Operation Bleedin’ Obvious.
I’ll keep this short.
Need money? Here’s some:
Axe the Paid Parental Leave scheme. Saving $22.2 billion over the forward estimates.
Axe Direct Action. Saving $2.55 billion over the forward estimates.
Tax voluntary superannuation contributions at the employee’s marginal tax rate. Saving $17.8 billion this financial year and $20.7 billion by 2016-17.
Axe the 50 per cent discount on capital gains tax. Saving $5.4 billion, climbing to $7.6 billion by 2016-17.
Stop negative gearing. Saving $4 billion a year.
Cap defence spending at $20 billion a year. Saving $40 billion over the forward estimates.
Cancel the extra 58 fighter jets. Saving $12.4 billion.
Reinstate the reporting obligation for car business use. Saving $1.8 billion.
Axe the company tax cut. Saving $4 billion a year.
Keep the mining tax. Revenue of $3.4 billion over the forward estimates.
Increase the top marginal tax rate from 45 to 47 per cent and apply it to all earnings over $150,000 rather than the existing threshold of $180,000. Revenue of $8.1bn over four years.
Introduce a Financial Transactions Tax. I don’t have current figures but if a 0.05% FTT were collected on Australian “over-the-counter” and exchange traded market transactions between 2005-06 and 2008-09, it would have raised $48 billion.
Are we there yet?
Get your hands off our kids, our elderly, our unemployed, our sick and disabled. Threaten me again and I will get REALLY angry.
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Return to home pageBrilliant, go for it! We need more like this piece.
Bob Ellis has written a similar article this morning at Table Talk.
http://www.ellistabletalk.com/2014/08/26/how-to-fix-the-budget-very-simply/
Yep….. the bleedin’ obvious. Thanks Kaye.
Great stuff Kaye!!!!
Can the Greens look at this seriously please.
Dennis
the one point missed was to tighten the tax laws so that multibillion dollar corporations can’t leak up to $60 billion per annum into overseas tax havens instead of paying their fair share of tax on their profits, that may help our bottom line as well.
Speaking of bleedin’ obvious…..
While we are at it, increase Newstart by $50 a week and increase the amount of affordable housing. People are more productive when they have somewhere to live and something to eat. It will improve productivity, cut health costs, and increase demand for goods and services which will increase the GST take and provide jobs both to meet increased demand and in building affordable housing.
Yep, bleeding obvious. Now how are blinkers removed?
townsvilleblog,
Very good point. The FTT would help a bit there as they could be made to pay when they shift money around as Rupert did. Sadly, the current government would rather declare an amnesty for offshore tax cheats in the hope they will come home, all forgiven, and promise not to be naughty again.
“Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s second-richest parliamentarian, has invested in a ”vulture fund” based in the tax haven Cayman Islands.
Disclosure of what appears to be a $1 million stake in a New York-run fund targeting distressed and bankrupt companies sparked criticism from financial transparency campaigners on Thursday.
They argue the Communications Minister has invested legally but in conflict with the Coalition’s current campaign against corporate tax dodging and the offshoring of profits.”
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/financial-transparency-campaigners-question-malcolm-turnbull-investment-20140703-3bbgc.html#ixzz3BSYzcMwU
Cracking down on tax havens is on the agenda for the G20.
Right there with you, sista.
The LNP to never achieve governance, ever again or even longer.
“Get your hands off our kids, our elderly, our unemployed, our sick and disabled. Threaten me again and I will get REALLY angry.”
The numbers are growing 🙁
Remember the debt that this mob says will happen, are only predictions, projections. At no time, can one say, this is what will happen a decade down the track. They only stand if everything remains the same, sat the time they were made, the global and nations economy would have to remain constant.
This can never be true, as all economies, including households budgets are in constant change.
One would expect any government, practising good governance would be reviewing making change as the situation changes.
[Get your hands off our kids, our elderly, our unemployed, our sick and disabled. Threaten me again and I will get REALLY angry.]
The Greatest Speech Ever Made – Charlie Chaplin
Most would have seen this, but it is worth listening to time and time again…and then again.
or one with relevant images
“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WibmcsEGLKo&”
Cut the fossil fuel subsidies = around $13 Billion a year!
“Get your hands off our kids, our elderly, our unemployed, our sick and disabled. Threaten me again and I will get REALLY angry.”
YES!
Yes. Should be publicised as leaflets, posters, ads etc. (Could pass round the hat for cost).
I would suggest both a modification of the transaction tax and the addition of import tariffs.
A tax on domestic transactions is a tax on the daily activity which no low-income Australian can escape. Instead, impose a Tobin tax on all currency conversions beyond a threshold which would avoid imposts on immigrants maintaining contact with foreign-resident families.
The rate of a Tobin tax is important. At 0.05% it would raise revenue without dampening trade in currencies (which is speculative). At 1% it would dampen financial transaction trade as most financial trade profits are at or under 1% per transaction, but in doing so would severely reduce contribution to government revenue. Being opposed to this noxious trade I’d favour 1% but 0.05% would be better for balancing the Budget.
The benefit of import tariffs is that they discourage purchase of cheap goods from slave countries like the Prison Republic of China which criminalise trade unions, and exploit their own workers and through the cost savings suppress Australian manufacturing. Exploitation-indexed tariffs would level the so-called “playing field”.
A linguistic quibble. War expenditure is not defence expenditure because for the last 69 years it has been directed not to defence of Australia but to participation in US wars of conquest. A non-Newspeak term would be military expenditure or military budget.
Right on Kaye
Great work Kaye. Looks like you beat me to the draw with your bleedin’ obvious suggestions. Not to worry 🙂
In law and in liability matters Australia treast companies as separate to their shareholders. We should treat them that same way in regard to dividends. A retired successful person with enough invested in safe shares to earn $120,000pa in dividends pays no tax because the dividends come with an attached tax credit of $51428.
Australia needs to eliminate either tax franking or company tax. An competent ACCC and company tax elimination would reduce cost of goods and services to the average Joe or Jane and most of the tax foregone would be recouped from those citizens who would no longer get a franking credit. Companies consider tax as a cost of doing business so that cost it is always included in charges to customers.
And add this to the list, limited politicians pensions to a two year cap, remove all other pension and entitlements for past politicians and only vote for the ones that will sign a contract to save they will represent the community in their deliberations. If they do not keep their promise then we can get rid of them immediately, no pension, just the entitlements that the rest of Australians get.
I need to think about the company tax statement, but the other one is fine. If they really want make a difference they could stop spending money on the environment, reduce it drastically anyway by closing down TerrainNRM
And the other not for profits let in by Howard. Terrain applies for and dispenses environment money and charges 10 percent, which makes a fine profit, but being a not for profit they have to lose money by giving away Glyphosate herbicide to local councils, aboriginal ‘caring for country’ groups and anyone else stupid enough to believe their scary stories about how threatening weeds are to the environment.
Once Glyphosate is spread about the land suffers and either erodes, causes diseases or tries to repair itself by growing earth repairing plants….weeds. As someone said “while you spray a weed there will always be a weed to spray”. Australian Customs estimated that the Australian market for one kind of Glyphosate in 2011 was 65 million litres. This Government could save millions by simply phasing out their support for herbicides.
No need to ban them, simply stop subsidising them. And stop financing the use of them by local government and all State and Federal Departments.
Now that is direct action. The environment would benefit, farmers would scream but would quickly discover that Chemical companies have lied about the sky falling in if they use fewer chemicals
And of course there’s the one that no politician is ever likely to suggest: Axe the ridiculous parliamentary pensions.
For that matter, slash parliamentary salaries: we’re getting a bunch of monkeys, we might as well pay them peanuts.
And clamp down on the ridiculous rorts like getting paid more per night than a week’s newstart in order to ‘stay away from home’ in your wife’s house.
Get rid of the spin doctors and image consultants. That would save squillions.
What about closing offshore detention centres, that will save billions!! Maybe even restore some humanity??
Stop buying one-use orange life rafts at over $200,000 a pop.
Make MPs catch commercial flights rather than private or air force jets
Kaye, I think I love you <3 Stick that up the World Congress of Families 😉
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love,
No not just for some but for everyone.
That’s for you Kevin and Cory
We can also save a few billion by ending offshore detention.
I think it’s unjust that people like Abbott and Hockey will be the benificaries to such huge entitlements when they get kicked out of/leave parliament. But having said that, I hope they are able to access those entitlements at the earliest opportunity.
Kaye, I love you when you’re angry.
What about the gst on ebay imports. That’s an elephant that so far is all talk and good for jobs.
The Mouse that ROARED!
I think a lot of people are feeling and thinking this way. I let go a spray in the Guardian yesterday to a Barnaby Joyce article where he said there is no other alternative.
I think I said that I wanted to ram the following words down Joyce’s throat, axe the ppl, axe the fuel subsidy and blah blah blah.
You’re a day behind me Kaye.
That is the stupidest thing I have ever read. The best thing you can do for the future of this country is refrain from breeding.
Too late 🙂
John seems nice.
KAYE LEE FOR TREASURER!! You could make Hockey your ass kissing subjugated apprentice and teach him a thing or two about balancing the books!
June M Bullivant OAM – Yes! Great idea and it should have been done long ago!
Let’s also add to that list all the ridiculously legal yet morally questionable “concessions” and “allowances” that all politicians receive whilst IN office. Joe Hockey et al, and the $270/night allowance to stay in their spouse’s homes.
As I don’t know A) how many politicians claim this each year or B) for how many nights each may claim/be allowed to claim I will use a simple example. Say each person claims an average of 150 nights each, at $270 per night –
$150 x $270 = $40,500 per person
If 1000 claim the same amount for the same number of nights –
1000 x $40,500 = $40,500,000
That’s a nice little saving right there and it’s only ONE of their allowances. Many may in fact claim 200 or even more nights each year. Some may not claim many at all. I’d love the figures though.
I think it’s about time to clean house!!!!
PEOPLE Get up! Start REALLY being vocal about ALL of these issues as a whole picture – not just pieces of a puzzle which politicians can manipulate to suit their own desired outcomes!!!!
If we aren’t heard now it will be too late to stop the proposed changes and tidal wave of damage that will come from frustration and desperation, driven by escalating poverty. It will create a rise in domestic violence, child abuse, marital breakdown, suicide, mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, petty crime, road rage, and on and on ….The result will be more Australian families desperately trying but failing to live above the poverty line, and more single parent families living on crap food, causing more medical problems such as diabetes and heart disease, respiratory problems caused by poor nutrition and lack of medical attention. There will be more need for women’s shelters but funding to those is being slashed as of now. Drug and alcohol programs will need more funding, hospitals already overcrowded will completely burst….. it has the potential to be a total train wreck and the true damage will become apparent over the next 5-7 years then will take another 10-12 to clean up.
Maybe so, Michael, but erudite he is not.
@ Michael Taylor – do you think maybe John is really Joe Hockey using a pseudonym?
@ Michael Taylor perhaps John is one of Joe Hockey’s pseudonyms?
John Taylor – perhaps “John” is one of Joe Hockey’s pseudonyms?
itsazoosue – he certainly isn’t
I meant to say . . . John seems nice. NOT.
I’m wondering how much the Royal Commission into Pink Batts cost us. It seemed to fizzle out more with a whimper than a bang which is hardly surprising considering there had already been 8 investigations.
Add to that the cost of the Commission of Audit. The salary for the 5 commissioners was $1500 a day each let alone all their staff and printing costs etc. Then of course we have white and green papers coming out our ears. We are having reviews into things that have just been reviewed – note how Christopher’s two education experts are months overdue with their judeo-christian business oriented conservative curriculum. I wonder what the tax white paper will reveal that the Henry review hasn’t already considered. And why did Sussan Ley get Price Waterhouse Coopers to produce a paper on childcare a few months before the productivity commission was due to release theirs?
The age of entitlement might be over but the age of the consultant is alive and well.
Oh and since we aren’t scrapping the racial discrimination laws, we can save $380,000 a year by sacking Tim Wilson.
Funny how we never did get to find out how much it cost to look for MH370 off the WA coast. For all I know that mission is still ongoing. The silence on that cost is deafening.
Ishe
So far, Malaysia has spent a total of 27.6 million ringgit ($9.3 million) on the search for the missing flight MH370, authorities said on Monday, giving a specific cost figure for the first time.
Australia, in contrast, has spent more than $43 million since the search began.
In its budget last month the federal government also set aside nearly $90 million for the search over the next two years.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/mh370-search-malaysia-and-australia-to-share-costs-20140609-zs2an.html#ixzz3BVXw6nfZ
We could have saved $40 million by obeying the High Court ruling and not continued to fund the schools chaplaincy programme. Well, at least the funding will run out in December, so there’s maybe $75 million saved by not funding it for 2015.
Ya gotta love it – Joe Hockey has hired comedy writer David Hunt to write his speeches to try and sell the budget. Hunt must be good at fiction because up until he was employed by Hockey he was bagging the crap out of the government.
“a quick trawl though his work on the social media site, Twitter, shows Hunt has been a trenchant critic of the government, issuing scathing critiques of its stance on asylum seekers, climate change, same-sex marriage and even Mr Hockey’s first budget.
The day after the budget was released, Hunt tweeted “UNREAL SOLUTIONS. REAL LIES.” with a Photoshopped image posted by actor and Labor supporter Rhys Muldoon.
That same day, he said “Commonwealth cuts to state health budgets will help end the blame game. Now we know exactly who to blame.”
In November: ‘John Howard preferred his “instinct” to scientific advice. Abbott’s instinct is to kill off scientific advice” accompanied by an article about cuts to the CSIRO.
Hunt also labelled Australia’s asylum seeker policy ‘#Australianshame’, lamented a lack of progress on same-sex marriage, and criticised the Prime Minister for the lack of women in cabinet.”
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/joe-hockey-hires-girt-author-david-hunt-as-speechwriter-20140826-108nw6.html#ixzz3BXPuHPND
Or they could save money by not defrauding the system every 5 minutes:
Tony Abbott’s visit to cancer hospital used to ‘justify’ fund-raising visit
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbotts-visit-to-cancer-hospital-used-to-justify-fundraising-visit-20140826-108nxo.html#ixzz3BXgTCWrQ
“spin doctors and consultants” – why do they keep hiring more and more people to do their work ? Isn’t that what the Public Service is for ? Or don’t they have the political affiliation required to come up with the “right” reports ?
No politician is ever going to vote all that stuff out – it’s what they’re going to live on for the rest of their lives, and why most of the wealthy vote for them. Pure unadulterated greed. It may take a revolution to clean out and start again with a level playing field. Remember the good old days when politicians represented their electorates for very little money because they wanted to serve ? Goodness, what a notion. There are still a few starry eyes who start out like that I think but are very quickly squashed into the moulds of compliance.
I am horrified that according to latest opinion polls already some of the great unwashed are being turned back to the government – probably because of the whole war of terror / fear campaign they’ve successfully run. Can people be so shallow ?
Maintain the rage Kaye, keep it coming. Only another 2 years to go.
If you need their arrogance underlined any further, there it is in Dan’s link. Tony kept Cabinet waiting for an hour because he had to fit in something to justify claiming flying to Melbourne on a sitting day of Parliament for a party.
“Prime Minister Tony Abbott told government MPs he had to schedule an early morning visit to a cancer research centre in Melbourne on Tuesday so that he could justify billing taxpayers to be in the city for a “private function” the night before.”
Kaye Lee,
The only small positive I can take from that disgusting story is that Government members are leaking to the press. Might just be Macdonald, but it’s something …
Keitha, check the Morgan poll – shows the ALP 54%tpp against LNP 46%tpp and a high proportion of young people favouring the ALP at the moment. Newspoll is a Murdoch poll and I give it very little credence.
Kaye Lee
I had yet another what tha…? moment when I heard the news about Hunt’s appointment. My hope is that the comedian can do more than just write a few funny lines and engage with Hockey – get Hockey in touch with his human side (if he has one).
Meanwhile the list of savings for the government is staggering anyone, other than the 5th estate, putting these anomalies to the government?
Dear Brethren: This may seem a little off subject however it cuts directly to the heart of the problem.
These lies are just so fundamentally wedded into the whole neoconservative military industrial complex.
Vijay Prashad is a highly respected professor and historian who is an authority on the Middle East. Here is his interview with Amy Goodman at Democracy Now.
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/8/25/libya_in_chaos_vijay_prashad_on
This is a must see interview where he clearly explains the emergence of Isis from Bush’s obnoxious war on Iraq and the expulsion of all Baathists from positions of power forcing front line military officers into unemployment and resentment which led many of them to join radical Islam. It is a little more complex however the direct relationship between Bush, Blair and Howard’s war (implicating Abbott and the LNP as co-conspirators) is inescapable so what we now see as rabid Islamic fundamentalism is in fact the direct product of the gang of three’s complete incompetence and mendacious lying to justify an unmitigated disaster of an unjustifiable war leading to untold deaths and unimaginable suffering. And now it’s time to make more political capital out of failure and defeat. I truly despise these greed infested murderers.
Abbott is using his own failure as a weapon of fear to bully the Australian public into thinking he is going to be a great war leader to take us out of the maelstrom his own making. This is without a doubt Abbott and his colleague’s enduring fantasy. I wonder why we have refugees when we keep bombing the shit out of nations while selling sophisticated weapons to rogue states. Then we have to purchase even more sophisticated weapons like mufti-billion dollar jet fighter lemons to counteract weapons sold to dysfunctional states. Isis has commandeered the massive supply of weapons left behind by the US for use by the incompetent Iraqi Government’s ill trained army while they play a game of sectarian Russian roulette as the Middle East staggers into sectarian madness.
What a fabulous own goal. Yet these conservatives keep rattling on about how wonderful they are as upholders of democracy and mangers of economies. What an unmitigated load of shite. Australian who vote for, or support, this vile cabala of fools are complete ignoramuses. No more bipartisan claptrap it is time to call a spade a spade.
Hockey and his bedfellows do not want to understand your reasoning. They rather hit the poor and the pensioners because they assume they vote Labor anyway.
Stephentardrew that’s so true! Can you hear me clapping and asking what your favourite beer is?
Interestingly, we have America to thank for al Qeada because the CIA trained bin Laden and his merry men to defend themselves against an invasion by Russia in the oil race. So they happily accepted the US$16 million (training is purported to be anywhere from US$2.9 million to US$26 million, but if I remember correctly, $16 million is the most commonly discussed figure in everything I’ve read or heard about it) worth of training and weaponry then turned it around on America.
Nice one USA. Nice one al Qeada.
And ISIS is the very same group bin Laden’s boys warned him to not associate himself in any way with ISIS because they are too bloodthirsty and would give al Qeada the wrong image!
The world is going to hell in a hand basket!
This Guardian article is very well researched and frightening in its implications – it agrees with much of your comment Sharon re. involvement by the West. Why don’t we ever think through the long term implications of our actions!!. Despite its barbaric nature ISIS could be a unifying and dominating terrorist force. So, what do we do about it?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/26/isis-apocalyptic-cult-carving-place-in-modern-world?CMP=fb_gu
Rewa Ward: that is the burning question. It’s a sort of no exit situation where you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. It requires mufti-level strategic planning over many years.We cannot be complicit in another Rwanda etc. Alleviation of poverty and inequality is probably a good place to start as well as some form of offensive military action. I have a deep aversion to war however this is one of those situations where we are left to wallow in a mess of our own making. There may be no medium term solution so we must do our best to prevent murder torture and genocide. This time the UN must be part of the action plan or else we are back where we started. All up I have no idea what to do however do something we must. Many bloggers in the Guardian article offer alternative lines of action yet none seem to me sufficient to resolve this heinous situation. How do you treat the delude and insane. Reason is not going to work. This is a terrible tragedy that all government must learn from. Unfortunately hiding behind platitudes is not going to work.
your suggestions would save 189.65 billion over forward estimates how many deficits is that? I think it really is time for the people to clean their houses both upper and lower, but where do we find a group of politicians willing to do that? Stop the rorts.
Having read all of the comments, I am still gigglig at “Get your hands off our kids, our elderly, our unemployed, our sick and disabled. Threaten me again and I will get REALLY angry.” Just love it !!!
Well written Kaye!
You should be treasurer 😉 This was more effort than Sweaty Joe ever put in!
Add to the end Tax revenue is never a ‘money’ limit on government spending (Fiat currency issuing system never needs tax revenue to finance anything technically. You tax for 3 main reasons: acceptance of currency by private sector, rewarding/reprimanding certain behaviours and as a monetary tool to control savings).
If government starts shutting hospitals because they think they’ve ‘run out of money’ its time for the paddy wagon to take them off to court.
By corollary:
Anybody else notice the nobel award winning economists all had one thing to say about the EU: “a bad system where governmet only spends money pro-cyclically”
Time to bash that into the tiny brains of the liberal party and its followers. Government is the ONLY entity that can spend counter cyclically. I call 20%+ under/unem/hidden employement a crisis! Time to act on that, the environment and every other outstanding issue!
Happy protesting everyone for august 30/31st!
sam,
Unemployment is about to get a heap worse actively abetted by this government.
A new federal government plan to ease labour shortages will enable employers to hire foreign workers on salaries up to 10 per cent below standard rates, it’s been reported.
The government will allow employers to seek lower pay rates and easier language tests for foreign workers.
Dozens of job categories will be covered including childcare workers, disability carers, mechanics, bricklayers, office managers, carpenters, chefs and nurses.
Employers of all sizes will be able to sponsor overseas staff on wages up to 10 per cent below the usual rates set for 457 skilled worker visas
Read more at http://www.9news.com.au/national/2014/08/29/01/21/cheaper-foreign-workers-under-govt-plan#CWh4RzBSukXhZt3X.99