For example, we saw disgraceful comments<\/a>\u00a0that described Australia as a \u2018homeowners welfare state\u2019. Economists (I\u2019m going to start calling them, \u2018ecommunists\u2019) aren\u2019t happy about the \u2018untaxed income owner-occupiers get from their homes via imputed rent and capital gains made when the home\u2019s value rises\u2019. The Treasury reckons it can squeeze $50 billion out of homeowners.<\/p>\nThe article goes on to explain:<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2026a broad-based land tax would be economically efficient (it is advocated by many economists). An explicit tax on owner-occupied housing wealth would be justifiable. A broader wealth tax could be considered \u2026 there is a strong case for reconsidering the exemption of housing from pensions means tests, because many wealthy retirees benefit from public pensions that are funded by taxes on the incomes of renters.\u2019<\/p>\n
That\u2019s merely a taste of what we\u2019ll have to fight off. Remember, this is the government that pinky-promised \u2018no new taxes\u2019 and yet it appears to be considering (or refusing to rule-out) ever-more frightening ways to raise taxes, resurrect taxes, or dream up whole new taxes.<\/p>\n
The lesson from Chalmers and Albanese is crystal clear: if you worked hard, saved responsibly, made sacrifices for your children, took risks to start a business, then you obviously stole that wealth and now it\u2019s time for you \u2013 not politicians or billionaires \u2013 but\u00a0you personally to \u2018solve inequality\u2019 by handing over your stuff.<\/p>\n
Labor doesn\u2019t have the balls to pitch this tax raid on their own. They have been leaning heavily on \u2018experts\u2019, economists, university academics, and journalists to nudge them around into \u2018consensus\u2019 positions.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not our idea, Labor can say, it\u2019s a recommendation of the industry! We\u2019re just following orders\u2026<\/p>\n
There are many travesties on the table but one of the most insulting would have to be the random shade thrown at people who live with the sin of an empty bedroom.<\/p>\n
Most Australian houses have space for bigger families. But that\u2019s not who\u2019s in them, moans the SBS.<\/p>\n
\u2018Couples without kids and people living alone make up 61 per cent of households, raising the question of how well a housing market focused on bigger families is serving real demand.\u2019<\/p>\n
We could make a mistake here and start justifying empty rooms. Maybe these couples are planning for a child. Maybe they have family that comes to stay. Maybe it\u2019s an office after all, working from home is about to become a \u2018right\u2019 in Victoria.<\/p>\n
Debate is exactly what the government wants. Debate opens up the opportunity to bargain. To give ground. To make concessions.<\/p>\n
\u2018Well, we\u2019ll let you keep your extra rooms I mean, we\u2019re not going to throw you out of a house but you\u2019ll have to pay tax on those empty rooms. Eventually, you\u2019ll reproduce or leave.\u2019<\/p>\n
Or something of that nature.<\/p>\n
Our homes should be non-negotiable. The curious nose of the government must stop at the closed and locked front door of our homes.<\/p>\n
We asked our\u00a0Spectator Australia\u00a0readers what they thought of the discussion.<\/p>\n
\u2018Start with the Lodge.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018They do this in the UK!\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Knock out the walls until you only have one bedroom.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018If Labor can\u2019t define a man or a woman, how can they define a bedroom as spare?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Get people to move \u2026 to where?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018My home is not an investment property for politicians!!!\u2019<\/p>\n
Listen to what\u2019s being said.<\/p>\n
\u2018A potential solution could lie in government housing reform. Governments could make it more expensive to have more housing than needed, and cheaper for those who opt to live in smaller properties. Abolishing taxes such as stamp duty could make it cheaper for those to move across different housing, and the introduction of a broad-based land tax would raise costs for those who own more land.\u2019<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re starting to feel as though you\u2019re being baited into a smaller and smaller trap, you\u2019d be right. What happened to having pride in the Australian dream of a picket fence, pool, and quarter acre-block? It\u2019s not the fault of Australians that the government started importing millions of foreigners into the country or that the government turns a blind eye when millions more refuse to leave after their visa has expired. It is not the fault of homeowners that our university system is being used as a migration racket or that welfare has become a sanctuary for individuals with no interest in being productive citizens.<\/p>\n
How wildly unfair and sinister it is to turn around to Australians and say, I see you have an extra bedroom in that house you worked your arse off to pay for\u2026 Move or we\u2019ll tax you.<\/p>\n
\u2018It\u2019s politically unpopular but has a broad consensus among economists\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a lot of really communistic ideas circling the roundtable at the moment which have the \u2018broad consensus of economists\u2019 which makes us question what sort of economy they are advocating for. Certainly not one where hard work, skill, and personal achievement is rewarded.<\/p>\n
\u2018There\u2019s a lot of scope for older Australians to leave their homes to free up homes for younger generations. But it\u2019s really hard to implement taxes to encourage people to downsize. Things like broad-based land taxes are an incentive for income-poor but asset-rich Australians to downsize.\u2019<\/p>\n
Taxing people to deliberately encourage them to abandon their homes? That\u2019s not an achievement. That\u2019s a horrifying dystopia where the old are viewed as \u2018house-sitters\u2019 taking up resources.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re not. They\u2019re people. They\u2019re citizens. They earned what they have and they should be allowed to enjoy it without the greedy hand of government reaching toward them.<\/p>\n
Imagine, you work all your life, pay some of the highest taxes in the world, endure the most convoluted and restrictive business conditions on record, and finally you retire to relax for a few decades and there\u2019s the Treasurer raiding your super while trying to slide your home out from underneath you. This government is turning Australia into a foundation of sand washing away with the economic tide.<\/p>\n
\u2018It\u2019s a tough transition to make. But it\u2019s also really hard to ask young families to pay a million dollars to own a house in one of our major cities.\u2019<\/p>\n
I am one of those young people trying to find a house in a major city, and I\u2019m not standing in line for a Sydney rental behind a hundred Boomers \u2026 I\u2019m queued up behind a hundred people who can barely speak English bidding four-to-an-apartment at rates single working Australians can\u2019t compete and we are dealing with real estate agents who often put their signage up in a foreign language and push Australians to the bottom of their callback list. I can tell you right now that if you look like the descendant of a settler, you\u2019re an outsider.<\/p>\n
Why not tackle discrimination in the housing market?<\/p>\n
Why not tear apart the migration scam being run by our universities to the detriment of not only the housing market, but our Australian kids?<\/p>\n
Why not deport the hundreds of thousands of people crowded in our cities on expired visas?<\/p>\n
Why not start deporting migrants who violate the terms of their stay by committing crimes or living off welfare?<\/p>\n
Why not crack down on businesses and real estate companies who shelter the mass migration dream over the needs of Australians?<\/p>\n
Coming after pensioners and their homes as a first priority might appeal to Labor, who know these people represent a shrinking conservative voting group, but at some point you have to ask where our humanity has gone.<\/p>\n
And if you are a young Australian family that saved to buy a house for your family which you might start in a few years, you\u2019ll be taxed out of that home long before you reproduce and it will be filled with a large family that arrived yesterday.<\/p>\n
Ten years later, you\u2019ll be childless, living in a single bedroom apartment to avoid the Bedroom Tax, wondering what happened to your country and your future.<\/p>\n
Labor must stop trying to tax its way out of its trillion-dollar mess.<\/p>\n
Flat White is written by Alexandra Marshall. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at\u00a0donor-box<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is a disturbing normalisation happening since Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced his Productivity Roundtable. In the interests of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,67257,63,99,164],"class_list":["post-90534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-au-news","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}