I just heard Bill Shorten and Joe Hockey huffing and puffing with Neil Mitchell on 3AW this morning. What bluff and bluster – and didn’t the public see it for what it was!
Maybe if we ignore the curious definition of unemployment, 5.1% is better than 5.2%, but the rapidity of announcements of job layoffs in the Australian economy suggests this is about as good as it’s going to get.
The call should NOT be to cut wages and penalty rates to save jobs, but to abolish income tax.
I like the way Australian governments claim they created the employment that occurs under their watch, and that “we now have more people employed in Australia than at any time in history”. That wouldn’t have anything to do with our growing population would it, Bill?
All right, the economic settings governments provide DO either obstruct or assist the creation of jobs, but it’s mainly ‘obstruct’ at the moment and, as Joe Hockey volunteered on the show, the Liberal Party “has agreed with 85%” of what the minority Labor government has done.
Importantly, both need reminding that the income tax and the GST–on which each of the major parties do agree– savagely restrict job creation.
However, lest I be seen as one of those Bill Shorten accuses of “talking the economy down” it’s NOT as though there are no alternatives to income tax.
In 2003 former Treasury tax expert Dr Terry Dwyer demonstrated “that land-based revenues are indeed sufficient to allow total abolition of company and personal income tax.” (The Taxable Capacity of Australian Land and Resources, Australian Tax Forum, Vol 18 No.1)
This was followed by (then) Treasury Secretary Ken Henry’s inquiry into Australia’s Future Tax System which in 2010 recommended that more than one hundred taxes be abolished and greater emphasis be given to drawing more revenues from the annual values of land and natural resources.
The proposal for a federal land tax so that an array of inefficient taxes could be abolished went down like a lead balloon with both major parties. This would never suit the 1% who can claw back the income taxes they pay via the uplift in their property (read land) values!
Both parties disavowed the idea vehemently. They didn’t seem to mind that whereas a land tax aids job creation, income taxes work against it.
Wouldn’t the abolition of company tax assist Qantas, Alcoa, the car manufacturers, banks and others who are putting people off, Joe and Bill? Wouldn’t the abolition of personal income tax assist Australia’s debt-ridden householders?
Why the broad, knowing grins at this suggestion, guys? Not possible? Or is it rather that the big boys (and girls) might have to pay their fair share and might spend up big (like the miners) to defeat it? They won’t have to if you simply accede to them, will they?
These are deflationary times and BIG reforms are needed, guys, not the pissant sort of stuff with which you’re both going on!
The film, “Real Estate 4 Ransom” claims Australia could replace company tax and income tax with an all-in 6% levy on its site values.
Colleague Dr Gavin Putland references his financial stability contour map to confirm that a 6% levy on all site values “would certainly be enough to prevent these destructive bubbles”.
And he continues, finding further evidence to suggest Australia’s GDP is heading for a decline [2nd chart].
C’mon, Bill Shorten and Joe Hockey, this is now far too serious for your mindless party politics!
