GENERATION WHY?

Only last week Prime Minister Rudd was painting black pictures on the unacceptable cost to the Government of an immediate increase in the pension. Even $10 a week would add $2 billion a year to the Budget. As I said then: Big deal. That would cut his Budget surplus from 22 billion dollars to twenty. And as I also pointed out when pensioners get any increase that money goes straight back into the economy. They don’t hoard it for a rainy day because it’s pouring already.

But forget old people. And they are easily forgotten. If you want to grab a headline give more money to young people. Like increase the First Home Loan bonus. Again. The Howard Government, always with one eye on the ballot box, started at $7000 and increased it to $14,000.  It’s now back to $7000 but Prime Minister Rudd made it $14,000 again today. And $21,000 if they build a new house. Why?

I know the polis prattle on about the Australian dream of owning your own home. Some, on the campaign trail, even call it your right. Well, it is a dream, an honourable and worthy and often tangible dream. But it is not your right.

I know of people who didn’t even start to own their own home until they were in their forties. Some people never own their own home.

I know the argument about kick-starting the economy – especially the housing industry. But if Governments, especially state governments, were serious about it they would slash, even abolish, land taxes and especially the crippling and unfair Stamp Duty.

It’s a Government licence to print money. They are gangsters. The Brumby Government takes billions of dollars a year in Stamp Duty for nothing. I have mentioned before a survey that shows our government is one of the greediest, most rapacious, most money-hungry governments in the world.

Stamp Duty for a property in Melbourne is much, much more than for a similar property in the United States or Canada or the UK.

On a $500,000 property you would pay just over $4000 in Stamp Duty in New York, $5000 in London and $6000 in Toronto.

You know what you pay in Melbourne?  $22,000.  And it escalates rapidly after that. On a property worth $650,000   you would pay around $33,000.
And you are paying those huge lump sums out of already heavily taxed dollars.

IT is unfair. It is unconscionable and once the states started raking in those billions from the GST then Stamp Duty should have been abolished.

And finally on the First Home bonus. It’s being offered to a generation that largely doesn’t want it or need it. I mentioned a survey of Generation Y several months ago.  It showed they spend nearly $50 billion a year on ‘hedonistic pursuits’. And good luck to them. Entertainment, fashion, sport, travel and music.

If they want to buy a house let them scrimp and save and sacrifice for it. Like their parents and grandparents did. If there’s any Government money to throw around give it to the pensioners not as a one-off as announced today but as a continuing weekly increase.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2008