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A Personal View |
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Reform
Introduction
Bruce Barbour - February 2020 and later updates.
This section is a thought experiment: What would I do differently if I ruled Australia? How would I make Australia a better, fairer place? Not that I want to rule Australia - to do that I would need to be a politician and I can think of nothing worse (well there are a few things worse!).
I like to explore ideas and propose solutions to perceived problems. And I see many areas in tax and other policy that could be done so much better.
I hope that I have come up with a series of reforms that would be beneficial to Australia going forward. Are they likely to be implemented? Who knows but at least the ideas are out there. Things can be done better if some of the ideological and other shackles are cast aside.
Taxation
Taxation reform has always been problematic in Australia. The reason
for this is quite straight forward: the word "tax" is poisonous to
the general disinterested populous, except if it has the word
"lower" or "abolish" associated with it. The general opinion seems
to be - if it is a tax it must be bad. And it does not matter
whether the person him or her self or most of the people they know
will not be affected by the tax. In their mind - is tax = is bad. Because of this it is so easy for either side of politics to "weaponise" the arguments against any proposal to increase taxes or to introduce a new tax or to do significant tax reform that involves the introduction of new taxes. It also seems that it does not matter to the politicians whether the proposal is good, in the nation's best interest or even whether they secretly agree with the tax proposal. They are most likely to take the political approach, and use it as a cheap shot weapon against their opponents.
From my observation the only way tax reform can be achieved is that any new tax introduced must be offset by other tax decreases or abolition probably worth two or three times as much as the new tax collects. Consequently opportunities only arise for tax reform after government tax receipts have increased substantially due to either a sustained period of "bracket creep", increased income from resources based taxes or from company tax in boom periods. These opportunities must not be wasted as they have been in the past, where governments have either decreased tax rates without reform or spent the windfall on services and projects, worthwhile or otherwise.
Societal Reform
Suggestions on the form of Governance for when Australia eventually gets its act together and votes for a Republic. However we can't just vote for a Republic for the sake of getting rid of the monarchy. It has to be the right form of Republic. Otherwise it could be expensive and problematic.Also a "message from the future" containing a suggestion or a prediction or (some would say) a naive hope on how society may work in 2050 in the face of climate change and other challenges.
The topics I cover are listed in the side bar. Or else click on the Next Page link below to step through each topic in turn.
Next Page - Carbon Taxes
Reform Home Page
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