Cranky Queenslander

Seeing as I have a few misguided friends who drive Holdens instead of the vastly superior Ford product, I thought I would quickly draw attention to this article in the courier mail showing that Ford’s are more fuel efficient. 🙂

Seriously. Yellow Cabs has had to sack some Muslim cab drivers because they refused to allow passengers with Guide Dogs into their cabs. The good news is that they have been sacked, and nobody is complaining about their rights.

A small win for Australians there, hopefully this is the start of some common sense prevailing. Yeah, I doubt it too.

The other day I decided to scroll through the articles on Paul Tully’s Division 2 blog. This is what I take to be Paul’s official local council blog, the place to spread news and information that enriches the lives of his local constituents.

But is that all he is enriching with this foray into the digital media? Check out this entry from the end of April. Here is the quote that made this a must blog about entry;

This new outlet will undoubtedly give the nearby McDonalds store a run for its money with what many people regard as a superior product.

Many people eh Paul? I think most people can see why my eyebrow is raised here, and I think it might be nice if Paul again comments here and lets us all know that he has never accepted any money from anyone connected to the store, and is not getting free burgers or any other kick backs.

But that aside, does anyone want their government representatives wasting their time promoting a multi national burger joint which sells terribly unhealthy food and makes our kids fat?

I didn’t think so.

Back when I blogged about the tax hike on pre mix alcoholic beverages, I wrote to Minister Roxon and asked her some simple questions;

Why are we taxing spirits so much more heavily than we do beer?

Why do we tax packaged beer at higher rates than draught beer?

Why do we tax wine on its value, rather than its alcohol content, like other alcoholic drinks?

Why don’t we tax “ready to drink” products on a sliding scale the same as packaged beer?

Doesn’t it make sense to encourage “ready to drink” makers to produce lower alcohol content drinks?

In her response, she fails to answer any of these questions, instead preferring to waffle on about all the wonderful things she’s doing to help with the alleged binge drinking problem. Basically, she has no answers.

One nugget of gold in her letter was her assertion that studies show that increasing tax on something decreases its consumption. Of all the stupid things she could have said, this must be the stupidest. What increasing the price does is convince people who CHOOSE to drink to drink less or stop completely. The people who are binge drinking are alcoholics, and are not going to stop drinking regardless of the price.

I think I’ll write back and see if she wants to answer my questions or just cite a bunch of PR BS again instead. It really makes me cranky when people won’t answer a simple question!

Recently in Collingwood Park the unthinkable happened. Old coal mine shafts underneath the suburb collapsed, causing severe damage to more than a dozen homes. The collapse will likely result in some of those houses having to be demolished.

These are cherished family homes, built and bought by people who trusted the state government when it said it was fine to build there. I’m hoping these home owners are getting legal advice, because if this happened to me, I’d be wanting my day in court to have the government explain why they did this.

Its about time that our state government realised that it is elected to help the people, not profit from them. Sanctioning a housing development on top of an old coal mine without doing something like collapsing the old mine shafts first, is just a cheap money grab.

Cr Paul Tully has lost the plot with his comment that the state government should be commended for its response to the issue. You’re kidding right Paul? The state government should be condemned for continuing to sell off land without rehabilitating it first. It would also be nice if he published maps of the affected areas with a few clues as to where they are; Just put one street name on the map Paul, and we’d know whats what!

I invite anyone affected by the issue to leave a comment and let me know how you personally are dealing with it, and what the state government is actually doing to help you.

Following up from Saturday’s post about changes to tax on pre mix drinks, I did a little research, and found that the tax rates on various drinks are apparently as follows (correct me if these are wrong)

Rates are dollars of tax per litre of alcohol content. Figures taken from dsica.com.au, read to drink figure from the news.com.au article previously mentioned.

This raises several questions; Firstly, why are spirits taxed so much more heavily than beer is? Why is packaged beer taxed much more heavily than draught beer? Why don’t we tax wine on the percentage of alcohol like everything else?

More importantly, why has the Rudd government decided to tax read to drink spirits so heavily across the board, instead of having a sliding scale as we have with beer?

A few comments on Nicola Roxon’s move to raise taxes on pre mixed alcoholic drinks; Firstly, according to news.com.au, all she is doing is adjusting the rate of tax to match that of bottled alcohol. I haven’t been able to find out if the tax on beer and other things is all the same too, that might be a good excuse to write to Nicola.

As long as we are going to tax alcohol, it should be a fair tax across all forms. A simple dollar amount per litre of alcohol provides a basic incentive for makers to produce lower alcohol content drinks, because they’ll be taxed less, and be cheaper. This is the case now with pre mix and bottled alcohol.

Personally, I think this is just a grab for more tax revenue (which is odd, as we are running record surpluses). There is no evidence that the move will do anything to curb binge drinking. If the $8-$12 a go these drinks cost now isn’t deterring people, another buck a can won’t do much.

What might have done something, would have been to change the way we tax these drinks. Lets have a scaled tax on "ready to drink" products, including stubbies of beer and pre mix spirits. How about those that are less than a standard drink, we tax lightly, and those that are a lot more than a standard drink, we tax much more heavily.

Of course not; That might actually work, as well as lowered our tax burden. Can’t have that.

I’m having a hard time believing that a national "fuelwatch" system would benefit motorists. Our governments plan to introduce a system where all petrol retailers need to register their price the day before, and are not allowed to change the price for 24 hours, seems to me, stupid.

The plan is to model it on the W.A. scheme. The ACCC looked into that scheme, and while they found an average of 1.9 cpl drop in fuel prices in WA, they also pointed out that the drop occurred quite some time after the introduction of the scheme, suggesting that perhaps other factors could have produced the price drop.

They also only tested it in Metropolitan areas. In smaller centres, where there is much less competition, the ACCC worry that the system will drive prices up by giving retailers an easy mechanism with which to control prices.

Service stations under this type of scheme are not going to be able to offer really low margin prices on petrol like they can now. Today, a service station can sell petrol at cost or even below, for a short term boost to turnover. Those prices will never occur within a fuel watch system, as the station cannot afford to sell at those prices for long.

The simple fact is that there really isn’t a conspiracy at the pump on petrol prices. If there is a scam going on, its happening at the refinery. The more we punish service station operators, the more we punish hard working small business owners for trying to make a living.

If the government wants to help motorists, then remove some of the tax on fuel. If it really wants to help, then why not legislate tougher fuel economy standards? How about doing something to get hydrogen powered vehicles on Australian streets? What about flex fuel vehicles? There are plenty of options, but they aren’t being explored.