Another budget, another efficiency dividend demanded ("Budget knife to cut $1.2b from PS", April 27, p1). Efficiency dividends are just a farce: budgets go up, efficiency dividends pretend to reduce them.
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Let the secretaries manage for once, without the disruption of endless demands for wage cuts and the burden of replacing public servants with subcontractors.
It is clear that the cost of replacing public servants with subcontractors is greater than the cost of retaining the public servants, and likely that those who take redundancies include the bright sparks who are confident of employment elsewhere.
So the Australian taxpayer loses the benefit of the capable public service and the public service loses intellectual skills, including corporate memory, all in pursue of the false logic that a smokescreen about public service employment will fool the voting public. The efficiency dividend Australia needs most is a new Treasurer. Scott Morrison's belligerent hectoring style is out of place in a democracy.
Warwick Davis, Isaacs
Loss questionable
Malcolm Turnbull argues that negative gearing is just part and parcel of normal tax deduction and tax loss principles. This is true as far as it goes.
However, most other countries limit negative gearing losses in some way, for example, making them deductible only against income of the same type, ie, rental income.
Second, there is a subtlety to general tax deduction principles that the prime minister appears to have missed.
The losses and outgoings are deductible to the extent that they have been incurred in gaining or producing assessable income.
The explosion of negative gearing loss claims after the capital gains discount replaced inflation adjusting of gains in 1999 suggests that what the investment in many cases may be about is producing the loss and the tax discount on the capital gain. If that is the case, then the loss could be disallowable under the general deduction provision, section 8-1 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 and/or Part IVA, the general anti-avoidance provision of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936.
I call on the Commissioner of Taxation to deny rental losses under the current law to investors who are negatively gearing for the tax benefit.
John Passant, Kambah
As usual, both political parties are wrong. Deducting investment losses against personal income is a fundamental aspect of Australian tax law, and its application to property should be uncontroversial. Also, the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount is a concession and it almost exclusively benefits the richer half of society. The best policy would be to keep negative gearing and scrap the CGT discount entirely.
Christopher Budd, Turner
Correct view
Gai Brodtmann ("Library's trove a national treasure worth funding", April 27) cited a newspaper article from April 10, 1902, which argued that women don't actually want the vote. She is correct. The contemporary editor was wrong.
The correct view was espoused by the infamous "hanging judge" of Texas, Judge Roy Bean. "When they gave women the vote, they ruined all the good things like whoring, whisky and gambling."
Gerry Murphy, Braddon
Show compassion
Your editorial, "PNG ruling isolates Australia" (Times 2, April 28, p2), brings to the fore the opportunity for Australia's political parties to reflect on their policies in regard to refugees.
The pathetic excuse used by all political spokespeople that we torture people in detention to prevent others from drowning at sea is a shallow fabrication to blind us all to inhuman and unlawful policies which make Australia the refugee pariah of the world.
The seeking of asylum by a refugee is not illegal. Given this and our appalling record to date, the forthcoming election provides a chance for one or both major parties to reinvent themselves as compassionate and humane.
Gerry Gillespie, Queanbeyan, NSW
Regarding Malcolm Turnbull's admonition that we shouldn't get too misty about asylum seekers: first, does he mean all asylum seekers? Seeing that Australia is a a signatory to the United Nations' Human Rights Convention, surely he must mean some asylum seekers. If so, is it only the ones who come by boat we should not get misty about?
To clear up this issue, I would refer him to Corinthians 13, in particular the admonition that: "And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity".
Surely there must be some better solution than Nauru. If we can explore our solar system, then surely we can find some humane solution to the people banned from our shores forever.
Howard Carew, Isaacs
Admirable march
I attended the Anzac Day march in Canberra on Monday. I had not attended for a few years and was happy to see the Karen people represented. All credit to the march organisers for allowing them to participate. I hope that Aung San Suu Kyi will give them a bigger voice also, perhaps after she has dealt with other priorities.
I was also happy to see the march conclude with the Frontier Wars demonstration. Their silent protest with numerous banners highlighting the many massacres perpetrated on them was very effective. It was wonderful to see that the ACT police permitted them to march.
Herman van de Brug, Kaleen
Senseless decision
Why do we want a dozen submarines when we cannot man more than two Collins-class submarines at a time? It is clear that not many sailors want to be submariners, no matter what they are paid.
Does the political decision to build them in Australia, at greatly increased cost, really make sense? And which untried design will give us a suitable submarine at a bearable cost?
Then there are the strategic questions. Can we make any difference in the South China Sea? It is clear that China is inevitably taking control of the region and that no one will stop it. The best we can hope for is that the freedom of the seas will persist in the region, and we should be working politically to ensure that the Chinese agree to that.
Neville Exon, Chapman
I hope that our new generation of submariners will readily adopt their French counterparts' battle cry of "Á l'eau, c'est là!"
Peter Burrett, Forrest
Ideological trap
Rod Holesgrove (Letters, April 25) might be right. The world may have reached the final tipping point and we are heading towards the apocalypse caused by human-induced global warming. I doubt it, but I don't know for sure.
Having seen so many predictions of catastrophe come and go, it is not surprising world leaders are slow to introduce measures that would satisfy Mr Holesgrove but seriously damage their development.
Indeed, it is possible that we are already spending trillions of dollars worldwide on remedies for global warming that may not amount to a hill of beans. I suspect that many world leaders think this, but dare not say it.
To illustrate my point, a recent study by the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, who were grappling with the problem of getting the right mix of power sources, found that increasing amounts of wind and solar power had resulted in significantly increased emissions because of the characteristics of the back-up power required. In general, flexible fossil-fuelled gas turbine generators displaced clean but less adaptable hydro and nuclear power to back up intermittent renewables.
One can only wonder what we are really achieving with our own wind and solar farms. We have no nuclear and precious little hydro back-up, and with the coal-fired power stations always ticking over to ensure uninterrupted supply together with fossil-fuelled gas turbines in the mix, what is the true net reduction in emissions and what does it cost?
I share Holesgrove's concern for the environment and our legacy to our grandchildren, but I want to be sure that we are not caught in an ideological trap that prevents us from finding out the truth about these matters or, heaven forbid, making matters worse by "just doing something".
H. Ronald, Jerrabomberra, NSW
Truth distorted
I wonder how many people groaned when they read Nick Miller's article, "General who 'got' the Front" (Forum, April 23, p5) peddling another round of misinformation and fallacies about John Monash's achievements in the Great War.
The view that Monash cemented victory and has been undervalued in history is nonsense. If the truth be known, we Australians have greatly overstated his contribution.
Monash was an outstanding general, but he was not the "outsider who won a war". A good many of his British, French, and Canadian colleagues also deserve credit for the victory, some considerably more so than Monash.
In pushing their parochial nationalism, Miller and former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer have demonstrated how shallow their knowledge of the Great War is, and their ignorance of Monash's place in the final Hundred Days Campaign.
Fischer's idea that Monash played the principal role in the Battle of Amiens sadly misrepresents the truth.
As Charles Bean concluded in 1935, "we know that Monash did not devise the August offensive, though of course he was responsible for many of the details in the plan for his own corps," one of eight French, British Canadian and Australian corps that participated in the battle. Nor did he "invent" the all arms concept of combat, as agitated by Mr Fischer.
Those developments sit more comfortably on the shoulders of the French and the British – Monash was a benefactor of their work. Messrs Miller's and Fisher's overblown claims for him are a gross distortion of the truth. If we are to proclaim our achievements, at least have the decency to put them into perspective and context.
Brigadier Chris Roberts, adjunct lecturer, University of NSW Canberra
RIGHT THE WRONG
The expenditure of billion of dollars on the inhumane detention centres of Manus and Nauru by the Coalition and ALP has brought shame on Australia. Peter Dutton and Richard Marles should now collaborate in finding a more humane long-term solution that is properly negotiated, managed and funded.
Helen Reid, New Acton
NEGATIVE BIAS
"Another day and another set of half-truths and myths about negative gearing." So begins Ken Morrison's defence of negative gearing ("Negative gearing isn't the bad guy in housing debate", canberratimes.com.au, April 28). It was helpful of him to so clearly tell us what we could expect from his highly partisan defence of the indefensible.
John Hutchison, Gunning, NSW
COMMODORE-CLASS SUBS
So the new submarine project is going to be run by a foreign company, based on an overseas design, but built in Australia. The main aim of the project is to prop up South Australian manufacturing. It would seem appropriate to name the new vessels "Commodore class".
Rob Ey, Weston
IT'S ALL ABOUT THE BOATS
People are misunderstanding the Coalition's decision on submarines. It is not about defence capability. It is not to save Christopher Pyne and other SA Coalition seats.
It is still all about stopping the boats.
Rory McElligott, Nicholls
GIVE US THE FINAL CHOICE
Let the Roman Catholics and other right-wing religious groups have their choice of dying slowly in palliative care, hopefully without too much pain, but don't force that way of dying on those of us who don't want it.
Susan MacDougall, Scullin
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