HalfEarthMedic

[T] he poor design of the resource rent tax has meant little or no money has been collected. According to Treasury, “to date not a single LNG plant has paid any petroleum resource rent tax and many are not expected to pay any significant amounts until the 2030s.

Nor do the big multinational exporters of gas — including Exxon, Shell and Chevron — seem to pay much company tax. The Australian Taxation Office has labelled the oil and gas industry “systematic non-payers” of tax.

In brief

Be sure your dodgy modelling will find you out. I’m starting to think economists have become so used to pretending to know more about the economy than they really do that they don’t notice the way they mislead the rest of us.

The Productivity Commission has proposed a radical change in the way companies are taxed which, it tells us, would improve the economy’s productivity and leave us better off. It has commissioned modelling that, it implies, supports its case for change.

Its modelling shows the benefit from cutting the rate of company tax would take years to materialise, and still be trivial, but the commission thinks we should do it anyway.

As pressure mounts on the Australian Government over Palestine, a group of highly respected Australians, who have represented our nation overseas, have gone straight to the top with a letter to the prime minister.

The productivity comission propses to reduce the tax paid by all companies bar the top 500, they’d get no cut in conventional company tax, but would pay the new 5 per cent cash flow tax.

On paper, the commission’s partial switch from conventional company tax to a tax on companies’ net cash flow – which allows them to write off the full cost of new assets immediately – ought to improve productivity.

The join statement by 24 business lobby groups says that “while some businesses may benefit under the proposal, it risks all Australian consumers and businesses paying more for the things they buy every day – groceries, fuel and other daily essentials”. Get it? This is the lobbyists’ oldest trick: “We’re not concerned about what the tax change would do to our profits, dear reader, we’re just worried about what it would do you and your pocket. It’s not us we worry about, it’s our customers.” Suddenly, their professed concern about the lack of productivity improvement and slow growth is out the window, and now it’s the cost of living they’re deeply worried about. They’ve been urging governments to increase the GST for years, but now they don’t want higher prices.

The US geopolitical objective is to destroy China’s power. This is being pursued variously. China’s economy depends on Asian sea traffic. The US military strategy is to sever those sea lanes. Thereby China’s economy is imperilled.

However, as the US itself has claimed (from Obama on) it lacks the resources to achieve its objective. It says it must rely on allies’ support.

Unsaid by US planners is that those same sea lanes upon which China depends are critical also for Japan and Australia. Any pedant can see that the natural allies here are China, Japan and Australia.

Before the last election, a bureaucrat in the office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet attempted to embed ministerial blindness into the conventions of our government.

2.6 Following the end of the caretaker period and once a new government is appointed, successive governments have accepted the convention that ministers do not seek access to documents recording the deliberations of ministers in previous governments.

One only has to think for about 20 milliseconds to realise how detrimental that advice would be.

Despite outcry from the opposition, about 57 per cent of seniors endorse the change, according to a survey of 3000 people aged 50 and older conducted by National Seniors Australia for the Super Members Council.

The results appear to track with broader public sentiment on Labor’s bill, Super Members Council CEO Misha Schubert said.

A growing chorus is calling for Australia’s republic conversation to focus less on symbolism and more on empowering local communities through real structural reform, writes Kaijin Solo.