liar liar pants on fire?

http://www.unitingcare.org.au/downloader.cgi?%E0%F0hc%60%E0%DA!%9E%B8%D5%00z%CE%8B!(P%60j%B3%D8Der:101:uploads%2Ffile%2FTaxation_June1998.pdf:0

Another significant myth is that those in receipt of social security benefits do not have to pay tax. In fact,
they are subject to high tax rates in a way which is unfair, creates a disincentive to work and perpetuates the
poverty trap. For example, the earning of certain levels of additional income which are then subject to tax
sees families lose benefits and actually lose money by earning income. For example a low income family
with children have their family payment reduced by 50 cents for each additional dollar they earn above
$23,000. As identified by The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS), “for many of these families,
earning an additional $10,000 per year would leave them little better off, due to the combined impact of a
34% tax rate, a 50% rate of withdrawal of family payment, and a 1.4% Medicare levy. In this case the
effective marginal tax rate exceeds 80%.”

the poor generally pay more of their income in taxes. plus they aren't able to benefit from middle class welfare.

Well said

Perhaps Dooley can pull some welfare and taxation figure from 1978 to help further bolster the highly factual argument he is putting forward.

Seeing that 10 year old data wasn't a stretch for him, perhaps 20 year old will make his argument just that more plausible 

perhaps the data was old, but it didn't come from a right wing stink tank like CISpit.
i hope this isn't too dated.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22158060-23289,00.html

Subsidies threaten Medicare

July 30, 2007

THE $6 billion "corporate welfare" paid to subsidise private health insurance each year is putting Medicare under threat, a former top bureaucrat says.

A summit in Canberra today heard major health system reform was necessary to make sure all Australians had access to affordable health care.

Almost half of the population had missed out on health services they needed because they could not afford them, while another 15 per cent suffered financial pressure after paying for health care, figures presented at the National Health Reform Summit showed.

Centre for Policy Development chair John Menadue said government subsidies for private health insurance (PHI) were approaching $6 billion a year, including $4.8 billion for the private health insurance rebate, lost tax from the Medicare levy exemption and TV advertising.

"The trend to a two-tier health system in Australia is a serious threat,'' Mr Menadue, a former head of three government departments including Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam, said.

"When the government subsidises wealthy people in PHI to jump the queue, we are on the way to crippling Medicare.

''(Health Minister) Tony Abbott says that the Howard government is the best friend Medicare ever had. Words are one thing. Actions tell a different and alarming story.''

Mr Menadue said the money would be better spent directly on mental, indigenous, preventative or dental health.

"Administration of the $6 billion annual subsidy to PHI should be transferred to Treasury, who would quickly recognise it for what it is - corporate welfare and not a health program,'' he said.

More than 40 health groups - including peak bodies for GPs, rural doctors, nurses and physiotherapists - are attending the meeting today to push the government to reform the health system.

Mr Abbott was originally listed as speaking at the forum but declined to attend.

Mr Menadue said the health minister and his predecessors had been too timid to undertake a major redesign of the health system.

He said the government should set up a national independent authority to drive health reform, and call a public inquiry into the health system.

"Tony Abbott speaks of health as a 'dog's breakfast', but has made no serious effort to fix the mess,'' he said.

"Our health leaders lack the will for health reform because they are strongly influenced by the vested interests that abound in health."

Melbourne's Health Issues Centre CEO Centre Tony McBride told the forum that community consultations held across four states had found cost prevented 45 per cent of people accessing essential health care in the past 12 months.

Another 15 per cent had experienced financial hardship as a result of paying for care.

"Now it's not a representative sample, but even so these are very, very high figures, figures that I think would be concerning any health minister,'' Mr McBride told Southern Cross Broadcasting.

The private insurance subsidies meant wealthier Australians could access services such as dental care, but those who could least afford to pay for dentistry were getting nothing, he said.

Perhaps you two need to explain what your positions are in real terms.

some dude eh? doubt he spoke without qualification. but then it wouldn't matter what was posted you stand by what you say. so do i.

John Menadue
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

John Menadue AO (b. 1935) is a former Australian public servant and diplomat.

Menadue was born in South Australia and graduated from the University of Adelaide in 1956 as a Bachelor of Economics. He is married with four children and ten grand children.

From 1960 to 1967 Menadue was Private Secretary to Gough Whitlam, Leader of the Opposition. He then moved into the private sector for seven years as General Manager, News Limited, Sydney, publisher of The Australian.
Contents

    * 1 Public service career
    * 2 Business career
    * 3 References
    * 4 External links

[edit] Public service career

Menadue was head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet from 1974 to 1976, working to Prime Ministers Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser. He was closely involved in the events of November 11, 1975, when Whitlam was dismissed. He was Australian Ambassador to Japan from 1976 to 1980. Menadue returned to Australia in 1980 to take up the position of Head, Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. In March 1983, he became Head of the Department of the Special Minister of State. He was appointed Head of the Department of Trade in December 1983.

[edit] Business career

Menadue was Chief Executive Officer of Qantas from June 1986 to July 1989. He was a Director of Telstra from December 1994 to October 1996, a Director of NSW State Rail Authority from 1996 to 1999, and Chairman of the Australia Japan Foundation from 1991 to 1998.

Menadue is an adviser to several companies. He chaired the NSW Health Council which reported to the NSW Minister for Health in March 2000 on changes to health services in NSW. He also chaired the SA Generational Health Review which reported to the SA Minister for Human Services in May 2003.

In October 1999, Menadue published his autobiography Things you learn along the way. He was the founding Chair of NewMatilda.com, an independent weekly online newsletter which was launched in August 2004. He is now chair of the public-interest think tank, the Centre for Policy Development.

Menadue was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1985 for public service. In 2003 he was awarded the Centenary Medal ‘for service to Australian society through public service leadership’. In 1997, he received the Japanese Imperial Award, The Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure (Kun-itto Zuiho-sho), the highest honour awarded to foreigners who are not head of state or head of government.

[/quote]

John Howard created paradise for the whole of society with those best able to pay a heavy tax load paying it, those least able to pay a heavy tax load not paying it and the wealth re-distributed across society in a most equitable way.

His economics are world renowned and John Howard was easily the most successful modern PM Australia has had.

The poor have never had it so good, but that is changing fast. [/quote]

those comments sort of remind me of similar remarks made by grabott a few years ago

Abbott made his comments on a program entitled “Going Backwards”, broadcast on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s weekly current affairs show Four Corners. To a limited extent at least, the program laid bare the plight of Australia’s growing army of “working poor”—families who are officially classified as living in poverty, even though one or more family members are working full-time.

Four Corners cited statistics from the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM), showing that almost half a million people, or 42 percent of those defined as poor, were trying to live on wages that were so low that they remained below the poverty line. NATSEM’s head, Professor Ann Harding, said the number of low-wage earners had doubled between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s. Moreover, child poverty in wage and salary earning households increased by almost 40 percent between 1996 and 1998.

The program interviewed several low-wage workers. One, Mara Apelis, was employed as a full-time casual in a telephone call centre but could not survive on the $300 to $400 a week she was paid. She had worked at the centre for 13 years, and was on call every day, but not entitled to sick leave. She had not taken a holiday since 1993 and could not even afford to visit a dentist.

Zenny Aruta, a housemaid at a five-star hotel, said her weekly wage of $425 was well below the $580 per week she needed to provide for her family of three children, a son-in-law and a grand-daughter. The household lived on rice and vegetables, occasionally supplemented by cheap meat or a can of sardines.

Confronted by this evidence, Abbott reverted to two crude responses. The first, possibly in keeping with his past study of theology at a Roman Catholic seminary, was to damn the poor as sinners. “We can’t stop people from making mistakes that might cause them to be less well off than they might otherwise be,” he asserted.

Abbott reacted so sharply because the program exposed the lie of the government’s program of slashing welfare entitlements and herding working class families into low-paid work. The government’s claim, in line with those of its counterparts in the United States and Britain, has been that welfare creates poverty and that the problem will be substantially eradicated by placing people in work.

In fact, the essential purpose of the policy is to push down wages and conditions. While increasingly dismantling the welfare system, the government has also undermined minimum pay regulations and encouraged employers to use casual, part-time and contract employment to cut labour costs. As those interviewed by Four Corners made plain, these processes are impoverishing entire layers of the working class.

This outcome is the entirely predictable result of the unrestricted operation of the market, as alluded to on the program by John Buchanan, from Sydney University’s School of Business. “Within any market society, there is basically no discipline on how far wages can drop,” he observed.

Left floundering, Abbott made the extraordinary claim that the “working poor” simply did not exist. He was not prepared to accept the term because it was an “emotive and distorting tag”. He reiterated the government’s basic credo that: “Unemployment, and not low pay, is the chief cause of poverty in our society.”

any tax on people living below the poverty line has an increased effect on the ability to live. until wealthier people are taxed on negative income like the poor are, then i will continue to believe the working poor pay relatively more in tax than other sectors in the community.

to quote from the same article

"Professor Harding pointed out that GST represented 6.9 per cent of the income of a low-income household, but just 3.5 per cent of high-income household income."

in case you have trouble with those figures, it is almost double the indrect tax burden.