Upcoming Australian election thread.

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Hacky McAxe

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This can not be true surely. Bolt gave it to Albo lol

Not surprising. Bolt cops it for being a Liberal supporter but he's not exactly a Liberal supporter. He's someone who has strict, ultra-Conservative beliefs and won't support anyone who strays from those beliefs. The moment ScoMo said that he would work to address climate change, he became an enemy of Bolt.
 

Hacky McAxe

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I don't think it was intentional either (even he's not that stupid), but words can matter to people. I'm not drawing from a big sample size but every one of my friends who has autistic or otherwise disabled kids is pretty pidsed off. Tbh his comments were much worse than also forgetting a BS figure.
Yep. I think it's something that many won't see how bad it is if they don't have that influence. My wife took it as extremely offensive, and friends who work in Disability care also found it extremely offensive.
 

CroydonDog

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Not surprising. Bolt cops it for being a Liberal supporter but he's not exactly a Liberal supporter. He's someone who has strict, ultra-Conservative beliefs and won't support anyone who strays from those beliefs. The moment ScoMo said that he would work to address climate change, he became an enemy of Bolt.
The Betoota Advocate once called Paul Murray "Aldi Alan Jones". Though that was pretty apt
 

Hacky McAxe

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Its the sad reality of politics these days, its just one "gotcha " moment after another with jounos and political fanatics chasing each others tales. No real policy, just what is least likely to cause me grief and get me elected or re- elected...
I wouldn't say "these days". As long as politics have existed it has been like this.

I remember an interesting doco about the founding of America where they said, "George Washington had one thing that he believed above all else. That is that there should never be a two party system, because it would only result in conflict. He would hate the current system"
 

wendog33

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This deal seems pretty dumb.

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News / Energy
The multi-billion-dollar rort no one is talking about
In an election where we face massive deficits and a trillion-dollar debt, why aren't we talking about taxing the windfall profits of offshore gas companies?
BERNARD KEANE
APR 20, 2022
28
(IMAGE: AP/ALAN DIAZ)
The extraordinary dodging of both company tax and the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT) by Australia’s, and the world’s, biggest gas companies — and thus the theft from Australians of income from our own natural assets — should be front and centre in the election campaign, given the colossal deficits and debt Australia currently faces.
As Crikey reported last year, the PRRT is a colossal rort — taxpayers are actually receiving less now than they were 20 years ago despite the massive expansion in gas exports from Western Australian projects and the tens of billions in extra revenue offshore gas companies are enjoying. Only Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and the massive spike in energy prices it caused — finally bumped PRRT revenue up in the forecasts in the April budget. But those forecasts remain below the levels of 20 years ago.
New data compiled by the Greens as part of their proposal for a new super-profits tax on the sector reveals the shocking extent to which the rules of the PRRT, which allowed accumulated deductions from exploration and construction to artificially grow by the long-term bond rate (LTBR) plus up to 15 percentage points, have inflated deductions.

Petroleum resource rent rort: fossil fuel companies continue to rip taxpayers off
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The government changed the rules marginally in 2019 to reflect that offshore gas projects take much longer to come online, and thus generate much bigger accumulated deductions, so that deductions would only grow by the LTBR plus 5 points for a decade, at which point they’d only grow by the LTBR.
But the damage was already done to taxpayers — and is now embedded in the PRRT system. The Greens have found in Australian Tax Office data that the current amount of deductions available to gas companies is $282 billion — or around 13% of GDP.
Every single dollar of those deductions means a dollar less in PRRT payable. That’s why we now get less in PRRT revenue than we were getting in 2000.
And that’s why, according to the Tax Office, gas companies won’t be paying any PRRT until the mid-2030s — even as they reap astonishing export returns worth over $100 billion a year. In fact, Shell has announced that it intends to never pay any PRRT on its profits from the Gorgon or Prelude fields. The biggest contributors to PRRT returns are oil companies: BHP and Esso’s Bass Strait projects.
It means that foreign companies are making huge profits from Australian resources, without paying Australians anything for their use.
And these companies also pay little or no company tax — again because of their expert use of deductions.
Like US-owned ExxonMobil, owner of 25% of the Gorgon project. $15.5 billion in revenue in 2019-20. Taxable income: zero. Company tax: zero. PRRT paid: zero.
Or US-owned Chevron, owner of 47% of Gorgon, 64% of Wheatstone and 16.7% of the North-West Shelf. $15 billion in revenue. Taxable income: $169 million. Company tax: zero. PRRT: zero.
Or British-owned Shell, owner of stakes in NW Shelf, Gorgon and Prelude: $5.3 billion in revenue; zero taxable income, zero company tax, zero PRRT.
Woodside, at least, pays some tax: $11.1 billion in revenue, $3.1 billion in taxable income, $454 million in tax, no PRRT.

Joyce’s $1.5 billion fossil fuel handout shows how we’re now a carbon state
Read More >
According to data sourced by the Greens, 28 gas companies collectively earning $77 billion in revenue and $482 million in taxable income paid no tax in 2019-20.
Remember these numbers are all wildly out of date: the revenue of these companies has more than doubled in the past six months, with little change in their costs, but because of those hundreds of billions in artificially inflated deductions, they won’t pay any more PRRT and little in the way of extra company tax.
The Greens want to dump the failed PRRT with a new system that would wipe out the accumulated deductions in one year, leaving none to be carried forward. There would be no uplift for any further expenditure, which would be deducted over 15 years. They also want a deductible 10% royalty applied to offshore gas projects other than the NW Shelf.
The Parliamentary Budget Office says the Greens proposal would generate $90 billion in additional tax revenue in the next decade — revenue that is currently flowing, mostly, to foreign shareholders for Australian assets.
The fact that the Greens are the ones bringing this idea forward says a lot about the extent of state capture of Australia by fossil fuel companies. At a time of massive budget deficits and a likely trillion-dollar debt, neither major party is interested in preventing the loss of revenue that belongs to Australians to foreign shareholders. It’s left to the Greens to do the hard policy work that would make life uncomfortable for fossil fuel giants.
It’s another example of how we’re a carbon state — except, unlike other carbon states like the fossil fuel sheikhdoms of the Middle East, we don’t even know how to profit from it.
 

Hacky McAxe

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Really? Fck me - I would never have guessed a federal election is to pick someone to run the country. I thought it was to pick someone to coach the Dogs - and thought we were in a transition coaching arrangement atm....
Nah man. It's to pick someone to coach the Dogs. That's what the federal election is for.
 

GoTheDoggies

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This is just embarrassing wheeling out senile Howard to campaign, he was actually out and about in Eastwood the other day and looked totally lost he thought he was in China
 

Grunthos

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We Australians are a stupid lot!
We waste part of a perfectly good Saturday every four years voting for
obnoxious people, we despise and wouldn't piss on if they were on
fire to positions of authority and power over us!
Also,
The perfect person for public office is usually someone who doesn't want the job in the first place...

 
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