andrew j richardson

Steve Waterson writes in the Australian “I can spot utter incompetence, and grow tired of hearing our politicians are “doing their best”. I would “do my best” if forced to remove your appendix or land a passenger jet, but no one in their right mind would entrust those tasks to me, because it would result in catastrophic failure. Yet this is what we tolerate in government: unqualified buffoons who issue permits to dig up coal and iron ore they’ve forbidden us to use, so China can turn them into ridiculous cars, windmills and solar panels to sell back to us at a succulent profit. But where the climate’s involved, says the minister, “the cost of inaction will always outweigh the cost of action”, a facile mantra that’s hard to test, because the claimed cost of inaction is as high as best serves your zealotry, while the cost of action is stamped top secret and will never be revealed. Meanwhile their mastery is on show in other areas of responsibility: a trillion dollars in debt; an immigration policy that is the envy of the (third) world; runaway rorting of NDIS and welfare payments; medieval antisemitism; Indigenous people worse off than their distant ancestors, despite the billions spent; kids leaving school with minimal education, but who cares, because there will be no jobs for them in our atrophied economy. And the pension-padded architects of this chaos smugly grin and tease each other for media soundbites across the parliamentary chambers. I hoped we had hit the bottom of the barrel of government stupidity during Covid, but no, the shameless malfeasance and ineptitude, brazen lies and arrogant obfuscation continue to burrow away at the nation’s foundations, undermining our future while the politicians congratulate themselves on their brilliant achievements. Sadly, self-delusion remains the only field of endeavour in which they display any imagination or enthusiasm. “If it weren’t so sad it would be funny,” people say, but of course it actually is funny. Our formerly serious, sensible, substantial country is being turned into a preposterous joke by an ugly mob of grasping, unprincipled, talentless clowns. If we don’t have the stomach to do anything about them, we should at least join in the fake laughter.” AND LETS NOT FORGET VOTERS PUT THEM THERE, NOT ONCE BUT TWICE AND ACCORDING TO CURRENT POLLS WILL DO IT FOR A THIRD TIME,

@hicasamadim 254

bunu çözersen, sen bir dahisin. çözebilir misin?

@angelar68197975 No sense in you comment. They have a policy fir every divisive issue

I’m sorry to say this, but everyone who intends voting for One Nation is a bloody idiot She doesn’t have one policy that will help Her policies are spurious, divisive, corrosive ineffective All they do is feed her insatiable appetite for power & money

But they have never worked a day in the private sector; never started a business; built a new product or service; hired a single soul from their hip pocket; or struggled for years, always at risk of going under… What we are seeing is the lid being lifted on those who have always lived completely taxpayer-funded lives trying to take and tax as much as possible to feather the public sector nest. They have never known what it is like to draw a private wage and/or profit. They think it is a zero sum game: any private income, profit or capital gain needs to be redistributed back to government and its dependents. It is the only way they know how to make money: by taxing private citizens and corporations to fund the public oligarchy and its way of life…

Let’s see how this goes here …

@craigkellyAFEE Not a clue !! But he knows a lot about Paul Keating - he did his PhD on the life of Paul Keating and then we made him treasurer. Fools we are !!

Jim Chalmers is utterly out of his depth — a dangerous amateur in one of the most critical jobs in the country. He hasn’t got a clue what he’s doing. Zero real-world experience in business or finance, zero understanding of how the economy actually functions, and zero idea how wealth is created. He’s winging it at the nation’s expense. You wouldn’t trust him as treasurer of the local cricket club — yet this is the best the talentless, no-hoper Labor MPs can scrape up for the Albanese regime. Undoubtedly, the worst federal government Australia has ever endured.

@SkyNewsAust How does this budget help young people ? I have looked everywhere and can’t find one thing that helps them ! In fact entrepreneurs will sit under a tree which will in fact harm young people !

Anthony Albanese has mounted an emotional defence of Labor’s controversial tax changes, arguing the reforms are needed to give younger Australians a fair shot at home ownership. skynews.com.au/australia-news…

So good !!

The One Nation policy platform is now no longer only being defended by One Nation supporters. Economists, analysts and commentators outside the party are now openly acknowledging that many of these policies directly address the pressures driving Australia’s cost of living crisis: housing demand, energy costs, industrial decline, tax creep and infrastructure strain. That’s no longer self-validation, that’s external validation. More Australians are starting to realise that policies focused on energy security, productive industry, controlled migration and rewarding work are not “extreme”, they’re common sense. Let’s go One Nation.

This is so incredibly good: Economist Joseph Schumpeter warned that capitalism weakens when prosperous societies become so comfortable they forget where prosperity came from – and begin resenting the entrepreneurial class that created it. A country might survive high taxes for periods of time. What becomes dangerous is something deeper: the moral suspicion of ambition itself. The creeping belief that commercial success is inherently exploitative, that profit is morally dubious, or that founders should quietly accept punishment for surviving years of uncertainty. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers should think carefully about the signals embedded in this budget. Tax policy communicates values. This budget signals that founders are not viewed as partners in national prosperity, but simply reservoirs of revenue whose success is viewed with suspicion... Civilisation advances because some people are willing to bet on tomorrow before tomorrow exists. Australia should be doing everything possible to encourage those people to build businesses here. Because once a society begins treating ambition as something suspect rather than admirable, it eventually discovers that no nation can remain prosperous after teaching its most ambitious people that they are unwelcome. afr.com/politics/feder…

One Nation will allow pensioners to work unlimited hours and keep their full pension payments.

Unfortunately, more and more Aussies are falling into the top marginal income tax bracket due to inflation and bracket creep. The highest 47 per cent tax threshold now kicks in at pre-tax income of $190,000, which is its lowest inflation-adjusted level in 20 years. If we had indexed these tax brackets to inflation since 2008-09, the top marginal income tax threshold would be a much higher $281,450. In trying to explain the cost of these capital gains tax changes, Labor assumed a future inflation rate of 3 per cent annually. Let's adopt that number to quantify the impact of bracket-creep. Back in 2008-09, only 1-in-50 Aussies paid the top marginal tax rate. Today, it is about 1-in-16 people. The bad news is that within 20 years, it will increase to 1-in-5 Aussies paying 47 per cent income tax. All of this begs the crucial question: what next? If, with literally — and deliberately — zero consultation, Labor is willing to ambush voters with these changes, what will it target in the future? The owner-occupied home, corporates and upper-income earners are obvious targets. All in the name of punishing prosperity and forcing all Aussies back to the mediocre mean. It is regressive socialism in stealth. Labor has framed this budget around fairness. Yet it is patently inequitable. It is a drive-by shooting to grab tax to pay for the one-quarter increase in the size of the public service since Anthony Albanese was elected prime minister in 2022. Even using its characteristically rosy forecasts, Labor predicts that the cost of Australia's extraordinarily bloated public service will blow out by $19.6 billion over the next four years. afr.com/markets/equity…

@JEChalmers Your facts are nonsense ! You have no idea how the psychology of entrepreneurship works ! Oh yeh, none of you have ever employed anyone but you think you know!

We’re delivering a lot of tax reform in the Budget – here are the facts.

The federal government’s refusal to lift income tax brackets in line with inflation means every dollar earned today above $190,000 is taxed at 47 per cent, instead of the top rate kicking in at more than $280,000. The top income tax threshold now sits at the lowest inflation-adjusted level in 20 years. It would be $281,450 by now if it had kept up with inflation since 2008-09, the last time high earners had their top income tax threshold substantially increased under changes initiated by the Howard government. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s former economic policy adviser Alex Sanchez said Labor’s decision in 2024 to increase the top $180,000 tax bracket to $190,000, instead of the $200,000 legislated by Liberal prime minister Scott Morrison under the stage 3 tax cuts, was a “terrible mistake”. afr.com/policy/economy…

I did not realise they were taxing gross rather than net gains… AFR: Investors with diversified share portfolios making a mix of gains and losses compared to inflation could face tax rates of more than 100 per cent on real gains, due to the Albanese government not compensating investors for underperforming stocks. A former senior Treasury tax official and a hedge fund manager both warned that people with a diversified portfolio of shares could face tax rates 50 per cent higher than Treasury calculated… Chalmers’ office and Treasury were contacted for comment on Thursday about whether real losses would be indexed to inflation. Under another example, an investor buys shares in Coles and Woolworths, with one outperforming inflation and the other underperforming inflation. The overall real return is zero after inflation, but the investor would pay tax on the winning stock. If an investor instead bought an ETF of supermarkets with the same overall result, they would pay no tax. afr.com/policy/tax-and…

Great point here by @Johnkehoe23 @DerekFranc90653. Another unintended consequence of the proposed CGT changes is that they heavily favour ETF investing over direct shares. With individual shares, investors can end up paying tax on the big winners while receiving little recognition for inflation adjusted underperformance elsewhere in the portfolio. Ironically, the more diversified your direct share portfolio is, the worse this problem can become. On the other hand, index ETFs effectively net winners and losers internally, making the tax outcome far more efficient under the proposed new system. afr.com/policy/tax-and…

@brivael @ALeighMP need a lesson in economics?

Gilles, je vais démonter ta prémisse de départ, parce que tout le reste de ton argument s'effondre avec elle. Tu pars du principe qu'il faut une « sensibilité de gauche » pour ne pas laisser créver les gens de faim. C'est l'inverse total de ce que dit l'histoire économique des 50 dernières années. Les chiffres bruts. 1990 : 2,3 milliards de personnes en pauvreté extrême. 38% de l'humanité. 2025 : 831 millions. Environ 10%. 1,5 milliard d'êtres humains sortis de la misère absolue en 35 ans. La plus grande réduction de souffrance humaine de toute l'histoire de l'espèce. Qui a fait ça ? Pas l'aide internationale. Pas les ONG. Pas les programmes de redistribution. Pas la « sensibilité de gauche ». Le marché. L'ouverture commerciale. La Chine de Deng en 1978 qui abandonne le maoisme. L'Inde en 1991 qui libéralise. Le Vietnam, l'Indonésie, le Bangladesh qui s'ouvrent au capitalisme. Les seuls endroits où l'extrême pauvreté a EXPLOSÉ sur la même période ? Le Vénézuela socialiste : de 27% de pauvres en 2008 à plus de 80% en 2018, avec une inflation de 130 000% et un Vénézuélien moyen qui a perdu 11 kilos par dénutrition. La Corée du Nord. Cuba. Le Zimbabwe de Mugabe. La gauche ne nourrit pas les pauvres. Elle les fabrique. Le capitalisme produit tellement de richesse que même ses « perdants » américains vivent mieux que la classe moyenne soviétique. Un pauvre US a un frigo, une voiture, un téléphone, l'air conditionné, internet. Un pauvre cubain attend du riz. Ton argument selon lequel « le social aux USA est un désastre » repète une légende française. La réalité : le PIB par habitant américain est de 80 000$. Français : 45 000$. Un Mississippien — l'État US le plus pauvre — a un revenu médian supérieur au Français moyen. La vérité que la gauche française refuse de regarder : dans un système libéral, il y a plus de richesse créée, plus largement distribuée, et beaucoup moins de pauvres. Partout. Sans exception. Sur toutes les périodes mesurées. ÊTRE de gauche en 2026 face à ces données, ce n'est pas avoir de la « sensibilité ». C'est ignorer 35 ans de preuves accablantes. C'est préférer la posture morale au résultat. La compassion sans résultats, ça s'appelle de la vanité.

@ALeighMP Nonsense ! Must be hard selling this economics shit sandwich - but you are giving it a go as your masters demand ! Consider changing parties !

Reform attracts resistance. That was true in the 1980s, and it’s true today. Our Budget tackles tax concessions around trusts, negative gearing and capital gains because younger Australians deserve a fair crack at home ownership. More homes, fairer rules, lower taxes for working Australians. ministers.treasury.gov.au/ministers/andr… #auspol

@AlboMP Nonsense !

We're bringing the dream of home ownership back in reach for young Australians. And it's why we're changing property investor tax breaks to give first home buyers a fair go.

The majority of everything Australians earn goes into some form of tax - on every transaction, every movement, every amount of energy used, every investment, every gain, every business trying to grow & produce. Tax has sunk us into a nation where people are now just trying to figure out what to do next.