No joy for Do-nothing today:
Most Australians surveyed in the latest Guardian Essential poll think both ministers of religion and celebrants should be able to refuse to officiate at same-sex marriage weddings, while 43% think businesses should be able to refuse service.
The new weekly poll of 1,803 voters showed Australians were divided about whether additional protections are required when marriage equality is legalised by the Australian parliament following last week’s historic majority yes vote by the public.
A solid majority of the sample – 63% – supported allowing ministers of religion and celebrants to refuse to officiate same-sex weddings, with 27% opposed.
…This week’s poll has Labor continuing with an election-winning lead on the two-party preferred measure. Labor is ahead 54% to 46%, the same as last week.
No pink honeymoon there. Is it any wonder, via Domainfax:
Fairfax Media spoke to a range of government MPs who were critical of the snap decision to cancel Parliament and questioned the political tactics of their own side.
“It seems like panic. In this game you put on a brave face, you front up and present an air of confidence. This seems like Turnbull is scared of the party room and the Parliament,” one MP said.
A second MP expressed shock at the decision, which he had first heard about on Sky News.
A third MP said the decision looked like Mr Turnbull was trying to stall the plan to set up the banking commission of inquiry.
The push to establish a commission of inquiry is all but certain to pass the Senate and is being led by Nationals senator Barry O’Sullivan.
Several lower house Nationals MPs, including George Christensen and Llew O’Brien, have indicated they could side with Labor and the crossbench to reach 76 votes needed to suspend standing orders and bring on debate on thr bill, and Senator O’Sullivan has said as many as four MPs could defect.
The Turnbull government is currently a minority government, holding just 73 seats on the floor of the lower house, because former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce and backbench MP John Alexander are campaigning to win back their NSW seats of New England and Bennelong respectively.
More:
The real issue, then, becomes of vastly greater magnitude of threat to the Turnbull government.
The Senate has already agreed, in an attempt to deal with the dual citizenship shambles, that Senators should produce proof of their citizenship status by December 1. The current proposal is that the House would agree to the same timetable, but it hasn’t been debated or voted upon.
If this were to be set in stone on the first day the House was due to return – next Monday, November 27 – all MPs would have to produce their evidence within a week of Parliament…and the House would still have a week of potentially tumultuous sitting.
Labor would undoubtedly do all it could to ensure the quickest possible timetable, because it suspects there are more dual citizens within government ranks than have been revealed. If that proved to be the case, those who couldn’t prove their constitutionally legal status could be required to resign straight away.
And that would leave the Turnbull government desperately exposed by the second week of sitting. Should just a few extra dual citizens be revealed, the government wouldn’t have the numbers to withstand a parliamentary assault from the opposition (assuming the opposition didn’t also produce several dual citizens of its own).
The opposition could then win a vote of no confidence in the government….and the Prime Minister would have to visit the Governor-General and request an election be held forthwith.
And amidst the chaos, the idiot has pressed the tax cut panic button:
Malcolm Turnbull has flagged income tax cuts for the majority of the nation’s workers as he attempts to move beyond the array of problems bedevilling his government and outline his pre-election agenda.
In a speech to the Business Council of Australia on Monday night, the Prime Minister signalled that any tax relief would be directed at those on low and middle incomes, because those on higher incomes had already been given some relief in the past two budgets.
The tax cuts would not come at the expense of the remainder of the company tax cuts, which the government is still pursuing, nor, the Prime Minister said, would they harm the budgeted return to surplus in 2020-21.
…Mr Turnbull’s tax-cut commitment provides a significant challenge for Treasurer Scott Morrison to find the money, given tax cuts at the lower end of the scale are enormously expensive.
Mr Turnbull ruled out any further relief for those on higher incomes. He noted the abolition on June 30 this year of the temporary deficit levy, a 2 percentage point increase to the top marginal tax rate which applies to income over $180,000. The abolition reduced the top marginal rate from 49.5 per cent to 47.5 per cent.
The next round of tax cuts would be revealed at the earliest in the May budget next year. The federal election is due either towards the end of next year or in early 2019.
…Chris Richardson of Deloitte Access Economics estimated that dropping the tax rate of 32.5 cents in the dollar – which applies to earnings between $37,000 and $87,000 – to 30 cents in the dollar would cost the budget $7.2 billion in the year 2020-21. That is the same year the budget is forecast to return to surplus, estimated at $7.4 billion.
I am not averse to low income tax cuts. Not at all. But, let’s be honest. This is not considered policy reform. It is another brain fart from a rotting PM corpse. There is no way that the cuts will be revenue neutral. And the Budget is already based upon fictitious assumptions about income growth and the terms of trade. In other words, this is a repeat of late era Howard/Costello and their creation of a structural deficit.
Moreover, why would you throw this Hail Mary as your government falls apart around you? The politics of it is obviously desperate and any momentum one might hope to gain from the policy will be swept into the maelstrom and lost. Including for your replacement.
You are an idiot, Malcolm. A dead set political buffoon with no policy sense, no political sense and no understanding of the nation you lead.
Doomed mate.
