Friday 29th of March 2024

COAG-ulation...

 

mr magic and dracula...

Senior ministers have thrown their support behind Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, after his contentious plan for income tax was rejected at yesterday's Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting in Canberra.

Key points:
  • Bill Shorten labels Turnbull 'arrogant' for thinking proposal would gain support
  • Annastacia Palaszczuk says states 'never got any documentation about the proposal'
  • Sussan Ley, Julie Bishop defend proposal, lay blame on states for rejecting plan

 

The support comes after Opposition Leader Bill Shorten described Mr Turnbull as "arrogant" for thinking his proposal would ever gain support.

Mr Turnbull announced a plan to reduce the Commonwealth's rate of income tax to allow the states and territories to levy their own tax to fund health and education on Wednesday.

But he was unable to convince state and territory leaders it was the best way to fix their budgets, and the plan was scrapped.

Mr Shorten has labelled it a "humiliating farce".

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-02/ministers-defend-pm-as-shorten-attacks-'humiliating'-tax-plan/7294586

 

the IPA rot...

Arguably the most influential think tank in Australia over the last decade, the Melbourne based Institute of Public Affairs, serves good beer at its functions, so I have been told. Whilst it has always been significant in pushing right wing, neo-liberal agendas, it is only in the last decade, and really during the last period of Liberal government, since October 2013, that it has emerged from the dim shadows into the brightness of political life. Previously it functioned mainly as a pressure group that would provide some kind of ‘intellectual’ substance to the economic and lobbying interests of the large mining companies and banks that provided most of its financial support. Yet already it had honed its lobbying skills with high success when Jeff Kennett privatised the electricity industry in Victoria in 1993. Now in 2016 whilst it continues to make many submissions to parliamentary inquiries, its influence on the political functioning of the country has become more direct.

Two main reasons can be adduced for this success. Firstly, is the IPA’s skill in insinuating itself into the media at all levels. In their 2015 annual report they boast of 81 mentions in federal parliament, 762 appearances in the print media, 411 appearances on radio and 184 appearances on TV. My untested feeling is that only the Grattan Institute, The Sydney Institute, the Australia Institute and the Lowy Institute would have comparable numbers. The IPA’s executive director John Roskam appears almost every Wednesday at 10am on the John Faine program, Chris Berg is a regular columnist for the Sunday Age, and the IPA is, not unexpectedly, well represented in the Murdoch Press. Others have appeared on the Drum and Q&A. Occasional media appearances might be understandable but their continuing presence, especially on the ABC, suggests they have successfully mainstreamed themselves. This insinuates a sleight-of-hand away from the extreme free-market thrust of many of their policies– such as the seventy-five item manifesto published in March 2013 that provided a radical platform of very detailed proposals that if fully implemented would have laid the foundation for an Australia of the likes we have never seen before–towards a more general acceptance by a relatively large audience of informed listeners on the ABC, readers of the Age, and a more popular audience of radio 3 AW. On these appearances their extreme views are usually toned down, to the extent that one could mistakenly consider the IPA a group of modest free marketeers.

 

read more: http://johnmenadue.com/blog/?p=6023

we've been fooled...

Apparently, according to Devine on Sunday, the sly fox Malcolm fooled everyone with his offer of handing over the taxation to the states which he knew would never pass. It could have been an April's fool prank... or a trick of Mr Fox who told us he was there, while digging somewhere else (Gus ponders that it possibly was his own electoral grave). Ms Devine tells the story:

At the end of the story, Bogis, Bunce and Bean are left waiting by the hole, still waiting for the fox to emerge. "And as far as I know", Dahl concludes "they are still waiting"...

 

The point is that, according to Devine, the States are profligate in their spending and Malcolm wanted them to be accountable to their dippy demands like mendicants... So that's why like the sly fox, Malcolm told them to raise their own taxes and see the result on the electorate — knowing fully well they would not buy the double dare trick. 

Somewhere of course, like in all Devine's fairy tales, in the fifth paragraph, the wicked witch is mentioned: Julia wanted to give the states $80 billions to sort out the health and education problems of this nation. How wicked... Though this cash was accounted for in Mr Swan's budget, it was dismissed by Devine's super hero, Super-Abbott, who cleverly diverted the non-existent cash to buy some very necessary aeroplanes with EXPENSIVE HELMETS from the USA to fight the Saracens in 2027, when the planes might be delivered (This last comment by Gus) but possibly outgunned by the latest SU45z.

Yes as Miranda Devine tells us, that "Australia is paralysed because no one is willing to make a difficult sales pitch and because a dysfunctional media class will exaggerate every downside..." This is where we leave this April's fool rant by Miranda considering that the media she works for — representing about 80 per cent of the lying/fibbing quarter-sheets — tends to exaggerate the value of Tony Abbott beyond god's clouds, while the rest — about 20 per cent of the trumpeters — including the "unsocial" media tends to poopoo Tony for having promised the moon and delivered turds only. And the Sly Fox Malcolm is fooling everybody by making the state accept $3 billion extra cash bribe for their visit to Canberra...

 

It's comforting to see the other mad hatter of the Sunday Tele, Piers Akerman, not fall for the trick and tell us that "PM finds delivering reforms too taxing"... The problem is in the "revenue" that shrunk, according to the laws of holes...