The government has been dragged kicking and screaming from its blind belief in free markets, small government, privatisation and the power of competition. It has taken four years of resistance from the opposition and crossbenches, reinforced by poor polling, for the Coalition to ditch its ideology. The banks are being told to pony up and take a $6 billion cut to profits; action is finally being taken on tax-avoiding multinationals; new debt to fund infrastructure is now a good thing; the government will now build and own assets that private operators have rejected as unviable; and regulatory bodies are being better funded, an acknowledgement that business cannot be trusted to self-regulate.
Two final planks must fall before it's called a total capitulation. The first is the $50billion of tax cuts that independent analysis shows will produce minimal, if any, improvement in GDP or trickle down benefits. The second is maintaining negative gearing, which has so distorted the property market and saddled buyers with enormous mortgage pressures for decades to come or put home ownership beyond the reach of generations.
![Illustration: Jim Pavlidis](http://web.archive.org./web/20170520163836im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/8/6/p/g/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gw7wrr.png/1495116629370.jpg)
But if the polls continue to disappoint for the Coalition, watch this space. Sadly this government stands for nothing except its own re-election.
Peter Thomson, Brunswick
Stop tormenting the powerless ...
Threatening the income of an addict won't cure them. This plan is just a way of punishing and demonising vulnerable people. Money allocated for this ludicrous testing program should be spent on increased drug rehabilitation services. Thousands of addicts already want to kick their habit, but have to wait months to get into a service. If we must reduce human lives to statistics, then surely these people are "low-hanging fruit" in efforts to reduce drug-taking? If an addict's pension is cut, their dependants suffer too – some of whom will be children. Some drug users will turn to crime to feed their habit. Keeping a person in prison costs taxpayers a lot more than paying them a Centrelink benefit. And as MPs also live on the public, why don't we bring in random testing of politicians? Otherwise, stop wasting money on tormenting and humiliating powerless people. Help them instead.
Belinda Nemec, Fitzroy
... and demonising the unemployed
I suspect Amy Remeikis (The Age, 15/5) is right – that "mutual obligation" will replace the equally nauseating "jobs and growth" slogan. The 2285 people on Newstart who used substance or alcohol abuse as an excuse for not meeting expectations represents 0.3 per cent of those receiving the allowance. Undeterred, the Coalition, which can't seem to get beyond its dole-bludger mentality, pushes on with "reforms" that tar all recipients with the same brush. Forcing older job seekers to spend more time looking for work; an overly broad definition of a "suitable job"; reducing new applicants to penury before they can apply and increasing the wait time; and sending out the "sewage sniffers" to identify anyone unfortunate to live in a "problem area" is demonising behaviour, by any definition of which I am aware.
Geoff McNamara, Newry
Apply Medicare levy to pre-tax income
On Monday's Q&A;, Simon Birmingham asserted that increasing the Medicare levy was fair because the more someone earns, the more levy they pay. This is blatantly untrue, even though in theory it's a good idea. Because of negative gearing, capital gains tax concessions, family trusts and so on, many high-income people reduce their tax liability to zilch, or close to it, meaning they pay no Medicare levy at all. Until those schemes are fixed, any increase on wage earners is inequitable.
David Lamb, Kew East
THE FORUM
Complaints galling
It is galling to hear senior executives of the Big Banks complaining that the newly announced levy cannot be absorbed but must be passed on to customers as higher charges, to employees by creating further redundancies, and to shareholders through reduced dividends. Such responses are simply not justified. Our banks are among the most profitable in the world.
The levy could be absorbed by all banks if the undistributed profits (profit available for distribution to shareholders less the dividends paid to shareholders), was used to pay the levy.
Consider the Commonwealth Bank's results for the 2016 year as disclosed in its annual report. It shows reserves and retained profits as increasing by nearly $2.5 billion during the year. This is more than two times the annual proposed tax levy of $1.2 billion a year.
Professor Geoffrey George, Fitzroy North
Good corporate citizens?
Did Messrs Turnbull and Morrison think the big banks would be good corporate citizens and cop the extra tax without passing it on to customers? These banks are the same "good corporate citizens" who have happily directed work to cheaper (and barely understandable) operators in overseas call centres.
Mike Trickett, Geelong West
Don't mention cars
Great cartoon from Andrew Dyson (Letters, 18/5). Shade of Basil Fawlty and "Don't mention the car industry" – to this government. If we build ships and submarines here, that would involve a workforce of about 5000 using about 10,000 tonnes of steel a year. Our car manufacturing sector employed more than 25,000 directly, used about 50,000 tonnes of steel a year and exported about $3 billion worth of cars and engines every year. No wonder the Coalition doesn't want us to remember.
Phil Bourke, Macleod
Bewildering move
One of the budget's measures to tackle the housing crisis will allow retirees to put $600,000 into super above the lifetime cap. Apparently this will bring more properties on to the market because home owners wishing to downsize will not be constrained by the superannuation rules.
Take a couple whose only income is the pension and only asset is a $1 million property in Oakleigh. If they downsize to, say, a $400,000 unit in Clayton and put the profit into super they now have a $600,000 asset, which will nearly halve their pension. And there is one less affordable unit on the market for first-home buyers. How will this help? Is it just a tricky way to reduce the age pension burden?
Stephen Williams, Wandin North
People are not widgets
Unemployed people are not widgets to be allocated to businesses at will (Letters, 17/5). They are people with families, dependants, communities, social and emotional needs and, most importantly, human rights.
Elaine Golding, Norwood, SA
States chipped in
The Commonwealth contributed only about 15 per cent of the cost of building the Alice Springs–Darwin rail line (Letters, 16/5), South Australia and the Northern Territory each contributed a similar amount, with the lion's share privately funded.
Tony Dawson, Armadale
Huge array of skills
Christina Foo refers to the desperate need for fruit pickers (Letters, 17/5). It is a commonly held myth (perpetuated by the government and often by the media) that asylum seekers who come by boat are only suited to low-skilled (and low-paid) work. While I doubt a full register has been compiled (maybe it should be?) of the skills of all who ask for refuge, there are many highly educated and talented people who'd be excellent candidates for residency in our lucky country.
Sue Acheson, Rokeby
An inconvenient truth
Despite medical advice that two refugees under Australian care on Nauru need urgent transfer to the mainland, the Immigration Department has stated the matter is solely under the control of the Republic of Nauru. This is despite the fact that Australia sent the refugees to Nauru: that it has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on running the "camps"; has been responsible for the security contracts; and that it regularly has to deny that refugees have been abused or intimidated. The "truth" seems a matter of convenience for Mr Dutton.
Malcolm Ellenport, East Brighton
Test ridiculously hard
Our government has decided to again increase the difficulty of the English language test for those wanting to become residents. The pass mark has now reached ridiculous levels. If this test were given to a sample of average Australians of all ages, I suggest considerably less than 50 per cent would pass. Australia is famous for its fairness to all – I see none in this new ruling.
Mark Roberts, Elwood
Expendable leader
Donald Trump was endorsed, reluctantly, as the presidential candidate by a divided Republican Party. But all factions agreed on one goal: the appointment of an ultra-conservative justice to the Supreme Couth to continue its lean to the right for possibly decades to come. Trump has achieved this. But as his behaviour becomes ever more bizarre, his support from the party is dwindling. He may soon be regarded as expendable.
Peter McCarthy, Mentone
Understand grievances
The certainty of Vaughan Greenberg's "righteousness" of his views (Letters, 18/5) while dismissing alternative positions as "childish" (deplorables?) is symptomatic of what ails us. Unless we engage in a debate with the "childish" and "deplorable", and try to understand their grievances rather than simply dismiss them, we shall continue to be confronted with a world that seems to us "right-thinking people" to be out of control.
Noel Ackman, South Melbourne
Adding to the load
I am not at all reassured by the government's assurance of future easing on the "overcrowded Craigieburn railway line". Are the residents of the 30-storey apartment building that is going up opposite the Moonee Ponds railway station going to walk the six kilometres to the city?
Ewa Haire, Moonee Ponds
Arrest the development
Victoria's number plate should be "The Developers' State". As noted by numerous letters, too many developers ride roughshod over owners' corporations and disregard community and neighbourhood interests. An overweening arrogance and confidence in their ability to successfully manoeuvre the responsible authorities, coupled with the acquiescence of overly compliant authorities, results in such behaviour as the brazen and illegal demolition of the historic Corkman Irish Pub.
On a smaller scale are countless instances of neighbourhood amenity degraded or destroyed by "property-by-property" developments, with council permits side-stepped and even VCAT rulings no more than low hurdles to be jumped by agile developers. There must be many a beleaguered citizen who wishes our state could actually be "Victoria: State of Arrested Development".
Deborah Morrison, Malvern East
No golden days
The Abbotsford Convent was hardly a "finishing school" for young women ("Reflecting art's new gold standard", 16/5). In actual fact, the lives of many girls incarcerated in the Abbotsford Convent laundry were "finished off" in this institution.
The Catholic Church and affiliated legal and social welfare entities believed unmarried pregnant girls were unfit for society. It was irrelevant whether the pregnancy occurred from sexual abuse, from a married man, a love tryst or a priest. The girls were locked up, turned into slaves and lost their identities, their babies and any chance of "marrying well" – the accepted aim for "young women of means" sent to "finishing schools" to learn how to be "society wives".
Many convent girls ended up unable to ever leave because of the abuse they suffered. I doubt there were any Golden Days of "light and awareness" for them.
Kerry Bergin, Surrey Hills
Wouldn't it be lovely
It was a bitter sweet experience when I attended the My Fair Lady extravaganza. Sixty years ago I delighted in this play, but on Wednesday I felt decidedly uncomfortable. Nostalgia gave way to anger from the opening scene when Professor Higgins pummelled Eliza with his verbal abuse. Others in the audience groaned their disapproval. Throughout the three hours of "entertainment", murmurs of discomfort rippled throughout the theatre as Higgins continued bullying his pupil.
I was glad to read Cameron Woodhead's critique ("Sporadically entertaining exercise in nostalgia", 18/5) calling out Higgins on his misogynistic behaviour. Let us not forget that as we sing along with the outdated lyrics or drool over the stunning costumes. Given society's enlightenment as to the trauma suffered by women at the hands of men who still hold patriarchal attitudes, "wouldn't it be lovely" if we could put this Fair Lady into the theatrical archives and leave her there.
Robyn McCarthy, Ormond
AND ANOTHER THING...
Donald Trump
Trump giving away "intelligence"? Wouldn't have thought he had any to spare.
Cath Dyson, Mount Eliza
When will all the adults sweeping up after Trump tire or run out of brooms?
Bill Cleveland, Kew
If we are going to pass on any secrets, we might as well send a copy to the Kremlin and cut out the double handling.
John Gipps, Frankston
Maybe the Israelis slipped Trump some disinformation, knowing he would blab it to the Russians.
Mike Puleston, Brunswick
We've had Axe the Tax, can we have Dump the Trump?
Corrado Tavella, Rosslyn Park, SA
The best thing about Trump's irresponsible conduct is that it gets him ever closer to impeachment.
Rick Drewer, Gawler East, SA
If Kim Jong-un and Trump played a round of golf, who'd get more holes-in-one?
Gregg Snider, Mansfield
Politics
Could Christopher Pyne be parachuted into a safe seat near Williamstown?
Tony Lenten, Glen Waverley
The Coalition has redrawn the map of Australia to exclude Victoria.
Robert Ness, Middle Park
If the government withdrew the deposit guarantee from banks who pass on the levy to customers, some may rethink their response.
Bill Pimm, Mentone
All the banks will do if they have to pay more tax is make more staff redundant.
Jane Spier, Seaford
AAA credit rating: ZZZ compassion rating.
Eve Addis, Blackburn
And finally
The new "Golden Rule"? China has the gold; China makes the rules.
Leslie James Hunter, Geelong
When developers warn about a "dramatic slowdown", their primary concern by a wide margin is for their profits.
Margaret Callinan, Balwyn