Forum
Mr. Findley’s notion that Australian industries have relocated overseas because of the payroll tax (“Ditch payroll tax”, CCN 257) is so outlandish that it is hard to know how to respond to it.
If there are any Australian companies that have relocated overseas (and Mr. Findley hasn’t named even one), they have done so for reasons a lot more complex than the avoidance of payroll tax.
Furthermore, the idea that Gough Whitlam (personally?) sold Australian industries (that he didn’t own and had no control over) to China, so that those industries could use cheap slave labour in their businesses (I challenge Mr. Findley to name one Australian company that uses cheap slave labour anywhere in the world) borders on the deranged.
I should also like to see the statistical evidence that 500,000 Australians emigrated to the UK in 1972: there has never been a year in history when 500,000 Australians (or a number anywhere near it) emigrated to the UK.
It is also notable that Mr. Findley refers to these fictional “Australian-born” (his words) citizens as “British return(ing) to their country of origin”, indicating that Mr. Findley needs some elementary education in both history and geography.
As a planner, I can only say that I wish I could run across one of his overseas developers so free with their largesse and I’d appreciate Mr. Findley’s introducing me to one of them, and, as for his statement that overseas developers only care about their own pockets, I wonder how many Australian developers he knows who have any different priority.
Australian developers are as rapacious as any I’ve met in other countries and, perhaps, get even more encouragement from our government than foreign companies get from theirs.
So, my plea would be that, when we go to the polls at the next election, rather than follow Mr. Findley’s advice, we exercise some common sense and stick with policies that have made the average Australian the wealthiest person in the world (according to the Credit Suisse Research Centre) and continually raise our rating on the Global Human Development Index.
Facts, not irresponsible ranting.
Email, Aug 30
B. Hyland, Woy Woy