au/interactive/2016/the-bribe-factory/day-1/the-company-that-bribed-the-world.html
10:09 PM – 30 Mar 2016]
Great SMH front page! The Age one will be similar.
https://twitter.com/bencubby/status/715138559749922816
LEIGHTON: THE AUSTRALIAN ANGLE
http://www.theage.com.au/interactive/2016/the-bribe-factory/day-1/leighton-news.html
would probably be what is used.
briefly,
All of this might be true, but after several years of incompetent government, the polls are still marginally ahead for Liberal.
There’s a lot of swinging voters who hated Labor and still don’t understand why they should vote for Labor now, when the didn’t last time.
A lot of that goes back to some rather successful Murdoch attacks. The pink bats, the school halls etc. An enormous narrative with the common theme of incompetence and waste. Reality doesn’t matter. What matters is the Murdoch narrative. Division didn’t help, but the core of it that voters actually believed that Labor was incompetent and wasteful. And many still do.
If this was a fair contest, Labor would be well in charge of the polls already. Its not. And there’s a lot of swinging voters who don’t just need to know that Turnbull is a dud. They need to get over their fear of Labor.
Oops no, that wouldn’t work, not everyone on the electoral roll of course.
TPOF,
You place a lot of faith on the campaign, as if voters are rational. I wish it were true. See my post @1737.
jenauthor@1611
It is scary how unprepared they have been, first with Abbott, and now, unbelievably, with Turnbull.
Did Mal not learn anything from the Abbott disaster about the importance of competent, coherent, and saleable policy?
ratsak @ 1730: That’s the idea. The beauty of that is that there are so many different possible permutations and combinations that they could never be covered in a Question Time Brief: the Opposition could make Messrs Abbott and Morrison look like fools.
Umm, Cud Chewer, at Abbott’s nadir, there were polls showing 57 – 43. That sounds to me like a hell of a lot of voters had got over their fear of Labor!
C@tmomma@1709
Be Prepared
https://youtu.be/hoEVPtVk9nE?t=8
I got it from Agnes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra3qnLXmJDM
We will all go together when we go
https://youtu.be/HxNUKUzx_K0?t=8
The governments new tax advisor Hotblack Desiato, recently returned from spending a year dead for tax purposes, has advised Prime Minister Maldemort to relocate all Federal government departments to the Cayman Islands to avoid paying any state-based income tax. This is expected to save the budget eleventy billion dollars.
First Qn Time question will be about the fate of medicare and private insurance.
I reckon Abbott saw that Turnbull was going public with his Brainfart so decided his services weren’t going to be required today and had a sleep in.
Pedant – all of ’em. If each State and Territory drafted its Tax Act to apply to residents + income earners in the State + property owners in the State, each one would satisfy the connection test in BH South ( http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/1937/4.html ) and they could all tax him. Which is one of the fundaamental problems with States imposing income tax – unless they’re self-denying enough to work out a formula as to who taxes what income (as if!) they all go for as much as they can and there is no fairness, a fair bit of double taxation, and lots of fights about technical points. As I said many pages back, great for the tax lawyers and constitutional lawyers but basically a mess.
Maybe when the Senate comes back it should refer the issue to one of its Committees, and have a few weeks of public hearings to rake over these problems.
And if the ALP and Greens are still minded to hold back supply bills for a bit to make it hard for Mr Turnbull to go to a double dissolution, the need for the Parliament to explore this “radical restructuring of the federation” in detail before it’s put to the people at the election would give them the perfect reason to do so.
Is this return to state taxes wank Turnbull’s dumbest brainfart yet?
I think it gets my vote!
Player One,
Since you mention Hotblack, I have to quote this..
[Disaster Area was a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones and was generally regarded as not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but also as being the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert goers judged that the best sound balance was usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles away from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves played their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stayed in orbit around the planet – or more frequently around a completely different planet.
“Their songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follow the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being beneath silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason.
“Many worlds have now banned their act altogether, sometimes for artistic reasons, but most commonly because the band’s public address system contravenes local strategic arms limitations treaties.”
This has not, however, stopped their earnings from pushing back the boundaries of hypermathematics, and their chief research accountant has recently been appointed Professor of Neomathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and his Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent.
Disaster Area are fronted by Hotblack Desiato.]
Much love to Douglas Adams.