Feeling generous so I thought I should answer some unanswered posts.
Just some of the wonderful positive things that the CURRENT Government has done/plans to do in the interest of????
The size of the cutbacks and sell-offs
The listed measures below reveal the size of some of the cutbacks and sell offs that the BCA and Abbott's Coalition Government wish to achieve and will carry out through the imprimatur of the audit commission:
• 20,000 public services jobs to go. The running cost of the federal public service is 15% in a $400 billion budget
• The sale of Medibank Private could bring in about $4.5bn
• The sale of the Australian Rail Track Corporation could earn the government $5bn
Below is what the Abbott Coalition Government already intends to slash from the working class and the favours they will pass onto capital and the rich:
• Have abolished the Low Income Superannuation Contribution, which reduces tax on superannuation contributions from workers on less than $37,000 per year. This is an effective tax increase on 3.6 million workers, including 2.1 million women. It means that these workers will be paying more tax on their superannuation than on their take home pay and will have less money in retirement.
• However the government announced that it would scrap the proposed 15% tax on superannuation pension earnings over $100,000. This change will apply to those with more than $2 million in superannuation assets, around 16,000 people. The 1% 'filthy rich' will be very appreciative and save themselves $313m in taxes.
• The Schoolkids Bonus has been scrapped which helped millions of families with the cost of sending children to school.
• The Income Support Bonus has been stopped, which will hurt people on a range of income support programs, including Newstart and Parenting Payments, which are already too low.
• The Mineral Resource Rent Tax for big mining companies will be abolished, not that it collected much revenue. The mining industry sends 80% of its profits offshore.
These measures are to ostensibly reduce government debt, which is currently around $400bn mark or 27.1% of Australia's GDP and eventually create a government surplus.
However the touted cutbacks and sell-offs are not only to assist achieving a surplus budget of 1% of GDP by 2023-24, but to restructure the budget over the long term so that the 'welfare state' will cease to exist, and the state will redirect revenue towards capital.
This 'Austerity Commission' has the objective to snatch back gains that the working class had won in the past and make them wear the burden of capital's economic crisis.
