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Lord, spare us from socialist governments desperate to get re-elected. The Albanese government is set to announce a major multibillion-dollar cash splash for all working Australians as its centrepiece cost-of-living support in the May budget.
Jim Chalmers is poised to announce an ‘earned income offset’ of between $200 and $300 for every person in Australia who gets a wage or salary and pays tax.
As an old Australian ad went, It’s your money, Ralph. This is the typical socialist scam: rob you blind with taxes, hand back a pittance in your own money, then expect a thank-you card and another term in office. It’s not relief. It’s vote-buying with the voter’s own money: the same tired sleight-of-hand that has Australia hurtling towards a trillion-dollar debt mountain.
After all, Chalmers learned this trick at the knee of his old boss Wayne Swan. Remember the GFC ‘stimulus’? Cash handouts, pink batts and school halls no one needed. Swan’s splurge demolished the Howard-Costello budget surplus and put Australia on the road to record intergenerational debt. Now the apprentice is running the same con, just with a shinier spreadsheet and more sanctimonious guff about ‘intergenerational equity’.
The measure, which comes in addition to the $3bn in fuel excise cuts, works in a similar fashion to the Low and Medium Income Tax Offset, but would only apply to earned income as opposed to all income such as that from investments. It is intended to apply only to the coming financial year, and it is understood not to be means-tested. Retirees who do not work will not benefit from the offset.
The cash handouts will miss key demographics, such as pensioners and small business and sole traders. Retirees who don’t work? Tough. Self-employed battlers carrying the economy on their backs? Also tough. This is targeted all right: targeted at the Labor vote. Joke’s on them, though: it’ll cost them far more than Robbing Hood in Canberra is so ‘generously’ handing out, when the interest rates on their mortgage goes up again. With many mortgage-holders already at breaking-point, that $200 will barely cover the rise in one month’s repayments.
Financial markets expect the RBA to make its third 0.25 percentage point interest rate rise this year when it meets on Tuesday, which would take the official interest rate to 4.35 per cent.
Inflation was running well outside the banks’ target range before the Iran war, but since the conflict, it has leapt to a 2.5 year high of 4.6 per cent, with inflation expectations sitting at record highs […]
On Monday HSBC chief economist Paul Bloxham pointed to electricity subsidies delivered in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the recent decision to slash the fuel excise, as inflationary policies adopted by the government.
Chalmers, of course, insists the budget is in “better nick”. Informed people know these statements to be falsehoods. Any cursory look at the budget papers will confirm the facts that the fiscal position is deteriorating, particularly when off-budget spending is considered, and government debt is fast approaching one trillion dollars for the first time.
Yet here we are: more spending, more debt and more distortion in the housing market, all dressed up as compassion for ‘working Australians’. The same working Australians who will watch their grocery bills, power bills and mortgage repayments climb while the government pats itself on the back for giving them $250 of their own money back.
Meanwhile the government is busy breaking election promises on property taxes to fund its class-war agenda. Albanese swore blind he wouldn’t touch negative gearing or the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount. Now both are on the chopping block, grandfathered for existing investors but axed for anyone dumb enough to buy after the budget. Classic Labor: campaign like moderates, govern like Marxists.
The government was also likely take aim at trusts with a minimum 30 per cent tax rate on distributions.
Chalmers calls this “rebalancing” between labour and asset income. Translation: punish anyone who dares save, invest or build wealth. The same people whose taxes pay for the handouts are now being punished for not being wage slaves. The ‘cash handouts’ are taxpayer’s money. The government is robbing from everybody and handing back a pittance and expecting gratitude.
This is socialism all the way down. Spend like drunken sailors in an election year, blame ‘the rich’ and ‘speculators’ when the bill arrives, then lecture the rest of us about ‘equity’ while the next generation gets stuck with the interest payments. Mums and dads are too busy and hard-pressed to investigate these tall tales. But what is clear to them – part of their ‘lived experience’ – is that prices are rising and that the monthly outlay on the mortgage has been going up this year.
