stoush.net

Relative to other states, NSW has a greater capacity to raise revenues because property values and household incomes are higher…

Since you mention it, can we have inheritance taxes? If anybody should be giving back to anybody it should be the landowning class to us peasantry.

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Good to see you posting Emmeline. Stoush!

Why is the federal government taxing for NSW. Government’s are supposed to tax for their upkeep and nothing more. Why isnt NSW an autonomous taxing entity?

Couldn’t agree more emmeline. Any problem at all (hospitals being shit, education being run down, laura norder, miss universe being dumped from dancing with the stars) and we get the “well we are being short changed by $3bn GST funding”.

They’ve probably blamed about $10bn of cockups on this, so I reckon they’d shit themselves if Costello stumped up the cash.

Interesting how Premier-in-waiting Costa rolled over after the treasurer’s meeting and went and said he would cut taxes.

They really are a bollocks government, and who is the alternative? The sodding Debnam-Hawke-Clarke axis of holiness.

For fuck sake.

First - Costa is not the Premier in waiting. No way, never ever, not to be considered, no.

Second - I would appreciated your more detailed thoughts on the formulae used to calculate GST revenue. You say the system is not working but would you say that is just because of the current problems in NSW or because of the actual calculation? Without a detailed study some of the determinations are quite frankly ludicrous.

Third - Why can we not get some of the bribe money the feds store up in their multi-billion dollar surpluses that magically appear above forecasted levels each year?

Fourth - I object to the removal of taxes such as stamp duty and others. I also believe that the Government was way to quick to remove the vendor tax and that this should have been raised rather than dropped! Taxes on such transfers are not inherently stiffling on business, just a barrier to massive and sustained growth in property prices.

Fifth and last - my major gripe is not that we give to other states but that they waste the money as much or more than we do. Why did Qld give tax cuts when they need to invest in infrastructure? Why do they subsidise petrol? And why do West Australians do anything?

What happened to Team Costa?

It’s a bit of a whinge, isn’t it? Time for the NSW Government to get over it and start thinking about more constructive ways than this to win in 2007.

i agree, but it doesn’t make it any less bullshit that nsw gst funds go towards subsidising qld petrol. i say smash the states anyway, and put a single national democratic socialist paradise in their place, but who the hell am i to talk…

Team Costa was the result of a bad trip.

Much like the current Treasurer’s policies…

Why did he go to Canberra only to give the feds a win?? Smarmy Costello looked like a cat who swallowed a budgie.

The state government will keep this up because the GST campaign is biting very well with the electorate - it has a high degree of recognition and deflects the issue of financial mismanagement (which is a non-issue anyway - there’s been a degree of mismanagement of service provision rather than of finances).

NSW has never said it’s wrong to subsidise the NT, Tassie or South Australia, but fact is WA and Qld are raking it in, their economies are booming and ours has stalled. As Dibo says, that’s bullshit. As Jason says, Queensland is using our money to fiddle while their infrastructure burns.

If our economy goes down we take the rest of the country with us, but nobody is stepping in to give the state government a hand. Government spending is a prime way of boosting a flagging economy, but what government can afford, in this day and age and a year out from the election, to preach deficit economics so they can do that spending? Why should we when the GST that Queensland and WA get would put us back half a billion in surplus?

If that happened we would still be subsidising the states that need it and Queensland can stop getting rich off our GST and our net migration.

I still say we don’t need to pinch off the other states.

Give us some of the Federal surplus!

The whole GST blame game is the same as any other issue….”It is not our problem, its the Feds” and vice versa. Dibbo has a good point. The states should be abolished.

Jason…if NSW had kept some of its previous state surpluses instead of putting into it debt reduction (without question) then we might be in a different position and people with mental illness and various other state responsibilities could actually get funding and solutions for for their issues as opposed to full page ads in the sydney dailies complaining about the GST take.

Isn’t the petrol subsidy in Qld more to do with the fact that Qld is big and has a population that is very spread out. Sure, it’s political suicide to get rid of it but Qld has a progressive government and wants to keep the subsidy so that those in remote areas don’t have to pay more for their fuel costs (which are a lot higher than for people in the city in the first place).

It’s about distributing wealth.

But Dibo if we get rid of state govts there will be less jobs to go around. We can’t do that! I mean at least two contributors to this blog will be out of a job:P
My personal view is get rid of the states or at least get rid of this bullshit system where both state and federal systems are responsible for funding health or education and just make one of them responsible for funding and running it.
Maybe while we’re at it we’ll actually put of socialism back into the Left who are becoming a bunch of bourgeois libertarians who might be socially left wing but would implement Keating’s economically libertarian vision.

No way we are the richest state!

Aren’t Queensland and Western Australian in the middle of a resources boom right now?

Aren’t we in the middle of a supposed slump?

Cool. My first stoush!

When I suggest that the system is not working, I’m referring to a hazy memory of the Garnaut / Fitzgerald Review (pdf) of Commonwealth-State funding in 2003, which concluded that the system was inequitable, inefficient and ridiculously complex. And the current juncture highlights that, far from its goal of promoting convergence between the state economies, the current distribution has the effect of taking money from the slow-growing states to give to the faster-growing states (to paraphrase Ian McFarlane (pdf)). That largely seems to reflect the fact that the relative funding calculation is lagging actual activity; the big boost Queensland and Western Australia are seeing from the resources boom has only had a small impact on their share of GST revenues because their funding shares are averaged over the previous five years.

As Jason highlights, the CGC’s attempt to be “policy neutral” is particularly perverse (see their report (pdf)). Revenues are allocated to allow each state to provide the same level of services – so Queensland and Western Australia receive more money to serve a more dispersed population – but aren’t penalised for choosing to spend the money on, say, petrol subsidies, rather than services.

It seems there are two possible solutions: find a better distribution methodology, which allows some level of redistribution without setting up perverse incentives or exacerbating divergences between states - difficult, if not impossible; or as Dibo says “smash the states”, and set up two levels of government, national and large regions, both equipped with taxation powers appropriate to their responsibilities for service provision.

Larry, the Left fought the battle against debt reduction every conference since we won govt in NSW and enacted the stupid thing. Only now is that wisdom recognised (though no credit is forthcoming, or apologies for laughing us down).

Unfortunately we are no longer a faction that cares about economics - it is all about artsy fartsy moral issues for us now. Refugees, Iraq, queers rights. All valuable causes but not enough to bind together a collectivity. Even the AMWU’s ‘fair trade’ debate is lost in amongst hand-wringing over international labour issues.

Still I know a few Labor Lefties who are still excited about real economic change. If only they suceed in their political careers we could have a very different and far superior faction (and no I don’t mean me - I don’t and won’t have a political ‘career’).

Now - who are Larry and Hacktivist?

but to some lefties (especially non-labor lefties, i hasten to add), as soon as you start getting excited about the economics and whatever else, you become instantly a right-winger… i don’t get it, but it’s a bit like focussing on the dessert in the hope that your suckling pig will materialise by itself.

Then stop caring what people think of you.

There is a big demand for economic advice and it is more rewarding in the long run than simply showing up at the swankiest chardonnay funraisers.

Then stop caring what people think of you.

wasn’t quite what i meant. :) it’s hard to get people interested was more the point.

the electorate only seems interested in economics when the reforms have already happened and bought them a new boat too, which is why the complete lack of activity in canberra goes unnoticed until boat payments start bouncing… then it’s catch-up time, which is a little bit akin to running after a car when you’ve left the handbrake off and hoping it rolls gently to a stop rather than performing a neat little reverse park into someone’s loungeroom.

You’ve got a way with metaphor, Dibo.
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Economics is one of those things, like art and cricket and the innards of computers that I wish I knew more about. Alternatively, it’d also be nice if the very non-scientific field of economics were a bit more open to laypeople’s input, in the same way that any silly bugger with a chip on her/his shoulder can call themselves Historian.

it is, isn’t it? just make the numbers add up? i think the problem is just that historians haven’t managed to mystify observers of their work in the same way as economists have.

from my view, economists are just politicians who are handy with a calculator. enough x’s, y’s and commas and they turn off all but the most resolutely interested nerds.

i haven’t yet passed the comma stage.

I’m a leftist factional hack Jason and I actually do care about economics - quite a lot. I haven’t studied any though. Got a copy of Economics for Dummies anyone?

Another person whose identity I would love to know…

I shouldn’t have dropped my own nom de plume. I now cop shit for this blog :P

The G.S.T. is no good enough. Why are the state government constantly probing and annoying us for any source of revenue. They are now trying to attack non-profit football clubs. The cost of the RTA is absurd just to get L’s. Now they are whinging that they do not get GST? JUST DO YOUR JOB YOU WANKERS. Get the trains running on time and speed up the Sutherland to Wollongong network you pieces of shit. Really this is a disgrace when the federal and state government are using public money to attack each other without either giving any real facts.

The facts are there Partick and both the Feds and State Govt expect the electorate to do just what you have done - scream abuse without understanding.

Their only point of difference is the target of that abuse.

They are now trying to attack non-profit football clubs

Which ones?
How?

Oh I understand exactly. Any chance to increase State Revenue at the expense of people who are too docile or too weak or too ignorant to bother protesting.

CJJRLFC, they make them pay huge amounts on insurance premiums instead of legislating to let sport’s clubs have free access. Absolutely shameful.

Jason- Why do you want to know my identity? Are you interested in my views and want to subscribe to my newsletter?

A little tid bit of info on laffer for you:

“Around his 38th birthday, his brain hit a sexual alarm and started having his first kinky thoughts. He started reading adult magazines and could not concentrate to his work. This was the reason his life was destroyed: As a first step he was fired, and on his way home, he found his house sold and his mother left for vacations.” Wikipedia…haha.

Too true about the left and economics. They think that tree hugging will win they way of the world. Left economics is solid as oak, but no one advocates it. So now we run surpluses, have no debt at state and federal level, user pays everything, sod all public assets, and the ALP puts up no argument against it. They have switched to playing the liberal game and will lose everytime until they can put together an alternative economic plan.