2000_07_july_tax changes

The journalistic cliche for the change of a political decision is “back flip”. It is perhaps a misplaced metaphor. When one does a back flip one ends up in the same at position as when one started. A better description would be an about-face or a back-down. In the year since the introduction of a the GST, the Government has done a number of about-faces or back-downs. It changed the quarterly business activity statement to an annual statement. It scrapped the extra 1.5 cents-a-litre petrol excise increase. It changed at the tax system for a self-funded a retirees and pensioners. It gave an amnesty for families who had overstated their income thus affecting their entitlement to family allowance. And this week the Government backed away from its 80-20 rule that a deemed people earning 80 per cent of their income from one employer to be employees not independent contractors.

The latest about-face comes a week before the government faces a critical by-election in the outer Melbourne seat of Aston. The relationship between the events is obvious. Indeed, the about-faces listed above have only occurred since Coalition losses in the Western Australian and Queensland state elections in February.
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2000_07_july_republic forum

IN 1904, the Governor-General, Baron Northcote, refused a request (or more technically, advice) from Labor Prime Minister John Christian Watson.

Watson had only been prime minister a few months after the protectionist-free trade coalition of Alfred Deakin fell apart. Watson was in a minority. After only a few months in office and less than a year after the 1903 election he found that George Reid, a free trader, was putting together a majority that would defeat him on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Rather than meekly surrender the prime ministership to Reid, Watson went to the Governor-General to seek an early election. Northcote denied him and called upon Reid to form a government.

We now turn to 1975 and the sacking of the Whitlam Government by Governor-General John Kerr after the Senate denied it supply.

Then in 1983, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser went to Governor-General Ninian Stephen and sought a double dissolution of parliament and an early election. Stephen sent him away to get detailed justification. In the meantime, the Labor Party changed its leader from Bill Hayden to Bob Hawke, possibly affecting the result of the election.
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2000_07_july_pm speech kill later

TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP NATIONAL PRESS CLUB ADDRESS

GREAT HALL, PARLIAMENT HOUSE

Subjects:

E&OE…………………………..

(Check against delivery)

Later this year, the Australian electorate will face a stark and important choice.

It will be a choice in three key areas – that of competence, philosophy and the capacity to respond to future challenges and I want to discuss each with you today.

A CHOICE OF COMPETENCE

You have heard me speak many times about good and competent government. The comparison between this government and our political opponents is clear.
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2000_07_july_planning

There they were, shaking hands in an unholy alliance at the Property Council lunch this week — the Liberal Minister for Planning, Brendan Smyth, and his Labor Opposition counterpart, Simon Corbell.

In this election year there they were brown-nosing themselves to the development lobby, attempting to outdo each other on what concessions they could give to make it easier for developers to make money — Smyth representing the moneyed classes and Corbell representing the unions which gain power from representing the people who do the constructing. It was the alliance for short term monetary again over the long term amenity and lifestyle of the bulk of the people of Canberra.

Both have promised the Property Council that they would curtail the right of of the residents to to appeal against development proposals.

Where has Simon Corbell been these past three years? Has he no idea of the fury out there in the suburbs as a residents feel powerless against the onslaught of the unbridled in-fill, redevelopment and change of land use. Now he is proposing to further curtail any chance residents have against developers. This system is already egregiously stacked against residents. Developers with greater resources and greater experience of the system invariably get their way. Moreover, developers get tax deductions for all of their costs involved and the planning process. Meanwhile, residents who were quietly minding their own business only to find that suddenly their landscape is to be radically changed for the worse, have to dig into their own resources of time and money to resist what they see as unsuitable and intrusive development.
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2000_07_july_leader31jul

The Prime Minister, John Howard, will have to make up his mind soon as to what is more important: that the parliamentary wing does not interfere with the organisational wing of the Liberal Party, or that the Liberal Party should make a clear stand that it is against the far-right, racist policies of the One Nation party.

Mr Howard will also have to make up his mind on a more practical level whether it is better for his party to do a deal with One Nation or whether his party will get more support from Australian voters if it makes a stand against One Nation.

The issue arose at the weekend at the Western Australian state Conference of the Liberal Party. The conference voted unanimously in it favour of a motion which said that the state executive should allocate “preferences in consultation with campaign committees with the intention of maximising boats in the individual seats.”

Different people have read this different ways Western Australian Liberal senator Ross Lightfoot indicated that it could it lead the way for Liberal Party campaign committees to do preference swapping deals or with One Nation. Fellow Western Australian senator Ian Campbell, however, rejected this Abu saying the that the weekend motion “was nothing but a reaffirmation of the existing situation, and that it is that state executive makes preference decisions.” The question that many people will be asking is that if there was to be no change from the 1998 principled decision by the Liberal Party to put One Nation last on every federal Liberal how-to-vote card, why did the Western Australian state conference of the party need to adopt any motion at all. The fact that it did so indicates a change in position and the Western Australian state Liberal leader, Colin Barnett, conceded as much. The fact that the motion talked about “maximising votes” indicated that pragmatism was to be put before principle and short-term needs were to be put before long term aims.

Mr Howard was correct in 1998 in it pushing for a One-Nation-last strategy. In the long term, both major parties should put One Nation last if it they wish to remove One Nation from the political scene. If, however, the Liberal Party engages in short-term pragmatism it will only lead to One Nation being stronger in the future and less resistible when it comes to engaging in it preference deals.

Mr Howard is certainly aware of the pragmatic difficulties in the West Australian position. He said at the weekend that it was not possible for the party to do a preference deal in a remote part of the country without it having national consequences. Whereas most people who voted One Nation were average astray aliens, he said, some statements emanating from One Nation were genuinely frightening ethnic groups. And many statements that have come from One Nation candidates are indeed frightening and unacceptable in multicultural Australia.

Already several organisations representing ethnic groups have expressed alarm at the development in Western Australia and the more they do so the more the Liberal Party will understand that even if it is not prepared to isolate One Nation on grounds of principle, at least there will be a pragmatic cost particularly in urban parts of Australia. The Liberal Party will see it that for every vote gained by preference arrangements with One Nation will cause the loss of one vote more or from people who rightly object to a major party having truck with One Nation.

As to Mr Howard’s principle of allowing the organisational wing to allocate preferences unfettered from the parliamentary wing, there has now come time when preference allocation is not merely a mechanical affair but a matter of highest importance and symbolic of the Liberal Party’s philosophical position. He should act of to ensure that One Nation is put at last on every Liberal Party how to vote card. It is not impossible: the parliamentary leaders in NSW and Victoria have stated that One Nation will be put last.

2000_07_july_leader30jul republic

Former Deputy Prime Minster Tim Fischer announced last week that he was now in favour of Australia becoming a republic. This is significant in itself, coming as it does from a National Party MP and a former National Party leader. Hitherto, the National Party had been one of the major supporters of continuation with the constitutional monarchy. Interestingly enough, Mr Fischer said he had changed his view after widespread discussions in his electorate.

Perhaps of greater its significance, however, is that Mr Fischer outlined in some detail different methods of bringing the constitutional change about. He rather quaintly called these the green and the gold option. Many people might be frightened by the complexity of Mr Fischer’s proposals. However, they certainly offer a way out of the present Republican impasse.

This impasse has arisen out of the way that the Constitution has to be changed in Australia and the seemingly intractable divisions among Republicans as to what sort of republic Australia should be. At present, the Constitution requires that before there can be a change, a majority of people in a majority of states must support a proposal and the proposal must be a simple yes or no option to change words in the Constitution or to add words to it. At present, opinion polls suggest that a substantial majority of the Australian population would like to see an Australian republic, an Australian head of state and the severing of the remaining formal ties with the monarchy. However, it seems that many people who want a republic would prefer the continuation of the present system rather than have a republic of a kind to which they are opposed.
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2000_07_july_leader27jul building

The Government’s appetite for expensive election stuns continues unabated. The most recent example is yesterday’s decision to launch a Royal Commission into the building industry. In announcing the Royal Commission, Prime Minister John Howard said it was being called because of unacceptable practices and examples of criminal behaviour in the industry.

The Minister for Workplace Relations, Tony Abbott, said, “This is an industry which, in the past month, has seen absolutely outrageous attempts to nobble police inquiries, threaten witnesses, and pervert the course of justice.”

The difficulty for the Government in justifying the expense of a Royal commission is that on the Government’s own admission knowledge of illegal activity in the building industry is widespread. If we know that illegal activity is going on, why do we need an expensive Royal Commission to find out about it.?

Moreover, this Royal Commission will be just a repeat of a the Gyles Royal Commission into the construction industry in its NSW which reported in 1992. That commission found widespread illegality, absence of law enforcement and a reversion to the law of the jungle. That commission cost $24 million.
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2000_07_july_leader23jul banks

The revelation that Australian banks have reaped a record $6.26 billion from account fees in the past year has caused an outcry from consumers and the opposition Labor Party. A Reserve Bank report showed that charges by banks have gone up by 50 per cent since 1997. They accounted for 24 per cent of bank income in 2000, up from a 21 per cent in 1997.

Transaction fees for households rose 49 per cent in the past three years and credit card charges rose 27 per cent. The average number of free transactions has shrunk from 11 to eight and the average minimum balance required for fee-free banking rose from $500 to $2,000. Businesses, on the other hand, paid 12 per cent more in fees over the three years.

On their face, these figures appear fairly damning. They were certainly enough for Opposition Leader Kim Beazley to reaffirm his commitment to legislate for a social contract with banks to provide fee-free accounts for pensioners and families unless the banks came up with a satisfactory voluntary scheme. They were enough for the Australian Consumers Association to call for government regulation to set some minimum standards for the banking industry.
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2000_07_july_leader20jul

The United States is on a mission of sabotage. It is not satisfied merely to walk away from the Kyoto protocol on environment change, rather it wants to see it destroyed. President Bush as the democratically elected leader of the United States is well within his rights to question whether the protocol is necessarily or whether the US should join the agreement to make it legally enforceable. Presumably, the US electorate will judge him on his actions on that due course. But the US has gone beyond this.

Since President Bush announced in March, shortly after assuming the presidency, that the US would not ratify the Kyoto protocol as it stood, the US has actively done its best to ensure that countries like Canada, Japan and the Australia do not sign up. These three countries are critical to the Kyoto process. Under the Kyoto protocol 55 nations with 55 per cent of the global emissions must ratify the protocol to give it a legal force. Under the 55-55 rule the European Union and Eastern European countries cannot ago it alone. On their own they do not add up to 55 per cent of emissions nor do they add up to 55 countries. If Kyoto is to go anywhere, Japan and perhaps some other countries must join the European camp. But US pressure is strong. The Japanese, Canadian and Australian Governments are particularly subservient to whatever position the US takes in foreign-policy matters.
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2000_07_july_leader19jul pork barrels

The Howard Government continued pork barrelling again this week. One day after Prime Minister John Howard turned the first sod for the $1.3 billion Alice Springs-to-Darwin railway, his Minister for Defence, Peter Reith, announced that the Australian Defence Force’s new operational headquarters would go to Queanbeyan.

The decision to build the railway was flawed it from the beginning. It will always be a large white elephant and a burden on the taxpayer. The idea that it would be used to ship goods into the Asian market was fanciful. Producers of goods in that the southern part of Australia will use the cheaper and only slightly less timely sea routes, as they do now. The railway was only ever a plan to help the last remaining Liberal state government in South Australia and to help the Coalition in the fight for the two new Northern Territory seats at the next election. Hitherto, the single Northern Territory seat had always been marginal, swinging backwards and forwards from Labor to the Coalition over past 25 years. At the next election the Northern Territory will have to two seats – Solomon, based on Darwin and Lingiari, comprising and the remainder of the territory. Notionally, Solomon is a marginal coalition seat requiring a 2.4 per cent swing to fall to Labor.
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