Month: August 2007

Prime Minister John Howard thinks Australia should have more tax changes. Treasurer Peter Costello thinks that non-investment housing should not be part of the tax system and so has ruled out an industry proposal to make interest payments on principal residences tax deductible.

Costello said this week that mortgage interest on the principal residence had never been tax deductible. But in fact was deductible for a period in either the late 1960s or early 1970s. It was means tested and eventually eroded by the high inflation of the Whitlam period.

Yes, Australia does need tax reform. But you have to wonder whether either side of politics is capable of doing a reasonable job. It may be that our tax system, so laced with perks and favours, is beyond change because it would mean stripping some of those away with obvious electoral consequences.

A lot of the Costello-Howard tax changes have been economically inefficient but politically very effective.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 25 August 2007 tax changes”

I am in an invidious position this week. I want to talk about sources, note-taking and not relying on memory in the light of the Peter Costello dinner with the three senior press gallery journalists in 2005.

The trouble is I made a boo-boo in last week’s column which might somewhat tarnish my credibility. The correction and apology appear at the bottom of column.

Ok, go and have a sneak preview, but promise you’ll come back.

So you are back.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 18 August 2007 jurno sources”

Competition squash, unlike Parkinson’s bureaucracies, has a two-way movement.

Professor C. Northcote Parkinson, you will recall, devised Parkinson’s Law – “that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”.

He also devised the Peter Principle – that people in bureaucracies keep getting promoted until they get a job at which they are incompetent and are promoted no more. This is why most bureaucracies have so many incompetent people in senior positions.

In competition squash (and other racquet sports), however, as the ravages of age and unfitness take over, you can get demoted to your level of competence.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 11 August 2007 the political racquet”

Cities are the opposite of families, or at least in the way that Leo Tolstoy described families.

Tolstoy said, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Miserable cities are alike; every wonderful city is wonderful in its own way.

The unique way that Canberra is wonderful is its street trees.

No other city on earth has every street planted with trees of a particular species.

Sure, many have street trees. But none has all its streets like those in Canberra: nature strip; no front fences and a given species of tree planted on each side of the street in a way that gives the street definition.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 4 August 2007 trees”