Hats off to Leith van Onselen for his perceptive comments on Australia’s current budget stoush:
The point is, it’s fine to oppose Budget savings if you can provide an alternative plan to cut expenditure and/or raise taxes. But simply opposing measures without providing alternatives, as has been done by the opposition parties, ignores the very real structural pressures facing the Budget from falling commodity prices and an ageing population….
Some low hanging fruit that could be targeted by the opposition parties as alternatives to budgetary reform could include closing Australia’s more egregious tax expenditures – including overly generous superannuation concessions (which mostly benefit the wealthy), quarantining negative gearing so that losses from an asset can only be claimed against income from that same asset, removing the capital gains discount on investments, and removing tax concessions on company cars – as well as abolishing Abbott’s paid parental leave scheme.
Reforms to these areas alone would save many billions of dollars and improve equity in the process.
Read more at Where are the Budget alternatives? | | MacroBusiness.