I couldn't agree more Tas, particularly in terms of the public service, the system is beyond chaotic and in some industries there has been over hiring for pointless positions. We basically need improved fiscal responibility for state and fderal governments on this issue. Having written my honours thesis on the area of defence manufacturing and the bureaucracy over the last 50 years, l can't agree more with your point of lots of money going in, but very little coming out in terms of benefiting the nation, job and economic creation etc. We keep turning to the US and a lesser extent Great Britain for so much of our defence material now, its really scary. You just need to look at the joint strike fighter program, what a cock up () that is atm.
"The government provides a number of 'services' which should be privatised, are not really needed or we can source from overseas for significantly less. We just waste so much money, spending beyond our means. This was highlighted even during the Howard era and nothing was done about it."
Very much so, their should be more of liberalization of certain sectors because of government inefficiency (neo-liberal/neo-conserative here). At least it was highlighted in the Howard years, Labor tends (l use the word tends to in a stereotypical sense) overbloat the public and teaching sectors to generate limited job creation and claim a win.
Very basically our poli's for the last 50 years haven't had the balls to make tough decisions on manufacturing, what and how to invest in industry and job creation and challenge the status quo politically and develop some fiscal responsibility and develop a privitised services that won't drastically increase the cost of living.
I think the government, especially in countries like Australia, should build then privatise. Because due to draconian regulation it is near on impossible to get money from a bank or financial institution without bricks and mortar to secure it.
We have three major cancers of middle australia.
First, negative gearing which has cooked our housing industry so that young people can't afford homes unless they go bush, it has allowed families earning more than enough money that they can invest in multiple properties to reduce their tax burden in exchange for accumulating assets, they are not paying as much tax as they should be paying.
Second, foreign investment, a lot of foreigners buy property and just sit on it and wait for it to appreciate because we have overcooked our property market, but also to an extent allowing foreign nations to purchase up our farmland, they produce products which they sell at next to no 'profit' back to the motherland, so they rape our natural resources, use our water and sell it back to themselves at cost and don't effectively pay any tax worth noticing.
Lastly, Imputation system, in theory avoiding double taxation is a good thing, this has merit when scumbags are actually paying tax. In reality, for the vast majority of significant investors who dodge the **** out of their tax paying duties, it allows them to also minimise any effective taxation that the corporation is paying on income distributed to investors. Companies should pay a fixed amount of tax on their profit and taxpayers should not include this income as assessable income tax from ATO approved corporations like blue chip companies.
This would incentivise those on higher incomes to invest in corporations, rather than destroying the housing industry as a tax dodging mechanism, the government can give this status also to approved new businesses to attract investment from the public.
The government should not allow business losses to carry across into personal income tax, they should just carry forward until the business makes a profit, this will eliminate the types of businesses designed to never make a profit, like asset accumulation businesses.
Government should focus on getting people to pay a reasonable amount of tax, especially from rich campaigners. At present the only Australians paying a fair amount of tax are low income earners because they lack the means to implement tax minimisation/avoidance schemes. The ATO act like complete campaigners to low income earners and let rich campaigners get away with ******* the nation.