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Keywords: Shareholders

  • ECONOMICS

    Boost budget by chopping charities' tax take

    • David James
    • 27 August 2013
    3 Comments

    Australia is one of only a few countries in the world that has a franking credit system. Though it is designed to stop 'double taxation' on company tax, in many cases it ends up being a 'double reward' for entities that already have tax favoured status. Last year the Tax Commissioner generously refunded over $500 million to charities and not-for-profits on dividends because they pay no tax.

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  • RELIGION

    When mines and football clubs betray the common good

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 August 2013
    3 Comments

    The common good can seem a very milky-tea concept — too bloodless for the real world. But it is an important idea, one which we need if we are to make sense of phenomena as disparate as the findings on corruption in the awarding of mining licenses in NSW, the initial report of the NSW chief scientist on coal seam gas mining, and the daily excursions in the drugs and footballers epic.

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  • RELIGION

    Good and evil faces of child labour

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 June 2013
    6 Comments

    I met a young woman who had been sold as a domestic servant when she was five, and later on-sold for sex work in Bangkok, Malaysia and Australia. I also met a girl in a village of El Salvador: for generations her family had lived by making rope from cactus fibre. Her work contributed substantially to the family income and made her a valued member of her society.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Big business twists tax truth

    • David James
    • 27 March 2013
    2 Comments

    Australia's business lobbies are fond of complaining that company tax is too high. Lower it, they argue, and the economy would become more dynamic and everyone would benefit. The reality isn't that simple. The combination of Australia's dividend imputation system and the compulsory super scheme greatly benefit Australia's big companies.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Migrants and big bank theory

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 February 2013
    8 Comments

    There is often a natural antipathy between the financial sector and the community sector. If you give the dog a bone, say the money men, he will only rub it in dirt and bury it. If you give the bank a bone, say the community workers, it will charge you interest on the transaction. But sometimes we are nudged to reconsider our reflexive prejudices.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Economic empire's unethical end

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 04 October 2012
    1 Comment

    Robert Miller has built an empire that is about to be sucked into the mire by a bad investment. Now he wants to offload it quickly before the purchaser realises anything is amiss. His practical obligations to his family and employees usurp his human obligations to those who become pawns in his efforts to maintain order.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Australia's pension fund perversion

    • David James
    • 03 October 2012
    7 Comments

    The demise of Gunns, Tasmania's biggest paper and pulp mill, has been greeted as a triumph of environmentalists over business. The saga encompasses much more than that. It poses some deep questions about ownership and accountability in Australia's financial system which are yet to be answered persuasively.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Olympics and business world need to grow up

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 06 August 2012
    9 Comments

    The Olympic Games see many thousands of mainly young athletes from all around the world competing for a hundred or so medals. So the point of the exercise can't be to win. It is to lose. Or rather the Games are a school for learning how to lose and so grow in humanity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Big media takes a leaf out of big tobacco

    • Michael Mullins
    • 19 March 2012
    5 Comments

    Media bosses believe self-regulation is compatible with protecting the interests of ordinary Australians. It's akin to allowing big tobacco to specify the size of health warnings on cigarette packs.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Benefits of Australia's UN Security Council bid

    • Benedict Coleridge
    • 07 March 2012
    5 Comments

    Critics of Australia's bid to join the UN Security Council have either a narrow view of what constitutes Australia's national interest, or a view of Australian taxpayers as shareholders who should expect a financial return on every investment.

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  • MEDIA

    Virgin's sexism in the sky

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 20 February 2012
    33 Comments

    For all the things Qantas stands accused of — selling out its Australian employees, uncompetitive pricing, bad management — it appears to be respectful of women. A ticket on a Virgin flight, on the other hand, brings with it the allure of sex, the commodity on which the company's brand has been built.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why the Carbon Tax is good for business

    • Tom Dreyfus
    • 09 November 2011
    15 Comments

    Corporations treat social responsibility as a PR tool or a trade-off for financial success. The truth is that if consumers suffer, so too do the corporations that depend on them. Socially responsible initiatives such as the Carbon Tax will benefit society holistically. 

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