March 20, 2015 | Graham

Nothing tough about trade-him-in Tony anymore



Tony Abbott has been portrayed as too tough and unfeeling by his enemies for as long as he’s been in parliament. This is wrong. Despite his obvious exercise discipline what we’re seeing at the moment is a Pavlova – brittle on the outside and soft in.

If Abbott were tough then he would not now be saying that a debt to GDP ratio of 50 or 60 per cent was acceptable compared to other countries. This is the fat farm argument. “I might be obese, but it’s OK because I’m nowhere near as obese as that loser over there.”

As a food Nazi Abbott should have sniffed this non sequitur out faster than a carb hidden in the salad.

By his own words he is fulfilling predictions that Australia is on the path to Greece, and given up on the mandate he was given at the last election.

If Abbott were tough then he wouldn’t have apologised for his perfectly acceptable remark that Bill Shorten is the “Dr Goebbels of economic policy”.

The furore is nothing more than confected outrage and the politics of social exclusion, as practiced by the Left on a daily basis via social media. It should have been called out as such. You can’t beat bullying by rolling over to the bullies.

Since when have Nazi references been out of bounds? Must have just happened yesterday, because Andrew Bolt has a long list of Labor Party figures using them. And there is that Holocaust inspired term of derision they throw around “climate deniers”.

(And I bet most of you read my Nazi quip higher up without even noticing it.)

If Abbott were tough Peter Credlin would be gone, and probably her husband, Federal Liberal Party Director Brian Loughnane as well.

Revelations that Loughnane resisted showing employment contracts to Liberal Party Treasurer Philip Higginson are, to put it mildly, mind-boggling. Not only did Higginson have a right to see that information, but the whole federal executive should also have been aware of it. Loughnane’s passive aggression was outrageous.

That Abbott demanded Higginson resign suggests that either Abbott does not get corporate governance, or  that he was pressured into it by his office. If he were tough he would never have demanded Higginson go, and now that Credlin has made herself the story, he would also demand her resignation (or engineer it).

If Abbott were tough there would be a long list of double dissolution triggers, and he would actually stand for something.

I no longer think Tony can survive. All the doubts I had when I read his book Battlelines have resurfaced. His backbench and cabinet will be reading a different script, but I think coming to the same conclusion.

And when I think of it Battlelines has all the problems I’m seeing in its author. It looks tough on the cover, but inside is an incoherent blanc mange of inconsistent ideas, none of which could be described as a “battleline”.

I don’t know who the replacement will be, but Abbott has done his dash. At least, unlike Kevin Rudd, he has been allowed to do it in public. When he is replaced, people won’t be asking why.

It is time to trade the PM in.



Posted by Graham at 7:55 am | Comments (24) |

24 Comments

  1. im in a agreement Graham. Abbots Govt seemed very tough and even mean initially, but there is no strong leadership to back it up. We need another Malcolm.

    Comment by Andrew Coates — March 20, 2015 @ 11:28 am

  2. If Abbott were tough he would have ‘shirt-fronted’ the Coalition’s plutocratic supporters by instituting a review of their various tax concessions and numerous rorts. Perhaps he could have eliminated middle class welfare as well.
    However, because he isn’t tough he decided to attack the most vulnerable in our society under the camouflage of a phoney “budget crisis’, expecting that the plebs wouldn’t notice, they did.

    Comment by RussellW — March 20, 2015 @ 3:07 pm

  3. Well Graham, at least we can agree on the last line.
    Alan B. Goulding.

    Comment by Alan B. Goulding — March 21, 2015 @ 9:47 am

  4. Thanks to Abbott haters, such as the supposedly unbiased ABC and the Fairfax rags persisting with attacks on Abbott, many of his parliamentary colleagues got weak knees and pleaded that Abbott change direction. So change direction, Abbott has. He realistically has backed down on implementing yet-to-be -passed 2014 Budget deficit-cutting measures. But this still does not please the media attack dogs – it the truth be known, nothing that Abbott does as Prime Minister will please them.

    The Green-Left media will be pleased only if Abbott is deposed as leader. They know that this would destabilise the Government, as there is no one else – whether it be Turnbull, Bishop, Morrison or anyone else – capable of turning around the Coalition’s fortunes in the next 18 months and convincing enough voters to win the next election.

    Journos have forgotten how badly the Coalition fared in the opinion polls when Malcolm was opposition leader. Malcolm did not endear voters with his unjustified support for Rudd’s ETS; nor did he endear them with his progressiveness, viz. his support for same-sex ‘marriage’. Journos also have forgotten that Julie Bishop was shadow treasurer, and had to step down due to dissatisfaction over her performance. Besides, she appears to be a dedicated climate alarmist, keen for Australia to contribute to the UN climate fund.

    Comment by Rayvic — March 22, 2015 @ 11:14 am

  5. We need something besides a change of leaders.

    The best salesman in the world will remain ineffectual when it comes to the current direction and suite of unpalatable and arguably counterproductive policies.

    Questions need to be addressed.

    Why don’t the CONSERVATIVES have another idea besides squeezing the most vulnerable even further/selling the family farm and the family silver?

    It’s almost as if they just don’t get that our punch drunk domestic economy, is almost totally reliant on our discretionary spending; and that the only effective way to increase that, is via the bottom of the socio economic ladder!

    As anyone with a still functioning brain, will understand, those able to afford everything they want of need now, aren’t the ones who will increase their discretionary spending!

    What we don’t need into the howling teeth of a large contraction, is contractionary policies!

    What we do need is a mechanism to revitalize manufacturing and selling/exporting more than we buy from the rest of the world!

    We need to ship iron where we now ship iron ore, aluminum where we now ship bauxite or alum; and value add almost everywhere else.

    We should still be making cars and as RHD electric vehicles for a very large niche market. And given the economies of scale that would confer, truly affordable electric cars here at home!

    We lead the world in molded carbon fibre, and could reinvigorate our manufacturing industries, if we would but roll out cheaper than coal thorium, which if coupled to micro-grids, is able to provide electricity for literally half that we now pay; and for things like Aluminium smelting and one step direct reduction steel making.

    And assisted by some long overdue real tax reform/massive simplification! As opposed to, see no reform, hear no reform, speak no reform!

    Nobody anywhere could compete with arc furnaces running on electricity costing less than that provided by hydro schemes, which still have to cope with transmission line losses, their particular Achilles heel; as is enduring droughts; neither of which is a problem for the aforementioned, cheaper than coal thorium/micro-grid model.

    And we alone remain the only nation with (unaffordable)negative gearing; and only retained you’d believe, cause just too many pollies have their noses plunged trotter deep into this particular trough.

    And truth be known, that’s also the reason we give such generous (unaffordable) tax breaks to the high end of the super spectrum!

    And most people remain gobsmacked, when they finally understand the cost of collecting our tax, remains around 40% of it? [Apparently reported ATO figures?]

    The only idea they the CONSERVATIVES ( arguably intellectual cripples incapable of thinking outside the box) ever had with regard to 95% of Australian corporations off-shoring their operations, was to hit us with the Granny killing GST?

    And this almost more than anything demonstrates the absolute paucity of their ideas!? And those on the other side of the isle, arguably no better or very different!?

    And all consumed with one single goal, to polish treasury bench leather?

    Incredibly, we’re allegedly short of money and will need to run a deficit from here to eternity? Why?

    Well because we remain welded to the present costly and complicated system of collecting tax. Replete with all of its costly complexity and and unproductive parasitical practice; like a great big ball and chain on the ankle of an economy that needs to start to run!

    We’re constantly told we going to have to pay more tax! Why?

    Because nobody on either side of politics has the stomach to introduce real reform!

    Otherwise real reform would fix what has been broken for many a year.

    We don’t need to sell the farm to china!

    We don’t need a conga line of foreign investors picking the eyes out of our still profitable enterprises; or making housing even more unaffordable. Besides, there’s far more real money to be made with volume, than margins that just make a staple of life inherently unaffordable!

    We don’t need to sit idly by while ideologues bereft of any new ideas, sit on their hands; and or, run the country into the ground/privatize anything not nailed down; and okay they think, because they’ll still be okay; and you can fool some of the people all of the time!?

    They’ll still take home great big pay packets, ride around in plush limos, smoke big fat expensive cigars and wax lyrical how much they love this country and her poeples.

    And while Abbot has been exposed as being limited to bull terrier opposition; that no longer works when you’re the PM!

    Replacing him will only work if there’s a better explanation of why there’s no other better course/policy paradigms!?

    And given that claim remains a logical absurdity, an impossible ask of the new salesperson, whoever it is, but particularly and patently, another tin eared intellectual cripple, unable or totally unwilling to think outside the square!?

    If management teaches just one thing, it teaches there’s always a better way, but only for those prepared to admit they’re not the suppositories of all wisdom, and remain open to new or fresh ideas!

    Particularly, when what’s on the table just isn’t working or worse, sending us backward faster than we came forward.

    And remaining welded to the nanny nipple of foreign capital can only ever exacerbate an already dreadful debt and deficit debacle!

    Borrow money by all means, always providing there’s a strategy in place to repay it; like say 30 year self-terminating bonds, that get as much income earning infrastructure built as we can actually build! Rapid rail, a national shipping line that quite massively assists exportation.

    I mean, bulk freight forwarding remains almost the most profitable enterprise on earth; and automation, ensures we can do it at a handsome profit; or enable increased and competitively priced exports, not also carrying an unduly large freight bill, courtesy of FOREIGN carriers!

    And couldn’t our ship yards benefit enormously from continuous operations and therefore, enabling us to reduce costs and retain all our hard-won world beating expertise [CAD and automated Plasma cutting] in this area?

    On again off again production, the only reason our own ship yards may be noncompetitive!? And down to the government of the day! Even someone as conservative as John Howard understood that!

    But no, the manifest intellectual cripples charged with fixing things, endlessly repeat the nonsense that the government has no business in business!

    [Why don’t you just rule out the only viable solution before you start, huh!?]

    And untrue, except when applied to clueless incompetents, who definitely have no business in business; or indeed, at the helm of corporate Australia.

    As others would have endlessly noted, doing what you’ve always done, only ever gets you what you’ve always got!

    And anyone who thinks our future lays in becoming a service economy for Asia, has to have “manure” for brains, or was asleep at the wheel when the last GFC hit; and missed how those service economies were the first to go and fell the hardest.

    Whereas, manufacturing economies like Germany, just kept trucking along and still making a quid!

    It’s just not Abbott that needs changing, but the very mindset that made him seem a credible leader!

    No you can’t has to be replaced by, yes we can; and virtually everywhere; but particularly, government owned and operated essential service!

    And a very desirable change from business killing price gouging privateers!
    Alan B. Goulding.

    Comment by Alan B. Goulding — March 23, 2015 @ 12:31 pm

  6. Alan,

    “Why don’t the CONSERVATIVES have another idea besides squeezing the most vulnerable even further/selling the family farm and the family silver?”

    Because the clique currently running the Liberal Party has the ‘One Big Idea’, i.e. the introduction of neoliberal policies that appear to have been imported as a package deal from the US. They really don’t have a Plan B as they are so arrogant that they expected that the voters would be conned by the scare campaign.

    What the country needs–

    (1) is a return to the nation-building ethos that, despite ideological differences, was once accepted by both major parties, these days, politicians fawn over trans-national corporations and hope for the best.

    (2) Indicative planning.

    We’re in much the same economic situation ( directed by a second-rate, political and industrial ‘elite’) as when Donald Horne wrote the “Lucky Country” 50 years ago.

    Comment by RussellW — March 23, 2015 @ 1:57 pm

  7. Alan B Goulding: “And most people remain gobsmacked, when they finally understand the cost of collecting our tax, remains around 40% of it? [Apparently reported ATO figures?]”
    You would do everyone a service by tabling the actual document title/reference, so that we could access it and read it for ourselves.

    Comment by Rayvic — March 23, 2015 @ 2:53 pm

  8. Of course Abbott is happy with a GDP to debt ratio of 50-60% because he now realises that with the China boom over and all our Govt Banks being sold off, the debt is almost impossible to pay off.

    Our banks borrow from the central banks at a cash rate of 2.25% and loan it out on mortgages at 5-6%.The real rate of inflation is 7% so how can they make profits on mortgages? Part of the answer is their gambling in derivatives which are 6 times the value of our mortgages and higher interest on credit cards and unsecured business loans. This system is doomed to failure.

    Since 1970 the real rate of inflation has been an average of 7%.When we went off the gold standard banks went into overdrive on money printing. Remember inflation is created as debt by private banks.

    7% inflation in a linear fashion over 10 yrs is a 70% loss of currency value, but inflation compounds like interest and the real rate of inflation after 10 yrs is 97%.Since 1970 till now we have had compounded inflation of 2000% or our currency has gone down 20 times in value. A beer in a pub in 1970 used to cost 25 cents,now it is more than 20 times this amount.

    So if we have growth of 3% and inflation of 7% we have to increase net exports by 4% to pay for the debt created from nothing by our banking system.

    Yes Greece here we come because when growing inflation is created as debt, our banks must exponentially create more debt today, to pay for the debt of yesterday. This is why interest rates cannot rise. The central bankers will print our currencies to oblivion and offer us a new global currency either via the IMF or through China and the BRICS nations.

    Comment by Ross — March 23, 2015 @ 6:15 pm

  9. Rayvic, refer you to another poster,Kirby 483 and amounts he apparently got from an official ATO site.

    And apparently includes all the ATO outgoings and not just a 0.9% collection fee?

    Now you may think the cost of those operations comes from another source of funds? However I don’t; and 40 cents in the dollar is somewhere around 150 billion out of around 350 billion; which is reported as the total tax tax?

    Conversely, 5% collected as an entirely unavoidable expenditure tax levied against a 1.6 trillion dollar economy, just happens to be around 380 billions, or around 30 billions more than the reported total tax take. [see official department figures for the current total tax take.]

    And given we used the model envisaged, [did you even bother to read and completely comprehend it before tying to smother it stillborn,] there’d be no ATO outgoings, because there’d would be an ATO.

    Nor would there need to be a 7% hole ripped out of the average bottom line as compliance costs, given they would just not be needed!

    As I said, and seem to have to repeat, 5% out or taken, and 7% returned! seems like a good deal to me!

    You might not like it, but I’ll warrant every small business prop with a still functioning brain will consider that a pretty good deal and long overdue reform!

    Simply put we just cannot go on running deficits till the cows come home, nor can we reduce essential spending.

    Very few cried foul when we jettisoned the textile and footwear industry, and or the 60,000 jobs it used to provide to many in the lower socio sector.

    There’s no sacred cows or free lunches, or people owed an income or a job for life!

    But some will scream like wounded bulls when you tell them the tax practice jobs just aren’t sacrosanct.

    Besides those often serious number crunching skills would serve us far better inside a brand new franchised peoples’ bank, and tasked with the job of placing the venture capital with new ideas and applications; and our best people.

    And simply put, if the local tax practitioner doesn’t know who had the business smarts in the community, then who would?

    However, if you just don’t think my idea is worth more than a hill of beans, then the challenge remains open for you to place on the table a better more open and transparent system?

    Look, 95% of corporate Australia has offshored their operations, mostly to save some tax, albeit those savings are purchased by the creation of a big black hole in the bottom line!

    And around 40% of our guest transnationals, [according to Bob Hawke and at his tax summit,] apparently pay no company tax to anyone?

    And guess what; what they don’t pay has to be made good by the few remaining local yokels, who just can’t avoid their tax bill!

    And here we could be discussing some entities/avoiders, with larger annual budgets than many a sovereign nation.

    I take it from the tone, tenor and timbre of your (professional) disbelieving response, you don’t see any of that as significant or in need of essential overdue reform?

    Why? Something to do with your current income stream and or bank balance perhaps?
    Alan B. Goulding.

    Comment by Alan B. Goulding — March 23, 2015 @ 6:38 pm

  10. Sorry one and all and correction; where I said there would be an ATO, should be read as there wouldn’t be an ATO!
    Alan B. Goulding.

    Comment by Alan B. Goulding — March 23, 2015 @ 7:29 pm

  11. Now some will claim that if faced with the prospect of an unavoidable tax, they will promptly offshore their operations!

    Ha ha, good luck with that spurious claim, given 95% of corporate Australia has already offshored their operations; and would be hard pressed to offshore already offshored operations.

    Others don’t like my ideas because they prevent current sharp practice; like say, sending of the same sum of money through several subsidiaries, in order to cook the books/create a false image/impression of cash flow activity or outgoings to avoid tax or insolvency/screw lenders?

    [So if you can’t destroy the argument then destroy the man making it! And haven’t I already run that gauntlet!]

    Now, given an unavoidable levy would apply to each one of these movements and say they were at least seven such transactions?

    Bogus as they may well be, they would still pay the expenditure tax with each transaction; and in effect, find themselves paying a 35% tax bill, just to move money between company accounts.

    And only possible because the ATO and the banking fraternity treats each subsidiary as an individual entity rather than the conglomerate the example envisaged would be!

    And those that create a subsidiary in a tax haven then charge themselves exorbitant service fees, would pay also; and with every international transfer or remittance!

    So you can see, there’s not just a few sharp practices that would go, but most if not all current avoidance, because instead of avoiding tax, current sharp practice would undeniably increase it.
    I mean, why do you think I and my ideas come under such unremitting attack!?

    Even so, the honest toiler, would pay considerably less if we collected all our tax via this simple single unavoidable method!

    The average household would be better off by around an estimated 25%, if my tax regime were adopted as envisaged; meaning, a 15% non contributory super would be immediately doable, as soon as all the other tax measures were jettisoned.

    And freed from the totality of all other tax business would be vastly better off! Can’t died in a cornfield over a century ago!

    In fact we would become the lowest tax destination every boy and his dog heads for; which would have to include millions of self funded retirees and many corporations.

    Anyway, the honey pot could be made considerably sweeter, if we coupled the lowest tax paradigm to the world’s cheapest energy! Publicly owned and operated, cheaper than coal thorium reactors connected to micro grids

    For starters all competently lead offshored corporations would hastily reverse their positions and hundreds nay thousands of new players, would queue to relocate to these shores.

    And possibly to the point we’d have to import guest labor and house them in tent cities, while we built more permanent accommodation for the new influx.

    Self funded retirees, would place additional demand on housing and health, but leave after a comparatively short stay with their holdings doing another turn for someone else.

    They are also unique as new arrivals, in that they don’t put increased demands on child care and schools; and as self funded retirees, would have the requisite mandatory health insurance/prepaid funerals etc, and therefore wouldn’t create more demand inside public health!

    Furthermore, the only affordable accommodation for them has to be outside capital cities and therefore assist with long overdue decentralization/regional regeneration!

    And consider, the tax rate alone can be moved microscopically up or down, region by region simultaneously, to alone counteract either inflation or stagnation, and far more rapidly and effectively than interest rates!

    Which then could be set at historical lows and left, to permanently turbocharge the domestic economy, and or exports!

    And who says we the people cannot change things so as to remove the one tier of government we just don’t need, and before you factor in so much as a single service, costs we the people some 70 billions per.

    I’d sooner spend this money on fibre to the home NBN, NDIS, the roll-out of rapid rail.

    Or our own nuclear powered shipping fleet, most of it as roll on roll of fast turnaround ferries.

    Some of these freight forwarding giants are already partially submersible, and would need very little adaptation to become fully submersible and therefore able to sail and navigate under almost all conditions; and with a veritable armchair ride, safe from pirate attacks by miscreants in small boats!

    Simply put, we just don’t need to create debt and deficit going forward as far as the eye can see!

    All we really need are leaders with the courage to make the DOABLE changes happen!?

    Can’t remove the states? Wrong, we did just that during the last world war, given an emergency.

    And if ever increasing debt and deficit going forward as far as the eye can see is not an economic emergency, that could culminate with we as tenants in our own land, same result as if we were a beaten nation!?

    Then it’s time somebody stepped up to the plate and ushered in the necessary changes, as oppossed to simply chucking them in the too hard basket!

    And if several referendums are required to ring in those changes, then lets do that! And a vastly cheaper option than the current status quo!

    As opposed to sitting on the hands and whining about what’s not possible!

    All that’s missing here is the intestinal fortitude, and as much as Tony may be yesterday’s man, he alone in the coalition, I believe, presents with the intestinal fortitude to carry reform and the party; if he were reform minded!

    Albeit, Malcolm is extremely persuasive, incredibly logical, and may be made of sterner stuff than that on public display?!

    And if the party would be saved it needs to embrace logical and overdue reform, almost as it it were a lifesaver thrown to a drowning man!

    Just don’t ask me to hold my breath waiting. Although, one can never tell what a few more one term parliaments could achieve!

    Besides giving up on now essential reform is simply not an option is it? But then, it never ever was!
    Alan B. Goulding

    Comment by Alan B. Goulding — March 24, 2015 @ 10:40 am

  12. Abbott may well be finished but I do agree with his policies on the CO2 tax and making us all pay a bit to see a doctor.

    Turnbull will sell us all out to global corporates with articulate flair and we will all be so thankful in our ignorant hero worship.

    Comment by Ross — March 24, 2015 @ 9:02 pm

  13. So, Alan B Goulding you are unable to quote a definitive source for your claim that “the cost of collecting our tax, remains around 40% of it”.

    That you unquestionably support that claim, does not do anything for your credibility.

    Comment by Rayvic — March 25, 2015 @ 10:19 am

  14. Thanks Ross for raising the Co2 Tax

    . I have to agree with Tony, we should never have an ETS; even the like of what Malcolm supported, given the history of rorts and rip offs!

    But then you’d be forgiven for thinking that this would be right up a former merchant Banker’s alley? I mean, a widely supported ETS of global proportions, would likely raise some 140 billions per as brokerage fees? And who would pay that?

    You guessed it, billy muggins tax payer, given these costs would simply be passed on till they reached those who couldn’t pass them on!

    However, we could put a price on carbon and as a straight tax, as Tony once remarked, as the lessor of two evils? And here I paraphrase.

    But, before we do anything else, we should create a cap, which could be our current carbon output!? And that would impact as heavily as a feather hitting a cloud!

    Then we just should only tax the carbon (feather hitting a cloud) above that cap?

    And at a million dollars a ton! (It wouldn’t matter if it were a trillion, just as long as nobody need pay any of it)

    Now that’s what I call putting a price on carbon!

    One doesn’t need to be a mathematical genius to understand that the proposed cap and tax model would mean; and to reiterate, nobody would actually pay any of that tax yet.

    And never ever the brokerage fees that would come with Malcolm’s preferred ETS!

    Even so, one could motivate change, and just by very progressively lowering the cap, and then only after having flagged that in a timely manner, as the intended outcome.

    And given we switched our economy from one far too reliant on increasingly costly fossil fuels to Thorium, and homemade biogas, algae sourced oil; and ethanol made from the waste produced by extracting oil from algae?

    Therefore it follows, our carbon output could be reduced to nil!?

    Think, algae absorb 2.5 times their bodyweight in Co2, and double that bodyweight and absorption capacity every 24 hours, under optimized conditions!

    And broad scale algae farming would not only save the Murray/Darling, but quite massively prosper everyone now reliant on it!

    I mean, algae on require 1-2% of the water of traditional irrigation! And to reiterate, given optimized conditions, double their bodyweight every 24 hours.

    Name any other potential oil rich crop able to do that!?

    Some types are up to 60% oil, which can be very easily extracted as virtually ready to use diesel or jet fuel.

    Why aren’t we already doing it?

    Great question, which needs to be addressed to those pollies blocking it or refusing to back it?

    [I mean, is there a single better use for what remains of the save the Murray fund?]

    Well, and thanks to the register, we do know many of that number have interests (perhaps at arms length) in coal and or gas projects, which could be seriously harmed if we were to go down the suggested road?

    Even so, I could live with power bills halved and fuel costing as little as 44 cents a litre!

    I mean and it’s plain as the nose on your face, self interest always seems to trump the national interest?

    Just ask he who must be Obeid!

    Then ask yourself he he stands alone as the only pollie with serious coal and or gas mining interests?

    And getting some change there, is harder than herding cats!

    That said and set aside, the cap would need to keep coming down for a century before it caught up to the new level; and then given a minus number as the actual national carbon output, simply dismantled as no longer moderating behavior.

    And boasting a proud history of never having raised a single cent of carbon tax! Now that how you put a behavior moderating price on carbon!
    Alan B. Goulding.

    Comment by Alan B. Goulding — March 25, 2015 @ 10:26 am

  15. Rayvic, Have a bex and a good lay down. I did quote a definitive source!

    And that source is and remains Kirby 483, who ran those numbers by us chapter and verse, and as coming from the ATO as his official source.

    However, you will need to do some homework and read a few different but recent threads (economics) on this site, to find Kirby 483, and read what he claims and reiterates.

    Other posters remain free to peruse other articles to find Kirby 483, and his believable claims! If you have a problem with his numbers, take it up with Kirby!

    Now given the patently hostile manner with which you attack me Rayvic, one can assume as you cannot destroy my argument, all you have left is an attempt to destroy the man; sort of like playing the man not the ball, to use a footballing terminology.

    I wouldn’t worry too much about your tax practice Rayvic, given the huge new surpluses we could create, could be plowed back into a brand new poeples’ bank; (franchised) and then used as venture capital to commercialize our best ideas!

    [And if we currently take 4% of the GNP (the sum total of our combined expenditure) as our total tax take, then it follows that 5% taken as an expenditure tax (from the sum total of our combined expenditure) would raise considerably more net revenue; and minus the costs of collecting and collating it as all those with their snouts, trotter deep in that particular trough, will be removed and have to cope with greener pastures; and or, actual productive output? Nobody is owed a living!]

    Besides, we are currently pretty hopeless at commercializing our best ideas; and something that also needs to change; and the new and far more logical home for bean counters; and or, their former feast or famine tax practices! It’s not personal, just practical!
    Alan B. Goulding.

    Comment by Alan B. Goulding — March 25, 2015 @ 11:08 am

  16. Alan b Goulding, you fail to convince.

    Comment by Rayvic — March 25, 2015 @ 12:56 pm

  17. Rayvic: You’ll find kirby483 on land tax; fair and equitable, and suggest you read his second post on that relatively recent thread, where he states (repeats) official ATO figures on income tax?

    And outlines the chapter and verse of those quite believable 40 cents in the tax dollar claims?

    Arguably it’s MAN MADE complexity and MAN MADE complexity alone that makes the ATO and or, most tax practices (totally unproductive work) necessary!? No ifs buts or maybes!

    And my 5% plan may seem to tax turnover, much of which may not be actual turnover at all, but just moving money around to hide it or possible insolvency?

    Even so, more than offset by the return of former 7% tax compliance costs! 5% out, 7% back in! I mean, how could anyone but a complete moron not see that as a good deal?

    Not to mention the shelving of the GST, fuel excise, payroll tax, PYAE, PAYG and or, bureaucratic empire building! We rank second in the world as the most over-governed country on the planet!

    All of which could be made redundant by the proposed simplicity/transparency, and or, a direct funding model coupled to vastly more regional autonomy! It’s time!
    Alan B. Goulding.

    Comment by Alan B. Goulding — March 25, 2015 @ 1:11 pm

  18. Rayvic: Clearly I fail to convince you; but then you’d have to say that anyway, wouldn’t you?

    Around the time we took the America’s cup from the yanks, Alan Bond was congratulating his accountant for getting his company tax bill down to 13%? Wow! 13%?

    And I’ve read believable claims, [and no I can’t prove it,] that company tax now averages between 1-4%?

    Amazon, Google, Apple!?

    And let’s not forget the way some of these companies hop into in the average Australian consumer; and the way they charge us over and above the odds, in comparison to say, the American market.

    Where the motorist pays around $2.00 a gallon for petrol/4.4 litres.

    I mean, fair suck of the sauce bottle, they get us coming and going, thanks to obtuse measures like the 1953 double tax act; and global vagaries that allow people to get away with some of the rorts, you apparently don’t see as either unfair, harmful to our national economy, or just downright dishonest!?

    So, if you were a company, I take it you’d choose the status quo, rather than accept a deal that took 5% with one hand and gave back 7% with the other?

    Or simply jettisoned all the other tax measures as part of eliminating manipulation of the same; as part and parcel of avoidance and or, at the behest of the avoidance industry.

    Who would be first in line to lose their meal tickets Rayvic, if we had the good common sense to eliminate complexity in all its forms and guises.

    A well known Republican Senator said and I quote, when a guest on Q+A, that at some point complexity always becomes fraud!

    And given the truth of those words, sort of sums up the opposition to massive and vastly overdue simplification! And you remain unconvinced?

    That sort of says it all doesn’t it?

    However, I’ll warrant anyone paying through the proverbial and carrying greater and greater loads of the common tax burden, will at the very least; read my ideas with an open and inquiring mind, and subject them to a fair hearing, rather than instant dismissal! And only because you refuse to do your own research, which at the very least, would have made you look!

    Nor I can’t be held to account if as some other posters seem to have suggested, the ATO has taken down a site?

    And if true? Why?

    Is there something they don’t want the general public to see?

    Lots of very plum jobs in tha ATO, isn’t there, and dare I say, some currently lucrative tax practices, with everything to lose to dangerous ideas!?

    Now given your comments, thus far, the status quo is apparently a perfectly acceptable state of affairs for Rayvic?

    But, I’m almost certain those actually paying more than their fair share or the difference; everybody else, have had a bellyful, and indeed, all the professional obfuscation; that act to effectively prevent genuine reform and an end to all the sharp practice; that make most of the current tax rorts possible?

    And made even more the more obvious, given you and all the other detractors fail as usual to come up with even a semblance of a better idea.

    And just attack those that have. Like some sort of latter day Luddite terrified to the very marrow of progress?

    And with a sweeping statement from the mount, like Alan B., you fail to convince! Ah, God speaks!?

    Well that might stop some of your fellow travelers from reading me; but perhaps spike the curiosity of others, particularly those prepared to give a new idea or ideas, a fair hearing, or failing that, just the time of day!

    Yes I do have some very dangerous ideas, and therefore expect to be attacked on all sides by those who just want to kill them stillborn; and before those with a still functioning brain of their own, have a chance to very thoroughly peruse them!

    Let me repeat the simple sums; 5% out 7% back in?

    Terrible deal eh? And send those just barely breaking even heading offshore; where they can pay a flat rate of just 15%, maybe; and then a 15% vat on top of that and income tax on their super, even where they have paid tax on the income accrued as retirement savings, all of their lives!

    Now it is true some very wealthy self funded European retirees, sort shelter in places like Russia, but London to a brick, if all they faced was a 5% expenditure tax, we’d have to beat them back in their millions, with a stick! And how much are we earning for the national budget from them now? 100% of 0! Yes?

    And we’d need a ruddy great whip, if we had the good common sense to roll out, thorium connected to micro grids and half price energy!

    The bible says, do not cast your pearls before swine. Up until now, I used to wonder what that meant?
    Alan B. Goulding.

    Comment by Alan B. Goulding — March 25, 2015 @ 5:49 pm

  19. Graham is right about Tony having a tough exterior ad being pretty weak on the inside.

    Andrew Robb before the last G20 wanted Aust to join the Asian Investment and Infrastructure Bank. John Kerry at the last G20 told Tony not to join. Now Great Britain has broken ranks along with many other countries and wants to join. Aust is now considering joining.

    Before joining we should make sure that the ground rules are fair and Russia and China just don’t take the place of the Central Bankers who have ruled the planet for the last 300 yrs.

    http://kingworldnews.com/gerald-celente-this-is-going-to-radically-change-the-world/

    Comment by Ross — March 26, 2015 @ 6:48 am

  20. Ross; I’m rather partial to the idea of this new Asian development bank; in the age of the Asian century!

    Even more so if it’s set up like any other currently acceptable international bank; and even more so again, if that then allows us to return to the Gold standard; which the Asians seem to prefer; and was rejected initially I believe, because it was and remains a good deal more difficult to manipulate!?

    I mean, it’s all but impossible to print any more of that!

    And if the USD, wasn’t the international currency, the Yanks would have gone totally bankrupt years ago!?

    Instead, I believe they’ve been able to reach into other economies and use those resources as if they were their own; to keep their technically insolvent economy up and functioning, even if on life support from donor economies, being literally being bled white; given the yanks, thanks to their currency; and very preferential one sided trade deals, are empowered to literally do so?

    And given a return to the sanity of a gold standard, we’d be forced to return to the idea of circulating currency of intrinsic value, to ensure economic growth or a properly functioning robust economy.

    Think, when there was a gold standard, CEO’s salaries rarely if ever, exceeded 30 times that paid to the lowest paid on the shop or factory floor!

    And inherently fair, given everyone inside an organisation contributes in some measure to the result; and not just an over-rewarded CEO or the board!

    And counterproductive inflation that only creates advantages for the wealthy and disadvantage for all else, would be seriously moderated!

    I mean, given a gold standard; the value of gold would rise with, or faster than house prices! [And we wouldn’t have to sell our souls to get one?}

    Or for that matter, anything else which which ages or deteriorates faster than gold!

    I mean why did the wealthy want to abandon it, and indeed, resist a return to it and the control it would place on (money for nothing) MAN MADE inflation!

    And a gold standard would force intending developers to return to volume sales to make their profits, and far more reliably than margins subject to the winds of change; or even virtually destroyed, when another large economy sneezes!

    And volume sales would be supported by massive and overdue decentralization! Which in turn would be assisted by the overdue roll out of rapid rail.

    Simply put, the longer that it’s delayed the more in real terms, (doubled every decade) it will cost! There just aren’t any advantages in deferred essential development!

    An Asian development bank makes perfect sense, even more so, given they have all the money!
    Alan B. Goulding.

    Comment by Alan B. Goulding — March 28, 2015 @ 11:02 am

  21. Alan, The AIIB needs to define who creates the new money and who shares in the benefits. To have a system like the IMF and World Bank that put countries in enormous debt by creating money from nothing cannot be tolerated any longer. It just creates massive poverty and ignorance.

    We need to decentralise power on this planet and let the people have more say. The current system is not working and we don’t have real democracy.

    If you don’t create your own new money, then you are subservient to the people who do.

    The IMF says it wants to join the AIIB so this is really admitting defeat by our central banking oligarchs.http://kingworldnews.com/dr-paul-craig-roberts-3-28-15/ Dr Paul Craig Roberts says our neo cons who do the bidding of the Central Bankers are still pushing for war with Russia and China because they want their economic independence. Europe wants to do business with Russia while the USA seeks destruction.

    We need far better leaders than Abbott, Turnbull and the rest of the unrepresentative swill that pretend to help us. It is a shame that Malcolm Fraser died.

    Comment by Ross — March 28, 2015 @ 3:37 pm

  22. http://rt.com/business/244805-russia-join-aiib-china/
    Well Russia is to join the AIIB and Britain and Sweden have been accepted as founding members.

    We have until the 31st March 20015 to join or just become associate members with no say in Governance. Why the rush ?

    I have a sneaking suspicion that the new money created as debt by the AIIB will not be distributed equally and I doubt that Abbott has the nous to understand any of this.

    Comment by Ross — March 28, 2015 @ 5:25 pm

  23. Well, Aust with Denmark has wants to join the AIIB on condition that no one country has control over it. This is breaking with the USA policy of the IMF, World Bank and Rothschild monopoly of Central Banking being the only source of new money.http://rt.com/business/245033-china-bank-australia-denmark/

    China has a lot more gold than it discloses and we may see a gold backed Yuan. I doubt that this bank will be dealing in derivatives.

    Perhaps we are seeing some common sense at last and stop this aggression towards Russia and China.

    Comment by Ross — March 30, 2015 @ 5:32 am

  24. Good call Ross.

    Incidentally, and on reflection, it may seem to some simple folk, that my proposed expenditure tax is just a turnover tax by another name.

    Simply put, and given it just doesn’t ever touch deposits, it’s not, strictly speaking, a turnover tax.

    A transaction tax might be more definitively labeled a turnover tax?

    Whereas an expenditure tax taken as the only tax needed; and as a 5% expenditure tax; can be more accurately described as a direct impost on the bottom line?

    As are current compliance costs, 7% averaged, of the average bottom line!

    Now if on one hand you take 5% as a unavoidable impost, but give back current tax compliance costs, which would be simply eliminated by the stand alone simplicity!

    Then it stands to reason most business still operating here would be around 2% better off overall, and with their complete tax bill paid; and minus all the time consuming paperwork!

    [And that is before you jettison all other tax measures, which would no longer be necessary to raise requisite revenue!?]

    And make no bones about it, when it comes to operating a business, time is money!

    On AM this morning Joe Hockey claimed only 12 corporations now paid our corporate tax!

    And no I believe he was specifically referring to locally operated corporations as opposed to limited liability companies, which would include most family businesses, the family farm and the corner store?

    Now if the sum total of the tax tax is just 4% of the GNP, and if the GNP is the sum total of all our combined expenditure, then a 5% impost on the sum total of all that expenditure, will raise more revenue; 75-100 billion per?

    Now if you’re reform minded and I am, then you would want to also jettison one tier of Government, (state government) and use the 70 billions per we’d save and without losing a single service; for some things a good deal more important than very junior and sometimes corrupt debating societies?

    Besides, a direct funding model for health and education; and a serious return to local autonomy, would come with as much as 30% cost savings; or the cost of double handling and double dipping for admin fees by profit demanding middle men/state governments?

    We just pay lip service to smaller government, when we need to get serious about it; given we are with one single exception, the most over-governed country in the world!

    Ask yourself, why we need to sell or otherwise privatize poles and wires, what they will raise as revenue once privatized and then compare that number with the actual cost of just running a state government?

    IT’S A NO BRAINER, ALL THE SALE OF THESE ASSETS DO, IS PROP UP ENTIRELY UNNECESSARY STATE GOVERNMENTS? I rest my case.
    Alan B. Goulding

    Comment by Alan B. Goulding — March 30, 2015 @ 9:11 am

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.