More taxes to cover Labor’s failures — across NewsCorp
Economist Robert Carling, who authored a paper out this week for the Centre for Independent Studies, has warned of “myths” about solving Australia’s housing crisis.
Mr Carling said: “Chalmers appears poised to announce a CGT increase, in whatever form it takes, as a ‘reform’ that will address perceived inequities in the tax system, but changing CGT rules would barely shift the dial on income and wealth distribution.
“The government’s base motive is to satisfy its voracious appetite for more revenue.”
MP touts tax reform blueprint as Treasury mulls changes — Ground News
Critics noted the potential effect on investment and housing costs, with Robert Carling warning the CGT discount could raise transaction tax rates.
Will prices crash, soar or barely budge? Negative gearing apologists can’t get their story straight — across Region Media
Then there’s the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), which insists the whole debate is pointless anyway because tinkering with tax concessions will barely move house prices at all.
The Centre for Independent Studies itself argues that removing these concessions wouldn’t have much impact on house prices.
NDIS staggers under a spectrum — The Australian
Drowning in a Sea of Diagnoses is a Centre for Independent Studies paper by emeritus professor Steven Schwartz, who reveals a stark paradox: despite decades of soaring government spending on mental health, outcomes have barely improved. Worse, quite normal behaviour and feelings can be recategorised as mental illnesses.
Schwartz says: “Programs designed to expand access to care – including Better Access and the NDIS – have unintentionally created a system that treats ordinary distress as pathology, encourages diagnostic expansion and rewards long-term dependency over recovery. Australia has built … a diagnostic-industrial-government complex: a self-reinforcing system that produces patients rather than health. This medicalisation diverts resources away from people with severe psychiatric illness while drawing millions into treatment pathways they don’t need.”
Supercharged inequality: rich investors stifle budget — Canberra Times and across ACM
However, Peter Tulip, chief economist at free-market think tank the Centre for Independent Studies, warned reforming the CGT discount would be unlikely to recoup anywhere near that amount of revenue for the federal budget.
Most of the proposals flagged would bring in little extra revenue in the first few years, because of elements grandfathering existing assets, he said.
Albanese government laying groundwork to blame Iran war for inflation’s rise as multiple rate hikes loom — Sky News
Michael Stutchbury, the Centre for Independent Studies’ executive director and former editor-in-chief of The Australian Financial Review, said price pressures prior to the Iran war drove inflation.
“As he has before, Jim Chalmers will want to blame the global turmoil for the continuing cost of living squeeze in Australia,” Mr Stutchbury said.
“But the problem is that inflation already had ticked up in Australia when it was supposed to be heading into the 2-3 per cent target.”
He stressed that low productivity, excess government spending, Labor’s mandated pay rises and policy-induced energy price increases drove inflation to its 3.8 per cent reading.
Parnell McGuinness on Sky TV Newsday