@Greens @sarahinthesen8’s solution to boat people drowning

Source: Another way for refugees | Australian Greens.

Arriving by boat in Australia does not increase the size of the refugee quota. It just changes who gets to the head of the queue and how many died trying to get to the head of the queue.

Source: Kiwiblog.

There is nothing compassionate about rewarding people for risking their lives. The chances of dying while attempting to come to Australia by boat are about 2%.

The recent experience in Europe confirms that just letting large numbers of refugees come to your country hardens the attitude of the majority of voters in that country to admitting refugees in general, much less more than their current quota.

1st and 2nd generation immigrants as percentage of the population

@billshortenMP Why @TurnbullMalcolm will back Kevin Rudd for UN Secretary General

What a splendid opportunity! In an Australian election year, Kevin Rudd will be back in the Australian news, frequently front page.

This re-emergence of Kevin747 will remind Australian voters of how dysfunctional he was and how dysfunctional the last Labour government was.

Most of the reporting of Kevin Rudd in the Australian media be about how that control freak and social cripple will bring his dysfunctionality to United Nations and international relations generally.

Bill Shorten must hate the idea. The last thing he wants as an unpopular opposition leader is for the last Labour Prime Minister, who he stabbed in the back as prime minister first time round, to be back in the news.

Mark Latham uses to say that the only reason Kevin Rudd was popular with the Australian people was that never met him.

Aggregated polling – Australian Federal Election

https://twitter.com/Mark_Graph/status/694070230536945664

Agricultural subsidies as a % of gross farm receipts in USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand since 1986

image

Source: Agricultural policy – Agricultural support – OECD Data.

Agricultural support is defined as the annual monetary value of gross transfers to agriculture from consumers and taxpayers arising from government policies that support agriculture, regardless of their objectives and economic impacts.

But who would be elected president of Australia?

The principal argument against the republic is it results in a president as the head of state.

In the last Republican debate in 1999, the Republican movement split between those who wanted an appointed president and an elected president.

An elected president would quickly get ideas above his station because of the popular mandate. Imagine Dick Smith as president.

It would be a good pub quiz game to list the people would be wholly unsuited as president but would be likely to be elected. Boring people such as those who currently occupy the position such as judges and retired military would not have much of a chance of being elected.

The Irish president, for example, is elected but is completely circumscribed in powers. The only power they have to exercise independently is whether to dissolve parliament after a motion of no confidence.

Compulsory superannuation makes a big difference to the size of Australian public sector

G7, Australian, Danish and New Zealand average personal income tax and social security contribution rates

image

Data extracted on 30 Jan 2016 03:32 UTC (GMT) from OECD.Stat.

G7, Danish, Australian and New Zealand marginal income tax and social security contribution rates

Ordinary French, Germans, Italians and Danish pay much higher marginal tax rates and that is before their high rates of GST.

image

Data extracted on 30 Jan 2016 03:08 UTC (GMT) from OECD.Stat.

@TrevorMallard what next for #TPPANoWay? Repeal CER?

image

New Zealand filmmakers have used trade treaties to pry open access to foreign markets by challenging failures to honour promises of nondiscrimination in trade and investment in the Federal Court of Australia.

This should please the Twitter Left because they are also a film going left as are most members of the educated middle class as a point of identity and snobbery.

Back in the day, New Zealand television programming was sold cheaply into the Australian market. Many cultural and other products are exported into foreign markets and sold for whatever they can get above the price of shipping or digital transmission. What else explains all that rubbish on cable TV?

Under the Closer Economic Relations agreement that creates a single market between Australia and New Zealand, New Zealand made television programming content must be treated the same way as Australian content so it was included in their 50% local content rules for commercial television back from whenever I remember this story from.

There was a Federal Court of Australia case that ruled that New Zealand television programming was Australian content programming for the purposes of the relevant media regulations because of Closer Economic Relations.

From the late 1990s, with revival of the New Zealand film and television industry, New Zealand content was starting to flood the Australian market, especially in the off-season in the summer when stations were looking for cheap content to fill a low ratings period.

Naturally, this Kiwi invasion did not please the rent seeking Australian television programme production industry and many a mendicant actor, writer and producer

Where there is a will, where there is a way: minimum quality standards are introduced into the Australian content rules defined by price – a price that happen to be above what the television stations used to pay for New Zealand made programming in the off-season.

This court victory in favour of various New Zealand film industry in enforcing a trade and investment treaty puts the Twitter left in a bit of a conundrum. Which is more important? The New Zealand film industry or their hatred of globalisation and the rule of law.

US, Australian and NZ all-in average personal income tax rates at average wage by family type

image

Data extracted on 25 Jan 2016 01:07 UTC (GMT) from OECD.Stat.

NZ, Oz & US real housing price index, January 1975 – September 2015 @philtwyford @JulieAnneGenter

Notice that New Zealand housing prices were pretty flat until the passage of the Resource Management Act in 1993.

Source: International House Price Database – Dallas Fed.

Here’s how Scandinavian countries pay for their spending

https://twitter.com/conradhackett/status/683884984772341760

It is the 1960s hippies who are letting marijuana decriminalisation down at the ballot box

The rise of the working rich in Australia – top income compositions since 1954

Over the course of the post-war period top incomes in Australia turned into top wage earners. It is unfortunate that information is not available on the extent to which business incomes make up the balance of top incomes as distinct from dividend incomes.

image

Source: The World Wealth and Income Database.

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