Happy new financial year, GrodsReaders! Hope everyone’s hangovers are manageable today after last night’s festivities. I had a pretty quiet one this time around so, being the dutiful Australian citizen I am, I woke up bright and early this morning ready to do my tax so I could send the Australian government any extra money that I might owe it without delay. After brewing a coffee and digging out my receipts and other tax detritus I logged onto the Australian Tax Office website to download the convenient e-tax software. Being a Mac user I was acutely aware that use of e-tax has been limited to PC Windows users since its launch, but I was sure that in 2009 a government department couldn’t still be refusing to support close to 10% of computer users.

It is.

And as it has been promising to do for the past few years (with fingers crossed behind its back), the ATO says it will still “continue investigating [making] e-tax available to different computer platforms.” What complete bullshit, I say. And as Craig would say, “It is the yeah two thousands!”

Word.

Comes details today about just exactly how much the late Kerry Packer’s state funeral cost NSW taxpayers: $73,223.63.

This for a man who had a personal wealth of an estimated $7 billion by the time he died.

This week has seen the new NSW Premier admit that the state of financial affairs is perilous, with NSW blowing out to a deficit of $1 billion.

I’m thinking, let the Packers offer to pay for Kerry’s bloody funeral* — not that they will, of course. After all, this was the man who would try to pay as little tax as possible when he was alive. Who’s to say his family hasn’t inherited his Scrooge-like ways?

Anyway, what made Kerry so special he deserved the most expensive by far funeral of the last eight years? I can think of many others who are far more deserving of my tax dollars. But that’s not the point – the man was a bloody billionaire. Why couldn’t his family pay for his funeral out of his vast fortune/estate? It would still have had all the pomp and ceremony, “grieving” politicians who received political donations, and the presence of TomKat. His passing would have still generated a week’s worth of media stories about the wonderful but tough Kerry.

So, pay up, fuckers.

* Kerry’s son Jamie… sorry, James Packer has an estimated personal fortune of $6.1 billion for the year 2008.

Ant reported earlier on Andrew Bolt’s ejaculative response to John Howard’s Irving Kristol lecture in the USA. Since then Bolta has added a few updates to his text, closing his second update with this sentence.

Missing him already.

Get a room, you two.

I’ve been having a read of the full text of Howard’s speech and it’s quite interesting to see how much hubris and arrogance this man has despite spending eleven years in office telling us he has none of either. Oh, and he’s still a dickhead.

Read the rest of this entry »

With income tax the big issue of the campaign so far, Lachlan Connor has released his own tax policy.

You are hereby instructed to aggressively use this new federal vs. state, Liberal vs. ALP, wedge tactic against state governments in response to any criticism of the Howard government:

AN ANGRY Julie Bishop will tell Victoria to “put its money where its mouth is” and abolish the $93 million it extracts in payroll tax from universities every year if it is serious about universities being underfunded.
(source)

Family and Community Services Minister Mal Brough said the Howard Government was already giving ample support to parents who used child care.

“If Mr Bracks wants to take steps to increase availability in his state by talking directly to providers, that’s a matter for him,” Mr Brough said.

“One step he could take is to reduce tax impositions on child-care centres.”
(source)

The theme of this argument is that instead of the coalition federal government providing any extra funding, the Labor state governments should reduce their taxes.

Feel free to employ this argument liberally (pun intended) in the lead up to the ‘07 election.