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Day to Day Politics: Pardon my cynicism

Friday 27 2018

The Government would have us believe the economy is in such fine shape, that despite adding 5 million dollars a day to the national debt, it can afford to drop the tax, in the form of a levy, on Medicare. Sorry for that. It has saved 5 billion on something that didn’t exist. It’s a bit of a Claytons tax on tax approach that was never going to pass the Senate.

The Government is already throwing out signals that this will be a giveaway budget, full of goodies to bribe the electorate into believing that after almost six years we have made a remarkable recovery without doing anything. We will even return to a surplus on time. It’s enough to get you dancing in the streets.

I find that a bit hard to digest. It is only a short time ago that they were telling us the economy was a cot-case. A disaster of the first order. Remember how they drove around in a truck with a dial indicating that we were at the abyss of a global meltdown.

How has this remarkable turnaround been achieved and how can we drop the Medicare levy and still pay for the cost of administering the NDIS. Well, we don’t know and we won’t know until the budget. But of course cynical minds like my own would question if the available funding for the NDIS will be adequate for its needs. There are many in the sector who say no. At the moment the Finance Department has an employment cap on them.

I think we can now be assured that we are heading toward an election in August/September of 2018. John Howard always had enough money to buy his election wins. We will be able to afford it all plus the huge tax cuts to the businesses who don’t pay tax and those who break the law to ensure they maximise profits.

Undoubtedly we will be subjected to a barrage of self-congratulatory words from the likes of those ministers with the loudest mouths and the fastest tongues.

“We are now in a position to give our guarantee to Australians living with a disability and their families and carers that all planned expenditure on the NDIS will be able to be met in this year’s budget and beyond without any longer having to increase the Medicare levy. This is the benefit that comes from a stronger economy,” Morrison will tell Australian Business Economists in Sydney.

One has to really wonder if, had the levy already been imposed, would the taxpayer have enjoyed a conservative government dropping it? I wonder. Anyhow, the politics will now open up.

The other thing to consider is that a levy would have guaranteed the NDIS funding. Now it is year to year.

Had the levy come into being at 0.5% then every Australian earning over $21,655, would have felt the effect but this is improbable because the government looked unlikely to secure Senate support to legislate it.

“Labor moved in budget week last year to say it would only support an increase for workers in the top two tax brackets – people earning more than $87,000 – despite the fact that it levied a similar universal increase when in government.”

“The opposition is also proposing to keep a 2% deficit levy first imposed by the Coalition in the 2014 budget applying to earnings above $180,000, which the government has moved to scrap.”

I am now looking forward to Scott Morisson’s budget speech in which all this wizardry will then be revealed. If it is all as good as they are telling us then two things interest me. One is how did he do it and two, what’s in it for me?

My thought for the day:

People need to wake up to the fact that government affects every part of their life (other than what they do in bed) and should be more interested. But there is a political malaise that is deep-seated.

 

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22 comments

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  1. lawrencewinder

    What a dreadful thought, another 3 years of these charlatans running the country down….. brrrrr.

  2. New Englnad Cocky

    Bring on the election, the longer that procrastinate the larger the loss.

    On the NDIS (a little off topic) … I am getting feedback that the NDIS is a gift to providers rather than a service to recipients as originally intended. A friend has been advised that providers determine what the NDIS moneys may be expended upon, rather than the recipients. Also this appears to be a very top heavy cost ineffective model to transfer NDIS payments to providers rather than provide the services required by recipients. May be worth a detailed look.

  3. Graham Parton

    John, your article says “John Howard always has enough money to buy his election wins”. Surely you mean Malcolm Turnbull?

  4. Terry2

    It seems that it was pointed out to Morrison that to push on with a .5% increase in personal income tax while at the same time pushing for a $65 billion cut in company taxes and whilst foreshadowing a reduction in income tax in the May budget made absolutely no sense.

    He must have given it some deep thought and realized that you can’t fool most of the people most of the time and he backed off.

    PS : This has nothing to do with the NDIS !

  5. Egalitarian

    They are full of shit as they want privatise parts of the NDIS. Everything the LNP do runs through the prism of privatisation ideology profiteering.

  6. ajogrady

    My cynicism or more pointedly, my belief, is that the L/NP can see the NDIS as a cash cow to the providers who in turn will donate handsomely to the L/NP coffers at election time so as to keep the gravy train rolling for the providers while the recipients struggle. A perfect example was the destruction of the Commonwealth Employment Service. The only ones happy with the resulting service is the providers.

  7. Aichsv

    LNP’s privatisation of Government Services (our services) looks to me like Pyramiding. I thought it had been outlawed!

  8. Henry Rodrigues

    The date of the election, sometime in August/September seems to be spot on. I was having a chat with a dyed in the wool coalition voter and he’s already practicing the coalition lines about taxes, welfare, and excuses for the bankers etc. Also they’re going to target Bill Shorten and the Unions, big time. Everyone’s noticed the huge spending on government ads about payments to families and home affordability continuously, for the last 2 months. Turdball has realised he cannot delay it any longer and that its either the people’s judgement or Abbott’s. Either way, its about time.

    And the banking Royal Commission just rolls on.

  9. Ricardo29

    As with Medicare, the LNP can never be trusted with the NDIS. They are mostly ideologically opposed to, as with so many other things had to be dragged kicking and screaming to it while also scheming about howto givethe best bits to the private sector. Clearly they have learnt no lessons from all of the market force disasters of recent years including the ongoing banking RC. Put the LNP last, and I really hope we get a chance todo that sooner rather than later. The way MoMScoMo is talking we are, as John suggests, in for a pre-election budget, I hope there is broad cynicism out there.

  10. Egalitarian

    They may give Kelly O’Dwyer an overseas posting during the election.

  11. Steve Ellery

    Cynic 2 . In my small home town in the blue mountains the NDIS is the very example that should be used to investigate (royal commission)why the recipients lose out and the providers win.e.g.the local taxi service used to carry several recipients to and from their place of work in a taxi bus.since NDIS has been put in place the support industry in question has bought its own bus and is charging the recipients 3 times the taxi service cost.

  12. Kronomex

    Short reply to Morriscum and his magic accounting: It’s a bullshit budget from a bullshit party and gubmint!

  13. wam

    The point of debt is a perception the rabbott used the huge numbers involved to frighten enough of the labor workers into believing the misconception that labor is the spender sending ‘our money’ down the union, welfare and public service drains.
    The comparison lies in the lies that were perpetuated by the lnp not the debt. The orwellian labor debt baad our debt gooood.works
    The previous lnp sold the airports and wow we pay, they sold telstra and wowwowow we pay
    This mob sold the cashless welfare card at an administration cost $10000 each?

    Sadly the malaise is, as your thought suggests, the result of indifference. We are rich so who cares about how we maintain that status? Newton’s first law is vital to success in politics and the ability to apply a force invariably applies to the lnp through their manipulation of the media which lasts until the %@^&@ up is monumental.

    The majority of voters on my non-family facebook are indifferent and share anti-‘left’ racist, sexist posts from far right groups in England and USA. They happily believe that labor is economically challenged, hanson tells the truth and howard was the best prime minister we had since menzies essential research poll confirms with howard at 34% hawke second with 13%)
    Can bill overcome indifference?? I think not but miracles like birthday cakes happen?

    ps NEC
    Given the history, who would not expect the NTDIS administration to be a windfall for twigs from the lnp tree?

  14. stephengb2014

    Interesting comments – which keep reminding me that the truth is often hard to see.

    I honestly believe that big business, the rich, the multinationals the political elites like Hawke, Howard, Keating, and other high flying pollies, are only too aware that the federal government niether has money nor doesn’t have money, it creates as much money as it needs at any one time.

    Never mind MMT.

    When does a dollar become a dollar? The federal black box.

  15. Rhonda

    Same thing happened to the aged care sector. The Coalition opened it up to the private market and now it’s a mess with all the providers wanting a piece of the Federal pie, and giving big f*cks to the elderly recipients. A huge barrel of dollars mostly lost to corporate administration costs. Good for business, I s’pose

  16. Florence nee Fedup

    Any single mother relying on benefits will tell you the government is very interested in what one does in bed.

  17. Dale

    “aged care sector. The Coalition opened it up to the private market and now it’s a mess”
    So true Rhonda, through privatization, the LNP has become nothing more than a job provider for the corporate class…

  18. eefteeuu

    Icing on the cake before the next Fed. election would be a Royal Commission into the Australian Taxation Dept.

  19. David Stakes

    NDIS will be flogged off to the highest bidder can see it coming a mile off.

  20. king1394

    Serco to run NDIS contact centres.

  21. Glenn Barry

    gotta love sky fairy scotty, also gotta wonder how messed up your thinking has to be to believe a single damned thing he says

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