Every day it seems there are new things to be aggravated about.
Take Peter Dutton.
If Australia is not responsible for the detainees on Manus and Nauru, then how come Peter Dutton gets to say they can’t go to New Zealand?
And why does his photographic image bother him more than our international reputation and the harm that is being done to people who came to us looking for help?
Then there is Scott Morrison’s claim that Labor always tax more.
From 1997 to 2013, tax averaged 21.4 per cent of GDP in the Labor years and 23.5 per cent in the Coalition years
The 2016 budget estimates that, including new policy, tax receipts are forecast to grow by 3.1 per cent in 2015‑16 and 5.0 per cent in 2016‑17. Total tax receipts as a share of GDP are expected to increase from 22.2 per cent in 2016‑17 to 23.5 per cent by 2019‑20, an increase of 1.3 percentage points.
As for his ‘enterprise tax plan’, over the forward estimates, it decreases tax receipts by $9.2 billion even while taxation as a percentage of GDP is going up. That would indicate that individuals will be bearing a greater burden.
Despite Morrison’s claim to have created 300,000 jobs last year, wages are growing so slowly that the projections of individuals tax has been reduced by $12 billion over the four years to 2018‑19. It seems Scott is not confident that cutting company tax is going to lead to more jobs and higher wages any time soon so his reliance on ‘household consumption’ to drive growth may be optimistic.
On the subject of house prices, Morrison is arguing that an increase of 5% instead of 7% means your house price is going down, but that won’t help housing affordability. He gets very grumpy if you question this piece of pretzel logic, as shown on Insiders last Sunday.
Another issue is the growing stench of corruption surrounding the decision to award our submarine contract to a company that is being investigated in France for bribery of Malaysian officials in a previous submarine deal.
As reported by Kangaroo Court:
The French company DCNS employed former Liberal staffer Sean Costello as its CEO for the bid. Mr Costello was chief-of-staff for former Defence Minister David Johnston who was sacked from his position in 2014. Could this have been the source of the leaks about submarines? And surely it is wrong for someone who is privy to defence department deliberations to then work for arms manufacturers who are bidding for Australian contracts?
The Australian Senate are already investigating corrupt conduct by French arms firm Thales who are the parent company of DCNS regarding the rorting and rigging of a $1.5 billion contract with Airservices Australia who are a government body responsible for airspace management in Australia which includes the management of airport control towers etc.
Airservices Australia hired a consulting organisation called International Centre for Complex Project Management (ICCPM) to negotiate a $1.5 billion contract with Thales to upgrade Australia’s air traffic control program. The former chairman and still a director of ICCPM is Thales CEO Chris Jenkins so you have an organisation overseen by Chris Jenkins in his role as chairman/director (ICCPM) negotiating with Chris Jenkins in his role as CEO (Thales) to get the best deal for Airservices Australia.
I could go on… and on and on… but that is enough aggravation for one day.
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