Ken Henry on tax reform

If the tax structure from early last century prevailed today, we would have to raise $40 billion from excise and $230 billion from tariffs to meet today's revenue demand. At that rate the excise on a schooner of beer would be around 7 times what it is today. And I shudder to think how much a television set would cost.

That's Treasury head Ken Henry, speaking on lessons from past tax reform experience. Henry is chairing the review of Australia's tax system and he singles out road pricing to address congestion as a perfect candidate for reform:

When vehicles drive on a congested road they impose costs on other drivers. Each driver thinks of their own need to get to their destination, not considering how, by taking up space on the road, they impinge on the ability of other drivers to do so. There is no means for one driver to coordinate with others, to bargain about who should have priority, so that they can all be better off. This results in a predictable 'tragedy of the commons' which is estimated to waste around $9 billion a year in avoidable congestion costs, increasing to around $20 billion by 2020. Such costs will only increase with faster population and economic growth.

Worth a read.

Climate Change Blog Action Day

Apparently today is Blog Action Day for Climate Change and I thought I'd throw it open to my wonderful blog readers.

I find myself alternatively optimistic and despairing on climate change. How bad is it going to be? Are we going to do what it takes to avoid the worst? And what do you think is going to be the most help? People and communities and businesses taking action themselves? National governments agreeing on strong action at Copenhagen and setting up strong domestic laws, like emissions trading? Peak oil or economic crisis reducing emissions automatically? Or technological breakthroughs making it easier than we thought? Or will it take some real environmental crisis to get the impetus?

What do you think? Put in your two cents for Blog Action Day - bloggers, regulars, visitors and lurkers!

Cheers

Dave

What's the Opposition's climate policy?

I saw Maclolm Turnbull interviewed the other night saying that he supported emissions trading and reminding people that emissions trading was indeed government policy under the previous Howard Liberal government when Turnbull was Environment Minister (it was pretty token and very very late if I remember rightly). He also said that it had been on their "legislative program" to introduce (I guess they ran out of time; 11 years in government only gives you so much time to make new laws). He said the Coalition didn't oppose emissions trading (it was Coalition policy) - what they oppose is Labor's confused and costly scheme.

It all made me think: what is their position? I don't recall them articulating what exactly they don't like about the proposed scheme and what they would do differently. It seems that every public figure and lobby group in Australia has said what they do and don't like about the scheme and how they'd like it changed - except our opposition party.

Can this be right?

Picture: abc.net.au