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Turnbull’s left turn may prove a hit
Volume 31 #49
May 17, 2017
Budge it 2017-18 Council’s draft $74.8 million operating budget has been running loose among the unsuspecting public for a while now, and your chance to provide feedback ends on May 25. It’s all contained within the Integrated Planning and Reporting Documents 2017, available on Council’s website (http://bit.ly/2pEmPz7). Council staff say its 2017–18 revenue is made up of 23 per cent from rates, 28 per cent from user charges and fees, 16 per cent from annual charges, 30 per cent from grants and three per cent from interest, investment and other revenue. While there’s a lot to consider, one aspect that gained a lot of attention was the Special Rate Variation (rate rise), which will now be incorporated after last week’s Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) approval. The four-year increase of 7.5 per cent per annum works out at 33.55 per cent cumulative and will remain permanently in the rate base. Council estimates, over these four years to 2020–21, it will collect an additional $11.7 million that will mostly be spent fixing the Shire’s crumbling roads and bridges. But not all; other proposed Special Rate Variation expenditure of $1.185m for 2017–18 includes urban and rural drain maintenance ($438.1k), Byron Bay and Mullum pool maintenance ($81.8k) and the Byron Bay town centre landscape/precinct plan ($60.9k). IPART provided oversight for Council’s request, and in its determination (available at bit.ly/2qjv421), they said, ‘The impact of the proposed rate rises on ratepayers is substantial but reasonable given the council’s existing rate levels, its history of special variations, the purpose of the special variation, indicators of the community’s capacity to pay, and the council’s consideration of affordability.’ The decision to raise rates was up to councillors too – not staff – on the back of public feedback over the poor state of our roads. Staff were also insistent we were not maintaining infrastructure. As such, there was no requirement within the IPART determination to demonstrate community support. And according to the data provided by Council, it was an unpopular measure, but not entirely. For example, Council’s online survey claims that 67 per cent of the 902 online survey participants did not want a special variation. Yet the surveys were contentious – the lack of the option for no rate rise – called ‘base case’ – was not included in early surveys. Was this a cunning plan to disrupt the data collection of accurate opinion or incompetence? The IPART said of this indiscretion by staff: ‘When communicating the impact of the proposed special variation on ratepayers, the council did not always adequately outline the required base case scenario, in which no special variation would apply. During phase three of the council’s consultation strategy, newspaper advertisements, display banners, and a community information booklet did not clearly display the base case as a possible option. While the cumulative dollar and percentage impact of the proposed special variations were clearly outlined in this material, ratepayers would have needed to access the council website for similar information regarding the base case (rate peg only) scenario.’ Despite all that, the IPART say ‘the community was adequately informed of the extent of the rate increases.’ Mayor Simon Richardson responded to Cr Paul Spooner’s (Labor) criticism of the rate rise and said: ‘The current proposal by Council would see an average rate rise for residential properties of $38 next year, or just over three per cent, while business rates in the Byron CBD are proposed to rise over $700, or over 16 per cent. Thus, the proportions within the 7.5 per cent yearly rate rise is heavily balanced to minimise its impact on residents. ‘Of course, we all need to be exploring new ways to obtain added funds from our visitors, especially within the unfair constraints imposed on us by both old political party governments over the last 20 or more years, and these conversations are occurring currently.’ Hopefully that conversation will also include how a 16 per cent rate hike on Byron CBD landowners will affect small business owners, when and if that landowner passes that cost down the food chain. Q Get involved and have your say at submissions@byron.nsw.gov.au (clearly mark “Submission – Draft Integrated Planning and Reporting”), call 6626 7290 or post your feedback to General Manager, Byron Shire Council, PO Box 219, Mullumbimby NSW 2482. Hans Lovejoy, editor
Nicholas Shand 1948–1996 Founding Editor
‘The job of a newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.’ – Finley Peter Dunne 1867–1936 © 2017 Echo Publications Pty Ltd – ABN 86 004 000 239 Mullumbimby: Village Way, Stuart St. Ph 02 6684 1777 Fax 02 6684 1719 Printer: Fairfax Media Brisbane Reg. by Aust. Post Pub. No. NBF9237
house, prescription if the real thing was available? Shorten’s budget reply hammered this point – rather than praising Turnbull for appropriating the fringes of his own policies, he lambasted the government for not following him the whole way down his social democratic road. He, like Turnbull, is keen to emphasise irreconcilable differences rather than the common aims of 21st century government.
The usual Liberal victims – the young, the unemployed, the university students, the foreign workers, the recipients of overseas aid – all get the usual caning. by Mungo MacCallum victims – the young, the unemployed (the random drug testing is gratuitous sadism), the university students, the foreign workers, the recipients of overseas aid – all get the usual caning. This, presumably, is to placate the hardliners in the party room, and perhaps to take some of the heat off the screams of the better funded and organised critics – the banks, the Catholics, and recalcitrant state premiers from both sides of politics. These, according to Tony Abbott and his still hopeful insurgents, are the Liberal Party’s base. Disturbing them, let alone rousing them to rebellion, is political suicide. And certainly they will be annoyed; they have been the entitled ones for so long, they have all but forgotten that their privileges are not a right, but a gift of compliant governments. Which is why Turnbull and Morrison are so eager to join Shorten’s rejection of the commentariat’s verdict that the budget was Labor-lite. If this was the case it would be a disaster: why should any rational voter embrace wishy-washy, halfway
Which is not to deny that much of what he said made sense. If there were ever a need for a deficit levy on the rich, then it is hardly logical to repeal it as the deficit has increased tenfold, and still looks likely to drag on for another four years at least. The much-vaunted housing affordability package is a cruel hoax; the superannuation switch will only drive up house prices now while leaving more retirees on the government payroll later. And while it is worth noting that Morrison has finally dangled his little toe over the dangerous waters of negative gearing, the result is flaccid to the point of impotence. The insistence on the jobs and growth package from last year, the corporate tax cuts package (now suddenly rising by $15 billion, a 30 per cent increase as the earlier estimate – shades of things to come?) is still being sold as a good policy. But so, apparently, is lowering the profits of the big banks – go figure. And the pachydermous presence of climate change dose not even rate a mention – if ever there were a need for fairness,
opportunity and security, then surely attempting to make the world tolerable for future generations should have been front and centre. John Howard, the superpragmatist whose squandering of the minerals boom bonanza started the debt and deficit disaster (now decently veiled by Turnbull and Morrison, in the manner of Victorian maidens draping chintz around the legs of tables in the name of decency) has scored the budget eight or nine out of ten, which seems absurdly generous. Even the neo-conservative trolls of the Murdoch press have been muted in criticising policies which, had Labor ever dared suggest them, would have produced demands for dismemberment and disembowelment. Reflexively, they have sailed into Shorten instead; Dennis Shanahan was even more than usually incoherent on the subject. So obviously Turnbull will get a welcome bounce from the public, if not from the ideologues among those he likes to see as his own troops. Whether or not it lasts will depend largely on the extent to which they play ball. Fortunately for the prime minister, Shorten is foreshadowing massive resistance. If he and his supporters make enough noise, perhaps they will drown out the anger and the angst of the lunar right. But Turnbull will still have to deal with the heavies in the banking industry and the Catholic accountants. He, Morrison and the estimable Simon Birmingham, seem determined to hold their ground. Whether the hardliners and the bed wetters in the party room do the same is less certain. Our hero may be out on parole, but there is a long way to go before he can celebrate his liberation.
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10 May 17, 2017 The Byron Shire Echo
poor pay less – and none at all if they are really poor. Bill Shorten’s insistence that it should only apply to the top two income brackets is opportunism, pure and simple. It is far preferable to raise progressive taxes, as the budget is trying to do, than raise the GST, which is presumably the alternative. But this does not mean, as Turnbull’s latest slogan is trumpeting, that the budget is a model of fairness. The usual Liberal
FEATURING:
The Byron Shire Echo General Manager Simon Haslam Editor Hans Lovejoy Photographer Jeff Dawson Advertising Manager Angela Cornell Production Manager Ziggi Browning
A
nd with one bound, our hero was free. Well, perhaps not completely; it will take more than one agile budget to loose Malcolm Turnbull from his selfimposed bondage. He remains chained hand and foot to the right over climate change and same-sex marriage and he cannot remove himself from the Nationals’ pork barrel of provincial perks in the name of infrastructure. But his tax-and-spendathon has made the initial effort to stagger back towards the sensible centre of modern politics, in which reformist zeal must be tempered with the occasional gesture towards fairness – if it costs too much to give serious relief to the masses. At least they can gain the satisfaction that a few of the fat cats will cop a hit as well. Thus the bank levy – or tax, or cash grab – or whatever you want to call it. It is true that this is lazy economics: it is hard to justify an impost that singles out a particular section of a particular industry at any time. And to claim it is designed specifically to fund a pet cause, however worthy, is the purest sophistry. Consolidated revenue doesn’t make choices, the government does. Turnbull and Scott Morrison will decide who gets what spending, so hanging the NDIS on the bank tax is plainly dishonest. And of course the same applies with the Medicare levy. Once again, the NDIS is offered as the carrot, the tax increase the unavoidable stick. Fake budgeting. However, raising the Medicare levy, which in fact means an overall tax increase, is sensible policy and, crucially, it is fair. It is not a flat-rate, acrossthe-board slug like the GST for example; it is part of the progressive system of income tax by which the rich pay more and the
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