It uses actual footage from local Palestinian crews
of the bombs falling, the terror of the Palestinians targeted and the
ensuing chaos of getting the wounded to overcrowded hospitals and overworked
medical staff while Israel continued its relentless attack without mercy.

Stories are told through shell-shocked children who have lost parents and
other family members and who have been horribly maimed, physically and
psychologically.

This is not something that anyone should turn away from in
squeamishness because it is very real and continues to happen to
Palestinians who resist Israel’s inhuman oppression of their daily lives.

We just don’t hear about it in the mainstream media.

If you can absorb the
grotesque acts of inhumanity in Holocaust museums and talk about them
afterwards and say “never again”, then you have an obligation to see what is
actually happening today to people struggling to survive under Israel’s
ruthless military domination and occupation.

The criminality of it all
simply cannot be justified in any way – not in Gaza, not in Iraq, not in
Afghanistan, not in Libya, nor in the many other places of the world where
innocents endure the onslaught of modern warfare whoever perpetrates it and
for whatever reason.

The film is directed by Norwegian filmmaker Vibeke Lokkeberg.

From Australians for Palestine
http://www.australiansforpalestine.net/56077#more-56077

Adelaide Voices, Opinion by David Noonan, Independent Environment Campaigner.

Australia uranium fuelled the Fukashima nuclear disaster yet our governments have just approved the world’s largest uranium project in BHP Billiton’s proposed new open pit mine at Roxby Downs.

“We can confirm that Australian obligated nuclear material was at the Fukushima Daiichi site and in each of the reactors—maybe five out of six, or it could have been all of them; almost all of them.”

This frank smoking gun admission by Dr Floyd, the Director-General of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office (ASNO) in DEFAT came some 7 months after the Fukashima crisis had started to unfold. It is quite likely this Australian uranium came from Roxby Downs in SA.

Denial runs deep in the nuclear industry. The nuclear utility TEPCO and the Japanese government lacked capacity and preparedness to respond to the inherent nuclear risks that reactors imposed on their society.

Fire fighters from Tokyo had to risk their lives and health to try and control the failing Fukashima nuclear reactors as they exploded and burnt and the reactor cores melted down spewing radiation over nearly 10 per cent of Japan.

Uranium mining companies in Australia are in denial.

They cited commercial in confidence to not disclose their contracts and not reveal which reactors were fuelled with their uranium.

The radioactive tailings produced by uranium miners needs to be isolated from the environment for far longer than recorded human history – in effect for ever.

However, Olympic Dam mine is a dam designed to leak an average of 3 million litres of liquid radioactive waste a day from the tailings storage facility through decades of mining up to 2050.

The Federal and SA governments agreed to surface dumping of the tailings rather than to require best practice disposal into the pit.

They agreed that the company does not have to rehabilitate the proposed one kilometre deep pit that will be left to form a hyper-saline contaminated lake of some 350 m in deep as a permanent scar on the landscape. Some 3.5 million litres a day of saline groundwater will be lost to the pit in perpetuity as it cuts through the local aquifers.

The world’s largest and richest mining company has been allowed to avoid paying for environment protection measures and mine rehabilitation costs of some many hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Federal government gave election policy commitments that they have failed to deliver:

“Labor will accordingly only allow the mining of uranium under the most stringent conditions”

And: ”Ensure that Australian uranium mining, milling and rehabilitation is based on world’s best practice standards”.

How did the SA government perform in exercising their responsibilities after Fukashima?

Indigenous people bear a disproportionate burden of impacts from uranium mining and this will certainly continue to be the case in SA under the Roxby Indenture deal ‘negotiated’ by the State with BHP Billiton that is being pushed through Parliament with bi-partisan support.

BHP Billiton is not bound by the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1988 in the “Stuart Shelf Area” of some 1.5 per cent of the area of SA around the Olympic Dam mine.

Aboriginal heritage obligations that apply to every other miner or developer do not apply to the Big Australian for the 70 year extended period of the Roxby Indenture, and the State further agreed that this can only be changed in future with the agreement of the company.

In response to a question by Mark Parnell, Greens MLC in the Legislative Council, a Minister acknowledged that:
“I have been advised that BHP insisted that the current arrangements continue and they were not prepared to consider changes to that…and the government did not consult further than that.”

Olympic Dam has an option to produce and trade in copper and gold and leave the uranium and the rest of the radioactive wastes at the mine site and not fuel further nuclear risks around the world.

The State owns the minerals but choose to approve a project that seeks to lock in uranium sales.

In 2007 BHP Billiton proposed a switch from processing a copper product on the mine site, as has been the case at Roxby since 1988, to the new open pit mine producing a uranium-infused bulk copper concentrate for direct sale to China.

This precedent sale of uranium in concentrates is not sanctioned under any of Australia’s nuclear treaties and bilateral uranium sales agreements and BHP Billiton’s plans requires a new or amended nuclear treaty with China that would further undermine our so called ‘nuclear safeguards’.

Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke signed off on the company’s plans and granted approvals to the proposed infrastructure, processing and transport for this uranium-infused bulk copper concentrate, pre-empting the negotiation and signing of a nuclear treaty, its presentation to the Federal Parliament and a required Inquiry by the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, and a subsequent decision on whether to Ratify, to amend or to reject the treaty.

Commercial vested interests of uranium mining companies are writing the script for Australia’s uranium sales deals under both Liberal and now ALP Federal government’s.

Now the Prime Minister Julia Gillard wants to write down Australia’s commitments to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (the NPT) to sell uranium to India – locked in a nuclear arms race with Pakistan and facing the rise of nuclear terrorism.

India has an ongoing nuclear weapons program, has failed to sign the CTBT and reserves a right to further test nuclear weapons, and it’s so called civilian nuclear sector has extensive military links.

A nuclear deal with India would suit BHP Billiton’s interests in potentially providing a second market country for the uranium-infused bulk copper concentrate from their proposed new open pit mine, and to allow them to lay off some of the increased uranium yellowcake production from the pit onto one of very few remaining potential nuclear markets in the shadow of Fukashima.

The illusion of protection in uranium sales will further unravel as the book keeping exercise in ASNO’s so called ‘nuclear safeguards’ may fail to track uranium in concentrates in non-transparent China, as the developing world struggles with nuclear risks that Japan was unable to contain, and as Australian uranium continues to fuel nuclear insecurity across the world.

It does take some five to six years to dig the pit just to reach the radioactive ore at Roxby.

South Australia should come to its senses and recognise our society’s responsibilities to get out of the uranium trade and not be made complicit in nuclear risks for BHP Billiton’s vested interests.

Dr Gondarra is a Senior Elder from Elcho Island.

This message was screened in Sydney on Saturday December 3, at a meeting hosted by the CFMEU Indigenous Committee, “The Case Against the NT Intervention”.

The meetings was part of the official Fringe program of the ALP national conference, but ignored by the government. So the struggle must be continued.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrEWMHTvexY

‘A report published today by the public education advocacy group, Save Our Schools, finds that two voucher models of school funding proposed to the Gonski Review would deliver billions of dollars in additional funding for private schools and no increases for government schools.

Trevor Cobbold, author of the report and national convenor of SOS, said the proposals would provide an outlandish funding bonanza for private schools and should be rejected by the Review.

“The two models would give a massive boost in government funding to private schools over their actual funding in 2009. The voucher model proposed by Independent Schools Victoria (ISV) would deliver an additional $3.3 billion a year – $1.8 billion to Independent schools and $1.5 billion to Catholic schools.

“The model proposed by the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) would provide an additional $2.5 billion a year – $1.6 billion to Catholic schools and $0.9 billion to Independent schools.

“At best, government schools get no increased funding and, at worst, a massive reduction. The ISV model would strip $2.5 billion from government schools.”

Mr. Cobbold said that the report shows that the biggest funding increases would go to the wealthiest Independent schools.

“It is a case of sheer greed and naked self-interest. Overall, 80 of the wealthiest private schools in Australia would collect $970 million in base funding a year under the ISV model compared to $380 million in total government funding in 2009.

“The ISV model would give 21 elite NSW Independent schools a funding increase of $191 million a year, or 207%, over their actual government funding in 2009.

This includes an increase of 337% for Scots College, 313% for SCEGGS Redlands, 286% for Ascham, 269% for Cranbrook, and 257% for Sydney Grammar. Over 80% of students at the 21 schools are from the highest SES quartile and only 1% is from the lowest SES quartile.

“In Victoria, 21 elite Independent schools would get an increase of $174 million a year, an increase of 204% over their actual government funding in 2009. Funding per student for St. Catherine‟s would increase by 374%, Lauriston by 308%, Korowa by 291%, Melbourne Grammar by 278%, and Scotch College by 273%. Eighty per cent of students at the 21 schools are from the highest SES quartile and only 1% is from the lowest SES quartile.

“The CIS model would also deliver a funding bonanza to the wealthiest schools. Independent schools with fees over $5,000 will receive a total of $1.8 billion a year in base funding while similar Catholic schools will get $0.5 billion.”

“The CIS concedes that “some independent schools clearly do not „need‟ public funding” and that “it is difficult to justify providing extra public funds to already well-resourced students and schools”.

However, it then proposes to give them over $2 billion a year in additional government funding.”

Mr. Cobbold said that these massive increases in government funding would give private schools a huge resource advantage over government schools.

“Under the ISV model, total resources (from private and government sources) per student in Independent schools will be nearly double that of government schools while that of Catholic schools will be 30% higher.

Total resources in Independent schools will be $19,609 per student and $13,511 in Catholic schools compared to $10,467 in government schools.

“Under the CIS model, total resources for Independent schools will be $17,847 per student and $13,706 in Catholic schools compared to $11,448 in government schools.

“Such huge resource advantages for schools which have much lower proportions of students from low income families than government schools can only exacerbate inequity in education.

Massive funding increases would go to higher SES students in private schools rather than those most in need, the vast majority of who are in government schools.

“Even the author of the CIS model concedes that voucher models are “extraordinarily expensive” and “would require billions of dollars of additional public expenditure”.

These billions would be far better and more efficiently spent on reducing the massive achievement gap between rich and poor in Australia.

“The Gonski Review stated repeatedly that its focus is on improving equity in education. Given this, it has no alternative but to reject these models as the basis for the future funding of Australian schools.”

5 December 2011

Contact:
Trevor Cobbold – 0410 121 640 (m)
Summary charts and funding examples from other states available.

SOS – Fighting for Equity in Education

http://www.saveourschools.com.au

18 November 2011: The UN’s International Labour Organisation has issued a strong condemnation of Fiji’s military Junta over severe violations of labour rights.

The ILO’s Committee on Freedom of Association described the situation there as “extremely serious” and requiring urgent attention.

The ruling follows the arrests of Daniel Urai, President of the national trade union centre FTUC on October 29 and Felix Anthony, the organisation’s General Secretary, on 5 November.

Worker representatives have also been subjected to a campaign of harassment, intimidation and physical beatings.

“Fiji’s military rulers are turning the country into an absolute dictatorship, and seem determined to destroy the trade unions as part of their strategy to crush any dissent and eliminate the legitimate voice of civil society,” said ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow.

“The rulers must turn back from this destructive path, and allow Fiji to return to democracy.”

The arrests of Urai and Anthony and the travel bans placed on them, have been linked to union opposition to a recent “essential services decree” which eliminates the right to trade union representation for a large part of Fiji’s workforce.

The decree, written for the military regime by a US law firm, takes away collective bargaining rights for many workers, imposes heavy restrictions on those elected to union leadership positions and removes the right to strike and minimum wages for all the sectors it covers.

“The ITUC and its international trade union partners will be ramping up action against the Fiji junta’s plan to destroy workers’ rights, and is calling on all governments to put maximum pressure on the military rulers,” said Burrow.

http://www.ituc-csi.org/ilo-condemns-fiji-junta-over.html

Speech outside Parliament House, Canberra, Thursday, 17 November 2011
by Humphrey McQueen.

Ten years ago, we were told that we were going to chose who came here. Today, we are exercising that choice by protesting at the arrival of the war and economic criminal Obama. In saying that he and his gang are not welcome we are not turning our backs on the people of the United States. On the contrary, we stand in solidarity with them against the forces that oppress and exploit them and peoples across the globe.

Let’s apply the policy of choosing who can come here to the Obama entourage. Some 600 security agents are here to protect him, presumably from assassination. That number is an insult to Australians. Whatever is wrong with our public life we are not yet subject to the ravings that infect US politics, even though its shock-jock lunacies are being imported. But let’s think more about Obama’s guardians. What is their background? What checks have been made to ensure that none have been CIA kidnappers, torturers and assassins? Who better to protect you against assassination than your own trained assassins?

Refugees are held in detention until ASIO has given them a security clearance. Some suffer behind razor wire for years. Obama’s security team flies in without so much as a by your leave. Their names are state secrets. They get a blanket clearance. Perhaps that is just as well.

Imagine the fate of anyone who tried to serve an arrest warrant on Obama or any one of his minders. Such people are not welcome. If anyone should be detained until we have checked their criminal status, it is these state terrorists.
To make it clearer why they are not welcome, we can indicate some of the US Americans who we do welcome. In running through the reasons for opening our borders to them, we shall see more clearly why Obama is the enemy of us all.

Before explaining who is welcome and why, we must acknowledge that choosing who could come here, or to the Americas or Africa, was not a choice that the invaders gave to indigenous peoples.

Colonisers resorted to force and practiced genocide. Their impacts continue. All that has changed is the scale and methods of dispossession. Hence, we acknowledge the traditional owners. Who will give Obama a welcome to country?

Looking back to the early years of the invasion of this continent who might the original occupants have welcomed? One group was from the US of A but could not be citizens there because they were runaway slaves. Many US citizens helped them to move north to Canada. We hope that the settlers here who opposed the transportation of convicts would have provided sanctuary for those fugitives.
In like manner, we recall the ‘terrorist’ John Brown who raided Harper’s Ferry in 1859 to set up a non-slave republic. His soul is more than welcome to go marching on through Australia.

Of course, the regime of terror for Afro-Americans did not end with their legal emancipation after the Civil War. The spirit of our protest welcomes the ex-slaves and their descendants escaping from Jim Crow Laws and the lynchings that ruled beyond the old South into the 1970s.
Since then there have been judicial lynchings. In September, Georgia executed Troy Davis although the case against him was unsound. Davis joins the hundreds of those executed wrongly. They were convicted because they were poor, black and had been ill-educated. We welcome a humanitarian intervention in the US of A to put an end to this systemic injustice grounded in class and race.

Reverting to the nineteenth century, it is easy to imagine the welcome that the diggers at Eureka gave to the 200-strong Independent Californian Rangers’ Revolver Brigade in 1854. The warmth of that welcome from other miners extended to the Melbourne jury who acquitted the first of the rebels brought to trial, the Afro-American John Josephs, whom the crowd carried through the streets.

Labor leaders

Since Obama’s electoral base is in Chicago, let’s ask which past and present residents of that city would we most like to have with us today.

A police attack on a labor rally in the city’s Haymarket in 1886 led to May Day’s becoming the international celebration of the working class movement. The Pullman rail strike was centred there in 1894. One of its leaders, the Socialist presidential candidate, Eugene Debs, spent time in prison for organising that and other strikes. He later went to jail for his anti-war activities.

The first English translation of Marx’s Capital came from Chicago, as did Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle (1906) about the horrors of working in a meat-packing works. Also from Chicago came the Industrial Workers of the World, known as the Wobblies. They contributed to the fighting strength of Australia’s working class, and were also at the forefront of anti-war movement here to oppose conscription for the slaughter at Gallipoli and on the Western Front.

After one US Wobbly, Joe Hill, was executed in Utah in 1915, his fellow workers sent packets of his ashes around the world, including to Sydney. We welcome every chance to breath life into his ashes, along with the Haymarket martyrs, Debs, Sinclair and all the Wobblies.

From Chicago today we welcome the late community activist Saul Alinsky. Obama stole his methods of organising – ‘Rules for Radicals’ – so that Wall Street could continue to occupy the White House..

As his chief economic advisor, he appointed the man who had de-regulated the financial system, Larry Scum-mers.

As Secretary of the Treasury he appointed Timothy Giethner who presided over Wall Street during its wildest speculations and swindles. Hence, we welcome the US documentary Inside Job which exposes their crimes, as we do the work of Michael Moore.

We also welcome all those involved in the Occupy Wall Street upsurge.

We welcome the Wisconsin teachers and students who initiated the fight-back against the latest attacks on the ability of working people to organise.

These twin movements challenge the resentful rhetoric of the Tea Party. Unlike that body, the occupiers are not in the pay of the plutocracy that dominates US politics and whose power and privileges Obama serves.

Mark Twain
Many of the profoundest critics of the serial criminality of US capitalism are and always have been its own citizens.

Mark Twain was the quintessential voice of US American literature. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn continue to provide models for US fiction. No one could be more ‘American’, yet he has been portrayed as ‘Un-American’. The reason is simple: he condemned the US take-over of the Philippines. Today, we hear about ‘humanitarian interventions. In 1898, the Marines landed to ‘liberate’ the locals from the tyranny of their Spanish colonisers. The US forces soon turned their guns on the independence fighters. In 1900, Twain joined the Anti-Imperialist League, declaring:
I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.
He recognised that
we do not intend to free, but to subjugate … We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem

The general order to ‘kill or capture’ became a policy of indiscriminate slaughter. Twain called the US troops ‘Christian butchers’.
Twain had been welcomed when he lectured throughout Australia in 1896. Today, we welcome the lessons he learned about US Imperialism.

Similarly, we have just welcomed a contemporary US citizen, Noam Chomsky, with the Sydney Peace Prize.

Part of Chomsky’s message is that Obama is more dangerous than Bush because he is still able to get away with crimes that were seen as such under Bush. With Bush, the person and the policy were recognised as one.

Obama emerged behind a smokescreen of hope. Bob Brown says he wont protest this time because Obama is ‘wiser, more astute’ than Bush. Sure he is. He is astute enough to sucker Brown.

We extend a welcome to Ralph Nader to return. His Unsafe at any speed sparked the consumer fightback against the auto industry. Never has he compromised with the corporates or with the Democratic machine.

Workers on the Sydney opera house in 1960 went wild when Paul Robeson sang to them. When Pete and Peggy Seeger toured in 1960, the Courier-Mail refused to accept advertisements for their Brisbane concert which nonetheless overfilled the City Hall. We look forward to a tour by Dixie Chicks whose songs were put off the air in 2003 after they told a London audience that they were ashamed to have had George Bush as their governor in Texas. We welcome the successes that their music has had since.

Offers of asylum

Harry Bridges was the Australian-born leader of the West Coast Longshoremen’s Union. The FBI spent decades trying to deport Harry to Australia. As much as we would have welcomed Harry home we rejoice in the success that his members had in keeping him there as a fighter against exploitation.

We will also welcome back non-violent resister Scott Parkin who was deported this time last year. We will welcome home Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, despite Killard’s determination to throw him to the coyotes. We offer asylum to Corporal Bradley Manning.

Today

On top of this liturgy of crimes, there are two new reasons for not welcoming Obama. The first is military and the second is economic, though they are inseparable.

The Darwin base is the base that you have when you are not having a foreign base. The US Marines and bombers are not welcome. Neither are the bases at Pine Gap and Norunga. We are told that those bases are now under Australian control.

In truth, they are managed by Australians who work as agents of a foreign power. That arrangement was put in place in the 1980s by the most significant agent of US influence in our history, R J Hawke. His successors in the trade of selling us out range from Senator Mark Ahbib to Carr and Beasley to Killard.

The other source for alarm is the Pacific Partnership on so-called free trade. Smell the spin-doctors at work with the use of ‘partnership’. What that weasel word means is more domination and control by global corporations. Two aspects are of particular importance.

The first concerns our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Big Pharma wants open slather for their most expensive drugs.

The consequentual cost blow-out will undermine our subsidised system. It will open the way to the abolition of Medicare as an impediment to profit-taking by the corporations that oppose even the modest system of health care proposed by Obama.

The second concern is with the Australian content provisions of the television licensing system. Hollywood executives see those regulations as a restraint on trade. They need to dump more of their programs here. The more networks that have to buy from Hollywood, the more they profit. Of course, the current laws are observed in the breech more than the observance. The media corporates fill up the hours with reality TV and other trivial pursuits. When they do make dramas they mimic Hollywood models.
Why is this latest piece of cultural imperialism important? One reason is to keep jobs here for writers, actors and technicians. But a larger question ties back to the military bases. If we grow up thinking that all music and movies come from somewhere else, we are being indoctrinated to accept that that somewhere else must know best for us on far more than entertainment. The claim is not that Australian screen culture is the best in the world. The point is that we need our own second-rate stuff. We need our own day-dreams. Without them, we are more susceptible to accepting military bases and trade deals that open the door to plunder. To occupy our imaginations is what the Pentagon calls soft power.

How best can we help those from Wisconsin to Wall Street? The way we can help US working families who are also victims of US monopolisers is to weaken their grip on the one part of the world over which we as Australians can have some influence.

Only the people of the US can destroy US Imperialism. We cannot do that for them anymore than they can free our lives from domination by the US military-industrial-congressional-academic complex.
The US rebels at Eureka pledged to stand truly by each other. Our presence here today renews that pledge among our fellow Australian workers and to the millions of US citizens who are stirring against the monopolising capitalists. The unity that counts is unity in action.

The more we Australians act in unison, the more we shall realise that the fault is not in the Stars and Stripes, but in our own politics, if we remain underlinings.

Humphrey McQueen is a labour historian and his new book on the history of
the Builders’ Labourers Federation
‘We Built This City” 2011
has just been published – see earlier a post on this blog.

Read also
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_does_obama_suddenly_want_a_war_with_china_20111122/

On this day we are asking people to take a few moments to send a message to the head of the federal funding review about the importance of investing more in public schools.

It’s your last chance to have a say before the education review finishes next month.
http://www.forourfuture.org.au/

by Frank Stillwell

The system of taxation needs to focus on assets, not merely on incomes and expenditures. It is asset price inflation that has been a major element in growing inequalities of wealth in Australia, particularly during the last two decades.

Ownership of landed property has been central to this process, land being outstandingly the largest component form of asset holdings in this country.

Land is a natural asset which is essential for all socioeconomic activities, but its private ownership gives rise to uneven wealth distribution between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ and a corresponding array of social problems.

Particular biases arise where the taxation arrangements give preferential treatment to ownership of this asset, as has been the case in Australia.

Landowners capture unearned income at the expense of the rest of the community. They benefit from rising land values that are, typically, the product of societal processes. For example, residential and commercial land values usually increase when new public infrastructure is built nearby.

Landowners can receive particularly large windfall capital gains when their land is rezoned to allow more intense development.

Yet more fundamentally, the driving force causing higher land values, particularly in urban areas, is the nature of the urban growth process itself.

While demand for sites for residential or commercial activities is continually growing, the supply remains relatively fixed, so the result is a long-run tendency for inflation in land values.

Without adequate taxation on land to recoup this social dividend, the rising land values resulting from the community’s productive efforts add to existing landowners’ wealth, while those unable to afford land are further excluded from the market.

These processes are a major contributor to economic inequality. They are also largely responsible for the stresses of housing affordability, given that land is usually the largest component in housing prices. They have a dubious ethical basis too: those fortunate enough to have owned land in desirable areas capture the economic surplus at the expense of those making productive contributions to its creation, and at the expense of future generations saddled with higher prices for access to urban land and housing.

The case for using land tax to counter these adverse features of property markets is well established, particularly by proponents of the economic analysis and policies pioneered by Henry George.

The Henry Review acknowledges the advantageous features of land taxation.

Economists – not renowned for their unanimity on other matters – almost invariably emphasise the relative efficiency of land taxes relative to stamp duties payable on property transfers. Levied on the site value of the land, annual land tax liabilities create a disincentive for hoarding unused land and a means of stabilising land prices by reducing the attraction of real estate for speculative investment.

In the absence of comprehensive land taxation, the other existing taxes – mainly on individual incomes, company profits and consumer expenditures – tend not to keep up with the growth of the economic surplus captured by landowners.

Each of the State governments and the government of the Australian Capital Territory already levy a land tax, but land used for owner-occupied housing is exempted in all cases.

Local government rates are also, in effect, land taxes because they are usually levied on the unimproved capital value of properties, although the form of these rates varies considerably from locality to locality.

These forms of land tax are well established, albeit rather marginal to the principal sources of revenue that the Commonwealth currently commands.

To be more efficient and effective, a land tax would need to be uniform nationwide. This would prevent property speculators from simply shifting their investments inter-State to reduce their land tax liabilities.

One reform option would be to replace the current array of State and Territory land taxes and local government rates with a nationally uniform land tax scheme.

Such a scheme could be linked to a reform of local government finance. Replacing the existing local government rates with an apportionment to local governments from a nationally uniform land tax could potentially be an economically efficient – and electorally attractive – reform.

More comprehensively, the introduction of a nationally uniform land tax scheme could be linked to development of a system of regional government.

This could provide an institutional and fiscal basis for more balanced regional development.

In general land tax can be expected to generate more revenue per hectare from those regions where land price inflation is most pronounced.

Because the land tax liabilities tend to be higher in metropolitan areas than non-metropolitan areas, particularly rural areas, this would tend to encourage regional decentralisation of population and industry. That tendency would be further accentuated if additional revenue from a more comprehensive system of land taxation were used for regional redistribution, such as financing better infrastructure and services in non-metropolitan areas, thereby linking tax reform with regional policy. Using land tax revenue to substantially expand the supply of public housing is another means of directly linking the policy to the redress of economic and social stresses in the housing market.

Clearly, the case for uniform land taxation involves all levels of government – Commonwealth, State, Territory and local – so consultation and cooperation between all the affected parties would be necessary to secure broad agreement on the features of the reform. It was presumably too much to expect the current Tax Forum to wholeheartedly embrace this grand project.

But the longer the reform is deferred the more problematic become the inefficiencies, inequalities and housing affordability problems that result from the inadequacy of the current land tax arrangements.

from ACTU

Submissions will open today for Australia’s first formal investigation into the rise of insecure work and its effect on families and communities.

Workers will have the opportunity to share their stories about the impact of casual, labour hire and contract employment alongside community groups, unions and employers in a new national independent inquiry to investigate the extent of insecure work in Australia.

The Independent Inquiry into Insecure Work has been commissioned by the ACTU to analyse the increase in casual, contract, labour hire and other forms of insecure work in Australia over recent decades, and the impact it has on workplace rights, household finances, and wider society.

ACTU President Ged Kearney said insecure work made up about 40% of the workforce and many Australians were being asked to choose between insecure employment or no work at all.

The inquiry is being chaired by former Deputy Prime Minister Brian Howe, with Paul Munro, a former Senior Presidential Member of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, as deputy chair.

“Casual employment alone has almost doubled in 25 years,” Ms Kearney said.

“More and more families are having to pay housing costs and other bills without knowing what their income will be from week to week,” Ms Kearney said.

“Workers have told us that insecure work is making it harder to manage household finances, spend time with their family and friends, and to plan for the future. More and more risk is being shifted from employers to workers.

“This Inquiry will shine a light on the situation of insecure workers in Australia, and work out what government, employers and unions should be doing to help them.”

Ms Kearney said the inquiry panel would be required to prepare a report and recommendations for the ACTU Congress in May next year.

Submissions can be lodged from today until 16 December, and the Inquiry will hold public hearings across Australian in February and March next year.

Ms Kearney said that she wanted all voices represented in the Inquiry including workers, employers and community groups.

The full terms of reference and more details about the inquiry are available at www.securejobs.org.au or by phoning 1300 362 223 (toll free).

yraw voting-badge