First up, I should note that elections will be held for two seats in Tasmania’s state upper house today (UPDATE: Make that three), as part of the 15-seat chamber’s cycle of annual periodical elections. Read Kevin Bonham’s rolling posts on the subject, for the electorate of Montgomery here and Pembroke here (UPDATE: and Nelson here), and you’ll be a lot better informed about it than I am. Nonetheless, I will make a probably half-hearted effort to live blog the results from 6pm this evening. Second up, a good word for the latest episode of the Seat du Jour series, which today covers the famous outer Sydney seat of Lindsay.
Now to business. The misadventures of sundry candidates are making it a constant challenge for me to keep my federal election guide up to date. The tally of candidates who will remain on the ballot paper despite having “withdrawn” to head off embarrassment for their parties now sits at six – although there is nothing to stop any candidate on the ballot paper winning election and taking their seat. Indeed, the two Senate candidates could theoretically win on recounts if the lead candidates end up being disqualified under some or other provision of Section 44 (or, in the case of One Nation candidate Malcolm Roberts in Queensland, re-disqualified). In turn:
• The second candidate on Labor’s Northern Territory Senate ticket, Wayne Kurnorth, was found to have shared anti-Semitic videos on Facebook in 2015, one of which featured popular British conspiracy theorist David Icke’s thesis that the world is run by shape-shifting Jewish lizards. Shorten overreached in distancing himself from Kurnorth, asserting he had never met him, a claim belied by a photo of the two that shortly emerged.
• Another “zombie” Senate candidate is Steve Dickson, who is placed second on One Nation’s ticket in Queensland. Dickson held the state seat of Buderim for One Nation for most of 2017, having previously been a Liberal National Party member since 2012. His troubles arose earlier this week when footage emerged of him offering poetic musings on the art of love while in a strip club, specifically relating to the deficiencies in that field of “Asian chicks”. This revelation for some reason reduced Pauline Hanson to tears during one of her daily appearances on commercial network television on Wednesday.
• Labor’s candidate for Melbourne, Luke Creasey, withdrew yesterday, two days after a report appeared in The Australian regarding his social media activity in 2012, at which time he was a 22-year-old university student. The most publicisied of Creasey’s infractions was to click “like” on what those who know their way around social media would recognise as a “psycho girlfriend meme”, in this case involving a joke about false rape allegations. He at first offered only an apology for what he acknowledged was “stupid, immature” behaviour, but a divide reportedly opened within the party between Creasey’s own Left faction, which wanted him to tough it out, and some on the Right, who insisted he be dumped. Importantly, The Australian reports the latter included Noah Carroll and Sam Rae, respectively the party’s national and state secretaries.
• Isaacs candidate Jeremy Hearn was one of two Liberals to announce his withdrawal on Wednesday, after it emerged he had written a number of comments on Facebook to the effect that the Muslim community wished to overthrow the Australian government and institute sharia law.
• Also pulling the plug on Wednesday was the Liberal candidate for Wills, Peter Killin, who wrote on a Christian conservative forum in 2016 that its readers should have participated in the Liberal preselection in Goldstein, as their doing so would have ensured the defeat of a “homosexual MP”, Tim Wilson.
• Jessica Whelan withdrew as the Liberal candidate for Lyons yesterday over anti-Muslim posts on Facebook, although she says she will continue to campaign as an independent. Whelan’s problems began on Wednesday when The Mercury reported she had posted that Muslims should not be allowed to live in Australia, and that Donald Trump should deal with Muslim-sympathetic feminists by giving them clitoridectomies and selling them to Muslim countries. She initially responded that the screen shots were fabricated, and referred the matter to the Australian Federal Police. Scott Morrison’s position on Thursday was that this was good enough for him, although he appeared to go to some lengths to avoid getting too close to Whelan when the two appeared together at a pre-arranged promotional opportunity at an agricultural show. However, Whelan appeared to change her mind about both the views expressed and their having been fabricated when she announced her withdrawal yesterday, prompting Morrison to complain he had been lied to. The Liberals will now encourage supporters to vote for the Nationals candidate, Deanna Hutchinson.
Horse race latest:
• In his column in the News Corp tabloids today, David Speers relates that “hard heads” in the Liberal Party doubt they can win. As one such reportedly puts it: “If we had another three months, who knows”.
• Steven Wardill of the Courier-Mail reported on Thursday that Labor sources said the party was “losing its grip” in Coalition-held marginals in regional Queensland where it led early in the campaign.
• Jennifer Hewett of the Financial Review reported on Monday that Liberals were “increasingly optimistic about internal polling” in Flinders, where Greg Hunt was “no longer at real risk”. Elsewhere in Victoria, Deakin was “considered solid”, although Corangamite was “much less certain”. The only seats in Victoria the Liberals were giving away were Dunkley and Chisholm.
• Andrew Clark of the Financial Review reports Liberal polling in Wentworth shows them “in a winning position, though the numbers are extremely close”, while in Warringah, Zali Steggall’s campaign is spruiking a poll that has her leading on the primary vote, with Tony Abbott said to be stuck on around 40%.
• For the second time in the campaign, the Liberals have provided the media – in this case Matthew Denholm of The Australian – with polling conducted by TeleReach that shows Bill Shorten with poor personal ratings in northern Tasmania. The poll gives Shorten a 29% approval and 63% disapproval rating in Braddon (compared with 55% and 37% for Scott Morrison), 37% approval and 56% disapproval in Bass, and 37% approval and 50% disapproval in Lyons. However, as was the case last time, no voting intention numbers appear to have been provided.
Self-promotion corner:
If you’re interested in my take on the state of play in my home state of Western Australia, you can hear a shorter version of it on Monday’s edition of the ABC’s AM program, or a much longer one on The Conversation’s Politics with Michelle Grattan podcast. Then there are my two paywalled articles for Crikey this week, lest anyone be worried that I haven’t been keeping myself busy lately.
From yesterday, an account of the importance of the Chinese community at the election:
Labor won enduring loyalty among many Chinese voters after the Hawke government allowed students to stay in Australia after the Tiananmen Square massacre, and John Howard did lasting damage with his suggestion that Asian immigration should be curtailed during his first stint as leader in 1988. When Howard himself suffered his historic defeat in Bennelong in 2007, the result was widely attributed to the transformative effect of Chinese immigration on the once white middle-class electorate. Increasingly though, the rise of China’s middle class is bringing affluent new arrivals with economic priorities to match, together with a measure of cultural resistance to the broader community’s progressive turn on sex and gender issues.
And from Monday, on Clive Palmer’s preference deal with the Coalition:
If Palmer can get ahead of the third candidate on the Coalition’s ticket, who will have what remains after the first 28.6% is spent electing its top two candidates, a quarter of their vote will then flow to Palmer, if Coalition voters’ rate of adherence to the how-to-vote card in 2016 offers any guide. That could give him a decisive edge over Malcolm Roberts of One Nation, his main competition for a third seat likely to be won by parties of the right. But so far as the Liberals are concerned, the significance of the deal is in showing up what a dim view they must be taking of their prospects, and their readiness to grasp at any straw that happens to come within reach.
I thought that the Queensland government had postponed the Adani Mine indefinitely until the Adani group can come up with a valid and sensible plan to not make the Black Throated Finch extinct? And while Labor are in power in Queensland they will hold Adani to account over this.
So, basically the mine is dead in the water. Without all the ballyhoo that The Greens have indulged in.
Urban Wronski
@UrbanWronski
1m1 minute ago
Controversial economist Brian Fisher has accused the Morrison government of failing to act transparently over secret modelling it commissioned on the costs of climate action, saying even he has not seen the findings despite contributing to the work.
https://bit.ly/2VI1rYS
lol
Stephen Koukoulas
Verified account @TheKouk
1m1 minute ago
Federal election betting
BIG $$ on Labor today
Labor $1.20
Coalition $5.20
Jackol says:
Saturday, May 4, 2019 at 2:48 pm
Company tax has been paid because the company had a tax liability.
A tax credit is issued with any dividends to reflect that that money had already been taxed at 30%.
If your marginal tax rate was for example 40%, then your tax liability on those dividends would only be 10%. i.e. you still need to pay some extra tax on them.
If your marginal tax rate was, 20%, then the rate paid by the company is higher than your liability, so you would be entitled to a refund of that 10% difference.
So the tax is not “being refunded in full” for taxpayers, it is offsetting their tax liability so that the 30% tax already paid by the company is not paid again by the shareholder and that money is taxed at their marginal rate.
The only time it is refunded is when the shareholder has no tax liability and tax rightfully paid by the company is gifted back to the shareholder.
With any other deductions in the tax system, they only have value if you have a tax liability.
A casual worker under under the tax free threshold can not claim work expenses that a full time worker, doing the same job, over it can because they have no tax liability.
This is the way the franking system was designed to be and this is what Labor want to return it to.
Betfair, just now
Jackol says:
Saturday, May 4, 2019 at 2:48 pm
BiPT –
when no money has been paid that can be returned
Company tax has been paid, and that is being returned to those on low taxable incomes. The company tax is refunded in full, to Australian resident shareholders, at the moment, and Labor is proposing that it will still be refunded, in full, to Australian resident shareholders except a certain group of people.
If you think that you shouldn’t be able to rebadge taxable income like that, then let’s do away with dividend imputation altogether, but what is refunded is tax that has actually been paid.
———————————-
Your attempt at sophistry does not hold up. The justification for dividend imputation was that the same money was being taxed twice. Once through company tax and then again through income tax. The answer was to allow the person paying the income tax to claim the company tax as a tax deduction. If the person receiving the dividend does not pay income tax there is no double taxation so the deduction is not justified.
Vogon Poet says:
Saturday, May 4, 2019 at 3:22 pm
Hobbit they’ll be able to say,
We stopped it! 😆
Nick Ross
Verified account @NickRossTech
11s11 seconds ago
Still no word on whether @zalisteggall is a member of @LiberalAus #vote1zali . Anyone know got an answer yet? @GuardianAus #auspol
Barney – the company tax is refunded in full for Australian resident shareholders. You even outlined exactly how that works.
It is exactly because it is a tax refund, and not a deduction, that it is refunded to those on low taxable income – it is not like a work deduction, which is about reducing your taxable income based on allowable expenses. Apples and oranges.
Franking credits are actually added to your taxable income, because the income is being retrofitted from being company income to being personal income.
Hobbit?? 😆
Should be
Bbbbbut
Peter Stanton –
I have no wish to re-prosecute a case I made a long time ago, at length.
Suffice to say it is not sophistry, it is the way the system is at the moment, and Labor’s proposed changes are a hodge-podge of poor reform, and my objections to it are based on (a) from my perspective it is unfair – if all shareholders were in the same boat, I would be much more comfortable with sharing the ‘pain’, and (b) it is not tackling any of the actual fundamental problems with our tax system.
I have, once again, been sucked into posting more on this than I wished to and I won’t be posting any more on this.
If retirees want tax paid by a company to be treated as tax paid by them because the profits are really their profits, then would they be happy to also be personally liable for the losses of the company and any liabilities it might incur to third parties?
They want to ignore the corporate veil and the notion that a company is a separate legal person which shields them from liability, but only when it’s about getting more money.
I’d be ok with the current arrangements so long as when, for example, a company went bust leaving employees and creditors unpaid that these same shareholders then had a personal liability to chip in to make up the shortfall.
“Cuts and chaos” was the last line of Labor’s press release on its $1b environment policy.
Presumably this and “Big end of Town” will be repeated all the way until the 18th.
Is there a background to this? Murdoch claims she is a secret Labor supporter.
I don’t imagine that Liberal party rules allow you to remain a member while standing in an election against the endorsed candidate, so if Steggall was a member of the Liberal party I don’t think there’s any chance she still is.
Things very positive for Albo on the mean streets of balmain this afternoon door knocking
Jackol says:
Saturday, May 4, 2019 at 3:39 pm
Sorry, but you are mathematically illiterate.
In the 40% case, if the person is paying extra tax on the dividend, how can that be considered a refund?
Also you are conflating the company’s tax liability with the shareholder’s.
They are two completely different things.
As for your last paragraph, wtf?
Barney wtf indeed.
On HTV volunteers, an elderly pensioner and Wagga ALP stalwart (who along with his sister was handed life membership of the party by R. J. L. Hawke) took a bad turn at Wagga pre poll on Thursday. He’s recovering in hospital with best wishes from across the political spectrum.
Handing out HTVs in Wagga for Labor has always had a jovial and community feel about it. I got to know Micheal Whatshisname well from 2010 onward and find him to be a decent and interesting person under the dull exterior (ducks head).
Barney – sigh, now I have to break my word to not make further comment because you went the personal insults, and I’m too proud to let that stand.
The company paid X amount of tax, the Australian resident shareholder receives a refund of that X amount of tax – as if no company tax had ever been paid – and then their personal income tax is assessed and they then pay the appropriate personal income tax for that taxable income.
The company tax is refunded in all cases to Australian resident shareholders.
That’s what dividend imputation does – it reclassifies company income, on which company tax was paid, as personal income and reassessed at the Australian resident shareholders marginal tax rate.
You clearly don’t understand how this works. When you submit your tax return taking into consideration franked dividends, what you have to do is to add the company income that resulted in those franking credits to your personal taxable income. If I receive $300 in franking credits that represents $1000 of company income taxed at 30%. I get a refund of that $300 in tax paid, but add the $1000 to my personal taxable income.
And now I definitely won’t respond anymore on this topic.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/rich-guys-are-most-likely-to-have-no-idea-what-they-re-talking-about-study-suggests-20190504-p51k1i.html
A timely reminder.
I think this anecdote illustrates the profound problems with Paul Keating’s compulsory superannuation policy. It was a thoroughly neoliberal policy in that it framed retirement income as something that ought to be privatized (albeit heavily subsidized by tax deductions) and individualistic, instead of framing the task of provisioning retired people as a task that is fundamentally collective, public, and shared. Compulsory super is based on the stupid myth that the federal government could run out of its own currency. It is also really stupid to force people to essentially entrust their retirement savings to the vagaries of financial markets. It is incredibly stupid to legislate a captive market for an industry and then act surprised when that industry becomes complacent and inefficient.
Ultimately the issue is whether we produce enough real goods and services to meet the needs of people who aren’t working. Money isn’t the issue for the federal government. The optimal approach to achieving fairness and decency in retirement policy is for all people of retirement age to receive a non-means tested pension from the federal government. If you want a more comfortable retirement than that, then you can supplement your pension with savings from your disposable income, but you shouldn’t expect any tax breaks. Superannuation is just one financial product for retirement income – it should not be compulsory – and no form of private saving for retirement should be compulsory. The simplest system is to make the Age Pension decent enough to live on, and pay it to every individual of retirement age regardless of what other income sources they may have. And combine that with policies that drastically reduce inequality of wealth and income.
There are perfectly fine structures with flow thru income, and unsurprisingly flow thru liability. It is a typical ‘want the best of both worlds’, all the benefits without any of the costs. BCA heaven.
Hey Jackol and Peter,
Thats a really important debate to have. Please keep it going. I get the sense that there is a real upswell of community sentiment, particularly among the younger voters, that the superannuation system is not generous enough to baby boomers and that they really should be given more cash handouts. I think Labor are really in trouble on this issue.
Hey Jackol and Peter,
Thats a really important debate to have. Please keep it going. I get the sense that there is a real upswell of community sentiment, particularly among the younger voters, that the superannuation system is not generous enough to baby boomers and that they really should be given more cash handouts. I think Labor are really in trouble on this issue.
WWP yep, it’s classic cake and eat it too stuff.
mundo: “Just read a depressing piece in the SMH about the findings from a recent focus group.
I think some of us here don’t realise how fully fcking fcked in the head most voters are.
Dumber than rocks in a box. How a progressive centre left party is ever elected in this country is a mystery.”
It’s not necessarily a function of stupidity. Many people on the Australian left, including many who post on this forum, have long underestimated the proportion of Australians who are comparatively very wealthy by global standards. As Clive Hamilton once argued, the Australian left is somewhat stuck in a “deprivation” paradigm in which its focus remains on helping “lowly-paid” workers and families, when much of its traditional core constituency has steadily marched up the income ladder into a bracket that many would consider to be totally “middle class.”
We can see it again in this election campaign. Everything Labor says and does has a very large focus on “low paid workers”: typically people earning AWE or less. On paper these people would look to be the sort of “battlers” to whom Labor would appeal, but the economic researcher in me would like to know a lot more about the composition of this group. With the growth in part-time employment, the rise in the number of small businesses, with many more working people putting money in tax effective investment vehicles, and with younger generations switching jobs far more regularly, I suspect the range of circumstances of people at the bottom of the income scale has never been more complex.
What we do know is that relatively few members of the traditional blue collar workforce are at the bottom of the scale, at least if they are engaged in full-time work. I was struck by the recent dispute at the Streets Ice Cream factory in Sydney where, when rostered overtime was included, the largely unskilled workforce was reported to be taking home an average of significantly more than $100k per year. And then we have the Gladstone worker who told Shorten he and his mates earned $240k per annum, but definitely still seemed to consider themselves to be Labor constituents.
It seems to me that, while there are undoubtedly many people doing it tough, a significant majority of Australians – more than enough to cause a landslide election result if they all voted the same way – are doing very nicely indeed thank you very much, and would be keen to do even better in future. Labor is very fortunate that a sizeable proportion of these well-off types – particularly university-educated baby boomers and millennials – are rusted-on voters for the parties of the left. If more of these people chose to vote entirely on the basis of their own economic self-interest, Labor’s electoral situation might be more or less permanently hopeless.
That’s why I always prefer Labor to go for economically inclusive narratives – as it did under Hawke and Keating – rather than adopt an “us and them” position, which is sort of what they are doing in this campaign.
But, if it ends up working, then fair enough I guess.
“I get the sense that …”
I wonder if the sarcasm will be to subtle for some 😉
Well done
Nicholas
I have to agree with you about Super. It’s supposed to be a half way point.
However at its heart its accepting the market rules not the government.
It is that simple. We accepted the government providing a pension and other social welfare for a reason.
This is the basic difference in approach that Thatcher tried to kill in the UK.
No government social security after all there is no society
No NHS
The list goes on.
This is why I say Labor was not a neoliberals Government but a result of living in a neo liberal era. Labor has defended the government role. Industrial Relations and Medicare being the most notable.
This at the same time as undermining social security with Super by outsourcing to the markets.
The Neo liberal dream. Pensions are popular. Get people off the pension kill social security.
“I get the sense that there is a real upswell of community sentiment, particularly among the younger voters, that the superannuation system is not generous enough to baby boomers and that they really should be given more cash handouts.”
Hadn’t thought of this obvious glaring flaw in the ALP’s campaign JQ.. I shall email Menzies house with your insightful revelations forthwith so that ScoMo can decisively trounce Bill at the next debate.
Unless Rex or Wayne beat me to it………..
Nicholas does some really sensible analysis sometimes. Like at 4.09pm. I agree with his premise that there should be a Universal Pension but if you want to supplement it with Superannuation, you should be able to. Not with tax breaks mind you but with generous concessions on the way in and a minimal tax as you take it out. Plus, some form of penalty that applies if you don’t touch your principle so that you are compelled to use it to live on above the Pension, should you so choose.
Other than that, I don’t really have a clue about this sort of stuff. 🙂
Urban Wronski
@UrbanWronski
·
1h
Brian Fisher has form. As Liberal staffer, Guy Pearse writes in his book High and Dry: “Time and again, results that Fisher presented in his reports to government, and the scenarios and assumptions behind them, lent themselves to misrepresentation by the Howard government.”
Labors policies are orientated to low and middle income families, and they also say that too.
Wages have been stagnating, which alot of people are noticing, thats why Bill has been on the ball with wages.
The figures show that people are going backwards because of the cost of living is going up.
Scott Morrison telling people that the economy is strong, is a real kick in the guts for alot of people.
Jackol says:
Saturday, May 4, 2019 at 2:48 pm
..
but what is refunded is tax that has actually been paid.
The refund is against the tax you would have paid on the income. It is not against other income it is against the dividend you received from the shares.
Simple really; the idea was that income would be taxed once.
What you guys want is no tax on your income and the company tax back as well.
It is a rort; the rest of us have to pay extra tax to cover the rort; it is not fare and it should be stopped.
Cat
I am looking forward to the new era.
With as I expect Labor wins this neo liberal stuff will die.
We will be back to Keynesian Economics for government.
We will then debate if MMT is an approach to consider.
A much more sensible place to be than under the LNP with tax cuts to increase inequality so the top end of town can have more money. That’s basically what neo liberalism is. No government role.
In its purest form I think anarchists would like it. The closest we have seen is Somalia when it was just a bunch of warlords and pirates as their government system.
In relation, again, to Franking and the perceived anger of the older brigade with Labor, there are a number of issues but not all to do with money lost. Sure, if one has shares and they are valued say at $250,000 then the Franking credits – assuming no income from elsewhere – are a nicely pocketed amount come tax time. However, I think the real annoyance is that older folk have managed their long term financial affairs on the trust that the “rules” as it were, will stay in place, or if they are to change, some warning/protection is afforded until such time as changes can be made. On top of this, even with knowledge of a change to come, the options for those beyond 65 say are limited at best.
While I suspect the older folk turning up at meetings about Franking would have voted Liberal anyway, Bowen’s insensitive comment about “vote Liberal then” did not do him or the so-called “inclusive” Labor party any credit at all. Maybe all of this is good economics, but not such good politics. The Liberals have jumped on this and who can blame them in this tough contest?
Jackol:
I agree that there are three separate concepts—income earning, share ownership and (as you point out) penalty rates—that ought to be kept separate. If they were kept separate, then your argument would follow.
Unfortunately in Australia the three have been mixed together as forms of income earning (penalty rates are an income factor for “weekend workers”, but have a completely different effect for “ordinary hours” workers; the latter was the original intention for their introduction but the former has become important, perhaps even more so).
Elsewhere in the world, it is “bonds for income, stocks for growth”. Australia is quite unusual in having “dividend stocks/shares” that are principally income generating. And of course all imputation credit generating stocks are income generating stocks. There are a large number of problems associated with this (for example it skews stock holding towards financial corporations, which are the most obvious dividend stocks, and this reduces growth in the real economy). I think you are probably correct in your (later) observation that the logic leads to the complete elimination of dividend imputation: it was useful at the time when stock holding in Australia was extremely low, but its time has passed and the disadvantages (in a globalised economy) from lack of harmonisation (and hence confusion of foreigners) with the approach used virtually everywhere else probably outweigh the advantages.
Jackol says:
Saturday, May 4, 2019 at 4:07 pm
No, they don’t receive a refund, they receive a tax debit reflecting the amount of tax the company paid on the dividends that the shareholder received.
That is the crux of the issue, it is tax debit, this is something that you use to offset your tax liability when calculating how much tax you rightfully owe the taxman.
A refund is something you get from taxman if you have paid more to them during the year than what your tax liability ends up being.
The company tax is offset in all cases to Australian resident shareholders when they calculate their tax liability.
No, it doesn’t.
It recognises that 30% tax has already been paid on the dividends received and that needs to be taken into account when calculating the shareholder’s actual tax liability.
Ah, you do have some understanding.
That reads very differently to your original final paragraph.
On the franking credits I use the extreme analogy that if all the shareholders were self-funded retirees (all over 60 and no other assets held other than shares) and the companies paid their tax to the government then the self-funded retirees would receive all the tax paid by the company back via franking credits refunds. The government would receive net revenue of Nil.
Having recently retired, I would be a beneficiary of the current arrangement having a small share portfolio in addition to super I’ve been contributing since I’ve been employed. My planning was not based on the franking credits and it must be stopped. It is a tax credit to be offset against any tax liability. It is not a free kick.
The issue I think is some don’t want to drawdown on their capital and want to leave it for their kids.
I remember sitting down with my financial planner and the first question he asked was what did you want to leave when you die. I said, “what I’m going to die and then said I just want to leave the house, the rest I’m spending on me!” If it means I’m on the pension when I’m in my 80’s so be it.
Bill Shorten
Verified account @billshortenmp
1h1 hour ago
I’ve been taking on space invaders all my life.
Two weeks from now at about this time we’ll be waiting with bated breath for the first exit poll.
Kirky
My man said something similar. He told me my superannuation should be to fund my retirement, not make my children rich.
I have met quite a few retirees who are obsessed about running out of money so are desperate to preserve capital.
Kirky
The only reason people are arguing for keeping their house for their children who are not greedy entitled bastards is very simple.
People see the horror of homelessness. They want the security to avoid that.
This is the basic fear the government is tapping with its Franking Credits argument.
Confessions @ #328 Saturday, May 4th, 2019 – 2:36 pm
Really?! Name recognition is everything? How politics and political analysis has degraded.
If preferred PM polls are meaningless for predicting election outcomes, name recognition would be even less useful. PVO admits as much when he discards the next 4 most recognised LNP names.
And who, besides the 0.1% of political tragics, remembers who voted against MTM? Mal wasn’t even all that popular with LNP voters so those who knifed him may be viewed more positively than negatively.
I suppose he’s got to write something to keep employed.
The proportion of wealth that has shifted from people with modest means to people with plenty over the last 35 years is massive. The problem for the bloke on 250k is most likely that he hasn’t got loaded up with all the tax avoiding means used by the Liberal spruikers. I used to joke that anyone earning over $150k pa who had financial problems needed to visit a financial adviser. Having seen the extent of the tax benefits flowing from superannuation options, share dividends, franking credits, trusts etc I am ceasing to offer this advice until we return to something a lot fairer. The current Labor proposals need to be explained with some big picture figure. We have been comprehensively done over in the class war over the last few decades.
Darn @ #389 Saturday, May 4th, 2019 – 5:02 pm
2 weeks from now I will be on my last legs! Having started the day at the designated polling booth at 7am and then going it alone with my son all day until 6pm when the booth closes I turn around and go in to scrutineer! 😯
Thanks KayJay, but Firefox has killed off everything including my VPN when running in Firefox on its own. I never saw anything about an update either. They all come up in the add on manager as not verified by Firefox. All worked yesterday but today kaput. The PB add on is still working fine btw.
Morrison denies ‘Space Invaders’ happened. Claims Shorten was avoiding him.
https://www.outline.com/gbwy5t
(I’ve exceeded my SMH limit)
Shorten didnt nail this when Sales accused him of distribution wealth away from the rich. For years now wealth has been distributed to the rich – they have become very wealthy, often obscenely so – it is now time to stop their subsidies and tax breaks and loopholes that are tearing a huge hole in the budget and the fabric of society.
Spence, you need to remind yourself it is only class warfare when you take from the rich and not when you provide concessions to the rich therefore depriving the less fortunate in our society the help they need.
The changes by the ALP are a good start but more is required. Little steps.