Monday 16 June 2014

En Passant » We workers create the wealth Hockey and Abbott are redistributing to the rich

We workers create the wealth Hockey and Abbott are redistributing to the rich

Posted by John, June 16th, 2014 - under Budget, Budget cuts, Surplus value, Tax, Wealth, Workers.

Joe Hockey has tried to find another angle to sell his bosses’
Budget. Now he is trying to win the sympathy of tax paying workers by
arguing that we workers work for a month to pay the taxes that provide
support for the poor, the sick, the disabled, the old, the young.

One obvious rejoinder is ‘Good.’ I am proud my taxes go in part to
supporting those less well off. I am pissed off that some goes in part
to subsidise the rich and capital, and war.

Another obvious response – see the meme above – is, well what about all those benefits that go to business?

There is another deeper response we on the Left should also make.

Where does all this income – profits, rents, dividends, interest, wages etc – and the taxes imposed on it, come from?

It is the wealth (or more precisely, in Marxist terms, the surplus
value) we workers create that we are talking about. It is ours. We
should decide where it goes, not the parliamentary popinjays of profit.

Attacking poor people and workers, which is what this Budget does,
is about transferring even more of the wealth or surplus value we create
to the bosses. The best way to stop that in the current circumstances
is at the point of production, that is, to win higher wages.

This is a point I make at length in my article Neoliberalism in Australia and the Henry Tax Review in (2013) 8(1) Journal of the Australasian Tax Teachers Association 117.

The link to the full journal, not just my article, is here.

Sunday 15 June 2014

Joe Hockey Contradicts Himself On Children in Detention

IS THERE ANY SHRED OF DECENCY IN THE COALITION?

JOE "ACTING" IN PARLIAMENT AN ACADEMY AWARD PERFORMANCE

Working age Australians have become far less reliant on welfare payments, new figures show

Date: June 16, 2014

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Ben Schneiders

Senior writer for The Age

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Figures undermine Abbott government claims of a 'welfare crisis'. Photo: Erin Jonasson

Working age Australians have become far less reliant on
welfare payments since the turn of the century – undermining Abbott
government claims of a crisis of welfare dependency in Australia.

The finding comes from the Household, Income and Labour
Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, an authoritative Melbourne
Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research report that has
tracked more than 12,000 people since 2001.

The latest HILDA report, for 2011, shows rising inequality in
Australia as well as flat or even falling living standards for
middle-class Australians in the years after the global financial crisis.

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But it also shows a marked trend away from working age Australians – and even pensioners – being as reliant on welfare.

Last month’s federal budget included a number of measures to
restrict welfare, including preventing unemployed people under 30
getting access to payments for up to six months.

Treasurer Joe Hockey, in a speech last week, described
Australia’s welfare system as ‘‘unsustainable’’ and said claims the
budget was unfair were misguided “old-style socialism”.

He said the government was spending, on average, more than $6000 on welfare for every Australian.

“The average working Australian, be they a cleaner, a plumber
or a teacher, is working over one month full-time each year just to pay
for the welfare of another Australian,’’ he said.

Yet the HILDA research shows that in 2001 23 per cent of
people aged 18 to 64 had received welfare payments each week and a
decade later that had fallen sharply to 18.5 per cent.

There has also been a big drop in the percentage of working
age households where more than 90 per cent of their income came from
welfare. In 2001 that accounted for 7.1 per cent of households while a
decade later it was just 4.8 per cent.

The proportion of retired people who relied on benefits as
their main source of income also declined across the decade from 65.8
per cent to 63.5 per cent.

The report's author, Associate Professor Roger Wilkins, said
Australia was experiencing its lowest level of welfare reliance in
decades, possibly since the 1980s.

‘‘I’m absolutely bewildered by Hockey’s obsession on welfare
reliance in Australia,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s lower than it's been in a
couple of decades, possibly longer.’’

Professor Wilkins said the long-term trend away from welfare
reliance was largely the result of Australia’s long boom, although a
succession of welfare reforms that have tightened eligibility to
payments had also contributed.

‘‘The long and short of it is we’ve had 20 years of growth
uninterrupted by a recession. This is a fact I don’t think is
appreciated widely enough,’’ he said. ‘‘It is the longest boom recorded
in any developed country ever.’’

The long boom had also helped the number of Australians in
absolute poverty halve in the decade with low, middle and high-income
groups all recording strong real income growth. Despite that, inequality
is rising in Australia with men in highly paid full-time jobs recording
the strongest wages growth.

Professor Wilkins said besides 2009 – when government
stimulus payments lessened inequality – the trend since the mid-2000s
has been for inequality to edge higher. While we are far more equal than
US or many developing countries, among rich countries we have
reasonably high levels of inequality.

‘‘We’re probably not as equal a country as many people think,’’ he said.

The Rudd government’s stimulus payments of 2009 also masked
the effect of the global financial crisis with living standards rising
sharply that year as interest rates fell and incomes rose.

But disposable income for the median household fell in both
2010 and 2011 on one measure. That contrasts with the years before the
financial crisis when there had been strong growth in real household
income. ‘‘It’s a pretty good hint for why the Rudd and Gillard
governments had such a difficult time ... median household incomes
were going backwards,’’ he said. ‘‘I think that is a delayed GFC
effect.’’

As the federal government moved to rein in its large deficit
there were no more income tax cuts while thresholds for some payments,
such as family tax payments, were frozen. ‘‘That’s why people were
feeling a bit aggrieved,’’ Professor Wilkins said.

Friday 13 June 2014

Joe Hockey, Shrek and Other Misunderstood Ogres! - - The Australian Independent Media Network

Joe Hockey, Shrek and Other Misunderstood Ogres!

June 13, 2014
Written by:
Rossleigh
24 Replies

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“This year the Australian government will
spend on average over $6,000 on welfare for every man, woman and child
in the country. Given that only around 45 per cent of the population
pays income tax, the average taxpayer must pay more than twice this
amount in tax to fund welfare expenditure.

“In other words, the average working
Australian, be they a cleaner, a plumber or a teacher, is working over
one month full-time each year just to pay for the welfare of another
Australian. Is this fair?”

Joe Hockey

Ok, what’s the difference between Joe Hockey and Shrek?

Answer: One is a complete work of fiction and the other is green.

I’m trying to work out Joe’s figures in the
above quote. If the average taxpayer has to pay twice $6,000 in tax to
fund welfare expenditure ($12,000), how does that equate to say cleaner
or a teacher or even a plumber working one month to pay for the welfare
of another Australian? Is he suggesting that we pay $12,000 in tax every
month? Or does he think that our wages are $12,000 a month.

Whatever way I look at it, it doesn’t make
any sense at all. But I’m sure some Liberal supporter will have the
answer and it’ll go something like this:

“Don’t you idiots realise that Labor broke
the country and we have to do something to fix things, and this is
something so you can’t criticise it!”

Of course, Joe did also complain that much of the criticism of his Budget was “political”.

Political? Imagine that! I mean, getting political is a terrible thing, isn’t it? Nobody should get political with the Budget…

I’m also intrigued as to when the media
stopped demonising the government because people were unemployed and
started blaming the unemployed themselves. After all, it’s the
unemployed that chose to shut down the manufacturing sector and sack
public servants. It’s the unemployed who make all the decisions about
how the economy is structured. “Everyone who is capable should be
working,” we’re now being told, as more and more decisions are made to
create less and less jobs. I’d say something about easier rules on 457
visas, but Rupert finds that racist and disgusting. We only want
stronger borders against asylum seekers.

But I’m more intrigued by the idea that the unemployed under 30 need to apply for forty jobs a month even in the six months before they start getting benefits. Or else they’ll have to wait another four weeks before being eligible for Newstart.

So this is how it works in practise. A person
who is 26 and suddenly unemployed must spend what money they have –
assuming they have savings – on photocopying resumes, stamps,
stationery, internet access and various other items in order to make
themselves eligible for the dole. Which – the Liberals are fond of
telling us – should only be a temporary measure! If you run out of funds
before you’re eligible, then you can never become eligible, because
you’ll never have the money to meet the job application criteria.

Catch-22 had nothing on this.

Ah well, I guess some can move back in with their pensioner parents who had no cuts to their pension!

Still, this should be enough to make those
under 30 demanding to be able to work for below the minimum wage.
Anything rather than starve.

And Workchoices – which will was dead, buried
and cremated – will become Zombie Workchoices. Or to give it the proper
new name. Work(youhaveno)choice, you lazy bastard.

Thursday 12 June 2014

My kids are ok, yours can go beg. - - The Australian Independent Media Network

My kids are ok, yours can go beg.

June 11, 2014
Written by:
Kaye Lee

When I hear Joe Hockey say, with trembling lip, that he refuses to
saddle his children with the nation’s debt, my hypocrisy radar maxes
out.

For starters, Joe Hockey’s children will never have to struggle. His
wife is a very wealthy woman and they have substantial investments.

Secondly, this talk of our children being saddled with our debt is an
obvious advertising strategy that the Coalition has adopted. Whenever
children are mentioned we get protective so it is a deliberate attempt
to play on the heartstrings of families.

The trouble is that this statement bears no scrutiny.

If we are really concerned about our children we would be taking
urgent action on climate change. Putting that off for our kids to have
to deal with sometime in the future is criminal neglect.

We would also be striving to make our society an even better one than
the one we inherited. We grew up with free education and universal
health care. We should not be going backwards in these most crucial
areas. Will our contribution to our children’s future be to say sorry,
you may not enjoy the benefits that we did?

We fought for workplace entitlements like minimum wages and penalty
rates. Are we to say to our kids that your labour is worth less?

We have told our young people that they must “earn or learn”. I am
sure that every kid, and every family, would prefer that situation, but
all I see is another three word slogan. There is no plan for jobs.
Rather than increasing apprenticeships, they are closing trade training
centres and increasing 457 visas. They are making university education
unaffordable – their justification being that no-one has to pay up
front. So apparently it is alright to saddle our children with huge
personal debt, just as long as Tony and Joe can say look, no deficit.

With no old school tie network of daddy’s friends to give you a job,
it can be very hard for young people with no experience to enter the
workforce. The soul destroying exercise of applying for countless jobs
and being rejected every time can be heartbreaking. Is it any wonder
that some just give up looking or turn to substance abuse as their sense
of self worth takes a hammering?

What is to become of these kids as we cut off any support to them for
6 months of the year? Why are we abandoning them when they are just
starting out on life’s road and need our help most?

We have evolved into a nation where someone’s worth is measured by
their wealth, where there are no excuses tolerated. If you aren’t
wealthy you just aren’t trying. What chance do our kids have to enter
this merry-go-round?

A national snapshot of rental affordability in Australia has found
there are minuscule and in some cases, zero, levels of affordable
housing for people on low incomes, with welfare advocates saying some
people will be forced to go without food to afford their accommodation.

The report, prepared by Anglicare Australia, found single Australians
on government payments are “seriously disadvantaged” in the housing
market, with less than 1 per cent of properties examined deemed
suitable.

Single people with no children living on the minimum wage were
slightly better off, with 4 per cent of listed properties found
suitable, according to the study.

The study defined a “suitable” rental as one that took up less than 30 per cent of the household’s income.

It also found that couples with two children on the minimum wage had
access to 12 per cent of properties surveyed, while just 1.4 per cent of
properties were suitable for couples with two children on Newstart.

On the snapshot day, just 3.6 per cent of properties were found suitable for age pensioners.

Anglicare Australia executive director Kasy Chambers said the lack of
affordable housing damaged the lives of millions of ordinary
Australians.

“Limited supply does more than just drive up the price of housing. It
forces those on lower incomes to spend more on rent than they can
afford; compels them to forgo food and other necessities and drives them
further away from social and economic participation.”

A coalition of peak housing bodies – including Homelessness Australia
and the Community Housing Federation of Australia called on Kevin
Andrews to make affordable housing a priority. His response was that it
is a state issue, and the federal government was “encouraging and
supporting” states to streamline their planning and development
processes, and review taxes and charges levied at home construction and
purchases.

In other words, he couldn’t give a damn that his government’s
negative gearing policy has made it impossible for many young people to
enter the housing market.

A quarter of Australian properties are being bought for investment rather than to live in.

Over the last four years the number of investment property loans in
Australia has grown by 37% compared to an increase of only 4% in the
number of owner occupied loans, new data from Roy Morgan Research shows.

The growth in investment property loans over the last four years has
come predominantly from the 35 to 64 age groups which account for 78% of
the increase.

The study, which surveyed 45,455 Australians, showed while the
proportion of over-50’s with an owner-occupied home loan has increased,
the proportion of under-35’s with owner-occupied home loans decreased.

Roy Morgan communications director Norman Morris believes government policy is having an impact on loan types.

“Younger Australians may continue to find it difficult to enter the
property market either for investment or owner-occupied because for both
types they are competing with more cashed-up older property buyers.”

There are currently 105,237 people in Australia who are homeless.
That means that on any given night, 1 in 200 people in Australia have
nowhere to sleep. While Malcolm Turnbull joins the CEO sleepout in his
comfortable warm swag, his government cut $44 million from funding for
the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness. This money was to
be spent on capital works building shelters for homeless people and
providing affordable housing for women and children.

There has been an upsurge of photos of Coalition MPs with charity
groups with politicians exhorting us to donate more. Someone needs to
remind this government that the money they are spending is ours and I
would much prefer to be looking after the vulnerable in our society and
around the world than subsidising corporate greed and supporting
armaments manufacturers.

Recent articles by Kaye Lee:

War games

Who are the real leaners here?

Some of my best friends are corrupt

Voter Directed Learning

Hockey was having a 'Mitt Romney moment', says Shorten

Date: June 13, 2014

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Gareth Hutchens

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'I'll tell you what's unfair Joe Hockey'

In a speech to ACOSS, Opposition leader Bill Shorten slams the Treasurer over 'unfairness' in the budget. Nine News.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has accused Treasurer Joe
Hockey of having a ''Mitt Romney moment'' after the Treasurer said half
of all households received welfare from the government and that we ought
to be rewarding ''lifters'' and not ''leaners''.

Welfare sector leaders have also reacted angrily to
suggestions by Mr Hockey that critics of his budget are engaging in
''class warfare''.

Mr Hockey delivered a speech in defence of his budget on
Wednesday night, telling the right-leaning Sydney Institute that views
that his first budget would exacerbate inequality were ''largely
misguided.'' He said Australia's welfare system was unsustainable, with
the government expecting to spend 35 per cent of the federal budget on
welfare next financial year, and with the average taxpayer being asked
to spend more than $12,000 to fund the system. ''At the moment over
half of Australian households receive a taxpayer-funded payment from the
government,'' Mr Hockey said.

Mitt Romney: billionaire presidential candidate who ran against Barack Obama. Photo: Reuters

''The average working Australian, be they cleaner, a plumber
or a teacher, is working over one month full-time each year just to pay
for the welfare of another Australian.

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''Is this fair?''

Mr Shorten criticised the Treasurer's framing of the
question on Thursday, saying the comments showed he was ''out of
touch''.

'Out of touch': Joe Hockey. Photo: Andrew Meares

''Joe Hockey had a Mitt Romney moment in Australian politics
where he says that half of the Australians who are receiving payments
from the government, support from the government, he very clearly
accused them of being the leaners, not the lifters,'' Mr Shorten said.

Mitt Romney was the billionaire US presidential candidate
who, when running against president Barack Obama in 2012, was secretly
taped telling a roomful of wealthy donors that half of the American
population was dependent on government and believed they were ''entitled
to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.''

The head of the Council of Social Service, Cassandra Goldie,
said she ''absolutely rejects'' the Treasurer's suggestion that people
talking about fairness, with regards to the budget, were engaging in
class warfare. ''[The budget] targets people on low incomes and
delivers only a light touch to those with significant wealth. It's in
everybody's interest for us not to increase the class divide,'' she
said.

Vice-president of the Doctors Reform Society Dr Tracy
Schrader said: ''If it is a class war, Hockey fired the first shot. The
cuts to public hospitals and the introduction of co-payments will
eventually lead to a two-tier system.''

Economist Chris Richardson from Deloitte Access Economics
said although the budget would see the burden of its cuts fall on the
less well-off, the longer-term budget strategy was more important.

Wednesday 11 June 2014

Joe’s fair go and his new class war

Bob Ellis 12 June 2014, 12:05am 13

Discrimination Economics Politics

In a speech last night, Joe Hockey said unpopular Budget is fair and that everyone who opposes it is engaging in class war. Bob Ellis comments.

IMAGINE, IF YOU WILL, a 27-year-old woman in a country town who loses
her job as a waitress on a Friday and finds she is pregnant the
following Monday.

Under Joe Hockey’s new rules, she will get no money for six months,
and must fend for herself until the baby is born and, after it is born,
will get no Paid Parental Leave either, because she has no job.

What is happening to her is "fair" Joe Hockey says and complaining about her is

"... the class war rhetoric of the 1970s."

Some of us would think it was unfair — and if there’s a class war on, he’s declared it.

#auspol Joe Hockey: 'Welfare system does not encourage personal responsibility'

Joe would argue that the woman can, in her ninth month, move to
another town and work for the dole, away from her family and their
support system, and give birth in the workplace, but some of us would
find this unfair also.

Joe would argue this is an ‘isolated case’, probably no more than
twenty women will be in this position in the next two years — but the
trouble is, 10 million women will have heard of it and will vote his
Government out because of it.

This inability to join the dots characterises Joe.

He may be the most incompetent politician in our history. He is certainly the most incompetent Treasurer.

He imagines $7 is no great sacrifice
to an old woman in a nursing home with a chronically treatable
condition who must go to the doctor twice a week, spending $20 on two
visits and four bus fares. He imagines she too is an isolated case and
10 million women will not hear of her.

But of course they will. And they will not find her treatment by him "fair".

Get a construction job or get a training loan: Hockey's message to under 30s

The Budget is now a quicksand sucking to their doom every rural MP in
the nation. Manufacturing jobs are vanishing apace and Joe won’t
subsidise them and the women fired from them won’t get PPL — not a cent
of it.

Joe is proud of this.

Women once ‘entitled’ to have a subsidised baby won’t, if they lose
their job, and are not yet 30, get any pregnancy money at all. And if
their husband has lost his job too, at the Holden factory Joe invited to
go away, for instance, or the fruit-canning factory that last year
moved offshore, well, they now have the ‘age of opportunity’ to look
forward to, and a mortgage to pay with relatives’ money till they have
to sell up and start to sleep in a car outside a gambling casino, hoping
to beg enough to bet inside on their ‘age of opportunity’, roulette.

Joe thinks his Budget has not been sold well. He’s right about that.

No-one in the nation cares about the surplus anymore – apart from
maybe thirty economists – and everyone is scared shitless of losing
their job and not getting another, ever, because the oldies are now
working until they’re seventy. And those that have a job are worried
about those that haven’t. Everyone has an unemployed relative, or a disabled one. And Joe didn’t realise they would care.

A question of trust -- Joe Hockey answers the hard questions

It is hard not to think him actually crazy. He’s certainly fanatical.

Is there some lesson from his Maronite upbringing
that emphasised self-help and God not answering the prayers of the
lazy? Does he imagine the millions his wife brings home can remain a
secret? Has he joined the dots? I don’t think he has.

It’s unlikely Palmer will even talk to them unless Joe is removed.
It’s unlikely, after what they’d said about him, they’ll get anything
through except the ending of the carbon tax, which worsens the bottom line.

It’s probable Joe has done for them. And he still thinks he can turn opinion round. Win back the 1.5 million votes they’ve lost in eight months.

He’s actually as crazy as that.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License

Tuesday 10 June 2014

Hockey plays chicken with the back bench. - - The Australian Independent Media Network

Hockey plays chicken with the back bench.

June 11, 2014
Written by:
Letitia McQuade

Did Hockey really just “threaten” a
Double Dissolution? Dare we hope? You can literally hear the collective
gasp of anticipation rippling out over social media. The mere
possibility we may be able to get out of our electoral contract with
“Hobott” (yes I just made a couple contraction of Hockey/Abbott….),
before they manage to totally wreck the joint has people right across
the nation on the edge of optimism for the first time in months.

Much as I would love to join them in
preemptive celebration, I’m fairly certain Hockey is bluffing. It looks
to me like “Hobott” are, in the absence of any better plan, playing
chicken with their own back bench, and what we have here is an empty
threat designed to put the fear of impending unemployment into their own
MPs.

Like all new parents, Hobott are deeply
proud of their first born budget, and would do almost anything to save
it’s little life; however I believe they will stop well short of a
family suicide pact, and opt instead to turn off it’s life support, and
hope their second child might fare a little better.

While Hobott have yet to give up on their first born, (like
all good parents, they are prepared to fight like caged tigers to see
their child survive, no matter what the collateral damage), Hockey’s recent rhetoric on the senate;

. . . it is disrupting the role of
government but if it just continually says no without any capacity to
negotiate an improved outcome, then the Senate becomes irrelevant,” he
said. “It’s simply a roadblock. We either have to smash through that
roadblock or the Australian people get the chance to change the
government.

. . . is just their latest desperate salvo in a fight they are now beginning realise they may not be able to win.

Admittedly it’s a
brazen move, playing chicken with a DD when the polls are looking
totally hideous for them; but I predict Hobott will blink first and
abandon their much unloved bruiser of a budget in favor of a more mild
mannered progeny.

As Liberal elder statesman Malcom Fraser famously pointed out on QA,”Tony Abbott would do what he needed to do to have power“. According to Fraser Abbott is man who is capable of Olympic level back flips on policy… so watch this space!

Hockey over-reaches in defending Abbott's parental leave scheme against backbench critics

10 June 2014, 9.41pm AEST

Article by MICHELLE GRATTAN

Hockey over-reaches in defending Abbott’s parental leave scheme against backbench critics

Treasurer Joe Hockey didn’t believe in the Abbott paid parental leave plan in opposition but has had to defend it.
AAP/Paul Miller

Tony Abbott is hardly the first Liberal prime minister to face a
serious backbench revolt on an issue but the depth of feeling in his own
ranks against his paid parental leave scheme is still striking.

More typically revolts are over some specific item – for example a
budget measure – but this one is notable because it contests a signature
policy of the leader which he took to two elections.

Abbott, a convert to government-financed PPL, imposed his plan on the
Coalition rather than putting it through the party room, and defends it
passionately. Yet the internal critics are just as determined as he is,
in trying to derail what they see as an expensive and inequitable
policy that has little community support.

Coalition opponents include two core groups – very dry Liberals who
regard the plan as middle class welfare, and pragmatic Nationals who
believe their constituents have little to gain compared with higher
income earners elsewhere. Conservatives are also concerned that the
scheme, which Abbott sells as a work entitlement designed to boost
labour market participation, disadvantages stay-at-home mothers.

A number of the “dry” critics remain silent but will be pleased with their colleagues' attacks.

The Nationals have no reason to hold their tongues. They want to be heard by their supporters.

It must be beyond galling for Treasurer Joe Hockey to have to go out
to defend the scheme, while he hears Nationals backbencher John Williams
lecture on the need to be “conservative with the budget”.

In a folksy version of the message Hockey delivers on other issues,
Williams declared: “I see no point in borrowing money to give to a young
mum when the bub is going to have to pay it back with interest later in
life.” Williams - a senator from NSW whose willingness to speak his
mind puts him in the mould of Barnaby Joyce (in former days) – said his
daughter-in-law had found the current scheme, brought in by Labor, very
beneficial. He’s suggested a compromise that would extend the present
scheme from 18 to 26 weeks and add in superannuation.

Hockey didn’t believe in the Abbott plan in opposition but has had to
accept it (though at least budgetary circumstances forced the PM to
reduce the proposed maximum payout from $75,000 to $50,000).

Questioned on the latest report about rebel Nationals and Liberals
being prepared to cross the floor to defeat the legislation (not yet
introduced), Hockey on Tuesday argued that the PPL plan was “a no
brainer for regional Australia”.

It was “a massive win for farmers who don’t have paid parental leave
schemes. Farmers are self-employed and for a lot of the mums in a
farming household, they don’t get paid parental leave and now they are
going to have replacement wages plus superannuation”.

Hockey was being loose with the facts. Farmers can get PPL under the
scheme now operating, and the work test for the new scheme would be the
same as for the present one.

This work test is very liberal. A person must have worked for at
least 10 of the 13 months before the birth or adoption of their child,
and worked for at least 330 hours in that 10-month period (just over one
day a week) with no more than an eight-week gap between two consecutive
working days.

Jenny Macklin, shadow minister for families, who brought in Labor’s
scheme, says bluntly: “Joe Hockey is lying. Of course people who are
self-employed, including farmers, are already eligible for Labor’s fair
and affordable paid parental leave scheme. Anyone who fulfils the work
test gets Labor’s paid parental leave scheme.” She accuses Hockey of
trying “to trick” his colleagues.

The Abbott scheme would include superannuation payments, which the
present one doesn’t, and the longer time period. And of course, higher
paid women would get a bigger payout – the current scheme pays only the
minimum wage. But few farming women would fall into that category.

While the backbenchers are huffing and puffing, it is possible some
would pull back when the crunch came. It is serious matter to vote down
the leader’s pet project and arms would be twisted in a big way to stop
that happening.

But the huffing and puffing might itself be fatal for the plan. The
government has considered the Greens its best chance to help get the
plan through the Senate. The Greens' policy has been to support such a
scheme (in a less generous form than Abbott’s original). But they are
now split, with some of them reluctant to back it. One condition they
are talking about is that the government needs to show it has the
support of its own ranks. If the Greens want a let out, signs of a
revolt in Coalition backbench would clearly give it to them.

More generally Hockey, frustrated that so many of his budget measures
are under threat, issued a warning to the Senate, as the new
crossbenchers prepare to take their places in July. “If it just
continually says no without any capacity to negotiate an improved
outcome, then the Senate becomes irrelevant.

“It is just simply a road black and we either have to smash through
that road block or the Australian people get the chance to change the
government.”

A double dissolution in the foreseeable future would be bravery with a capital B.

Sunday 8 June 2014

Who are the real leaners here? - - The Australian Independent Media Network

Who are the real leaners here?

June 8, 2014
Written by:
Kaye Lee

While we are being told that we are are not “entitled” to anything
at all, it is worthwhile to look at the “entitlements” of politicians
and ask who are the real leaners here?

The base salary
for a federal Member of Parliament is $195,130. This is the entry wage
for a job that requires no qualifications, no experience, has no
essential criteria, and no key performance targets.

There is no such thing as false advertising in the business of
government. They are even protected from defamation laws when speaking
in the House.

On top of their salary, politicians are given generous allowances and
“entitlements”. Parliament provides these allowances to assist members
and senators to carry out their duties as elected representatives in
their constituencies. They can claim for legitimate “costs” of doing
their work effectively and taxpayers meet the bill.

In previous times (decades ago) politicians did not have large
entitlement allowances. Their travel to the parliament (federal or
state) was usually arranged by the parliamentary staff (rail
historically, then flights), and they may have had a small electoral
office and a limited budget for mail or landline phones.

But as time went on, the range of allowances was extended to include a
whole series of tangible benefits to members – including daily
expenses, travel allowances, overnight accommodation, domestic and
overseas travel, use of Commonwealth cars, electoral vehicles, hire
cars, taxis or subsidised private vehicles. They receive an electoral
allowance of between $32,000 and $46,000. If they choose not to be
given an electoral vehicle they can claim another $19,500 pa. Some
allowances are capped, others not.

As John Wanna explains:

“One of the problems with the present system is that
there is no clear definition of what is and what isn’t “parliamentary
business” or politicians exercising their rights to interact with their
constituents or the wider community.

Going into a pub and shouting drinks can be a community engagement;
spruiking a book you have written around the country can be
communicating your message to the electorate. Buying books you are
interested in owning as a reader can be seen as informing a politician.

Taking holidays to the snow or sunny climes, or visiting desirable
foreign cities, can be classified under the nomenclature “parliamentary
study tour” to broaden the mind. Many state politicians take regular
holidays at taxpayers’ expense and put in silly half-page “report” on
what they have discovered (one once remarked that sandwiches were bigger
in one state he visited than his home state!).”

Barnaby Joyce’s first foreign study tour as a Senator is a prime
example of the above. On the way home from a billionaire’s
granddaughter’s wedding in India that he attended as a guest of Gina
Rinehart, he had a one day stopover in Malaysia after which he presented
a six page report summarising his findings (which could have been written by any Year 9 geography student):

•Malaysia has recently experienced high levels of
economic growth which has created urban cities comparable in wealth to
cities in developed countries.

•Nonetheless, economic disadvantage remains in some areas, particularly rural areas.

•A key focus for Malaysian policymakers are policies which seek to
increase the economic development of rural areas through targeted
approaches.

•As Malaysia becomes wealthier the potential for Australia high value
exports will increase, particularly of products such as beef.

•A closer dialogue between Australian politicians and Malaysian
policymakers could help to foster stronger government-to-government
Malay-Australian relations.

After a private jet flew him to Malaysia, Mr Joyce claimed a $5500
flight home for him and his wife out of Kuala Lumpur. He also defended
his use of another $3600 in taxpayer entitlements, used to fly him and
his wife to Perth, the day before the couple boarded a private jet to
Hyderabad from that city.

A spokeswoman for the Agriculture Minister told Fairfax Media that Mr
Joyce and his wife attended ”a range of official meetings with business
people and Senate colleagues” in Perth that day, on which he also
claimed $350 in travelling allowance, though she refused to say which
senators or business people attended those meetings.

Barnaby Joyce, Julie Bishop and Teresa Gambaro collectively claimed more than $12,000 in ”overseas study” allowances to pay for their flights home.

Department of Finance records show Tony Abbott has used travel
entitlements to take his family to AFL Grand Finals and Derby Day in
Victoria.

The family trips cost taxpayers more than $10,000 in 2012 and a
charter flight to the Tamworth Country Music Festival, which he attended
with one of his daughters, cost $8800.

TONY ABBOTT’S ENTITLEMENTS WHEN OPPOSITION LEADER:

- A travelling allowance, which varies between cities, for each
overnight stay away from home to and from parliamentary and party
business and “official business as an Opposition Office Holder”. The
meaning of “official business” is not stipulated.

- Business class airfares on “official business within Australia” for
the “most reasonable and usual route between the departure and
destination points”.

- Use unlimited car transport, both chauffeured and self-drive, for “official business” anywhere in Australia.

- A spouse is entitled to travel “anywhere in Australia for official
purposes” at taxpayer expense, including business class flights. A
description of “official purposes” is not provided.

- Can claim $8889 a year in overseas fares, plus accommodation,
meals, vaccinations, insurance and incidentals, including $63-a-day for
minor expenses like tips and porterage. The cost of travel of one
staffer and their spouse is covered, but not for children.

- “Dependent children” are allowed three return visits to Canberra a
year and additional travel with the approval of the Special Minister of
State. A dependent child is under 16 and in the Opposition Leader’s
care, or is aged 16-25 and is a full-time student wholly or
substantially dependent upon the Opposition Leader.

Mr Abbott repaid about $1,700 he spent attending the weddings of
former colleagues Sophie Mirabella and Peter Slipper though this was
several hundred short of what he claimed. Apparently he was a little
bit entitled? He also repaid $9,400 in taxpayer funding that was spent
on travel to promote his book Battlelines in 2009, but he is standing
firm on his right to claim entitlements for taking part in sporting and
charity events – a decision that has cost us tens of thousands of
dollars.

We spend over $100,000,000.00
a year on Parliamentarians’ entitlements – not salaries, not
superannuation, not paying for past Prime Ministers and MPs – that is
how much the current sitting members ask for in extras. Between July
2010 and December 2012, Tony Abbott claimed $2,731,253.50 on top of his
salary, and this was in Opposition. Now he has the keys to the safe and
the ability to make the rules and to appoint the people who enforce
them. He can buy planes for himself and put it under whatever heading
he chooses, then choose to fly whoever he wants around.

Unfortunately, Tony chooses to take businessmen and photographers
with him everywhere he goes and leaves the public servants, diplomats,
legal and trade experts, a shoestring budget to make their own way there
if they can get approval from Peta.

“Cabinet ministers have been instructed to sign off
claims for airfares and hotel bookings by public servants in a clampdown
on government travel costs.

Under strict new guidelines, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has ordered
that all travel costing more than $20,000 must be approved by a cabinet
minister.

He said that any expenses exceeding $50,000 had to be signed off by the prime minister.

All public servants’ travel costing less than $20,000 must be approved by department secretaries or agency heads.”

No cutback for the politicians, just for the people who know what
they are talking about, the ones who do the real work. Mind you, the
couple of public servants they are sending to climate change conferences
would probably prefer NOT to go.

I have a suggestion. How about we keep the politicians at home and
send the public servants instead. Seriously, what does Tony achieve
when he travels overseas? He is so embarrassed he won’t even meet with anyone now except Stephen Harper. (We really need to contact our Canadian brothers and sisters and ramp up a joint campaign.)

And for those who would like to point to the wonderful contribution
to belt-tightening made by the politicians in not accepting a wage rise
this year, the Remuneration and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2011 specifically “removed the power of the Parliament to disallow parliamentary remuneration determinations made by the Tribunal.”

Not only was the decision not up to Tony, he had already been advised of it well before he announced his sacrifice.

“IT was sold as a last-minute decision by the Government
to freeze wages of its Federal MPs to ensure they were hit by their own
chunk of Budget pain. But that wasn’t quite right.

As it turns out, the body which sets those wages had already decided pay rates would be untouched.”

If we halved politicians’ entitlements and the number of fighter jets
we are buying, canned the PPL and Direct Action, kept the carbon tax
and mining tax, kept the changes to FBT on novated car leases and
taxation changes on superannuation payments over $100,000 pa, got rid of
Kevin Andrews marriage guidance vouchers and school chaplaincy program,
stopped all the new reviews and acted on the recommendations from the
ones we have already done, and created a Federal ICAC, not only would we
not have to tighten our belts, we could actually move forwards rather
than backwards.

If we then chose to look at closing tax loopholes and insisting that
rich people pay their fair share we could start addressing poverty and
income inequity. We could do something about affordable childcare and
housing. We could pay decent wages to childcare and aged care workers.
We could invest in research and education.

Get rid of the politicians and give a panel of single parents the
budget. I have no hesitation in saying they could do a far better job
of finding savings and prioritising expenditure than this mob has done.