Posts

Double Jeopardy in Tax Unfair

I spoke on the Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Measures No. 1) Bill 2023. One Nation supports an efficient, honest and fair tax system. This Bill does nothing to make that happen.

Trickery with franking credits (again), the start of mandating Blackrock and Vanguard style ESG into Australia’s financial system and a potential Robodebt 2.0 are all in this Bill.

Despite Labor’s promises, they continue to fiddle with the taxation system and it is rarely for the better.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Measures No. 1) Bill 2023. One Nation supports an efficient, honest and fair tax system. An important aspect of a fair system to is to make sure tax is not double-charged. That’s what franking credits do. They make sure a tax is not double-charged. They ensure that Australians don’t pay income tax on the parts of dividends on which the government has already collected company tax. That’s fair. There’s no reason to allow the government to double-dip on Australian profits and then again on Australians’ income.  

In the 2019 election campaign, Labor proposed changes to the franking credits system. Australia completely rejected those thought bubbles. Labor learnt from that lesson and for the 2022 election, promised there would be no changes made to franked dividends if Australia voted them into government. Yet, now that Labor is in government, schedules 4 and 5 make a number of wholesale changes to how the dividend, share buyback, and franking system currently works. It is a broken promise, yet another to add to Labor’s list of broken promises. Just like when they promised to reduce your power bills by $275, Labor’s promise that they wouldn’t touch franking credits was a lie. As always, the government claims that these are simply modest changes. They’re anything but modest, with large implications for companies and for capital markets. The government hasn’t been able to articulate the need for these changes, nor quantify how big an impact they will have. They’re doing it, and they don’t even know what will happen. We cannot legislate on a hope, a vibe or a wish that it will be okay. While that is, according to some in government, Prime Minister Albanese’s modus operandi, it’s not a responsible way to steer a $1.7 trillion economy. It’s highly irresponsible. One Nation will be opposing these changes in schedules 4 and 5 and cannot pass the bill if they remain part of this package.  

Schedule 2 lays the groundwork for standards that align money to climate goals. This would presumably be to create alignment with the greatest scam in finance: ESG standards—environment, social and governance. The powers that be call them ‘sustainability standards’, yet there’s nothing sustainable about them. In fact, UN sustainability policies survive only as parasites on subsidies from the real economy—subsidies: that makes them unsustainable. So-called sustainability standards talk about protecting the financial system from risks. Yet they cannot quantify what those risks are. The idea that the government or, worse, a single bureaucratic department can ever predict and quantify risk to the financial system is sheer lunacy. A brief analysis of history shows that. Did the government and regulatory agencies see the risk of the dot com bubble coming in the 2000s? No. They had no idea. Did the American regulators see the risk of subprime mortgages leading to the global financial crisis? No. They arguably participated in and make it far worse. Did any regulator around the world predict the risk of almost every government in the world going certifiably insane in response to COVID, a bad flu? No, they did not. Over the last three years, the Reserve Bank created $500 billion in electronic journal entries, money concocted out of thin air. Did any regulator predict the risks that would lead to the skyrocketing inflation that we’re still trying to get under control? No, they did not. Actually, some did, and we were ridiculed by the experts. The point here is very simple. The government and the regulators cannot quantify the risk of financial system shock. History shows governments are hilariously bad at it. They certainly won’t be able to do it for supposed climate risks that are nothing more than fabrications concocted from inherent, natural, cyclical variation. By the way, everything in nature—everything in existence—varies, yet understanding of variation is not taught in schools and rarely taught properly, if at all, at university. That’s why Green, Labor, Teal and, sadly, some Liberal-National members and senators spout nonsense in this parliament and in public, concocting and spreading imaginary fears of climate apocalypse, when reality shows simply inherent, natural, cyclical variation. 

They cannot even come up with the only sound and essential basis for policy—that is, they’ve never quantified the specific effect of carbon dioxide from human activity. That means they have no basis for climate and energy policy, no specific quantified goals for climate and energy policy and no means of measuring progress towards those goals. We’re flying blind. Australia is flying blind. Energy costs and climate policies are out of control and needlessly imposing huge costs on families, small businesses, our country and our nation’s future. Anyway, the only thing we can do to protect against systemic risks is to make sure that financial intermediaries are well capitalised and diversified to survive any risk that comes to fruition. Doing anything else encourages a lack of diversification and actually increases risk. 

I don’t believe in this climate apocalypse nonsense, this climate fraud, yet even for those who do fall for this illusion there’s no serious risk to anything. Let’s look at the supposed science around climate risk. When I ask the government why we need to cut human production of carbon dioxide, they point me to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN IPCC. They’re a dodgy bunch—proven over 40-plus years—yet I don’t think anyone in here has actually read the IPCC reports they claim as proof the climate is going to collapse. If you go to the IPCC’s assessment report 6, you’ll see chapter 12 is the summary of Working Group I, who looked at the actual science around natural disasters. Table 12.12 summarises all of the available evidence on the frequency of extreme weather events. Let me read out the types of natural disasters where even the United Nations has said there has been no detectable increase in the number of natural disasters. I repeat that: no detectable increase in frost, river flood, rain measured in terms of mean precipitation or heavy precipitation, landslide, drought, fire weather, wind speed, windstorm, tropical cyclone, dust storm, heavy snowfall, hail, relative sea level, coastal flood, marine heatwave—and on and on. Although I do not put any trust in the United Nations, government claims it does, and the United Nations says there has been no increase in severe weather events in those categories—none. 

Even better, table 12.12 in the IPCC’s AR6 says the United Nations doesn’t expect to see any detectable increase in those categories in the next 80 years under its worst-case scenario. There’s no risk to the financial system from climate change because there’s no need to cut human production of carbon dioxide—end of story. 

As an aside, I ask: on what basis does Minister Watt get his frequent fanciful, scary claims of increasing extreme weather events? Wild imagination, Senator Watt? From where do the Greens get their dishonest claims? From where does Senator Pocock get his pseudoscience to support his Kermit green fantasy policies? Is it the family money of Simon Holmes a Court, who now relies on the millions of green subsidy dollars that support otherwise unsustainable and failing wind and solar net zero projects—parasitic subsidies from energy users and taxpayers who pay through needlessly higher prices. 

Recently in this chamber I heard Senator David Pocock cite scientists who said they have fears for the climate. Significantly, he did not provide any science to back it up, apparently because he seems to just swallow their words because they claim to be scientists. That’s what’s happened repeatedly in this chamber. People don’t produce the science; they say what scientists conclude and don’t analyse it. Those scientists are on major grants to push the climate fraud. Real scientists don’t peddle unsubstantiated fears. Scientists present science, presenting the empirical scientific data as evidence within logical scientific points, proving cause and effect. Never has anyone done that. Senator David Pocock never presents any such science nor references the specific pages providing such logical scientific points—never. Extreme weather has always been with us. It remains with us and will always be with us. It’s natural and often cyclical.  

So what’s the real reason for implementing so-called sustainability standards and ESG? The Assistant Treasurer, Stephen Jones, said it in his second reading speech to this bill: the purpose is to ‘align capital flows towards climate and sustainability goals’. I’ll say it again: the purpose is to ‘align capital flows towards climate and sustainability goals’—political goals, not scientific. Those are the goals of predatory globalist billionaires and the rent seekers who are flogging wind, solar and battery products, billionaires peddling parasitic mis-investments in solar, wind and batteries and transferring wealth from families, small businesses and employers to billionaires, often overseas. 

Despite claims that these solar and wind products are the cheapest, the free market has utterly failed to adopt them, because they simply cannot survive in the wild on their own, without subsidies. In other speeches in recent weeks, I’ve documented the huge number of failures in wind and solar projects overseas and here in Australia. They’re falling over like flies. Billionaires behind the climate push are panicking now that their parasitic investments won’t get the return they need. The teals’ sugar daddy, Simon Holmes a Court; Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest; Johnny-come-lately to climate fearmongering Mike Cannon-Brookes; and old stagers Alex Turnbull and Ross Garnaut—having failed with climate scams in the free market, these climate doomsayers now need the government to direct money their way through implementation of ‘climate standards’—they’re going to standardise the climate!—to, as the Assistant Treasurer said, ‘align capital flows’. This is more of the crony capitalism that has ruined Australia. If it weren’t so serious, it would be laughable. This is why I’ve circulated an amendment to strike out schedule 2 of the bill. There’s no reason to even start down this path of folly and pretend that, hidden away in the cupboard somewhere, the government have a crystal ball they can use to predict the future. If they do, they clearly haven’t used it before. 

A final concern I’ll raise is with schedule 1, part 2, of the bill. This gives ASIC the power to use ‘assisted decision-making’ processes. That’s their label. This amendment is incredibly broad and vague, and we can assume this will involve some level of automation and, eventually, the implementation of AI, artificial intelligence. It’s incredibly concerning that the explanatory memorandum includes, at 1.24: ‘ASIC may change a decision made by an assisted decision-making process if it is satisfied the decision is wrong.’ Can you believe it? This very heavily implies that a human will not be involved in the decision-making process. An assisted decision-making process should only be in place to assist a human in making a decision. There should not be a robot using artificial intelligence to make the decision itself. The fact that Labor would introduce this blank cheque to the new robot overlords in the wake of a royal commission they called into robodebt is a stunning revelation. If the robots get it wrong, there’s no clear avenue of appeal for a person who is subject to the wrong decision. They’ll simply have to rely on ASIC deciding to look at it on their own motion and finding out it’s wrong. Good luck with that. This change is too broad, and One Nation is raising its concerns now so that these issues can be monitored in future. 

To summarise, the government would be better off going back to the drawing board on this con hiding behind the label ‘Treasury laws’. 

/1 Comment/by

Double Jeopardy in Tax Unfair

One Nation supports an efficient, honest and fair tax system.

A fair tax system is one where tax is not double-charged. That’s what franking credits do. They make sure a tax is not double-charged.

They ensure that Australians don’t pay income tax on the parts of dividends on which the government has already collected company tax. That’s fair. There’s no reason to allow the government to double-dip on Australian profits and then again on Australians’ income.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Measures No. 1) Bill 2023. One Nation supports an efficient, honest and fair tax system. An important aspect of a fair system to is to make sure tax is not double-charged. That’s what franking credits do. They make sure a tax is not double-charged. They ensure that Australians don’t pay income tax on the parts of dividends on which the government has already collected company tax. That’s fair. There’s no reason to allow the government to double-dip on Australian profits and then again on Australians’ income.  

In the 2019 election campaign, Labor proposed changes to the franking credits system. Australia completely rejected those thought bubbles. Labor learnt from that lesson and for the 2022 election, promised there would be no changes made to franked dividends if Australia voted them into government. Yet, now that Labor is in government, schedules 4 and 5 make a number of wholesale changes to how the dividend, share buyback, and franking system currently works. It is a broken promise, yet another to add to Labor’s list of broken promises. Just like when they promised to reduce your power bills by $275, Labor’s promise that they wouldn’t touch franking credits was a lie. As always, the government claims that these are simply modest changes. They’re anything but modest, with large implications for companies and for capital markets. The government hasn’t been able to articulate the need for these changes, nor quantify how big an impact they will have. They’re doing it, and they don’t even know what will happen. We cannot legislate on a hope, a vibe or a wish that it will be okay. While that is, according to some in government, Prime Minister Albanese’s modus operandi, it’s not a responsible way to steer a $1.7 trillion economy. It’s highly irresponsible. One Nation will be opposing these changes in schedules 4 and 5 and cannot pass the bill if they remain part of this package.  

Schedule 2 lays the groundwork for standards that align money to climate goals. This would presumably be to create alignment with the greatest scam in finance: ESG standards—environment, social and governance. The powers that be call them ‘sustainability standards’, yet there’s nothing sustainable about them. In fact, UN sustainability policies survive only as parasites on subsidies from the real economy—subsidies: that makes them unsustainable. So-called sustainability standards talk about protecting the financial system from risks. Yet they cannot quantify what those risks are. The idea that the government or, worse, a single bureaucratic department can ever predict and quantify risk to the financial system is sheer lunacy.

A brief analysis of history shows that. Did the government and regulatory agencies see the risk of the dot com bubble coming in the 2000s? No. They had no idea. Did the American regulators see the risk of subprime mortgages leading to the global financial crisis? No. They arguably participated in and make it far worse. Did any regulator around the world predict the risk of almost every government in the world going certifiably insane in response to COVID, a bad flu? No, they did not. Over the last three years, the Reserve Bank created $500 billion in electronic journal entries, money concocted out of thin air. Did any regulator predict the risks that would lead to the skyrocketing inflation that we’re still trying to get under control? No, they did not. Actually, some did, and we were ridiculed by the experts. The point here is very simple. The government and the regulators cannot quantify the risk of financial system shock. History shows governments are hilariously bad at it. They certainly won’t be able to do it for supposed climate risks that are nothing more than fabrications concocted from inherent, natural, cyclical variation. By the way, everything in nature—everything in existence—varies, yet understanding of variation is not taught in schools and rarely taught properly, if at all, at university. That’s why Green, Labor, Teal and, sadly, some Liberal-National members and senators spout nonsense in this parliament and in public, concocting and spreading imaginary fears of climate apocalypse, when reality shows simply inherent, natural, cyclical variation. 

They cannot even come up with the only sound and essential basis for policy—that is, they’ve never quantified the specific effect of carbon dioxide from human activity. That means they have no basis for climate and energy policy, no specific quantified goals for climate and energy policy and no means of measuring progress towards those goals. We’re flying blind. Australia is flying blind. Energy costs and climate policies are out of control and needlessly imposing huge costs on families, small businesses, our country and our nation’s future. Anyway, the only thing we can do to protect against systemic risks is to make sure that financial intermediaries are well capitalised and diversified to survive any risk that comes to fruition. Doing anything else encourages a lack of diversification and actually increases risk. 

I don’t believe in this climate apocalypse nonsense, this climate fraud, yet even for those who do fall for this illusion there’s no serious risk to anything. Let’s look at the supposed science around climate risk. When I ask the government why we need to cut human production of carbon dioxide, they point me to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN IPCC. They’re a dodgy bunch—proven over 40-plus years—yet I don’t think anyone in here has actually read the IPCC reports they claim as proof the climate is going to collapse. If you go to the IPCC’s assessment report 6, you’ll see chapter 12 is the summary of Working Group I, who looked at the actual science around natural disasters. Table 12.12 summarises all of the available evidence on the frequency of extreme weather events. Let me read out the types of natural disasters where even the United Nations has said there has been no detectable increase in the number of natural disasters. I repeat that: no detectable increase in frost, river flood, rain measured in terms of mean precipitation or heavy precipitation, landslide, drought, fire weather, wind speed, windstorm, tropical cyclone, dust storm, heavy snowfall, hail, relative sea level, coastal flood, marine heatwave—and on and on. Although I do not put any trust in the United Nations, government claims it does, and the United Nations says there has been no increase in severe weather events in those categories—none. 

Even better, table 12.12 in the IPCC’s AR6 says the United Nations doesn’t expect to see any detectable increase in those categories in the next 80 years under its worst-case scenario. There’s no risk to the financial system from climate change because there’s no need to cut human production of carbon dioxide—end of story. 

As an aside, I ask: on what basis does Minister Watt get his frequent fanciful, scary claims of increasing extreme weather events? Wild imagination, Senator Watt? From where do the Greens get their dishonest claims? From where does Senator Pocock get his pseudoscience to support his Kermit green fantasy policies? Is it the family money of Simon Holmes a Court, who now relies on the millions of green subsidy dollars that support otherwise unsustainable and failing wind and solar net zero projects—parasitic subsidies from energy users and taxpayers who pay through needlessly higher prices. 

Recently in this chamber I heard Senator David Pocock cite scientists who said they have fears for the climate. Significantly, he did not provide any science to back it up, apparently because he seems to just swallow their words because they claim to be scientists. That’s what’s happened repeatedly in this chamber. People don’t produce the science; they say what scientists conclude and don’t analyse it. Those scientists are on major grants to push the climate fraud. Real scientists don’t peddle unsubstantiated fears. Scientists present science, presenting the empirical scientific data as evidence within logical scientific points, proving cause and effect. Never has anyone done that. Senator David Pocock never presents any such science nor references the specific pages providing such logical scientific points—never. Extreme weather has always been with us. It remains with us and will always be with us. It’s natural and often cyclical.  

So what’s the real reason for implementing so-called sustainability standards and ESG? The Assistant Treasurer, Stephen Jones, said it in his second reading speech to this bill: the purpose is to ‘align capital flows towards climate and sustainability goals’. I’ll say it again: the purpose is to ‘align capital flows towards climate and sustainability goals’—political goals, not scientific. Those are the goals of predatory globalist billionaires and the rent seekers who are flogging wind, solar and battery products, billionaires peddling parasitic mis-investments in solar, wind and batteries and transferring wealth from families, small businesses and employers to billionaires, often overseas. 

Despite claims that these solar and wind products are the cheapest, the free market has utterly failed to adopt them, because they simply cannot survive in the wild on their own, without subsidies. In other speeches in recent weeks, I’ve documented the huge number of failures in wind and solar projects overseas and here in Australia. They’re falling over like flies. Billionaires behind the climate push are panicking now that their parasitic investments won’t get the return they need. The teals’ sugar daddy, Simon Holmes a Court; Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest; Johnny-come-lately to climate fearmongering Mike Cannon-Brookes; and old stagers Alex Turnbull and Ross Garnaut—having failed with climate scams in the free market, these climate doomsayers now need the government to direct money their way through implementation of ‘climate standards’—they’re going to standardise the climate!—to, as the Assistant Treasurer said, ‘align capital flows’. This is more of the crony capitalism that has ruined Australia. If it weren’t so serious, it would be laughable. This is why I’ve circulated an amendment to strike out schedule 2 of the bill. There’s no reason to even start down this path of folly and pretend that, hidden away in the cupboard somewhere, the government have a crystal ball they can use to predict the future. If they do, they clearly haven’t used it before. 

A final concern I’ll raise is with schedule 1, part 2, of the bill. This gives ASIC the power to use ‘assisted decision-making’ processes. That’s their label. This amendment is incredibly broad and vague, and we can assume this will involve some level of automation and, eventually, the implementation of AI, artificial intelligence. It’s incredibly concerning that the explanatory memorandum includes, at 1.24: ‘ASIC may change a decision made by an assisted decision-making process if it is satisfied the decision is wrong.’ Can you believe it? This very heavily implies that a human will not be involved in the decision-making process. An assisted decision-making process should only be in place to assist a human in making a decision. There should not be a robot using artificial intelligence to make the decision itself. The fact that Labor would introduce this blank cheque to the new robot overlords in the wake of a royal commission they called into robodebt is a stunning revelation. If the robots get it wrong, there’s no clear avenue of appeal for a person who is subject to the wrong decision. They’ll simply have to rely on ASIC deciding to look at it on their own motion and finding out it’s wrong. Good luck with that. This change is too broad, and One Nation is raising its concerns now so that these issues can be monitored in future. 

To summarise, the government would be better off going back to the drawing board on this con hiding behind the label ‘Treasury laws’. 

/6 Comments/by

Queensland Government rolls out TAX on the SICK

The Palaszczuk Government’s decision to extend payroll tax to contracting GP’s is nothing but a tax on the sick. The treasurer has promised a 2 year grace period, instead, the entire idea of taxing GPs more should be scrapped.

/14 Comments/by

Do you feel like government spends your money well?

, , , ,

There have been massive increases in debt in the last 12 months, without the necessary objective data to underpin them. That shows, yet again, poor governance of our country. When you take in government charges, rates, levies and fees as well 68% of someone’s average income is taken in tax. That’s working from Monday to mid-morning Thursday to pay for government.

Transcript

Senator Siewert’s motion is that the Senate notes that the Morrison government’s 2021-22 budget left people on low incomes behind. I would go further. This budget leaves the whole country behind, and that means it leaves everyone behind. There have been massive increases in debt in the last 12 months, without the necessary objective data to underpin them. That shows, yet again, poor governance of our country. In Senate estimates, I discussed with the chief medical officer and the secretary of the health department the seven essential components of a plan for managing a virus. The federal government is addressing one; the state governments are addressing another—that’s it—and they have both been addressed poorly.

I want to discuss the productive capacity because that’s what determines the wealth and the economic security, and, indeed, sometimes the defence security of our nation in the future. The productive capacity of our country has been declining considerably since 1944 and, in fact, since 1923, if we want to get into basics—but that’s for another day. Let’s look at the most important part of productive capacity—the human asset, our people. Look at education, because it’s the future leaders of this country who will determine the future productive capacity, as well as us determining that capacity today. We have declining scores in education. Reading and writing, mathematics and science—declining. By world standards, we are falling well behind in the core aspects of education but we devote plenty of resources, plenty of time, plenty of energy to teaching kids—misleading kids—about gender fluidity, critical race theory, non-gender language and a national curriculum that the government forks out money for yet cannot control. That’s what has been told to us by the federal government.

We need charter schools. We need parents to have more say in the running of their schools, and principals to have more say in the running of their schools; parents to control what values are passed on; and parents to decide whether or not their children will be taught about gender fluidity. I want to compliment Mark Latham in the New South Wales parliament and my colleague Senator Pauline Hanson for the bills they are introducing and evaluating right now to restore values and common sense to education. I note that Singapore, Japan, and Korea have really moved ahead in recent years, as has Taiwan. They all have solid basic education.

What’s happened to apprenticeships in this country? Senator Lines moved a motion today with regard to apprenticeships sadly lacking in WA. Senator Hanson has proudly introduced an apprenticeship scheme that the government has taken and refurbished and expanded, such is the success of her suggestion on apprenticeships. What has happened to universities? They followed our primary schools and high schools in becoming more woke and driven by anything but education. As for university education, it is now just pushing an ideology. Our TAFE systems have fallen into disrepair; our trades qualifications are falling into disrepair.

Let’s move on then to the workplace. The Fair Work Act is an abomination. It is about that thick in pages printed. It destroys the employer-employee relationship, which is essential for productive capacity. It is difficult for anyone, an employee or a small businesses employer who doesn’t have access to lawyers and consultants and HR practitioners to work their way through that. How can they possibly be held accountable for that relationship when they can’t even understand it and never will understand it, not because of lack of intelligence but because of lack of time and surely being overwhelmed? Again, just like education, this is poor governance to get into this state.

Then we go to energy—arguably the most critical in material resources because energy has determined the competitiveness of every country. Under President Trump America reversed the decline in its competitiveness because it reversed its increase of energy prices and it started to decrease its energy prices again. America became more competitive against its competitors and blossomed because of that. President Trump created more jobs than any president in history because of that and because he cut away regulations.

This government and its predecessors have fiddled the Renewable Energy Target, destroying our baseload coal-fired power stations, our grid. The network costs are destroying our grid, making it unaffordable. Retail sectors of electricity are just a fabrication. The national electricity market is now a national electricity racket. It’s not a market at all; it’s a bureaucracy that’s interfered with and manipulated by bureaucrats looking after vested interests. Then we see privatisation. The Queensland Labor government is taking about $1½ billion every year from people who use electricity—businesses, small businesses and families—and that is now a tax. We have taxes on electricity. Why is it that the Chinese can produce electricity and sell it for one-third the cost of electricity sold in this country when they use the same coal as we do? They take it thousands of kilometres, burn it and sell the coal-fired power to their consumers and we sell it for three times as much because of regulations that come out of both sides of this parliament.

Then we look at water. The Murray-Darling Basin has been gutted. Communities have been gutted. Regions have been gutted. And nothing is happening about it. Today we passed an amendment to restore compliance with the law, the Water Act of 2007, with regard to water trading. It was supported by the Labor Party but denied by the Liberals and Nationals. They don’t want to comply with the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. It went down to the lower house and Labor changed and sent it back here, in cahoots with the Liberals and Nationals. That will continue to destroy water allocations in our country because it will continue the corruption and the likely—I’m very confident in saying this—criminal activity going in the Murray-Darling Basin with regard to abuse of water trading.

Then we see property rights, which are fundamental to running a farm or a business. They were capriciously stolen under the Howard-Anderson government in 1996 and then progressively by Labor premiers from Queensland and New South Wales, jumping on the bandwagon to steal farmers’ property rights. Why? To comply with the United Nations Kyoto protocol of 1996—that’s why. Farmers have lost the value of their land. We see that extended in Queensland, for example, by the Queensland state government, relying on bogus claims about the reef to lock up land. We then see the federal government enacting carbon farming, where vast tracks of good farmland are laid waste, abandoned and taken over by feral animals and noxious weeds. There are costs to managing them as they spread around the country and fall on their neighbours’ properties. This is another example of poor governance. There’s a lack of infrastructure in water. The Bradfield scheme is crying out for investment.

Then we go to the most destructive system of all in our country, the Australian taxation system. In 1996 and 2010, Jim Killaly was the deputy commissioner of taxation for large companies and international matters. He said on both occasions—1996 and 2010—that 90 per cent of Australia’s large companies are foreign owned and, since 1953, have paid little or no company tax. They use our resources, people, assets, defence forces, police forces and education system and pay nothing in return and just take. The Japanese, by comparison, have in their large companies 2.5 per cent foreign owned. The American and the British figures are about 12.5 per cent. Who pays for these foreign companies to use our assets and to make money without paying company tax? The people of Australia pay for that through families paying taxes, individuals paying taxes, small businesses paying taxes and some large Australian come companies paying 30 per cent against their multinational competitors who don’t have to pay that. How can we possibly compete? Then we found out in the late 1990s and early 2000s—and I’ve asked the Parliamentary Library to update this figure—that a person on an average income in this country pays 68 per cent of their income to government. Housing is not our largest expenditure in life; government is, through taxes, rates, fees, levies, chargers, supercharges and special charges. Joe Hockey admitted when he was Treasurer that 50 per cent of a person’s income is taken in tax. He said people work from January through to the end of June for government and then they keep what’s left. The actual figure, when you take in government charges, rates, levies and fees as well, is 68 per cent, which means that someone on the average income is working from Monday to mid-morning Thursday to pay for government.

Then they have what’s left, the two-thirds of Thursday and Friday, to pay for their entire life: their retirement, their education, their food, their shelter, their car, their transport, their entertainment. That is not fair, and it shows poor governance. I haven’t got time now to talk about attempts to reform taxation, but both parties, both the tired old parties, have shown a reluctance to invest energy and political will and sheer guts in tackling—and they lack the integrity to tackle—comprehensive tax reform.

I mentioned infrastructure a minute ago. What about projects like the Richmond agricultural project? What about the irrigation project up in Hughenden? What about things like Iron Boomerang, which would transform our country and make it the most cost-effective and largest producer of steel, and give us enormous security for manufacturing and for our defence? Then we have things that tap into that Iron Boomerang—things like an inland rail that’s being destroyed by the Liberal-National government, an inland rail that is sucking up resources and coming up with something that will be far worse than the existing installations, especially when we consider the blowout in the cost. Again, it’s a lack of data, a lack of sound planning. An inland rail and a proper route through to Gladstone would be part, then, of a proper national rail circuit.

Madam Deputy President, I submit to you these points that show and prove that the government here has not only left the poor behind, as Senator Siewert points out; the government has put additional burdens on the poor, the government has put a regressive tax on the poor in terms of energy prices. Energy prices are increasing alarmingly, and the poor have to pay a higher and higher and higher proportion of their income on a fundamental, which is energy. And then the poor pay for it because they lose their jobs when our manufacturing jobs and some of our agricultural and agricultural processing jobs are exported to China, which uses our raw materials—gas and coal—to produce electricity far more cheaply than we sell it for in our own country. So we’re losing out entirely and we lose out in the diminishing of our defence security.

So I certainly agree with Senator Siewert that the Morrison government’s 2021-22 budget has left people on low incomes behind. It has left people right across the country behind. It has left Australia behind.

/by

Senate Estimates – How much GST are we losing at the border on imports?

, ,

Millions upon millions of parcels flow into Australia every month. Some dodgy operators avoid paying GST on imports by understating the value of the goods being posted. This is a huge disadvantage to our Aussie shops and we need to be doing more to enforce the rules on GST for foreign imports.

Transcript

[Malcolm Roberts] I have some brief questions on border force. How many parcels come through Australian border force each financial year?

So Senator just give me one second. I’ll just get, I might just ask deputy commissioner Saunders to join me at the, the front table as well. In terms of parcels, probably I might describe it slightly differently if I could. So air cargo consignments, if I could start there cause Senator the goods coming into Australia, primarily from a border screening point of view is either sea cargo, stuff that comes in containers, air cargo, stuff that comes in crates in the belly of aeroplanes and international mail. So in terms of air cargo consignments between the 1st of July, 2020 and the 31st of March, 2021 there were 54,340,909 consignments in relation to sea cargo, there’s been a significant uptake. So I’ll give you the numbers for 19 and 20 first of all. So between the 1st of July, 2019, 31st of March, 2020 there were 2,472,286 consignments. Between the 1st of July, 2020 31st of March, 2021, 7,449,539 consignments. The reason for that is because of COVID-19 because of changes in logistics, supply chains, etc, a lot of people shopping from home, smaller consignments and the the freight forwarders need to get it here somehow. And there just isn’t a number of aeroplanes coming to Australia to support all of that coming through air cargo. So a lot of, a lot of the smaller consignments are now coming in containers and that’s led to a significant increase. In terms of international mail you see that data is actually commercially confidential because obviously Australia posts are in competition with you know, freight forwarders and other sort of international supply chain sort of companies. And, we don’t put those numbers out there Senator in terms of Australian international mail.

[Malcolm Roberts] Okay. But the total number of consignments for the nine months, July 20 to March 21 was 54 million, including air, mail and sea.

Well not including mail, I can’t give you that number because that’s commercially sensitive because Australian posts are sort of a, you know there’s a single commercial entity and they’re in competition with other people in the market. We don’t put that number out there. So what I’ve given you is in terms, sorry, air cargo consignments 54,340,909

[Malcolm Roberts] That’s just for air.

That’s for air, cargo. And for sea cargo an additional almost seven and a half million, 7.449 million.

[Malcolm Roberts] Okay. Thank you very much for that. How many of these parcels are checked for value and whether or not GST is applied?

I might just call

[Malcolm Roberts] Sorry commissioner, just on that number, the sea cargo is that, how are you quantifying that number?

Consignment, so a consignment is obviously

[Malcolm Roberts] Do you define that as per container or how

No consignment is if you import a good into Australia, that’s a consignment, so that could be an entire container load that you have or if you’ve got lots of lines of goods in a container, so let’s say a freight forwarding company wants to get a lot of consignments to Australia, previously they might put them in a crate in the belly of an aeroplane, whereas now they’re putting them in containers. So we’re getting containers with lots and lots of consignments in them.

[Malcolm Roberts] I see, thanks for clarifying.

Does that make sense?

So it’s an individual entry for an importer of a good and that can be a private person or a commercial entity.

[Malcolm Roberts] Thank you. Thanks.

Thanks Senator Roberts. I might just ask Vanessa Holben here in terms of the, the GST question. If I could, it goes to matters of customs policy.

Vanessa Holburn group manager, customs group, Australian Border force. So your question is related to GST?

[Malcolm Roberts] Yeah. How many of the parcels that come in, consignments, are checked for value and have GST applied?

So I’ll need to take on notice the number of consignments that are checked. What I can give you though, is the dollar value of the undetected, undecided GST detected?

[Malcolm Roberts] The under?

The undecided GST detected. So that’s, that’s where they haven’t obviously claimed GST. So the dollar value, would you like it in the financial years?

[Malcolm Roberts] Yes, please.

So 2019-20, 25,827,753. I can go previous years if you’d like to as well.

[Malcolm Roberts] No it’s fine.

Year to date, so 31st of March, 2021, 411,719.

[Malcolm Roberts] So that’s the, could you say that again? What is that 25 million?

So we determine it, we determine it as understated, GST detected.

[Malcolm Roberts] Understated, GST detected.

Correct.

[Malcolm Roberts] So what does that mean? Understated? So that means only the only the parcels that have been where the GST has been understated and where it’s detected.

Correct.

[Malcolm Roberts] So what proportion of parcels are waved through without checking to see if GST should be paid.

That’s what I need to check on notice for you.

[Malcolm Roberts] Okay. Thank you. Is there any estimation of how much GST has not been paid per year? It’s a massive task as, as Mr. Adam just told us.

Again, I’ll need to check that on notice.

[Malcolm Roberts] Thank you. How many notices are sent out to call in GST prior to the parcel being released?

I’ll need to check that on notice Senator.

[Malcolm Roberts] What is the estimated loss to Australia per year for the lost or forgone GST?

I’ll need to take that on notice

And senator, we’ll take that on notice, but also we do obviously with GST, recognise other departments have a stake in the GST question, the ATO and treasury. So we will take it on notice, but we’ll, we’ll also link in with our other departments who have an interest in the GST policy.

[Malcolm Roberts] Thank you. What has been done to assist the cost of this forfeit and to implement a remedy. We’ve got to define the problem before we can solve it. With 54 million consignments, I’m sorry, 61 million consignment, it’s a pretty massive opportunity.

Can you repeat the question again Senator?

[Malcolm Roberts] What’s been done to assess the, the loss of revenue the forgone revenue, and to implement a remedy.

We can talk about our audit inspection control programme.

So, so the compliance, we have a compliance programme obviously to detect non-compliance through those avenues.

[Malcolm Roberts] That’s sampling is it?

Correct, yes so there’s targets and there’s profiling. Also we do business engagements, that’s around educating those that are importing to ensure that they are quickly classifying the goods and obviously paying those duties attached to those goods.

[Malcolm Roberts] So there’d be hidden costs, is the government, I don’t know who to ask this question of, perhaps a minister, perhaps Mr. Adam, is the government aware of the hidden cost to Australian manufacturers and retailers who must add GST to their goods, whereas imports bypassing customs do not?

Probably a matter of policy I suggest, and maybe a different department would be best placed to answer that.

I’ll say, we are aware in the general sense of the matters you raise, but I’d need to take on notice the quantum of that.

[Malcolm Roberts] Yeah, so depends on the size of the problem, I understand that. So is it possible to consider another solution being tax reform? Another way of levying the tax?

Those options are always available to be considered by policymakers.

[Malcolm Roberts] Okay, Thank you very much.

/by

Tax Reform in Australia

,

Tax is one of the biggest costs to this country and governments are not spending it wisely. Tax reform is in the ‘too hard’ basket for both parties but the country is dying without it. Take for example the GST. When it was introduced, the State Governments promised to abolish 6 different taxes to make up for it. Every single one of them is still being slugged on Australians.

Transcript

[Malcolm Roberts] G’day Marcus, how are you?

[Marcus Paul] All right. Did you have a steak in the last couple of days up there in Rocky for beef week?

[Malcolm Roberts] I had one of the best steaks I’ve ever had, mate.

[Marcus Paul] Really?

[Malcolm Roberts] I had beef in the Rocky Sports Club two nights ago. Absolutely delicious. Just melted in my mouth.

[Marcus Paul] Oh, nice. Now, that’s a really big event up there, of course.

[Malcolm Roberts] It’s huge. I don’t know how much it costs to support this and organise it, but it must be millions. It’s really well done. Very professionally done. It’s a really, really big credit to Rocky.

[Marcus Paul] Well, it attracted everybody including the prime minister of the country. He was there as well the other day.

[Malcolm Roberts] That’s right. They’re all taking credit for it. Whereas it’s really the beef graziers and the beef associations that need to take credit for it. And Rockhampton.

[Marcus Paul] Yeah. Well look, so long as we support the industry, that’s I think what’s vitally important now. Malcolm, as you know, there’s a couple of things certain in this life. One is death, the other is bloody taxes.

[Malcolm Roberts] Yeah. The tax levied on families in Australia is completely unreasonable. I mean, Joe Hockey himself, the former treasurer, said in 2015, a typical Australian works from January to June just to pay taxes. You lose half your money in taxes, that’s what he said. In 2000, I think it was the Australian Bureau of Statistics, you can no longer get these figures but I’ve got to confirm them. A person, the ABS, I think it was, said a person earning the average income pays 68% to government in the form of rates, taxes, levies, fees, special charges. That means that a person on the average income, which today is $80000, works from Monday to mid-morning Thursday paying for government. So, we’ve been fed a line that’s a complete lie. We’ve been told that the biggest purchase of our life is a house. It’s not. The biggest purchase by far of our life is government. Who sees value for money in that purchase in Australia?

[Marcus Paul] So you work Monday to Thursday mid-morning paying government, not only obviously in income tax, but all the other levies, charges, etc.

[Malcolm Roberts] Rates, fees, that’s it. That’s it, Marcus. That’s far too high. People don’t mind paying tax, because they see that’s the cost of government. We’ve got to have defence, we’ve got to have police. Okay, we all get that. But tax also represents, when it’s wasted, when that money is wasted, Tax represents the cost of government waste. And that’s what people are paying for in this country. The abuse of their taxes by a government that is not accountable. That’s the problem.

[Marcus Paul] Why is it unfair, this tax levy? Why is it unfair? I mean, we’ve got multinationals that avoid paying probably their fair share. And I’ve discussed this at length with politicians from both sides of politics, but nobody can seem to come up with the right answer. I don’t understand why the burden falls on those most, I don’t want to say vulnerable. I mean, we all need to pay our own way and nobody can expect to get a handout for their entire life. Sure, from time to time, you might need a hand up. And that’s what the social service network is for. That’s why we have social security. But I mean for goodness sake, if we’re paying, as you say, you’re telling me we’re working Monday to Thursday mid-morning paying government in fees. Why is it then that big multinationals, why do we allow our administrators, our governments allow these big companies to avoid paying their fair share?

[Malcolm Roberts] You’ve nailed it. Let me give you some figures here. The deputy commissioner of taxation in 1996 and 2010, and his name was Jim Killaly, and I’ve met the man, I met him in early 2015, he said publicly in the media, that 90% of Australia’s large companies are foreign owned and since 1953, have paid little or no company tax. Jim Killaly, 1996, 2010. Now why is that? Well, it goes back to 1953 and the so-called double taxation legislation that was introduced by liberal prime minister Menzies. He made sure that legislation, that foreign companies don’t have to pay company tax. Bob Hawke, the labour prime minister in 1987, passed the PRRT tax, Petroleum Rent Resources Tax. The largest companies in the world and the worst tax avoider in the world, Chevron, other multinationals, are not paying tax and the Australian government gets virtually nothing for the gas that they tap into in the Northwest shelf and send overseas. We’re the largest exporters of gas and we get the least for it in the world.

[Marcus Paul] There was some figure that I think we talked about recently, where in, I can’t remember, it might’ve been WA, there was a gas exploration venture that was being undertaken whereby 5.3 billion dollars, I think that was the figure, worth of gas was shipped off overseas. Our gas prices haven’t come down as a result of it but the company involved, I won’t name them, but the company involved, paid a paltry, 300 odd million dollars in tax compared to taking away five point odd billion dollars worth of our natural resources. How on earth, Malcolm, do we allow this to happen?

[Malcolm Roberts] Exactly Marcus. The Japanese government levies an import duty on Australian gas coming into Japan. The Japanese government makes three billion a year on taxing Australian gas. So, they get that income. We get bugger all. And that’s the fact, because both the liberal party and the labour party over many years, it’s not just a few, it’s decades, over many decades, have allowed this to occur. And they do that despite 90% of Australia’s large companies being foreign owned and paying little or no tax. And what that also means is that Australian companies that are working in this country have to pay 30%, their company tax. That means they’re immediately behind the eight ball when it comes to competing with these multinationals. So, it’s just completely unfair.

[Marcus Paul] All right, well, maybe that is a short term fix to tax foreign multinationals more appropriately. I mean, tax reform is difficult. We know that the liberal Howard government introduced GST in return for states dropping six taxes, yet all are still being levied, including in my opinion, the most ridiculous crippling tax of all, payroll tax. I mean, that hits employment and it penalises those taking the risk by setting up business and in fact, people, these businesses employ people. Why on earth are we penalising businesses for employing Australians?

[Malcolm Roberts] Exactly, Marcus. We all know, everybody knows, you don’t need to be well educated to understand that when you tax something, you get less of it. So, why are we taxing payroll? Because that’s a tax on employment. When you tax employment, you get less of it, but let’s have a look at some of the so-called tax reform in this country. As you said, in 1999, liberal prime minister Howard introduced the GST, in return for the states promising to drop six state taxes. Every one of those taxes is still levied. In 1985, Paul Keating first called for a GST, the labour treasurer at the time. He almost got it up and Bob Hawke went wobbly at the last minute and they dropped the GST. Later, despite being the first person to talk about a GST in this country, Paul Keating reversed his position to belt John Houston on the GST. And he won the unwinnable election.

[Marcus Paul] Yeah, of course.

[Malcolm Roberts] In 1998, there was a transaction tax proposed by somebody. Quite, quite good thinking going behind it. Peter Costello, the treasurer. He did a pretty good job in my opinion. Peter Costello, even he, when it looked like they could smash this politician over the transaction tax, he turned around, and even though he said earlier, that it was… Well it had quite a bit of merit and it looked good, he then used it to belt that politician. So, he trashed that opportunity. So, what the point is here is that both the parties attack someone else whenever they raise a system of proposed change for taxation. We all agree, right around the country, that the taxation system, it needs to be reformed completely around. It is the most damaging system in this country. Australians pay far too much tax, multinationals pay bugger all, but the point is this, every time someone puts forward a tax reform system, the party politics is played and it’s smashed. What we’re seeing is the liberal and labour and national parties too busy protecting themselves and they’re sacrificing the country to the worst and most destructive system in the country. What we need to do is to approach this in a far more effective sense, because we can’t continue as we are. So, what I would suggest is what we need to do is make sure we have agreement that the tax system has failed and must be changed. And then, instead of getting into the details, agree on the basic principles, things like fairness, equity, transparency, efficiency of taxation. Our taxation system is so inefficient. And then once the principles are established, out pops the solution in the form of a system. We’ve got to front up and be honest that this system is so bad at the moment and we’ve got to come up with a new way of addressing this politically.

[Marcus Paul] All right, Malcolm, good to have you on the programme as always. We’ll chat again next week.

[Malcolm Roberts] Look forward to it, Marcus. Thanks, mate.

[Marcus Paul] All right, One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts.

/by