By Denis Bright
Mary Doyle’s victory in Aston is another milestone in Australia’s emergence from the shadows of neoliberalism and frightening compromises with our national sovereignty within the US Global Military Alliance.
The extent and consistency of the swing to Labor have received saturation coverage. Absent, pre-poll and postal votes have yet to be added by the AEC. Latest AEC figures show a 7 per cent swing to Labor in Aston after preferences. No polling booth in Aston recorded a swing to the LNP after preferences. However, the extent of the swing to Labor varied across the electorate in a quite complex manner. Readers can check out this complexity though the AEC election site if they download the electoral map of Aston to complement the data from polling booths.
The significance of this result will be discussed well into the future. Previous by-elections have made it into the history books as barometers of longer-term changes in Australian politics. Readers may wish to comment on my take on the by-election in Aston. Eyewitness news covers the mathematics of election results exhaustively but the critical interpretation of elections is no exact science. This includes my take on the Aston result. Do not be afraid to make critical comments and feel free to use a pseudonym.
Younger applicants for jobs will have their personal profiles vetted by employment agencies and increasingly by security agencies. One younger programmer working for the defence department told me that his/her phone was surveilled by ASIO. This may or may not be correct as we all share a capacity for over-statement.
Australia is quite a secretive society with lots of quite para-military networks like Employsure which I visited in Brisbane for an article some time ago. Corporate Australia is quite media friendly but only inside journalists received comprehensive answers to enquiries and emails. This makes investigative journalism exciting. Something is lurking under friendly marketing structures if no replies are forthcoming. The companies on the ATO’s tax avoidance lists are indeed some of the most secretive. I love to be kept waiting for replies as it motivates my chases even further.
The map of the Aston electorate is an important resource. The AEC could assist with a more critical analysis of election results if a detailed demographic analysis could be available for each electorate. The Queensland Statistician’s Office makes this available for state and local government areas.
I have suggested that this could be extended to federal electoral districts in Queensland where some of the most disadvantaged electorates are the most conservative.
Readers might want to check out the web site of the Queensland Governments Statistician’s Office. It is an outstanding investigative resource.
As the 74th anniversary of the defeat of the Chifley Government approaches later this year, our ship of state has been in LNP hands after most elections since then. Apart from the Hawke-Keating era (1983-96), periods of federal Labor government have been largely short-term governments. Gough Whitlam’s agendas for change were snuffed out after less than three years through his dismissal in 1975 by the Queen’s Representative in Canberra despite his government’s narrow victory in the Double Dissolution election of 1974. The character of the senate was manipulated by the appointments of replacement senators in both NSW and Queensland.
Labor’s victory in 2022 was also a tight result. Insiders in the Albanese Government have moved cautiously on both domestic and strategic issues as the shadows of decades of LNP government hangs over Canberra. With the arrival of Mary Doyle in Parliament from Aston, the government should get the message that the electorate wants more changes in fundamental policies. Support for The Voice Referendum is now more likely to be successful.
The Albanese Government can afford to be less cautious about sharing the worst excesses of US economic diplomacy to contain the inevitable rise of China. Too much support from a Labor Government for the current US Administration will be an enormous financial burden for future generations who still live under the shadows of reckless policies from the old neoliberal order. Legalized tax avoidance by Anglo-American multinational companies is standard practice. Some US companies like Cubic Defense and Cubic Transportation of San Diego have no record of company tax payments at least since the Abbott Government was elected in 2013.
Under the previous LNP governments, initiatives by Cubic received favourable comments in the Australian Defence Magazine:
Townsville-based company Cubic Defence Australia has secured a $5 million contract to deliver training services for the ADF.
The contract is for the first stage of the Integrated Training Environment for Combat Training Centre 2025. The first stage of works will include new communications towers and the upgrade of existing equipment.
“Cubic Defence Australia will deliver a communications capability to support a blended live and virtual training environment for the ADF,” Minister for Defence Industry Melissa Price said.
“Having visited Cubic Defence Australia with local MP Phil Thompson last year, I know they’re a very capable local company, employing Australians and strengthening our defence industry.”
Thompson said he was proud to see a Townsville company benefiting from the record investment in Australia’s defence industry.
“I congratulate Cubic Defence Australia on ensuring our ADF has the modern operational training they need to defend Australia’s national interests,” Thompson said. “This advanced training environment replicates the complex and challenging environments of current and potential conflict zones.
“I know from experience that having the opportunity for realistic training simulations can make a real difference for Defence members when faced with real-life situations.”
Cubic Transportation has lucrative contracts with Australian public transport and road traffic management systems. Its contracts extend to the Opal Card system in Sydney, SEQ’s Go Card and vast networks of government transportation and defence contracts internationally and especially in the USA.
The ATO latest tax list is essential reading in identifying the good, the bad and the ugly in corporate taxation payments to maintain a fair ship of state on behalf of the electorate.
Extract from the ATO’s Taxation Anomalies List 2020-21
ABC News is to be commended for its ongoing coverage of this issue from data released by the ATO:
Thirty-two per cent of Australian public companies paid no tax in 2020-21, according to Australian Taxation Office (ATO) data.
The ATO’s eighth corporate tax transparency report, which covers 2,468 corporate entities, found that 782 (32 per cent) did not pay any tax.
The report attributes that to various reasons, including companies making an accounting loss or claiming tax offsets that reduced their tax bill to nil.
“There’s legitimate reasons why companies may not pay tax,” ATO deputy commissioner Rebecca Saint said.
“You have to have made profit in a year to be subject to tax. There are obviously genuine reasons why companies may not be profitable during the year.
“There’s also other reasons why you may not pay taxes, you might be able to carry forward losses from earlier years to offset against income for that year.
“We do scrutinise why it is that [it’s] nil tax … that they are genuine losses, and that they’re not generated by uncommercial or artificial arrangements.”
The data comes as the ATO continues to battle large companies over unpaid taxes, with Ms Saint telling ABC News that 113 companies had assessments raised against them during the 2022 financial year, totalling about $3 billion.
The arrival of Mary Doyle in Canberra should give the government a mandate to go in harder against taxation anomalies and the delivery of those Stage 3 tax concessions which were summarized by Amy Remeikis for The Guardian:
Stage Three abolishes the 37% marginal tax bracket completely and lowers the 32.5% marginal tax rate to 30%. It also raises the threshold for the 45% marginal tax rate, meaning everyone earning between $45,000 and $200,000 will pay the same 30% tax rate.
At present, Australia’s tax brackets look like this:
- up to $18,200 – no tax
- $18,201 to $45,000 – pay a 19% tax rate
- $45,001 to $120,000 – pay a 32.5% tax rate
- $120,001 to $180,000 – pay a 37% tax rate
- $180,001 plus – pay a 45% tax rate
Under stage three, the tax brackets would look like this:
- $18,200 – no tax
- $18,201 to $45,000 – pay a 19% tax rate
- $45,001 to $200,000 – pay a 30% tax rate
- $200,001 plus – pay a 45% tax rate
A marginal tax rate is how much tax you pay on income in that bracket. For example, if you earn $97,000, under Stage 3, you would pay no tax on the first $18,200 you earned, 19% for every dollar between $18,2001 and $45,000, and 30% on every dollar between $45,001 and $97,000.
The unkindest cut of all to our sovereignty and capacity for a more independent economic diplomacy in Asia comes from the AUKUS defence deals which have been well covered by The Guardian (14 March 2023). Just how many AUKUS commitments have been made into binding commercial contracts with British and US supplies of military equipment is still a matter for further investigation.
A more than likely end to the strategic stand-offs with China under a long-serving Albanese Government might leave Australians with financial debts to commercial military industrial complexes for generations to come. Future governments with the permanent problems of managing high grade nuclear fuel wastes long after any nuclear-powered submarines fleets are retired in the 2070s. There is no certainty that visiting US naval vessels to our ports have parked their nuclear weapons in Guam prior to their transit through Australian waters.
Our future strategic history was outlined in San Diego in March 2023:
In a tripartite deal with the US and the UK, Australia has unveiled a plan to acquire a fleet of up to eight nuclear-powered submarines, forecast to cost up to $368bn between now and the mid-2050s. Australia will spend $9bn over the next four years.
From this year Australian military and civilian personnel will embed with US and UK navies, including within both countries’ submarine industrial bases. From 2027 the UK and the US plan to rotate their nuclear-powered submarines through HMAS Stirling near Perth as part of a push to step up training of Australians.
France was betrayed when the Morrison Government welcomed the ageing French nuclear powered submarine Émeraude on a fool’s errand of joint naval maneuvers off Guam and perilous jaunts in stealth mode through the South China Sea off Hainan. While these maneuvers were being filmed by their respective media units, the Australian government was secretly negotiating with Britain and the US to abort the deal for the purchase of those new French submarines.
There is a touch of sad irony in the public media hype which surrounded the epic voyage of the Émeraude. Details of these antics are available on You Tube to challenge the routine secrecy protocols of the Australian Government. The number of public relations videos available on these issues is too trivial to list and is readily available to readers.
Hopefully, the results in Aston will encourage a new phase of policy independence in Canberra against the self-perceived wisdom of intel and military insiders in Canberra and financial policy advisers who are still locked into the mindset of the Morrison Government and hopes of a New Anglo American Britannia which takes the world back to the age of King George III and his successor George IV whose logo still appears on the Commissariat Store in Brisbane right next to the Policy HQ of the Queensland Government at 1 William Street.
Cubic signed up to the first Go Card deal with the Q Government at least sixteen years ago. Cubic seems to be permanently in the loop of maintaining less than high technology equipment which often requires two card swipes particularly on train networks in Brisbane and SEQ to activate the ticketing system.
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