Thursday 25 April 2019
The claims by Coalition candidates grow even more absurd
Voters have been treated to the absurd spectacle of the Liberal Prime Minister and his ministers accusing Labor of wanting to steal tradies utes, of wanting to end weekends as well as lying about how quickly electic cars could be charged (in fact in Australia right now an EV can be charged in 8 minutes by JET Charge) and of conspiring with the Greens to introduce death taxes.
Now we have a Queensland Llberal-Nationals candidate, Gerard Rennick, stating that helping families send three-year-olds to pre-school is a Labor Party conspiracy to strengthen government control over child raising.
Then we had this from the Liberal-Nationals arch conspirator.....
ABC
News, 23
April 2019:
The weather bureau has
been tampering with temperature data in order to "perpetuate global
warming hysteria", according to an under-fire Coalition candidate.
The Bureau of
Meteorology (BOM) has strongly rejected the conspiracy theory being peddled by
Queensland Senate hopeful Gerard Rennick.
Shades of that hard right lobby group, the Institute of Public Affairs!
What will be the next desperate, far-fetched claim?
When old political enemies go two rounds on social media
The fighting is getting dirty during this federal election campaign.
I think that the former Member for New England Tony Windsor managed to floor the current Member for New England Barnaby Joyce in this round......
Joyce up off the canvas for another round.....
Oh dear. Jab went home and Joyce now sporting a cut lip.
Labels:
Australian politics,
election campaigns,
Social media,
Twitter
Wednesday 24 April 2019
Punters still expect Labor to win on 18 May 2019
Labels:
elections 2019
The Trouble With Water: 'ghost' water begins to haunt the Liberal-Nationals election campaign
“It is well understood and agreed that water in the Murray-Darling Basin has been overallocated and extracted at rates that are unsustainable.” [The Australia Institute, February 2018]
Eastern Australia Agriculture Pty Ltd (EAA) owns
water entitlements at two properties in the lower Balonne area of the
Condamine-Balonne region The Kia-Ora property is situated approximately 7km
south of St. George, Queensland, along the Balonne River. The Clyde property is
located 10km south-west of Dirranbandi, Queensland.
"Kia
Ora" reportedly totals 18,841 hectares and has water entitlements of 36,705 megalitres, while "Clyde" is said to total 18,743 hectares with water entitlements of 30,289 megalitres.
EAA also
appears to hold Queensland water licences which allows it to harvest overland
flows/flood waters from both properties.
Questions have arisen with regard to the sale of some of this water.......
Questions have arisen with regard to the sale of some of this water.......
The Government’s been buying up water at record prices, leading to millions of dollars flowing to offshore tax havens. But now, two of our top pollies are facing questions over just who is making a fortune off our water.@HamishNews and @MichaelWestBiz bring you this report pic.twitter.com/5UTH1NHJzR— The Project (@theprojecttv) April 18, 2019
At various times prior to entering federal parliament in September 2013 Liberal MP for Hume and Australian Minister for Energy Angus Taylor was reportedly a co-founder and director of Eastern Australia Irrigation, a director of and company secretary for Eastern Australia Agriculture and was also a paid consultant for EAA.Ever wondered how that $79M 'gift' of taxpayers money to a SE Qld irrigator was spent? Wonder no more - this is what 'ghost water' can buy the seller #AusVotes2019 pic.twitter.com/cYOE8CvqJ9— no_filter_Yamba (@no_filter_Yamba) April 16, 2019
💧Angus Taylor YESTERDAY: “has never had a direct or indirect financial interest in EAA or any assoc’d company.”— Hamish Macdonald (@hamishNews) April 19, 2019
TODAY: He was also a consultant for EAA 09/10 “on normal commercial terms”.
TONIGHT: there’s a difference between ‘an interest’ & being paid as consultant. #auspol pic.twitter.com/AwwWGznyNz
The Minister for Energy Angus Taylor, former deputy-prime minister and federal agriculture and water resources minister, the current National Party MP for New England Barnaby Joyce, and the federal Dept. of Agriculture and Water Resources have all issued statements taking issue with concerns being expressed over this particular water sale and denying any wrong doing. Both ministers have threatened legal action for defamation.
The Queensland Government denies being party to this water sale.
The Morrison Government is now facing calls for an inquiry into the Murray-Darling plan water contracts signed off by former minister Joyce.
BACKGROUND
The Queensland Government denies being party to this water sale.
The Morrison Government is now facing calls for an inquiry into the Murray-Darling plan water contracts signed off by former minister Joyce.
BACKGROUND
Ghost Water – licences for unreliable/unverifiable amounts of temporary water sold
to government for use as environmental flow water.
Overland flow is “water that runs across the land after
rainfall, either before it enters a watercourse, after it leaves a watercourse
as floodwater, or after it rises to the surface naturally from underground…..You
can take overland flow for any purpose unless there is a moratorium notice or a
water plan that limits what can be taken.” [Qld Government, Business
Queensland. January 2019]
Applications
can be made for a water licence for the capture of overland flow water.
“A
water licence is an entitlement to take water which is attached to land
therefore, unlike a water allocation, it is not an asset in its own right.
Water licences cannot normally be sold independent of land unless there are
management rules in place which allow permanent transfers (relocations) to
occur…..The relocation of a water licence enables a licensee to transfer
ownership of the entitlement, permanently moving the licence from the land to
which it is attached, to another parcel of land within the confines of the
rules. This process differs from permanent water allocation trading whereby
water allocations are traded independently of land titles and have their own
registrable title (i.e. water can be held by someone who does not own land).” [Qld Government,
Business Queensland. February
2019]
At the time of the water sales EAA has 7 harvesting licences, of which 4 were for water extraction from the Balonne and Narran rivers, 2 were for collection of overland flow waters and 1 was for irrigation water draw on the Beardmore Dam.
At the time of the water sales EAA has 7 harvesting licences, of which 4 were for water extraction from the Balonne and Narran rivers, 2 were for collection of overland flow waters and 1 was for irrigation water draw on the Beardmore Dam.
Unsolicited offer by EAA to sell overflow water at
https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22publications%2Ftabledpapers%2F59682649-2fa2-43b1-955f-ae16caecef45%22.
Austender records of three EAA water sales to the Dept. of Agriculture and Water Resources - the first by transparent open tender and the remaining to by non-transparent limited tender:
At the time of the first water sale (1,980ML at est. $2,175 per megalitre) Barnaby Joyce was an elected senator on the Opposition benchs and Labor's Tony Burke was federal water minister, at the time of the second and third sales (totalling 27,960ML at $2,745 per megalitre) Joyce was the Australian Deputy Prime Minister as well as Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources.
The first sale under the Labour Government was a result of an open competitive tender, the second and third sales were by unadvertised limited tender which excluded a competitive tender process.
NOTE: In 2008 it appears that EAA sold 10,433ML from its water storage to the Murray-Darling Basin Commission for an unknown amount.
The Australia Institute, March 2018, "That's not how you haggle....Commonwealth water purchasing in the Condamine Balonne", excerpt:
Austender records of three EAA water sales to the Dept. of Agriculture and Water Resources - the first by transparent open tender and the remaining to by non-transparent limited tender:
At the time of the first water sale (1,980ML at est. $2,175 per megalitre) Barnaby Joyce was an elected senator on the Opposition benchs and Labor's Tony Burke was federal water minister, at the time of the second and third sales (totalling 27,960ML at $2,745 per megalitre) Joyce was the Australian Deputy Prime Minister as well as Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources.
The first sale under the Labour Government was a result of an open competitive tender, the second and third sales were by unadvertised limited tender which excluded a competitive tender process.
NOTE: In 2008 it appears that EAA sold 10,433ML from its water storage to the Murray-Darling Basin Commission for an unknown amount.
The Australia Institute, March 2018, "That's not how you haggle....Commonwealth water purchasing in the Condamine Balonne", excerpt:
EAAs original asking
price was $2,200 per megalitre. DAWR displayed Pythonesque haggling skills and
paid a final price of $2,745 per megalitre. DAWR paid 25% more per megalitre
than originally requested by EAA, 139% higher than the Commonwealth had previously
paid for the same type of licence and 85% higher than the average price for a
more reliable type of water licence. The megalitre price was inflated because
it included the cost of a storage that the vendor originally offered to
transfer to the Commonwealth, but that offer was later withdrawn, without
adjusting the price. The storage was used as a justification of the sale, but
not as a condition of the sale.
The water purchased was
for Over Land Flow (OLF) licences, which cannot be traded between irrigators,
because they are attached to land. They have no legal status or any recognition
at a location other than where they were originally purchased. That is, there
appears to be no legal basis for the Commonwealth to ensure it gets to the
places it is intended to be used.
First, tax havens siphon
taxable profits away from jurisdictions like Australia. This means either
increasing the tax burden on individuals and businesses, taking on more debt,
or cutting social services.
These shenanigans are
not always illegal. But what is legal is not always moral or economically
sound. Australia’s fiscal foundations are threatened by the erosion of the tax
base by tricky tax tactics.
Aggressive tax planning
can erode public confidence in the tax system itself. After all, one reason
most of us pay the taxes we owe is that we believe we live in a society where
our fellow citizens do the same.
A fascinating new
dataset released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics helps shed light on
this problem. Across multinational firms operating in Australia, the bureau
reports their operating profit and their taxable profit. What is unique about
these data is that they are reported for firms with majority owners in
different countries. So it is possible to compare across countries, and ask the
question: which nation’s firms have the biggest gap between operating profits
and taxable profits?
For the typical
Australian firm, the gap between operating profits and taxable profits is 30
percent. The figure is pretty similar for multinationals whose owners reside in
the United States (28.4 percent), United Kingdom (26.6 percent) and Japan (28.5
percent).
But for some nations,
it’s a different story. If you’re a Bermuda-owned multinational operating in
Australia, then on average the gap between operating profit and taxable profit
is 88 percent. If you’re a British Virgin Islands owned multinational, the
reduction is 92 percent.[3]
So if you start with ten
dollars of operating profit, then Australian firms report about seven dollars
of taxable profits. The same is true for American, British and Japanese-based
multinationals – ten dollars of operating profit produces seven dollars of
taxable profit.
But for firms based in
Bermuda or the Virgin Islands, and operating in Australia, ten dollars of
operating profit produces just one dollar of taxable profit. That’s a startling
difference……..
Second, tax havens are
the hiding ground.....
Gabriel Zucman, an
economist at University of California, Berkley, estimates that around
four-fifths of money in offshore bank accounts is there in breach of other
countries’ tax laws.[4] .......
A recent study in the
journal Nature Ecology and Evolution found there are even egregious
environmental vandals there too. Following the Panama Papers, the study
found seventy percent of fishing vessels implicated in illegal, unreported and
unregulated catches had been registered in Belize, Panama, or other tax havens
at some point. [5]
Third, tax havens
increase inequality. Offshore wealth held by Australians in tax havens was
approximately 6 per cent of GDP, according to Zucman’s work in 2013. In today’s
prices, that would mean over $100 billion in assets held offshore by wealthy
Australians. [6]..........
Cayman Islands corporate tax rates appears to be zero.
During December 2016,
the Tax Office required Eastern Australia Agriculture to enter into a
Settlement Deed to reduce the interest charged by EAI on convertible notes
issued by EAA.
The interest charges
were required to be reduced from June 2011 when Taylor was still a director of
EAI. The total amount of excessive interest charges was $14 million.
This from EAA’s 2016 annual
report:
“Forgiveness of interest
expense – parent entity
“Following a review by
the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), the company entered into a Settlement
Deed with the ATO on 9 December 2016 and the parent entity agreed to reduce the
interest rate on the convertible note from 12 per cent to an average interest
rate of 7.97 per cent effective from 29 June 2011, resulting in a forgiveness
of interest expense accrued in 2016 and prior years."
The higher the interest
rate charged by the parent, the more money flows from Australia to the
Caribbean. In the parlance of the tax fraternity, this practice of charging
excessive interest rates, in order to maximise the interest payments out of
Australia to a tax haven, is called “debt-loading”.
By 2016, Angus Taylor
was no longer a director of EAI. He had stepped down from the board of the
Cayman Islands company in 2013, the year he entered Parliament. He was a
director however when the financing arrangement was established.
London Stock Exchange, EF
Realisation Company Limited (EFR) Annual
Financial Report, released 22 January 2018, excerpt:
Compulsory Redemption
Mechanism
EF Realisation monetised
various portfolio assets between February and August 2017 which, in aggregate,
comprised approximately 24% of the NAV as at 30 September 2017. The total
net proceeds raised were approximately £4.36 million, made up of £4.26 million
in realised proceeds (including £0.1 million from a corporate action involving
the Company's holding in Energy Future Holdings) and £0.1 million of investment
income (net of expenses). The Company realised its investment in Menhaden
Capital plc in February 2017 which raised £1.2 million, equal to 2.3p per
Ordinary Share. EF Realisation sold a bond holding in Integradoro de Servicios
Petroleros Oro Negro SAPI de CV ("Oro Negro") which raised
approximately £0.5m, and it
received approximately £2.5 million from Eastern Australia Irrigation Limited
which had sold certain of its water entitlements to the Australian Government
and distributed a majority of the proceeds to its shareholders, including EF
Realisation. On 4 September 2017, the Company announced its intention to
implement the Company's first capital distribution, returning £3.0 million
to Shareholders of the approximately £4.36 million in total net proceeds; the
balance of the net proceeds from asset realisations was retained for working
capital purposes…..
All the other
investments in EF Realisation are unlisted and valued by the Directors at their
estimated realisation values and, with one exception, changes in these
valuations have been small. The
exception is an upgrade to the valuation of the Company's minority shareholding
in Eastern Australia Irrigation Limited following that company's sale of water
rights to the Australian Government authorities in August 2017 and the
expectations for the amount of proceeds that can now be realised from the sale
of its farms…..
Eastern Australia
Irrigation Limited ("EAI") is an Australian based company which owns
and operates two farms in Queensland, whose main crop is cotton, along with
various water extraction rights from the Murray Darling River Basin. During the
summer of 2017, Australian Government authorities approached EAI with an offer
to acquire some of its water entitlements. EAI was able to negotiate the price for the water
entitlements to the highest level ever paid, and in August 2017 it completed
the largest ever sale of water entitlements in the Murray Darling River Basin.
EF Realisation owns 9.6% of EAI's shares and, along with other holders,
supported the sale of the water rights. EAI used the majority of the sale
proceeds to return capital to its shareholders, and passed £2.5 million to EF
Realisation. This represented a gain on that part of the EAI holding of £0.34
million or 16.0%. We comment below on the plans to dispose of EAI's farms……
EAI was in the process of selling its farms prior to the
sale of water rights. Proceeds received for the sale of water rights were
attractive compared to the offers received in the farm sale process so the farm
sale process was suspended in order to complete negotiations with the
Australian Government authorities over the sale of water rights. EAI has
now resumed the farm sale process with the intention of using sale proceeds to
repay debt and redeem its shares.
Having sold some of the water rights, the effective size of the irrigable land
that can be used for cotton farming has been reduced by approximately one-third
and it is expected that this, and the decision to sell the farms separately
rather than as a package as last summer, will make the farms attractive to a
broader range of potential buyers. Cotton prices are supported by low crop
harvests in cotton growing regions outside Australia and, at the time of
writing, local rainfall on EAI's farms has prevented a return of drought
conditions. However, until binding bids are received for the farms, the timing
for EF Realisation to redeem or sell its shareholding in EAI and the proceeds
from such a redemption or sale are uncertain.
EF Realisation carries
its remaining investment in EAI at a conservative estimate of the proceeds that
would be received assuming EAI's farms are sold and its shares are redeemed. In
particular, the implied valuation of the farms is less than the value of the
farms used to secure EAI's loan from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, a
valuation point that has been a floor for proceeds in farm sales. [my yellow highlighting]
After the September 2013 federal election Barnaby Joyce became the Minister for Agriculture and in September 2015 Water Resources was added to his ministerial portfolio.
Tuesday 23 April 2019
Clarence Valley winter woolies drive on 29 April to 5 May 2019
The
Daily Examiner,
22 April 2019, p.4:
If you have clothes
piling up in the back of your wardrobe you’ve forgotten about or won’t be
wearing any more, now is the time to dig them out.
What started out as an
initiative of the Waste Not Want Not Facebook group has quickly become a
tradition now in its sixth year.
The original yarn
bombing movement was about injecting colour and joy into everyday life, but for
Sue Noddy and the other organisers, it was a chance to help others.
“If it’s been sitting
your wardrobe forever and you don’t wear it any more bring it down, it is all
about recycling things,” Ms Noddy said.
She said anything warm
is welcomed but hoodies, jeans and mittens are particularly useful.
“We do have some ladies
who are knitting crochet all year-round rugs, hats and scarves and they will
peg their hand knitted items up,”
“We run it for a week,
we don’t take the items in at night because some people don’t want to be seen
taking things off the fence,” she said.
“We leave it out all
night, all day, even if it rains people still come and take the items.”
There will be three
locations for the community to donate their pre-loved winter woollies, two in
Grafton and one in Maclean.
Drop off points from
April 29–May 5:
New School of Art
neighbourhood house, corner of Spring and New streets, South Grafton
The Hub Baptist Church,
corner of Queen and Oliver streets
River St, Maclean, next
to the fire station.
Labels:
Clarence Valley,
Waste Not Want Not
Australian PM Scott Morrison acting as an IPA stooge on the 2019 election campaign trail
The hard-right
lobby group the Institute of Public
Affairs (IPA) told the Liberal Party of Australia to jump to it……..
IPA, on 12 April 2019, the day after the
federal election date was set:
20 POLICIES TO FIX AUSTRALIA
15
policies the Coalition should implement but will not and 5 policies they should
not implement but will
John Roskam, Executive Director and Daniel
Wild, Director of Research PARLIAMENTARY RESEARCH BRIEF A research note from
the Institute of Public Affairs distributed to all Australian parliamentarians
12 April 2019
For more information
contact Daniel Wild, Director of Research at dwild@ipa.org.au
15 policies the
Coalition should implement but will not
1. Remove all references
to race in the Constitution Martin Luther King, Jr stated “I have a dream that
my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be
judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.” But
Australia’s Constitution currently divides Australians by race. Section 25 of
the Australian Constitution, titled “Provision as to races disqualified from
voting’, while today redundant remains an affront to Australians’ sense of
egalitarianism. Similarly, Section 51(xxvi) of the Australian Constitution
gives the Commonwealth government the power to make laws on the basis of race.All
Australians are equal and should be treated as equal before the law. Therefore,
both provisions should be discarded and references to race in the Constitution
must be erased.
2. Repeal Section 18C of
the Racial Discrimination Act (1975) Free speech is inextricably linked to the
Australian way of life. Australians should be able to enjoy and participate in
open and unfettered discussion about issues of import to the future of our
democracy and our nation. Section 18C stops this from happening. It is an
unconscionable and egregious limitation on the free speech rights of all
Australians and must be abolished.
3. Withdraw from the
Paris Climate Agreement The Paris Climate Agreement will increase the cost of
electricity production by at least $52 billion by 2030 without making any
noticeable difference to the environment. The four largest greenhouse gas
emitters in absolute terms are not in the Paris Agreement (the United States)
or their emissions are not constrained by the Paris Agreement (China and India)
or are not on target to meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement (the
European Union). It is not in Australia’s national interest to remain party to
the Agreement.
4. Implement a flat
income tax Australia’s income tax system punishes success and discourages
upward economic mobility. Its interaction with the welfare system also creates
welfare traps through high effective marginal tax rates which keeps too many
Australians poor and trapped in a poverty cycle. To reduce poverty, expand economic
opportunity, promote equality, all Australians should face the same income tax
rate.
5. Reduce the corporate
tax rate to below 20 per cent, in line with competitor nations The top marginal
company tax rate in Australia of 30 per cent is the third highest in the
developed world, and well above the OECD average of 24 per cent and competitor
nations such as the United States (21 per cent), the United Kingdom (17 per
cent from 2020), and Singapore (17 per cent). Australia’s high corporate tax
rate is a key reason why business investment is just 11.5 per cent of GDP,
which is lower than the rate that prevailed during the Whitlam years.
6. Appointment of High
Court Justices to be rotated between the six states and the Commonwealth The
Commonwealth Government is too big, powerful, and interventionist, and state
governments have too small of a role in the operation of Australia’s
federation. A key reason for this is that the Commonwealth alone is responsible
for appointing Justices to the High Court of Australia. This has unsurprisingly
led to the appointment of Judges who favour an expansion of Commonwealth power
at the expense of state governments. To correct this imbalance, state
governments should play a central role in appointing High Court Justices.
7. Double the size of
the House of Representatives, and halve the size of the Ministry Canberra is
too detached and removed from the concerns of mainstream Australia.
This is
partly a reflection of the size of individual electorates. Almost every Federal
electorate contains more than 100,000 voters. This is too many. To get
government closer to the people there should be a larger number of electorates
with fewer voters, resulting in each voter having a louder voice. In addition,
the number of Members of Parliament who are a part of the Ministry at any point
in time has grown rapidly over the past two decades. Appointing members to the
Ministry, the Outer Ministry, and as Assistant Ministers is a deliberate
strategy to silence debate and reduce the influence of backbenchers. For
Australia’s democracy to become more robust as in the United Kingdom and the
United States, the number of Members of Parliament in the Ministry, Outer
Ministry, and as Assistant Ministers should be reduced from 41 to 20.
8. Privatise the ABC In
a free society the government should not own and operate its own media company.
The media market in Australia is highly competitive. Online platforms have
transformed and disrupted traditional approaches to media. Consumers have never
had more choice about where to source their news and opinions on current
affairs. Moreover, the ABC is unremittingly bias. Its staff are five times more
likely to vote for the Greens compared to the general population. The ABC is
beyond reform. New leaders will not fix the problem, regardless of their
experience or intention. The ABC must be privatised.
9. Re-introduce the debt
ceiling Gross government debt is currently $546 billion, all of which must be
paid back by today’s young Australians via higher future taxes. One approach
policy-makers can take to reduce government debt, or at least reduce its
growth, is to re-introduce the debt ceiling. A debt-ceiling places a limit on
how much the Australian government can borrow. Raising the debt ceiling
requires an Act of Parliament, which ensures the issue will be debated and
receive the public attention it deserves. A debt ceiling was implemented by the
Rudd government in 2007 and it was set at $75 billion. With the support of the
Greens, the Abbott government with Joe Hockey as Treasurer abolished the debt
ceiling in 2013 as debt approached $300 billion.
10. Hold a Royal
Commission into the Bureau of Meteorology’s tampering with temperature and
climate data The Bureau of Meteorology appears to have tampered with
temperature and climate data and to have re-written history to make it appear
as if the temperature is higher than it actually is, and that is has risen
faster than it actually has. Australians deserve to know the truth about their
public institutions. The only way to find the truth about potential temperature
data manipulation is to hold a Royal Commission into the Bureau of
Meteorology’s activities.
11. Abolish compulsory
superannuation Compulsory superannuation is a tax on workers’ wages which is
coercively redistributed to the Unions. Australian workers should be free to
decide how much of their own income they are willing to defer until retirement,
and how much they need in the present to spend on items such as housing,
education, and health care. For more information contact Daniel Wild, Director
of Research at dwild@ipa.org.au
12. Abolish the
Renewable Energy Target and end all subsidies to wind, solar, and
hydro-electricity generators Subsidies to renewable energy generation in
Australia are expected to reach $60 billion by 2030. The Renewable Energy
Target at the Commonwealth level, as well as state-based targets, have been the
main contributors to this subsidy blow-out. Because renewables are
uncompetitive, expensive, and unreliable, Australia’s electricity prices have
increased by 120 per cent over the past decade – around double the rate of
inflation. This has a disproportionate effect on the lowest income earners who
spend a higher portion of their income on energy than others. Moreover, this
cost comes at no noticeable benefit to the environment. For example, over the
period of 2001 (when the RET was first implemented by the Howard government) to
2014, the RET resulted in 0.005 per cent fewer carbon emissions globally from
human sources which in turn account for just three per cent of total
emissions.
13. Introduce a
one-in-two-out approach to reduce red tape Red tape is the single biggest
impediment to business investment, job creation, and economic opportunity in
Australia. Each year red tape reduces economic output by $176 billion, which is
equivalent to 10 per cent of GDP.12 This cost represents all of the jobs which
are never created, the wages which never rise, the businesses never started,
and the dreams which go unfulfilled because of red tape. Governments should cut
red tape by repealing two laws for every new law introduced.
14. Repeal the Fair Work
Act The Fair Work Act denies hundreds and thousands of Australians the dignity
of work. There are currently 1.7 million Australians who are either unemployed
or unable to work the number of hours they want. This is largely due to the
Fair Work Act which prevents employers and employees from reaching mutually
beneficial employment agreements. The Fair Work Act is too complicated and
broken to reform. It must be repealed in full. 15. Legalise nuclear power in
Australia Australia has 30 per cent of the world’s uranium deposits, some of
which we export to the rest of the world for power generation. Yet we forbid
ourselves from using nuclear power for domestic energy generation. Meanwhile,
Australia has the fourth highest electricity prices in the world. Section
140A(1) of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (1999)
states there is to be “no approval for certain nuclear installations” including
“a nuclear power plant”. These four words – “a nuclear power plant” – should be
removed from the Section to legalise the development of a nuclear power plant
in Australia. For more information
contact Daniel Wild, Director of Research at dwild@ipa.org.au
5 policies the
Coalition should not implement but will
1. Do not hold a
Referendum to divide Australians by race The proposal to establish the
Constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Peoples
would irrevocably undermine national unity and is a regressive throwback to the
days when race played a central role in Australia’s Constitution. Similarly,
the proposal to establish a separate entity in the Constitution to be ‘The
Voice’ of Indigenous Australians is divisive and false - all Australians are
represented by the Commonwealth parliament and are equal before the law. Race
has no place in Australia’s Constitution.
2. Do not raise taxes
Australia is a high tax nation and workers and families pay too much tax. Over
the past decade real taxes per capita have risen by 11 per cent. According to
the Reserve Bank of Australia, over the past year taxes paid by households
increased by around 8 per cent, more than double the rate of growth in
household income.15 This means more money is going to the government and less
money can be spent on household essentials such as housing, child care, and
education. The Coalition should not raise taxes, and ideally should reduce
taxes.
3. Do not raise spending
The true cause of high and rising taxes is high and rising spending. Every
dollar of spending must be paid back with higher taxes, either today or in the
future via the accumulation of debt which is a tax on the next generation of
Australians. Government spending has increased from 23.1 per cent of GDP at the
end of the Howard-era to 24.6 per cent today (not including off-Budget expenses
and liabilities such as the NBN).16 In absolute terms spending has increased by
approximately 80 per cent, which is the equivalent to 6 per cent per year.17
This is well above the average rate of inflation of around 2 per cent per year.
4. Do not proceed with
Snowy 2.0 The Snowy Hydro 2.0 project will be remembered alongside the NBN as a
costly, ineffective, outdated, and inefficient bureaucratic program which won’t
solve the underlying public policy problem of high and rising electricity
prices and unreliable supply. The project will cost at least $4.5 billion, it
won’t become operational until at least 2024-25, and it will be a net energy
user, meaning it will be a drain on the energy grid. Instead, governments
should provide policy settings which allow for the development of reliable and
cost-effective coal-fired power generation.
5. Do not introduce new
anti-discrimination laws In the context of the Religious Freedom Review, it has
been suggested that new anti-discrimination laws be introduced to protect
freedom of religion. However, adding new restrictions through religious
antidiscrimination laws would constitute a significant threat to the freedom of
conscience of all Australians. Freedom, whether exercised for a religious
purpose or not, should only be limited where the exercise of that freedom
impacts another person’s freedom or peaceful use and enjoyment of their own
property. The only way to sufficiently protect religious freedom is to remove
laws that currently place restrictions on religious thought and practice.
Prime
Minister Scott Morrison asked how high he should jump, then realised he had
exposed the pathway he preferred if the party won at the 18 May 2019 federal
election and quickly dissembled………
The
Canberra Times,
18 April 2019:
Prime Minister Scott
Morrison says he has no plans to reverse a ban on nuclear energy, despite
earlier saying he was open to the industry if it could "pay its way".
"It's not, not on
the agenda ... but it's got to be self-sustaining," he told Tasmania Talks
LAFM on Thursday.
"I'm not going to
roll out tens of billions of dollars in subsidies, that's not the future for
energy efficiencies."
Labor's environment
spokesman Tony Burke took the chance to remind Mr Morrison nuclear power is
against the law.
"It is
extraordinary that Scott Morrison is now contemplating changing the law to
allow nuclear power stations in Australia," he said.
Mr Burke said Jervis
Bay, Townsville, Bribie Island and Mackay have all been flagged as locations
for nuclear power.
"Where is Morrison
proposing to put his nuclear power plants? Which coastal community is under
threat?"
But the prime minister
later on Thursday took to Twitter to step away from his earlier comment.
"This is not our
policy and we have no plans to change that," he tweeted.
Labels:
IPA,
Liberal Party of Australia
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