The New Daily reported that Emma Alberici has succeeded in getting the ABC to repost her ‘analysis’ of the Turnbull government’s tax cut plans with the help of lawyers. Essentially, the ABC has had to concede that Ms Alberici’s article was factually correct and that, by removing it, they have impugned her reputation.
The latest Alberici analysis more forcefully questions the claims made by Mr Morrison that by lowering the Australian corporate tax rate from 30 per cent to 25 per cent there would be a direct flow-on to wage growth.
The evidence to support Emma’s analysis is overwhelming.
In November last year, the NAB announced a full year profit of $6.64b at the same time that it announced it will cut 6,000 jobs over the next three years,
Today, Qantas reported a record $976 million profit for the December half. So are their staff getting a pay rise? No, unless you are the CEO. Alan Joyce received almost $25 million, a 90% jump in remuneration from his 2016 take home pay of $12.9m as a reward for increasing the airline’s share price.
Shareholders will benefit from an interim dividend of 7¢ a share and the company will conduct an on-market share buyback.
Qantas will not, as usual, be paying any tax on its profits due to our very generous deductions rules.
It’s not only wage growth that has fallen behind. Costs continue to soar.
We hear a great deal about how energy prices are contributing to cost of living pressures, but the cost keeps going up despite record profits.
AGL made massive half-year profits of more than $622 million, up 91 per cent on the previous year, but policy uncertainty means new investment in energy is on hold, so this privatised market is getting away with charging consumers more and more.
Origin Energy, whilst making a statutory loss which was “significantly impacted by non-cash impairment charges”, whatever that means, announced they had delivered a $1 billion reduction in debt.
Official statistics released a couple of weeks ago show the pre-tax profits of private health insurers increased by 7.3 per cent in the 12 months to 2017 – raking in $1.86 billion before tax. At the same time, out-of-pocket costs continue to rise and Australians are being forced to dump their cover.
Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison and our fourth-in-line reserve PM, Matthias Corman, can continue to say that company tax cuts will make us all better off, but all the evidence is against them.
I know they don’t like facts, as shown by the ridiculous complaints about the Alberici article, but this policy is a lemon that even the naivest rusted-on government apologist cannot make a case for.
Perhaps if companies had some integrity, perhaps if they remembered the value of investing in the society that makes them their profits, perhaps if they admitted that it is demand which drives jobs growth rather than corporate profit, perhaps if they shared the largesse with the workers without whom they would produce nothing, it might be reasonable to say let’s help them make more so they share the wealth.
But that ain’t the way it works.
Businesses fight to reduce wages so their CEOs and shareholders (usually foreign) can make more money.
If they continue in this way, the system will face inevitable collapse. We either pay workers a fair share of production profits, or we go back to slavery… or the people revolt.
Now is the time when every worker should be remembering the collective power of organised labour and every voter should be taking seriously their responsibility to inform themselves and to hold our politicians to account.
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