Mates Don't Tax Mates

Vikas Nayak discusses why he opposes the Flood Levy, and provides suggestions for how the money could be raised elsewhere

Never underestimate the ability of Labor to take a social concept such as 'mateship', find a way to regulate it, and then tax it.  It sounds like it’d be a good joke to tell at Liberal Party conventions and functions, and we’d all have a laugh. Unfortunately, it seems to be exactly what now passes for Labor Party policy.

At first, I saw no reason to write this, since everyone and their dog appeared to be writing an article on the so-called levy.  However, after checking Facebook, I saw a large amount of illogical leftist nonsense about people opposing the levy being “scrooges”, and what seemed to be zombie-like responses from trolls on the “Stop The Levy” fan page, I felt I had to respond. 

Let me begin by demonstrating exactly where the problem lies: the information provided on the tax by the Prime Minister is pure spin, and does not address  any of the criticisms to the tax. Labor doesn't seem to understand people’s gripes on the issue, and is hell-bent on politicizing the flood by ignoring our grievances. We’re not idiots, and we've heard all of this before, but we still oppose it.  It has nothing to do with people not wanting to send an extra dollar or five to Queenslanders. 

Let me make it simple for Labor and Gillard: the case against the levy hasn’t been addressed by any of your points.  The Australian people aren’t cheap; I think the record levels of donations indicate quite the opposite.  Rather, we oppose the levy on a number of grounds, including:

• This levy discourages people form generously donating a few hundred dollars to their fellow Australians;
• The Australian people already sacrifice money to the government through taxation. Why isn’t the government simply cutting the fat from pet projects to help Queenslanders?
• This tax will never go away, and it hits the average Australian too hard in a world with rising costs of living.

I, like many Australians, donated to a charity (I only trust the Australian Red Cross, so that’s to whom I donated).  In fact, I donated about as much as I will be hit by the levy. It’s as though I gave money to help out a needy friend, and then some random douche came over asked me for my wallet and then took an identical amount, walked off and bought my friend a coffee and told me “it’s a mateship fee”.  The entire concept stinks of political opportunism, preying on people’s generosity to increase the money in the coffers in Canberra. 

Yes, our down-trodden friends in Queensland need help, but taxing people will only reduce the intake of funds to charities since people will feel as though they’re going to be taxed for it anyway.  Given a choice between donating $x, and being coerced through government to give $y on top of $x, your average punter will end up paying just $y since the following rule applies ($y < $y + $x). I know Labor imagines people earning $50,000 a year somehow live in mansions, but battlers can only give so much.

Moving to the second point: this: the Labor government is completely and utterly incompetent.  I’m not stating that as an opinion: it is a fact.  Every single one of its programs has ended up in one of three states:

1) Triple constraint failure (a blow out in cost, a delivery delay or a lack of workers on the project)

2) Inflationary spikes on the market (the stimulus gave us a whopping 5% inflation to leave us with a real growth rate of 0.1%.)

3) Dead in the water

Keeping this in mind - there are plenty of pork-barreling projects we could dump in order to pay for the rebuilding. Here’s a short list (with reasoning):

Dump Foreign Aid

We have given six times what we promised to give in foreign aid.  A lot of this is supposedly to “Public Education” in Indonesia (let’s face it, it’s part and parcel of buying Indonesian cooperation towards offshore processing centers for boat people). 

The Prime Minister, today rejecting that call, replied, “I'd also stress that the world is also responding to help Australia during our time of need.”  I can’t help but giggle at the contradictory position of this statement.  We’re sending six times what we promised to send, and supposedly they’re coming to help us.  I’m not sure how they’re helping us, but if it was monetarily, why would we need to be taxed?

We could halt the payments for one  year, so that we can fund the rebuilding efforts and resume next year, but apparently, we have help coming (but we still need to be levied).

Shrink the NBN

In 2008, the plan with the proposed NBN didn’t include fibre to the home.  Practically speaking, it was ‘NBN-lite’, in that it increased the fibre backhaul capability of Australia, but it left the last mile very much in the hands of Telstra.  If Labor is still hell-bent on the NBN, they could implement the fibre backhaul, essentially making everyone’s ADSL 2 connection act as though it was right next to the exchange. This would deliver the full 24 Mbps speed capability of ADSL 2+, and it could be a temporary step towards the FTTH.  At the time, the plan was rumoured to cost $6 billion (so one would assume it now probably costs around $8 billion).  The savings from this would pay for all the flood damage and then some.

Halt the BER

We always hear Labor ranting on about “Australia’s skills shortage,” and the BER is the most labour-intensive government program we currently have in this country.  It would make sense that if the Labor Party really believed there was a “skills shortage,” they would axe this program and redirect funds and labour to rebuilding infrastructure.  The money is already there - it’s just being blown on $900,000 sheds.

Close the Super Clinics

I know this has probably escaped people’s minds, but remember the “Super Clinics”?  Well, the program is still going on, despite it being exposed for the pork-barreling plan that it is.  These glorified government clinics were the last attempt of the Labor government to buy votes in marginal electorates at the last election.   The scheme is struggling to stay afloat, and looks like its going to be over-budget AND late. This program really should be axed sooner rather than later.  It’s destroying existing private practices, while simultaneously forcing people into hospital waiting rooms.

Dump the Family Tax Benefit

Yes, it’s a former Liberal policy, and yes, it should be dumped.  This is nothing but middle class welfare, and all it does is subsidises the purchase of flat screen TVs.  I enjoy seeing Gerry Harvey get all uppity about his lack of sales, so I implore Canberra to end it just to hear Gerry have another rant (the fact that it’s a bad policy is just a bonus).

The final argument I made against the levy is that this is a tax that has the potential to never go away (even more so, considering revelations in the papers today that Gillard is indeed contemplating making it a permanent “disaster levy”).  One only needs to see what Katter had to say to realise that the Independents and Greens may force the levy to become a permanent “disaster insurance”.  Knowing Labor, this will fold into general revenue, and then be spent on other pork-barreling projects to buy votes.

I'm always quick to point to Katrina, and the lessons we should have learned from the U.S. about the dangers of placing too much central government control on disaster relief.  Unlike lefties’ rant, the problem with New Orleans wasn’t that the government did nothing.  It was that the government took money from people, saying they would take care of problems, and then through bureaucratic red tape they impeded on peoples rebuilding efforts.  What happened in Queensland is TOO IMPORTANT to let Gillard and company politicise it for their party purposes. 

I hope I have clearly stated my case for why there should be no levy (with plenty of alternatives for consideration).

Vikas Nayak describes himself as "an Engineer and  Beer lover who is known to occasionally inform us of his political opinion". He is also a  Managing Partner at Metahype and a co-founder of Rock The Vote Australia

Comments

[Dan Nolan]

1.

This article does not call for the government to be shut down and the funds to be redistributed to the taxpayer. It is obviously written by a crypto-communist working as part of the Socialist Alternative's 5th column within the actual circuitry of the internet.

[Vikas Nayak]

2.

Well i was going to end with "We must starve the beast so that Aussies can help their fellow aussies out without canberra dictating terms"...but i thought that might be a bit much.

[TimP]

3.

I know I won't be donating money to disaster recovery simply due to the amount of taxpayer founded money they will already be receiving, and this isn't because I'm unwilling to lend a helping hand to those in need; I normally donate around 15% of my pre-tax income to charity (25% if you count missionary organisations as charities), so I wouldn't have hesitated to throw a few hundred dollars to the disaster recovery.

[Elizabeth]

4.

Some excellent points in this article.

This levy is a gross and insulting injustice - both in the sense of double dipping - that is, after people's voluntary generosity and the unfairness of the more wealthy forced to stand the cost in the hope that this would earn votes from the less wealthy.

I find the latter assumption offensive in the extreme.

For the Government to think that people of certain socia-economic levels are driven by envy and cupidity is beyond belief, but accords well with abhorrent Labor philosophy - that is, if they have one other than tax and spend.

The example Vikas gives of the levy as a tax on mateship is an excellent one. This is the good old Australian value of mateship the PM was prating on about, but not as a uniting factor - oh, superficially maybe, but at a deeper level as a divisive, vote gathering exercise.

Contemptible.

Re the super clinics - my Doctor thinks they are a joke and doomed to fail. And I trust his judgement and commonsense as I do not trust a government and PM bereft of either judgement or commonsense.

[Andy]

5.

Our PM is going to tax us (flood levy) because it flooded too much but also wants to tax us (carbon tax) because it won’t flood anymore.
There is no low this PM won’t stoop to and talk about a PM never allowing a crisis to go to waste.
Good article, Vikas. I would also add to your list of things to dump or drastically cut back is this:
It is about God damn time someone had the backbone to address Medicare.
It is bigger than the Andromeda Black Hole and I think anyone who earns over $100k doesn’t need to get back a Medicare rebate. Let’s acknowledge what Medicare is...21st century health care for the poor.
I suggest MH readers re-read this excellent article by Monique Beguely

http://www.menzieshouse.com.au/2010/02/our-63-gp-visits-per-year-are-more-likely-to-be-the-result-of-a-sick-health-system-rather-than-austr.html

Medicare is so abused it makes the BER rorts look like a small amount of petty cash went missing from the $100 float.
Remove systemic abuses from the medical system!!!! Please

[Andrew]

6.

This says it all...

"QUEENSLAND is the only major state economy in Australia without a comprehensive insurance policy, leaving the government's assets exposed in the face of natural disasters."

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/cyclone-yasi/state-goes-it-alone-in-shunning-insurance/story-fn7rj0ye-1225999067129