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Will Pauline be bullied into changing her mind?


The government is going to try to push through its company tax cuts in the next two weeks and requires the support of One Nation to do it.

To date, Pauline had said no, but she has been subjected to a concentrated campaign by the business community.

A few days ago, Simon Benson reported that five-minute video petitions from the Business Council of Australia and the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia, shot in Townsville, and clearly aimed at One Nation, have been sent to all Senate crossbenchers.

The business lobby also held three days of talks with local businesses in Cairns and Townsville to localise the impact on jobs.

So will Pauline cave-in?

Who can ever tell.

On her facebook page, Pauline has gone into overdrive about Labor’s planned changes to excess franking credits refunds.

“LABORS CUTS TO PENSIONERS – OVER MY DEAD BODY!”

Yet in 2016, she sang a different tune.

Hansen said successive governments, in a bid to win votes, had allowed welfare to become a way of life rather than a helping hand and “tough decisions” were needed.

“If we are going to be able to, in the future, support those who are truly in need, like the sick or the aged, we’ve got to do something about it now,” she said.

“I want the money to be put into hospital waiting lists and schools. Infrastructure in this country is ridiculous.”

This was in explanation to the budget cuts proposed by the government and supported by One Nation.

They included: $2.9 billion in Family Tax Benefit end-of-year supplements; $1.3 billion carbon tax compensation for future welfare recipients; $1.2 billion by stopping the “double dipping” of paid parental leave; and $600 million in assorted measures including freezing eligibility thresholds, ending a pensioners education supplement and making dole recipients wait a period before receiving payments.

Senator Hansen said the government should go even harder, suggesting the wait period for the dole should be 3 months, and there should be a tougher approach to the disability support pension, including biennial reviews of all recipients by government-certified doctors to ensure the pension was warranted.

For Pauline, it was all about budget repair.

“Right across the board, not only in welfare, I see a big waste of money and we actually have to rein it back in.”

Perhaps Pauline doesn’t quite understand the proposed changes to franking credit refunds or perhaps she has changed her mind about welfare going to those that needed it.

But if she still cares about budget repair, will she accept Matthias Cormann’s sales pitch, or will she see a cost of $65 billion for no assured gain?

Cormann is really pushing hard.

“Families around Australia wanting to get ahead need their Senate to pass our business tax cuts for all businesses in full,” Senator Cormann said. “Their future job opportunities, job security and wage increases depend on more businesses being more successful and more profitable into the future.

“We can’t put our businesses at a competitive disadvantage compared to the businesses from other parts of the world. This is commonsense, plain and simple. Bill Shorten has been blinded by his adoption of socialist ideology and is putting his extreme and reckless views ahead of what is in the best interests of our economy.”

Why does no-one ever stop him to say our average rate is 17% and our effective rate is 10.7%, making us already very competitive. Our overly generous allowable deductions and ‘legal’ tax loopholes result in many companies paying no tax.

It isn’t the tax rate that attracts investment here, as foreign companies keep explaining, with much of our foreign investment coming from countries who already have lower company tax rates than ours.

Unless companies raise dividends, it will only be foreign shareholders who benefit from a cut in our company tax as Australian shareholders will have to make up the difference in income tax. And if companies raise dividends, then how can they afford to raise wages as well?

So how much of this can Pauline absorb? Will she be strong enough to resist the very concentrated pressure? Will they win her support by promising to only let white Christians migrate here?

My guess? White South African farmers should book their tickets.

14 comments

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  1. Ricardo29

    Sadly, Pauline Hanson is both economically illiterate, and biased against the poor and needy. I imagine that, as a former small business person, she will be beguiled by the government’s proposed business tax cuts on the basis of perceived self interest. But I wonder how she can justify supporting the proposition that someone who pays no tax, but has a swag of shares, is entitled to a cash gift from the taxpayers.it’s the same as the question about negative gearing: why should taxpayers help someone buy an investment property? I give Labor points for this latest policy but Pauline might be too ideologically blinded, or too susceptible to Matthias Cormann’s honeyed tongue, to support it.

  2. babyjewels10

    So they’re working hard on her. What is Labor doing to counter that? A few token words? Shaking their heads? Nothing? Hmmm.

  3. Kyran

    Bullied? No. It may, however, be negotiated. What are the penalties for non disclosure about gifts and ownership of aircraft and all those other tedious things?

    https://www.sbs.com.au/news/hanson-declares-one-nation-received-30-000-in-free-flights

    You can just imagine the conversation now between Hanson and the Belgian. Isn’t he still the ‘Special Minister of State? You know, the “portfolio responsible for various parliamentary, electoral, financial, public service and oversight affairs.”
    Not that they would ever contemplate such a thing, right?
    Thank you Ms Lee. Take care

  4. Kronomex

    Pauline has a mind?

  5. New England Cocky

    “Right across the board, not only in welfare, I see a big waste of money and we actually have to rein it back in.”

    Perhaps Poorlean will vote against the about $150 BILLION PER YEAR government payments to the undeserving wealthy and corporates currently gifted free, gratis and for nothing. But is that likely when James Ashby’s Only Nutters Party are reliant upon financial donations form corporations??

  6. Jaquix

    If Pauline caves, she loses a lot of credibility with the battlers. The bus will have to be renamed! The Business Bus!.

  7. jimhaz

    She has already caved in or doesn’t need to as her and Ashby are really Liberals anyway. Her problem is that she does not know how to explain it to her supporters.

  8. diannaart

    Pauline Hanson another clueless politician being courted by big business. Nothing unusual there, if she was a part of the LNP fold instead of leading her own rabble party, she wouldn’t even stand out in anyway at all.

    As for explaining to the battlers if she caves, Hanson has never explained her decisions to her supporters in the past, why would she start now?

  9. Kaye Lee

    On 1 January 2017, more than 330,000 Age Pensioners had their Age Pension entitlements cut, with at least 100,000 of those affected Australians losing all Age Pension entitlements due to changes to the assets test. Also, new pensioners no longer get the energy supplement to help them pay their power bills. Pauline voted for all this so spare me the belated concern. The shareholders she will ‘die’ to protect ALL have higher income than someone whose sole income is the aged pension.

  10. Terry2

    Pauline won’t be bullied bit she will be bribed !

  11. Kaye Lee

    Pauline recites the script she is fed. Another of her facebook threads….

    “Bill Shorten says that Labor’s victory in the by-election of Batman gives them the green light to pursue his policy of cutting over 600,000 part pensioner payments.

    Couple that with Labor’s election promise over the weekend in South Australia to implement a 75% renewable energy target within 7 years and something tells me we’re in for a world of hurt if this bloke becomes Prime Minister with the help of his mates in the Greens.”

  12. Pierre Wilkinson

    Never the one to allow facts to curtail a good opinion or influence a discourse is our Pauline, and the media can rely on her to state something outlandish whenever Labor announce anything decent, or the COALition gets caught in the spotlights again for its’ arrant nonsense of a government. Just look what the incoming Tassie and S.A. Liberals are promising on the environment, or the lack thereof.

  13. ace Jones

    people who vote for hanson need immediate psychiatric help, is there any money for that …
    what a millstone around Australia’s neck she be

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