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Search Results: GST

  • AUSTRALIA

    Why miners will backflip on tax

    • John Menadue
    • 18 October 2013
    1 Comment

    Some miners must be wondering whether they took the right course in opposing the Rudd Government's Resources Super Profits Tax, in which taxes would be levied on the profitability of the enterprise rather than royalties. Higher state mining royalties, lower commodity prices and higher costs will put the squeeze on the mining companies. It will be quite delicious to see them then urging a tax based on profits/losses rather than royalties.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Election day reflections on religion in the public square

    • Frank Brennan
    • 07 September 2013
    12 Comments

    How clever of you to choose the day of the federal election for me to offer these reflections.  I come amongst you, not as a publisher or journalist but as an advocate in the public square animated by my own religious tradition as a Jesuit and Catholic priest engaged on human rights issues in a robustly pluralistic democratic society.

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  • RELIGION

    Irrational fear of the Muslim Brotherhood

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 21 August 2013
    9 Comments

    It’s a crude and misleading line of reasoning to declare that Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood can’t be committed to democracy because it is an Islamist organisation much like al-Qaida and Hezbollah. On what basis do we label individuals or groups 'Islamist'? Or 'fundamentalist'? Or 'extremist'? How can we have a monolith amongst a set of congregations making up almost one quarter of the world's human population? The history and politics of Islam is just as complex as that of Christianity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Perils of the Greens' moral vanity

    • John Warhurst
    • 07 August 2012
    13 Comments

    The Greens have been accused of self-righteousness leading to an unwillingness to compromise. Yet the most inflexible party in the current parliament has been the Coalition, led by Tony 'Mr No' Abbott. Getting the balance right between flexibility and maintaining what you stand for is an important lesson for all political parties in parliament.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Cultural snobbery and Wayne Swan's Springsteen mania

    • Ellena Savage
    • 03 August 2012
    6 Comments

    In Australia, land of the cultural cringe, the social elite mainly consume middle- and low-brow culture: mainstream cinema, best-sellers, and Bruce Springsteen, for example. Swan's admiration of Springsteen is positive in its belief in the legitimacy of mainstream taste, which is dictated more democratically than highbrow taste.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Electricity price hike won't give us clean energy

    • Brian Toohey
    • 02 July 2012
    16 Comments

    For most Australians, Government compensation for the carbon tax won't cover the steep rise in the cost of electricity caused by unrelated investment in infrastructure. That was not its intention. But the carbon tax will still not ensure the price of 'dirty' electricity is high enough to make coal-fired generators uncompetitive and force a 'clean energy future'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Super concessions rob the poor to pay the rich

    • Lin Hatfield Dodds
    • 04 October 2011
    11 Comments

    A third of taxpayer-funded superannuation concessions — around $10 billion a year — are directed to the top 5 per cent of income earners. People living on or below the poverty line get no such support. This week's Tax Forum must ask: Are we proud of how we redistribute our national wealth?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A fair go for all means a higher GST

    • Michael Mullins
    • 03 October 2011
    11 Comments

    The GST appears unfair, as it hits the poor much harder than it does the wealthy. But that's due to the way it is implemented, and it doesn't need to be that way. The St Vincent de Paul Society would like to see it increased, but with a more sophisticated and fairer compensation mechanism.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Tony Abbott's FUD factor

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 01 August 2011
    36 Comments

    In the 1980s computer journalists used to refer to the 'FUD factor' and its impact on computer purchases. FUD — Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Tony Abbott has become the master of the FUD factor in the debate over climate change and the carbon tax.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Record store pilgrim

    • Vin Maskell
    • 11 May 2011
    5 Comments

    Once, I soaked up so much music it seeped from my pores. A week wasn't complete without buying a few albums, seeing a few bands, talking music with mates until dawn. Now I wonder if my weekly pilgrimage to a city music store is merely a break from the working day, or a respite from fading dreams.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Pope-hate in broken Britain

    • Michael Mullins
    • 20 September 2010
    12 Comments

    Social commentator Frank Furedi wrote that the Pope's UK visit provided Britain's cultural elite with 'a figure that it is okay to hate'. We might regard the angst as a manifestation of the growing pains that are to be expected in a world of emerging pluralism.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The angel's telling smile

    • Michael Healey and Grant Fraser
    • 31 August 2010

    He is Gabriel, delicately boned, familiar, .. he has turned towards the Virgin .. who stands in her long solemnity, .. amongst the sober prophets, .. and the proper saints.

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