Point number eight calls for:
The elimination of the Goods and Services Tax, which is a regressive tax which hits poor and working class Australians the hardest, and its replacement by a 0.1% (one tenth of one per cent) tax on speculative turnover.
Come July, everyone in Australia will understand why the Canadians, at the election immediately following the imposition of what they called the "gouge and screw tax", decimated the government party, dropping it from nearly 200 seats down to just two. And who first proposed the GST here? Not John Howard, but Paul Keating, and the ALP, the Anti-Labor Party, already in 1985.
A true Labor approach to taxation, was enunciated by John Curtin in his 1937 Fremantle speech, which sounds like it could have been written about the Howard, or Hawke and Keating governments:
"In its remissions of taxation, the Government has favoured wealthy land and property owners, shipping, insurance and other companies; while to a great extent it has disregarded the principle of levying taxes on the basis of ability to pay."
The GST is expected to raise between $30 and $40 billion per year. This can be more than replaced by a one tenth of one per cent tax on speculative financial turnover, in the stock market, and in the currency markets, etc. The volume of annual turnover in these markets in Australia is $50.5 trillion, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. A 0.1% tax on this would raise $50.5 billion in a year. This tax would also start to shrink the speculative bubble that is looting the Australian economy. Retirees and pensioners would be exempt from such a tax—they have been taxed many times on the money that has been put aside for their retirement, and their exemption will have a negligible impact on the amount of revenue raised.
