Not quite.
But as you might guess I have been nerding up the spreadsheets to work out what I’ll be doing in the longer term (butler-free).
Is it though? How many people would this affect? Better to take from those who can afford it most. Honestly with the sums DJR threw up, I wouldn’t know what to do with the money.
Maybe these wealthy retirees have to stay home for a couple of days instead of galivanting around the world in their yacht. Maybe give up on drinking that 500 dollar bottle of wine. I’m sure they will find a way to survive…
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No idea how many but I can bet you quite a few of them live in Toorak and Armadale (Higgins).
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No doubt. My parents live in Higgins and let me assure you they sure as hell ain’t loaded. Just fortunate enough to buy their home there in the late 70s.
Us butlers gotta look after our income stream.
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If you had the money you would very quickly work out how to spend it.
I knew a working class bloke who won $17 million in a lottery, he blew it all in three years.
It’s all about mindset though. There’s other people that have millions of dollars and are the biggest tightarses you would ever meet.
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Some people actually let that money trickle down to local services and businesses. I once did a job hanging artwork for a Judge and partner in a law firm. They’ve got truckloads, one painting was a 2*2m Pro Hart worth about 50k, was a bit hairy because it was so big and heavy AND expensive. Meanwhile 2 gardeners pottered around and another bloke cleaned the pool, the cleaning lady got me a cup of tea. Me and a mate built and stocked the wine cellar; faaark!
Australia’s rich getting richer, with billionaires’ wealth rising $160b in one year
Australia’s rich keep getting richer, with the top 1 per cent of Australians owning more wealth than the bottom 70 per cent combined.
Key points:
There has been another record increase in the number of billionaires in Australia — from 33 to 43
The wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by $900 billion in the past year alone, or $2.5 billion a day
Oxfam wants the tax man to require companies to give detailed public reports about their tax affairs by country, and reinstate a women’s budget
A new report from Oxfam has found another record increase in the number of billionaires in Australia — from 33 to 43 — with their combined wealth climbing to almost $160 billion last year.
Oxfam said this equates to an increase of $100 million a day, or a total increase of $36 billion, and is enough to cover half the Federal Government’s total health budget this financial year.
Helen Szoke, chief executive of Oxfam Australia, said the paper — released ahead of political and business leaders meeting for the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland — showed that the most disadvantaged remained trapped in an entrenched cycle of poverty.
“Australia is among the wealthiest nations in the world, yet the pervasive gap between the haves and the have-nots persists. This inequality simply cannot, and does not need to, continue.”
Call to do more to fight multinational tax avoidance
Dr Szoke called on the Federal Government to introduce tougher laws aimed at multinationals which still may be avoiding tax.
Recent ATO data showed about one third of Australian companies paid zero tax.
Oxfam wants the tax man to require companies to give detailed public reports about their tax affairs by country.
The nation of equals ideal is fading
Currently the information — as part of an OECD initiative to have each tax jurisdiction around the world collect detailed tax information about companies and share it with each — is collected by the ATO, but not revealed publicly.
Dr Szoke also called on the Federal Government to reinstate a women’s budget and pay greater attention to health and education outcomes for Indigenous people.
Australian women continued to face economic disadvantage — earning 85 cents for every dollar earned by men and dealt a gender pay gap that continues to favour men in every single industry, she said.
Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians fall into the wealth group that is being left behind.
Oxfam noted that the latest Federal Government report on Indigenous health performance shows that 36 per cent of Indigenous households have weekly incomes in the bottom 25 per cent of income groups (compared to 17 per cent for non-Indigenous groups).
And the 2016 Census shows that about 80 per cent of Indigenous adults have weekly incomes below the national average earnings ($1,160 per week).
Jeff Bezos’ wealth equals Ethiopia’s health budget
Oxfam’s report found that in the 10 years since the global financial crisis, the number of billionaires around the world has nearly doubled.
The wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by $900 billion in the past year alone, or $2.5 billion a day.
Australia’s 10 richest:
Gina Rinehart, $17.4b
Harry Triguboff, $9.2b
Vivek Chaand Sehgal, $6b
Frank Lowy, $5.9b
Anthony Pratt, $5.5b
Andrew Forrest, $4.4b
John Gandel, $4.1b
James Packer, $4.1b
Mike Cannon-Brookes, Scott Farquhar $3.4b each
Lindsay Fox, $3.4b
(Source: $US, Forbes Billionaires List as of March 2018, Oxfam)
To put that in context, a new billionaire was created every two days between 2017 and 2018. According to Forbes there were 2,208 billionaires as at March 2018 — and nine out of 10 billionaires are men.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is the richest man in the world, with a fortune of $US112 billion ($156 billion) on the 2018 Forbes list.
The report states that just 1 per cent of his total wealth is the equivalent of almost the whole health budget of Ethiopia, a country of 105 million people.
It also singled out India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani, who ranks 19th in the Forbes 2018 billionaire list.
His residence in Mumbai, a towering 570-foot building, is worth $1 billion and is the most expensive private house in the world.
Wealth is also becoming more concentrated — last year 26 people owned the same as the 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity, down from 43 people the year before.
Super-rich hide $7.6 trillion from tax authorities
Wealth is also undertaxed, according to Oxfam. Only 4 cents in every dollar of tax revenue comes from taxes on wealth, the report found.
Oxfam said governments should focus their efforts on raising more from the very wealthy to help fight inequality around the world.
“The super-rich are hiding $7.6 trillion from the tax authorities,” the report argued.
In the 2013 book, The Hidden Wealth of Nations, Gabriel Zucman suggests that $US7.6 trillion ($10.6 trillion) — 8 per cent of the world’s personal financial wealth — is stashed in tax havens. His numbers do not include corporate tax avoidance.
Meanwhile the report notes the impacts of entrenched inequality. The report noted that 10,000 people die each day because of a lack of access to affordable healthcare.
Oxfam also observed that, in developing countries, a child from a poor family is twice as likely to die before the age of five than a child from a wealthy family.
Gender pay gaps also persist across the world. Men own 50 per cent more wealth than women globally, and control more than 86 per cent of corporations.
Oxfam estimates that if all the unpaid care work carried out by women across the globe was done by a single company it would have an annual turnover of $10 trillion — 43 times that of Apple.
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It is just so simple. Why don’t we all just follow the Tories’ model and become billionaires?
The last 100+ years of getting screwed by them and their mates notwithstanding.
#stillwaitingfortrickledown
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The only trickle down you or I will ever experience is if we forget to shake it properly.
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Former Labor Party president Warren Mundine is expected to be installed as the Liberal candidate for the federal seat of Gilmore at the behest of the Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Liberal Party members in the seat had already preselected Grant Schultz to replace sitting member Ann Sudmalis, who is quitting politics.
The ABC understands the Liberal Party state executive is expected to block a motion to endorse Mr Schultz’ candidacy today.
They will instead endorse a motion to parachute the Prime Minister’s preferred candidate, Mr Mundine, into the seat.
It is understood Mr Mundine is not a member of the Liberal Party, but that his membership application is being processed.
Ms Sudmalis held the seat on a 0.7 per cent margin — or about 1,500 votes — at the 2016 election.
ABC election analyst Antony Green said it would be difficult for the Government to retain the seat when a federal vote is held later this year.
“The margin is much lower than the swings that have reported in opinion polls for several months,” he said.
"It’s the sort of regional seat where personal vote matters.
“Mr Mundine is a brave choice.”
Raised in northern New South Wales, Mr Mundine is a Bundjalum man known for his advocacy on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues.
In 2006 he became the first Indigenous president of the Australian Labor Party and once had his eyes set on the senate seat that eventually went to former NSW Premier Bob Carr.
The high-profile businessman had quit the Labor Party in 2012 after 20 years, saying it was “no longer the party he joined”.
He was appointed as the chairman of the Abbott Government’s Indigenous Advisory Council the following year before the council was dissolved by Malcolm Turnbull in 2017.
I met today in San Francisco with Ambassador the Honorable Joe Hockey and the Premier of South Australia the Honorable Steven Marshall, and a bevy of aides and hangers on.
It was a very interesting session and Joe is an amiable and open sort of bloke, especially when he said that the US Government is fully broken. Not sure he knows much about Australia though when he asked about the badge on my lapel, he asked if it was the Scottish Flag
Reckon he should know a bit about Australian history
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The current Labor is not the party he joined, but the current hard right Liberals are. ■■■■■■■ lol.
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Warren is bitter and twisted about Labor, which is sad. He wanted everything his way and a Senate spot which didn’t happen.
He is a capable bloke but reckon he is doing this for the wrong reasons.
The libs hated Malcom becuase they reckoned he was a Labor man in the liberal party. So they nominate an actual Labor man for the election.
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Probably not a bad move from the libs. Might get a few from column A and a few from column B.
Doubtful, the seat is pretty marginal as it is and they are not expected to win, no matter who they nominate.
The local branch are encouraging their guy to run as an independent, so presumably that wouldn’t be great for them.
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Oh okay I did read that right.
What strange reasoning.