From Fairfax:
The federal government won’t rule anything out – including increasing taxes – to compensate for new national security spending and delayed budget savings.
Several of the Abbott government’s budget measures have been held up in the Senate, with Labor and crossbench senators refusing to back them.
That, coupled with an additional $630 million boost for domestic spy agencies, has forced the government to go back through all government portfolios to find new savings.
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann is not ruling out increasing taxes nor dipping into the foreign aid budget.
I don’t mind paying for a good war but a rushed war with goals that are at best vague at best and virtually no national interest discussion as a sequel to an already failed super-expensive war leaves me very cold on tax hikes. For once I agree with the Pascomemter:
Given the bi-partisan appetite for Iraq 3, there just might be an opening for a calm finance minister to broker a few compromises to get a couple of the better budget ideas through the senate and improve the bottom line by looking into some of those many billions of dollars of tax expenditures that are (hopefully) going to cop a serve from the tax review.
Beyond the revenge and posturing, the saner Labor folk know the fuel excise indexation is a completely reasonable benefit for revenue that’s of minimal impact on voters unless they’re whipped up into thinking otherwise. The Middle East has long been about oil so, hey, what better way to pitch paying for the bombing missions’ jet fuel?
But there should be a quid pro quo. For Labor to pass a responsible Liberal measure, Operation Here We Go Again could become the excuse to pass a couple of responsible Labor measures – the 15% tax on superannuation fund earnings of more than $100,000 a year and the FBT changes from Wayne Swan’s last budget.
Sadly, the screaming of the Pascometer rather suggests war taxes are inevitable.
