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Friday, March 19, 2010

Taxation + Climate change

Taxation
In an intriguing article, Chris Middendorp (The Age 22/2/10) claims that taxation is a privilege of membership in our society, because of all the services undertaken by government to enhance our quality of life.
Despite the elaborate efforts of many to reduce their tax bill, what he says is quite true. The problem of course, boils down to this - what does the government do with the money it collects. As has been said, people would be happier about taxation if they were more confident about the way governments spend it.

Here we see the age-old problem of our dissatisfaction with our democracy. Good though it is, there is still far too much room for our politicians to push ahead with their own ideas without listening to the public point of view.
Our democracy is badly in need of revision, to enable the people at large to have some real say in government, during the period between elections, making government far more accountable - all the time.

This,of course, as we have said so many times, requires a radical revision of the voting system in parliament to make all representatives independent, and the ministers all answerable to the vote of all the members.

To indulge in a little fantasy, people might then be proud to have their tax contribution to society open to the public gaze, their contribution to society being just as honourable as large charitable donations.

Climate change
'Political power plays deliver short-sighted policy stand-offs’ (the Age 22/2 p 10). How can we get good government, with good long-term policies being embraced and implemented, while we still have the nonsense of party politics? Isn't it about time to wake up Australia, and deal with this nonsense?

Where is the trumpet blast calling us to national revival?

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