It’s time to update the brute and ugly Tony Abbott’s WARTHOGs (What Abbott Really Touts, Holes Of Gargantuan Size)
Latest WARTHOGs:
1. Tony Abbott’s great big NANNY TAX – has conceded that the method he proposes to use to pay for his paid parental leave scheme would be a form of tax. Nanny rebate would cost $2b – But according to an analysis by the departments of education and finance, obtained by the Herald, including nannies would cost an extra $1.975 billion over its first four years, prompting the government to claim Mr Abbott could afford his ”thought bubble” only with big cuts to families’ existing childcare payments. READ MORE
2. Peter Costello savaged Tony Abbott on taxing 3300 companies to pay for the PPL scheme:
“Costello says it’s a bad policy that should have set Liberal alarm bells ringing. The idea of increasing tax
should be foreign to the Liberal Party, Costello warned in a newspaper article when Abbott announced the plan.
And he accused the opposition leader of adopting “the Crocodile Dundee approach” to outdo Labor on paid maternity leave. “In this kind of politics, if your opponent has a bad idea you try to outflank it,” Costello wrote. “Your opponent has a mildly bad idea, so you come up with a more extreme one and have a race to the bottom.” READ MORE:
3. Axing NBN. Tony Abbott would have to bring NBN on budget if they decide to sell. That would add another $15-20B minimum to the Blackhole
4. Ross Gittin savaged Tony Abbott on his deficits:
Two weeks ago the secretary to the Treasury, Dr Martin Parkinson, dropped a fiscal bombshell that since the global financial crisis, federal tax revenue had fallen by the equivalent of 4 percentage points of gross domestic product [about $60 billion a year, and was not expected to recover to its pre-crisis level for many years to come. The cumulative write-down in revenue against the forward estimates between 2007-08 and 2011-12 has been about $130 billion.
The most obvious (and least consequential) implication of this news is its threat to Julia Gillard’s resolve to
return the budget to surplus next financial year without fail.But Gillard’s problems pale in comparison to Tony
Abbott’s, with his oddly ideological and populist commitment to rescind both Labor’s carbon tax and its mining tax without rescinding all the tax cuts and spending increases the taxes will pay for.
There seems little doubt Abbott’s term in office would either be marked by an orgy of broken promises or be
consumed by agonising over what spending to cut, with eternal lobbying both before and after the fact. Probably a fair bit of both. READ MORE
Previous WARTHOGs:
1. Axing Carbon tax: $27B
2. Axing Mining tax: $11B
3. Last election promise: $37B
4. PPL $3.3B
5. Indexation of veterans’ pensions: $1.7B
6. Direct Action: $3.2B
7. Abbott’s PPL will hit 3300 companies Vs PM Carbon Tax will ht the top 500 companies only
8. Tony Abbott’s Direct Action climate change plan of sequestering 85 million tonnes of carbon a year in soil by
2020 may fall short by between 30 million and 80 million tonnes of abatement
9. PM Gillard at #QT: Under your scheme the effective price is $62/tonne
1/2/3: ABC – They were leaked to Channel 7 and last night the Opposition’s finance spokesman Andrew Robb all but confirmed the $70 billion figure, by saying “It’s no great piece of investigative journalism. It’s a case of simple arithmetic.”
The figure includes $27 billion from dumping the carbon tax, $11 billion from axing the mining tax and $37 billion in promises the Opposition made during last year’s election campaign.The Prime Minister Julia Gillard seized on the $70 billion figure during a forum in Perth last night. – READ MORE
4. Phil Coorey, SMH – He has already alarmed sections of his party with a promised $3.3 billion paid parental leave scheme. – READ MORE
5. Leone Taylor – There was also his promise to provide more generous indexation for veterans’ pensions, which the Coalition costs at $98 million over the first four years and the government $1.7 billion READ MORE
6. Leone Taylor – The only other spending would be on ”Direct Action” on climate change -
$3.2 billion over four years which most experts believe is woefully insufficient to reach the emissions reductions promised and a ”Green Army” to do conservation good deeds. The Green Army would be a big spending promise if it was to quickly reach its target of 15,000 soldiers, but as it was proposed at the last election it began more the size of a Green Platoon, costing $50 million in the first year and taking at least four years to build up to its full strength. Read more:
7. Sam Maiden: HERE’S a surprising fact about Tony Abbott’s paid parental leave plan that hasn’t attracted much attention: the new levy to pay for the scheme would hit more companies than the carbon tax.Surprised? Consider the numbers. Julia Gillard’s carbon tax will be imposed on about 500 of the nation’s biggest polluters. Abbott’s tax levy would hit an estimated 3300 businesses with a 1.5 per cent levy.Isn’t that a great, big, new tax coincidence, to deploy Abbott’s favourite mantra ? READ MORE:
11. CSIRO research suggests Tony Abbott’s direct action climate change plan of sequestering 85 million tonnes of carbon a year in soil by 2020 may fall short by between 30 million and 80 million tonnes of abatement