Crispin Hull

One Nation’s Trumpian threat

South Australia, Farrer, and the latest opinion polling have put One Nation ahead of any third force in Australian politics in the past 80 years, even the Greens and the Democrats, let alone the Australia Party, the United Australia Party, the Centre Alliance, or the Nuclear Disarmament Party all of which have had parliamentary representation.

It is tectonic that a minor party is now polling higher than one or even both major parties. We have less than two years to see how it will play out in a Federal election and how well Australia’s institutions, especially the Parliament, the media, and the political parties themselves can cope.

Why Trump should be indicted

The details of the 2016 agreement that the Obama Administration and European allies made with Iran show why President Donald Trump should be indicted for the war crime of waging an aggressive war.

That agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between the nuclear-armed US, UK, France, China, and Russia, and Germany and Iran, which Iran abided by for two years until Trump tore it up, made it impossible for Iran to make a nuclear bomb.

Death to News Ltd’s propaganda

Let’s not mince words, the “death tax” campaign begun by The Australian and the rest of News Ltd stable is a pack of lies and manipulative misinformation. It is best met with facts and reassurance.

There is no death tax in the Budget. The changes to taxes on trusts only affect the very wealthiest of people. The changes to capital gains tax will not stymie innovation, send innovators offshore, or affect anyone unfairly.

Budget just a small obvious step

Well, the Budget was a great song and dance about very little. It wound back a 27-year-old Howard freebie to the rich, middle-aged which should never have been given in the first place and brought negative-gearing and trusts into line with most other developed countries.

What a sorry state Australia is in if that is called major reform. It was just one wind-back of a myriad of egregious Howard Government hand-outs to mainly male, middle-aged or elderly, wealthy people. It was not reform – unless it is the first part of a project to unwind the 30-year dominance of economic “rationalism” that took so much wealth from the collective many and put it into the hands of the well-off few.

Ghastly result in Farrer for . . . Labor

The result for Labor in the Farrer by-election was truly ghastly. Labor did not field a candidate, so it has largely been ignored.

The pertinent question to ask, though, is: What happened to the votes of those 15,551 people (15 percent of the electorate) who voted for Labor at the general election in 2025?

Australia, don’t join war crime

Australia is expected to consider this week a request from the US to join a coalition of allies in a military effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz – called the “Maritime Freedom Construct.”

Australia should refuse, even in the unlikely event that others join.

To accept while hostilities continue would make Australia an accessory to the international crime of waging an aggressive war.

‘Crazy left-wing cabal of bitter people’

Sometimes evolution can be quite quick, almost revolutionary. Politics is similar to biology that way.

Politicians and political parties think they are part of the political environment, but they are more like organisms within it and if it changes, they will die out if they do not respond adaptively. Only the fittest survive.

Cutting government ‘spending’

The Coalition and business lobbyists are quite right to say that the Federal Government must rein in spending and reduce debt. And they were doing it again in the past week.

Australian debt has blown out, and the interest payments mean that there is less money to spend on health, education, and the like.

But the real issue is how do you define “government spending”. Similarly, the Coalition and business lobbyists are dead against increased taxes. But, again, the issue is what do you define as “tax”.

Health a symptom of ‘gutful’ response

Last week I was asked by someone on a very modest income whether it was worthwhile keeping private health insurance.

I replied that, for someone in their circumstances, almost certainly not. The starting point is that what we have in Australia is not private “health” insurance, but rather private “hospital” insurance. It does not cover medical services. Indeed, it is illegal for an insurer to provide insurance for the cost of medical services beyond the Medicare scheduled fee.

Unwinding the 1999 CGT folly

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers have confirmed in the past week that the May Budget will contain major tax changes to help intergenerational inequality.

Hopefully, it will be more than the half-hearted tinkering we have seen so far on major policy matters: the corruption commission; superannuation; and gambling.

However, the Budget process is the wrong vehicle for an overhaul of the tax system. It is inherently secret, so there will be no input from academics, think tanks, and other outside experts and no scrutiny or testing of proposals until it is too late and the Government is locked in.

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