Tax proposal:

$50k standard deduction for single filers

$100k standard deduction for married filers

All income treated the same

Eliminate all other tax deductions and credits

Let's do what the GOP almost accidentally did and make the corporate tax rate 20% with no loopholes.

Since we can throw in a bunch of stuff that isn't actually tax policy into a tax bill, put in single payer.

Create a new tax bracket on earnings after standard deduction over $1M at a rate high enough to score out as this whole bill paying for itself

bluefox, some of the reasons your healthcare costs are bonkers:

A) you have a gigantic healthcare insurance industry which skims a ton off the top. they also have to hire loads of people to negotiate with healthcare providers re how much they are gonna pay

B) your healthcare providers have to hire an army of people to deal with the negotiations mentioned in A). none of this **** has to occur, just get rid of all of them, proclaim that everyone is insured and save a couple hundred billion straight away

C) your drugs are 3x more expensive than where i live. our NHS is a gigantic buyer which leverages its size to negotiate price. you dont have that leverage for whatever reason

those are the ones off the top of my head

You think THAT'S why the country is disillusioned with the government? Maybe it's because we've had five prime ministers in seven years. Maybe it's because they continuously renege on their promises (no GST, no carbon tax, NBN). Maybe it's because they don't even do the job they're elected to do, relying on us to decide for them, and then don't even ****ing vote for it when the electorate overwhelmingly decides (Abbott on same sex marriage). Maybe it's their inaction on climate change and renewables, euthanasia, medical marijuana, all of which have overwhelming support.

But no, it's that damn liberal media!

Ok that explains Rudd, Gillard and Abbott. But what about Turnbull - he was democratically elected as PM in the last election and is still there as PM and by all reports has stuck to his pledges - so why the constant media attention that he hasn't lived up to expectations and is somehow a disappointment?

Turnbull is perceived as bereft of real convictions because of his inability to stand up to the right wing of the party. More generally though it's simply the disposition of the Australian people to get sick of incumbents. You're going back to like the 1980s before you see governments have more than two terms.

I am in your godforsaken state right now, btw. You live in Brisbane?

But if he wishes to pursue his centralist ideas he won't get support of the right wing of the party which is really the controlling arm of the party so he is always going to be compromised to some extent.

But that isn't to say that still having him there as leader is not better than any alternative for the left and he is still delivering outcomes that are probably not in line with the expectations of most of the conservative forces (hence, the rise of alt right parties at the moment).

So just going back to this negative publicity for his leadership that they really are doing a fine balancing act as on the one hand they want a labor leader elected but on the other they don't really want Turnbull replaced and that would probably include any defeat where someone else would replace him as invariably no other liberal member would be as much as a moderate as him.

well i got pvn to agree on something libertarian related, im gonna call it a day

Well he hasn't stuck to his pledges. The same sex marriage survey and NBN rollout are just two examples

The reason is the R Congress passed a law ordering the govt to pay whatever the drug companies ask for.

And a survey is worse than a plebiscite, is it? Oh and the NBN let's just scratch that from discussions as its handling from the outset was always going to make it doomed to begin with - just a shame that Abbott and Turnbull didn't go one further and forget about fibre to the node as the advancements in wireless have well and truly trumped that and fibre to the premises (on a cost vs benefit analysis).

Well a survey and a plebiscite were both awful but the discussion was whether or not he stuck to his pledges. He pledged a plebiscite and it didn't happen.
And sure let's just scratch a complete failure of his for some reason. The Libs NBN plan, while doomed from the start, will still manage to come in well over budget and well behind schedule for a product that still has us far down the list of developed countries' internet speed

Where is the money for infrastructure going to come from if we cut taxes? some states will be able to use MJ tax to compensate but not every state has legal MJ.

Honestly I'd rather pay more taxes and they do away with the gambling tax of 40 percent.

Just popped in to give kudos to the guys trying to educate bundy. You're doing god's work. It's also interesting for the outsiders to learn about Aussie politics.

And "WHO WILL BUILD THE ROADS?!?!" gives me an "Arguing with an ACist" bingo.

Bundy making all sorts of fantastical claims about how liberals want to build roads despite apparently never having spoken to an actual liberal outside of his own imagination on the subject was pretty amazing too.

Still wondering where all these government owned construction companies are.

Say again?

I'm not saying it's impossible for a state-run business to compete in a market, but I don't think a monopoly firm making more money than they did last year is really proving your point here.

The survey was basically a cheaper version of a plebiscite. There was no difference in the legal effect of either. So I don't think you can say that he didn't stick to it. The problem with the proponents view which I assume is your view is that it didn't matter if he pledged it or indeed carried it out as per his proposals you still wouldn't be happy as many liberals just tend to take the view that the decision to adopt gay marriage should be forced upon everyone by a legislative vote despite the issue not being a political one but rather a conscience one (that is, Labor party supporters would have been allowed to cross the floor or abstain from voting as, outside of this, and for all other public policy bills (except for issues like abortion and euthanasia), they would have to toe the party's decision).

As for the NBN well the Labor party's plan and handling of it made the liberals job almost impossible to do having to reign the extreme over budget expenditure and lack of being able to hit their rollout targets. It is probably sad in some way that the Liberals weren't in power at the time that this network was being mooted as you can bet that more pragmatic and rational decisions would have been made as to the extent that it should be rolled out as now with its cost probably heading towards an eventual $75-$100 billion cost that most of that would have been saved. It also shows at least for the future that we shouldn't jump right in with technology and go ahead and spend the maximum amount possible with other options out there such as wireless where its potential was only just being realised. And as we have seen that drive to adopt, improve and implement wireless has been driven by the private sector.

Sweet, did we go back to Politics circa 2008? Where Boro and Niels??

"forcing gay marriage on everyone"

if those crazy libs were in charge I would be forced to marry a gay guy. its unconscionable.

Wat

As a librul I take the view that maybe every single poll result showing 60+% of the population in favour of same sex marriage should have been good enough and we didn't need to spend 122m on a slightly more accurate poll that got the same result. Also that it was transparently an effort by the far right to somehow make the issue go away (probably hoping that young people wouldn't even know how to post their votes) and I would appreciate them not playing cynical political games in an effort to impose their childish religious idiocy on the country. A conscience vote would have been fine by me, obviously.

If any muricans are interested there's a good and reasonably short article here on the conservative government we had in the late 90s through mid 2000s. Cliffs: Boomers WOAT generation all over the planet, not just America. Note that John Hewson, who is savaging Howard through the article, is a member of Howard's own party who narrowly lost an election just before Howard came to power because he made the terrible mistake of trying to run on detailed policy.

If we start legislating based on opinion polls, we may as well get rid of all the politicians and just rely on bureaucrats to follow the desire of the people.

And that end for Hewson has certainly pushed him far more to the centre to try to counter balance the political leanings of Howard. So by all means take whatever he says in Australian conservative politics with a grain of salt as you can bet if he did win in 1993 he wouldn't be as soft of a conservative that he is today.