Just how well off are we in Australia? Quite a bit, but we don't seem to notice, is the answer.
It turns out that most people out there trying to get into the housing market waving around their deposits upwards of 100k, are very wealthy people already.
Inequality has grown since the global financial crisis (GFC) and the richest 1 per cent now own half of all household wealth in the world, a report has found.
So much of the world remains relatively poor that it has taken a net worth of just $US3210 ($4400) this year to be among the wealthiest half of all world citizens, according to Credit Suisse's Global Wealth Report 2015.
And it doesn't take obscene amounts of money to rank among the richest of the world's 7 billion citizens. A net worth of more than $US68,800 puts you in the top 10 per cent of all global wealth holders. Once debts are subtracted, you need $US759,900 to be in the top 1 per cent, the report found.
That's not a great deal of money if you're sitting on a mortgage Sydney. Median prices eclipsing $1million puts that close enough to US$759,900. If you own a house outright in Sydney, you're in the world's top 1%. Of course this is different to the top 1% for Australia, but from a global perspective, our society is incredibly wealthy.
It's not terribly profound but it goes to show wealth is a state of mind.
Branding It Thrusted Custard
Speaking of wealth, the news this week was talk of Malcolm Turnbull's investments in a hedge fund based in the Cayman Islands. It appears that the hedgefund in the Caymans pays no tax in the USA, but the returns that come to Malcolm Turnbull's holdings are taxed in Australia appropriately according to Malcolm Turnbull. That set the cat amongst the pigeons.
The ALP attack on Turnbull was branded as a ham-fisted 'class war' by defenders of Turnbull, but you have to wonder about this a little bit. Not everybody gets the opportunity to investing a hedgefund in the Caymans, which does benefit from dodging taxes in one major jurisdiction. If the residents of Australia all equally had access to such a fund as an investment vehicle, then Malcolm Turnbull's defence that it is like any ordinary investment would pass the sniff test. As it is, it's not likely that people have the kind of money to buy expensive units in such investments, so just being able to put your money into a fund that dodges taxes in America is a privilege of wealth.
Even without a class war take on it, it's a bad look when the Prime Minister of the land is getting special returns dodging taxes in America. It's made worse when you consider it's contributing to the inequality and not subtracting from it, in the sense that it affirms the investment options for the wealthy would be different to the ordinary citizens.
If we do put on the full class warfare goggles, then it is clear that it is a sign of a system that segregates options based wealth. I think the ALP is correct in pointing out that this is a problem for the Prime Minister to have such holdings as he shields stop companies from tax scrutiny. Russell Brand had an odd simile when he went on TV this week.
It's not terribly profound but it goes to show wealth is a state of mind.
Branding It Thrusted Custard
Speaking of wealth, the news this week was talk of Malcolm Turnbull's investments in a hedge fund based in the Cayman Islands. It appears that the hedgefund in the Caymans pays no tax in the USA, but the returns that come to Malcolm Turnbull's holdings are taxed in Australia appropriately according to Malcolm Turnbull. That set the cat amongst the pigeons.
The ALP attack on Turnbull was branded as a ham-fisted 'class war' by defenders of Turnbull, but you have to wonder about this a little bit. Not everybody gets the opportunity to investing a hedgefund in the Caymans, which does benefit from dodging taxes in one major jurisdiction. If the residents of Australia all equally had access to such a fund as an investment vehicle, then Malcolm Turnbull's defence that it is like any ordinary investment would pass the sniff test. As it is, it's not likely that people have the kind of money to buy expensive units in such investments, so just being able to put your money into a fund that dodges taxes in America is a privilege of wealth.
Even without a class war take on it, it's a bad look when the Prime Minister of the land is getting special returns dodging taxes in America. It's made worse when you consider it's contributing to the inequality and not subtracting from it, in the sense that it affirms the investment options for the wealthy would be different to the ordinary citizens.
If we do put on the full class warfare goggles, then it is clear that it is a sign of a system that segregates options based wealth. I think the ALP is correct in pointing out that this is a problem for the Prime Minister to have such holdings as he shields stop companies from tax scrutiny. Russell Brand had an odd simile when he went on TV this week.
"Why do you put really, really rich people in charge of your country for, who want to build a thing called a tax shield?" he said, referring to the Coalition giving private companies that earn more than $100 million a year an exemption from new tax disclosure requirements.
He then went on to criticise Turnbull and revelations - hammered by the Labor party this week - that the prime minister has some of his wealth located in the Cayman Islands. But he did it in a very Russell Brand sort of way, with one of the stranger metaphors ever used in Australian public life.
"[Turnbull] goes he's got money in the Cayman Islands but there's nothing wrong with it... Having your money in the Cayman Islands is like putting your dick into custard," said Brand.
"We all want to do it, but there's no rational reason to do it."
"If your dick's in a bowl of custard you're doing it for a reason."
It's strangely accurate when you parse the logic. It would make us all feel better if we could all do it, but we don't or can't. If he's doing it, caught red-dicked, he's got a lot more explaining to do than simply dismissing it as class warfare. He ought to be embarrassed and desist.
Hiding WestConnex From Scrutiny
The ugly news this week amongst a week of fairly vanilla headlines was the news that the NSW Government shifted the controls for the WestConnex project into the hands of a private corporation which essentially shields WestConnex from public scrutiny. More specifically, information about the Sydney Motorway Corporation and its doings cannot be accessed or captured under the Freedom of Information.
Hiding WestConnex From Scrutiny
The ugly news this week amongst a week of fairly vanilla headlines was the news that the NSW Government shifted the controls for the WestConnex project into the hands of a private corporation which essentially shields WestConnex from public scrutiny. More specifically, information about the Sydney Motorway Corporation and its doings cannot be accessed or captured under the Freedom of Information.
The board of the Sydney Motorway Corporation, now responsible for all aspects of the project, is chaired by experienced engineering executive Peter Brecht, after former chair Tony Shepherd resigned this month.
Other board members are finance executives Penny Graham, Mary Ploughman and Cameron Robertson, former Boral chief executive Rod Pearse, Treasury representative Leilani Frew, as well as chief executive Mr Cliche and deputy chief executive Peter Regan. The two shareholders of SMC are Treasurer Gladys Berejiklian and Mr Gay.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for the SMC said a 2014-15 financial report would be submitted to ASIC by the end of October, which would disclose information relating to key management compensation.
The spokeswoman also said that because the corporation is delivering and financing the road on behalf of RMS, RMS "will continue to hold information relating to WestConnex and remains subject to GIPA".
However Labor's roads spokeswoman, Jodi McKay, said the WestConnex changes were "all about shutting down scrutiny."
"I do not understand how they can call themselves a private corporation when they have two minister shareholders," Ms McKay said.
"It is government money, it is clearly a government organisation."
They're in a mighty hurry to build this thing. So far there isn't a business case to build it, the Environment Impact Statement is being carried out by the company that is contracted build it; there are no concrete plans open for discussion for the public, but they are furiously buying land to make this thing. The people who have analysed the bones of the proposal that has gone to the public have come to the conclusion that it's not worth building because there is no net benefit for having built this series of roads - which makes it a complete and utter waste of $15.4 billion. Nick Greiner who chaired the group who came up with the crazy proposal has resigned because even he can't see the point of building this thing.
But by all means, please, hide all this from public scrutiny and pay your crony capitalist lobby group friends to go ahead with this cockamamie plan, Mr. Baird. Something tells me you'll live to regret it.
Vanishing Point Of Politics
Paul Keating popped up today he still wants a treaty and a Republic.
Australia is in many ways a very strange country. Its penal colony roots and then the manufactured consensus on the meaning of nationhood through the 20th century has framed up national identity as the kind of topic through which all cultural discourse runs. Hence the big project to have an 'Australian' theatre or literature or cinema or music has driven the various arts funding for many years. Australian Identity is our of necessity - quite simply - a bun-fight for grants.
And it is through this distorted cultural prism that we come to the republican debate which pits on one side those who wish Australia to remain part of the vast British colonial past, and those who consider it somehow progressive to make the head of state a President and not the appointed representative of the British Crown. It is, to put it bluntly, the identity politics played by the political class of this country who largely remain, distinctly white.
To give you a picture of how disjointed the Republican debate is, consider that most Australians under the age of 40 were not alive at theme of the Whitlam Dismissal. If ever there was an incident which cast great doubt about the structure of the government of this country, it was the Dismissal, and all discussions of the Republic in fact stems from the constitutional shock that the Prime Minister of the land could be sacked by the agent of the British Crown. It is so opaque, we have no idea what Queen Elizabeth II thought about this incident that was carried out in her name, but there it is, the inscrutable event that robs Australia of its sense of independence - and anybody under 40 was not there to see it.
It is somewhat curious that the middle ground of politics finds an overlap between the ALP's right as represented by Paul Keating, and the Liberal Party's moderate/wet faction as represented by Malcolm Turnbull, who are both "republicans" and important figures to the Republican movement. You find to the right of these figures John Howard who screwed the referendum; and further to the lunar right resides the rump that is Tony Abbott who was the face of maintaining the monarchy. If you add the fact that Whitlam and Fraser made up before their deaths, and that Fraser renounced his membership of the Liberal Party, you get a pretty crowded view of who's who in this on-going discussion, and how the Republic sits on strange fault line in the political alignment. All these men who were instrumental in forming the framework of the debate have passed through the Lodge, which tells you that for the political class of Australia, it was a debate of paramount importance - but the point of that debate is vanishing before out eyes. Quite simply, we're no longer the Australia of 1993 or 2003 (or even for that matter, 2013).
It's interesting that Paul Keating sees it as unfinished business, but it might just be the case that the issue itself has ceased to mean what it once did in the heady days of Keating's prime ministership. After all it seems like a heck of a long time ago that Australia's first Baby Boomer Prime Minister got up and pushed for a Republic.
But by all means, please, hide all this from public scrutiny and pay your crony capitalist lobby group friends to go ahead with this cockamamie plan, Mr. Baird. Something tells me you'll live to regret it.
Vanishing Point Of Politics
Paul Keating popped up today he still wants a treaty and a Republic.
On the republic, Mr Keating blamed John Howard for the defeat of the minimalist model that was proposed by the advisory committee chaired by Mr Turnbull that he appointed in 1993. "That's the great mark against Howard in respect of the republic: he will have now, probably forever, denied the country the right model," he said.
The model provided for a president appointed on the recommendation of both houses of parliament with the same reserve powers as the governor-general. Mr Keating sees the alternative of a directly-elected president as shifting the balance of power and authority away from the cabinet and the House of Representatives.
Asked if he would join Mr Turnbull on a platform if the Prime Minister revived the model, Mr Keating replied: "Of course I would."
Asked if this might represent the "best and last opportunity" to get that model up, he replied: "That's entirely likely."Over the years, I've developed a more detached view. I don't need a Republic for Australia to be truly a self-respecting nation; I certainly don't mind that the British Crown has a place at the table in Australian politics. I certainly would've liked to have seen Sir Peter Cosgrove sack Tony Abbott, but that was not to be. I don't want to expend money trying to change the flag and I won't feel better about this country just because we have a President and not a Governor General. On a simple pragmatic level, the republican debate is actually not that relevant to the day-to-day running of Australia.
Australia is in many ways a very strange country. Its penal colony roots and then the manufactured consensus on the meaning of nationhood through the 20th century has framed up national identity as the kind of topic through which all cultural discourse runs. Hence the big project to have an 'Australian' theatre or literature or cinema or music has driven the various arts funding for many years. Australian Identity is our of necessity - quite simply - a bun-fight for grants.
And it is through this distorted cultural prism that we come to the republican debate which pits on one side those who wish Australia to remain part of the vast British colonial past, and those who consider it somehow progressive to make the head of state a President and not the appointed representative of the British Crown. It is, to put it bluntly, the identity politics played by the political class of this country who largely remain, distinctly white.
To give you a picture of how disjointed the Republican debate is, consider that most Australians under the age of 40 were not alive at theme of the Whitlam Dismissal. If ever there was an incident which cast great doubt about the structure of the government of this country, it was the Dismissal, and all discussions of the Republic in fact stems from the constitutional shock that the Prime Minister of the land could be sacked by the agent of the British Crown. It is so opaque, we have no idea what Queen Elizabeth II thought about this incident that was carried out in her name, but there it is, the inscrutable event that robs Australia of its sense of independence - and anybody under 40 was not there to see it.
It is somewhat curious that the middle ground of politics finds an overlap between the ALP's right as represented by Paul Keating, and the Liberal Party's moderate/wet faction as represented by Malcolm Turnbull, who are both "republicans" and important figures to the Republican movement. You find to the right of these figures John Howard who screwed the referendum; and further to the lunar right resides the rump that is Tony Abbott who was the face of maintaining the monarchy. If you add the fact that Whitlam and Fraser made up before their deaths, and that Fraser renounced his membership of the Liberal Party, you get a pretty crowded view of who's who in this on-going discussion, and how the Republic sits on strange fault line in the political alignment. All these men who were instrumental in forming the framework of the debate have passed through the Lodge, which tells you that for the political class of Australia, it was a debate of paramount importance - but the point of that debate is vanishing before out eyes. Quite simply, we're no longer the Australia of 1993 or 2003 (or even for that matter, 2013).
It's interesting that Paul Keating sees it as unfinished business, but it might just be the case that the issue itself has ceased to mean what it once did in the heady days of Keating's prime ministership. After all it seems like a heck of a long time ago that Australia's first Baby Boomer Prime Minister got up and pushed for a Republic.
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