Labor and Common Sense Are Mutually Exclusive
You’d be familiar with the term “mutually exclusive”.
It means that two things can’t be done at the same time, at least not without cancelling each other out.
Sadly, our politicians don’t seem to have heard of the phrase.
Take the NSW Labor Government’s budget, delivered last week, for instance.
The centrepiece of the budget was billions of dollars for public housing. Their big idea was to spend $5.1b tackling the housing crisis.
And yet, at the same time that they were promising new homes to ease the housing crisis, they were refusing to raise the tax-free threshold on land tax.
By not raising the threshold to allow for skyrocketing property prices, more land-owners, whose property values have increased, will now be paying land tax.
The government expects to generate an extra $1.5b in land taxes over the next four years as a result of their decision to keep the threshold in place.
And where does the Labor Government imagine landlords will get that extra money?
Hmmm. It’s a mystery.
See-saw
But trust me, every renter knows.
You can’t tackle the housing crisis while, at the same time, implementing policies that drive up the cost of rentals. They are… say it with me… mutually exclusive!
Meanwhile, the NSW Government is promising to build 400 homes that will be leased on the cheap to those it deems “essential workers”?
Personally, I regard my local barista as an essential worker. If I don’t get my small latte (extra hot, one sugar) in the morning, nothing good can come from the day.
But apparently, we need nurses and firefighters, too. Whatever.
So, to make living in Sydney more affordable for the 100,000 police officers, nurses, ambulance officers, firefighters and teachers in the city, the Government will build 400 homes.
Clearly, math is not this government’s strong point.
I mean, unless they plan on having 250 people bunk in together, it just doesn’t work.
Speaking of a 1-in-250 chance at scoring a government-subsidised home, those same workers have a 1-in-37 chance at winning a bet on Crown Casino’s roulette wheel.
That’s right. Crown actually offers better odds at solving your housing cost problems than the Government.
Pathetic
Faced with the math, Planning Minister Paul Scully defended the 400 homes as “a start”.
The gaming room at Crown Casino would also be a start — and the odds are better.
The only conclusion is that governments are far more committed to being re-elected than they are to serving constituents and solving problems.
They know 400 homes will barely make things better while freezing the land tax threshold will certainly make things worse. But they don’t care.
They just want to be able to announce big plans while hoping you and I never think too hard about them so as to be impressed.
Funnily enough, they might just find that serving the public and being re-elected, far from being mutually exclusive, are actually mutually inclusive.
What a day it will be when they wake up to that.
___
Republished with thanks to The James Macpherson Report.
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Thank you James…This is all so true and your main point so well explained. It is also painful for so many homeless or renting Australians and now the landlords.
I loved the statement: “You can’t tackle the housing crisis while, at the same time, implementing policies that drive up the cost of rentals. They are… say it with me… mutually exclusive!”
You are so right. The practical side of buying and renting a unit or house seems missing from the jigsaw and so is the systematic side like counting the cost before buildings go up, and weighing that against other costs that will be effecting not only the builder and owner but the poor (literally poor) renters.
It’s as though there is no ‘homework done’ on the estimates and the ceiling amount, but perhaps Labor no longer have a statistician in the office and haven’t realize they need one. Instead it seems they have a ‘Wishful thinking’ Dept director, who has as yet to understand the economic decline we are living in.
I feel above all for the single Mothers, or Dads, or families living in a car, the sick or employed one, elderly or divorced who live in a car or tent and the children….It’s pitiful to have to live in winter through all this as well. (One recent story in the newspaper was a retired ambulance driver living in his car as he had fallen on hard times. Other stories have covered single mothers with children trying to maintain normal daily life at school and trying to hold down a job)…There are also Veterans who have fought for Australia, out there, who have no home. There has been no realization that landlords now are doing it tough and they can’t keep bridging the gap.
May God give insight and wisdom to the Labor Govt, the CEO of the Housing Dept and Finances.
There is another angle of all this. It is that Australian politicians seem to be able to work out their own finances, wage rises and costings very well (though it could be done under the ‘The Wishful thinking’ Dept) and yet they haven’t been able to work out how those less well off, or below the poverty line, will manage to rent or buy a house or sustain landlord costs and taxes.
Recent reports show this:
The Guardian wrote: “Members of Australia’s federal parliament and other public officer holders will pocket thousands more each year from July after the independent remuneration tribunal announced a 3.5% wage rise. The decision by the Remuneration Tribunal, an independent body that determines the pay of federal politicians and bureaucrats, will mean backbench MPs will now take home about $233,643 a year – up from $225,742 the previous year – or about $4,493 a week before tax.”
“The salary of the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, will also get a boost, cracking the $600,000 mark for the first time. Prime ministers earn an extra 160% on top of an MP’s base salary while the opposition leader earns an additional 85%.”
The Prime Minister Antony Albanese “will take home about $607,471 a year – up from $586,929 – while Peter Dutton will receive $432,239 – an increase of $25,000 on the previous year.”
Meanwhile in West Australia:
The recent payments of MP’s have increased. In West Australia the west.com.au reported: “The decision (of a pay rise 7 days ago) means a member of Parliament will have a base salary of $173,393 — almost 60 per cent, or about $64,000, more than the average West Aussie’s salary of $109,600. It also means they will earn more than their political counterparts in NSW, Tasmania and the Northern Territory.”
May God help all in Parliament to understand the needs of the nation and as a nation may we prepare for hard times by taking time to prepare for leaner years ahead while caring for the less fortunate.
May our nation be able to help those who seek help in time of need and show justice in housing needs, wages and taxes.
‘Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.’ (Mathew 5.)
I have to wonder what you think the remuneration for politicians should be. What kind of pay would you feel you were entitled to for a job with that much responsibility? For many years the pay increases of politicians has been independently assessed, and I don’t think you’d find anyone who thinks that 3.5%, which is still below the rate of inflation as well as in line with pay increases in many sectors.
I’ll never forget seeing an incident on the news during the 2019 Federal election campaign when Bill Shorten was campaigning in Rockhampton. A site foreman at the port there bailed Shorten up to ask him about proposed income tax increases for the top bracket because he had guys working shiftwork who were raking in $250,000 a year (!!).
And there’s probably no shortage of small business owners in your area earning as much or more than Albo and Dutton.
As Christians we need to show the way by giving them honour where honour is due (Romans 13:7). We need to be far less cynical, and remove our own ideological lenses at times, to be able to give that form of honour to those on the other side, and criticism to those on our own, when it’s warranted.