Anthony Albanese defends negative gearing as he shuts down internal debate over housing

An intelligent Leftist. Chasing away landlords during a housing shortage would be evil. How sad that Julijana Todorovic is a representative of Labor’s housing group but is a total emptyhead

Anthony Albanese has hosed down suggestions Labor will curtail tax breaks for Australians who own investment properties — at least before the next election.

The Prime Minister attempted to shut down debate within the party over its housing policies on Tuesday, saying the government’s position on housing tax concessions hadn’t changed from the policy platform Labor took to the election last May.

He made the remarks after Nine newspapers reported Labor is facing a strong internal push to come up with more ambitious housing policies including revisiting negative gearing in an effort to prevent distortion of the property market.

Julijana Todorovic, a representative of Labor’s housing group, is reportedly pushing for negative gearing to be capped at one investment property and to classify housing as a basic human right at the party’s next national conference.

Mr Albanese, who owns three properties, including his home in Sydney’s Marrickville and an investment property in nearby Dulwich Hill, downplayed the significance of the report.

“It says there will be a policy debate at ALP national conference. Ho-hum. There are policy debates about everything,” he said. “The government’s position is very clear and it’s a position for which we received a mandate at the 2022 election and I’m someone who honours the commitments that we made.”

Mr Albanese rattled off a number of Labor’s policies aimed at increasing housing affordability and supply, including its plans to create the $10bn Housing Australia Future Fund investment vehicle.

The HAFF’s passage through parliament has stalled as the Greens wield their balance of power position in the Senate to make a number of demands on the legislation including better protections for renters.

Later on Tuesday, Peter Dutton went on the attack as he launched a spirited defence of negative gearing and suggested Labor was going to hurt “mum and dad” investors.

The Opposition Leader, who also boasts a tidy property portfolio, told reporters: “If you don’t have investment properties, renters don’t have accommodation to rent. Let’s be clear about it”.

“For mums and dads who save and, as part of their retirement income, put some money aside and buy a rental property, they rent it out and that’s supplementing their income,” he said.

“Particularly for people that don’t have a big superannuation balance, that is a perfectly legitimate investment for them to make.”

The current negative gearing arrangements allow people to engineer a loss on an unlimited number of investment properties and then claim it as a tax deduction.

Critics have long argued Australia’s unusually generous tax concessions for investment in rental properties unfairly benefit wealthy people and drives up the price of housing.

But previous plans to change these tax benefits have proved politically dicey, given both major parties’ desire to woo multiple property-owning voters who might swing between the Coalition and Labor.

In 2021, Labor dumped former leader Bill Shorten’s policies of limiting negative gearing to new properties only and halving the 50 per cent capital gains tax deduction after voters rejected the party at the 2019 and 2016 elections.

Anglicare executive director Kasy Chambers took aim at successive federal governments’ approach to property tax concessions in her National Press Club address later on Tuesday.

“Where we used to spend money directly on building houses, we’ve shifted that expenditure into Commonwealth Rent Assistance, negative gearing, and capital gains tax concessions,” she said.

“And we now spend more commonwealth dollars per capita on those three payments than we ever did, and yet housing affordability has never been lower.”

https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/anthony-albanese-defends-negative-gearing-as-he-shuts-down-internal-debate-over-housing/news-story/47c31f2cbc2489007f789f18de13bd99

************************************************

All of a sudden, ivermectin is safe again

Julie Sladden

Has anyone else noticed a pattern around the Covid-related restrictions of the past three years?

Each infringement felt like a wave crashing on the shore of Australian freedoms, which, after a while, would quietly recede into the background with little fanfare, media, or attention. So it was with the introduction of lockdowns, masks, and mandates.

No wonder we’ve all felt ‘at sea’.

On May 3, 2023, the TGA quietly announced it was removing the prescribing restrictions on ivermectin. These restrictions were imposed on September 10, 2021 in an effort to stop doctors prescribing the drug to treat Covid.

These original restrictions were described as an ‘extraordinary intervention’.

Ivermectin is an (actual) ‘safe and effective’ medication with decades of safety data and known side effects. Heck, it’s even on the World Health Organisation’s list of essential medications. At the time, ivermectin was being used by several countries around the world to treat Covid and several studies were in process of being conducted.

But why would the TGA restrict ivermectin? Good question. The reasons given for the amendment to the Poisons Standard include:

A rise in the number of off-label prescriptions of ivermectin.

A significant increase in personal importation of ivermectin into Australia.

Concern that people who had been prescribed ivermectin might believe themselves to be protected and therefore not get vaccinated.

Concern that ivermectin would come into short supply in Australia.

Ivermectin also has the potential to cause severe adverse events, particularly when taken in high doses; though oral ivermectin is generally well-tolerated at recommended doses.
Nowhere, back in September 2021, did the TGA say there had been a rise in serious adverse events associated with ivermectin. The closest the regulator came was stating a ‘potential’ to cause severe adverse events.

Hmm… So, if a therapeutic agent is restricted for ‘potentially’ causing serious adverse events, what happens when a therapeutic agent actually causes serious adverse events?

Let’s move on.

The concern that ivermectin would come into short supply is perplexing. As an ‘off-patent’ drug, ivermectin is incredibly cheap to make (around 55 US cents per course of treatment) and widely available. As one commentator ponders, ‘If the TGA foresaw a potential shortage, why did no one in the Australian government think to phone an order through to Indiamart?’ Another good question.

In light of the above, the rise in number of off-label prescriptions of ivermectin and increase in personal importation is no reason to restrict a medication. These signals should be taken as an indication to investigate (why is it being used and what is the ‘front-line’ experience) and educate (regarding potential side effects). According to Dr Peter McCullough, ‘About two dozen countries have ivermectin as a first-line treatment for Covid in their government guidelines.’ They can’t all be wrong.

Furthermore, the increased prescription and importation heralds another consideration, something prohibition taught our friends across the Pacific: when you prohibit something the people want, you just drive it underground.

The reason that incited me most back in September 2021 was the ‘concern that people who had been prescribed ivermectin might … not get vaccinated’.

So, as the government funneled the Australian people down the ‘vaccine or bust’ pathway with mass coercion, an essentially safe and potentially significant therapeutic option was removed. This was done not because it was causing harm, but because it might stop people from getting the ‘experimental’ injection.

I find this outrageous.

Why? Because in a time of ‘unknowns’, the TGA put its weight behind an injection with minimal safety data over a medication with a known safety and therapeutic profile.

So, in what seems like a miracle, ivermectin is now deemed ‘safe’ again.

‘How can ivermectin go from being a toxic horse de-wormer in 2021 and then be declared to have a low safety risk in 2023?’ asks Pharmacologist and Drug Regulatory Affairs consultant Dr Philip Altman. Yet another good question.

In my opinion, the only reason a therapeutic agent like ivermectin, with a proven track record, should be restricted is a demonstrated safety signal that truly indicates the health of Australians is at risk. To do otherwise makes no sense to me.

Dr Philip Altman takes it further, ‘If the Australian TGA cannot tell the difference between a toxic horse deworming medicine and a potentially life-saving, widely used, essential safe medicine – they should not exist.’

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/all-of-a-sudden-ivermectin-is-safe-again/

****************************************************

Victorian schools add another activist event to the calendar

Victorian schools celebrating the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) set for May 18 prove, yet again, how successful the cultural-Left has been in taking a long march through the institutions.

These schools join a host of others drinking the Kool-Aid including libraries, local councils, universities, government departments, and banks like the NAB who are all willing to push neo-Marxist-inspired radical gender theory.

Schools are no longer places where students are taught to master the basics and where teachers introduce them to what the Victorian Blackburn Report describes as our ‘best validated knowledge and artistic achievements’.

Instead, when it comes to gender and sexuality, children as young as 5 are told that ‘love is love’, ‘everyone is special, just the way they are’, and that students should dress ‘up in rainbow colours in respect to the LGBTQ+ community’.

Even more concerning is one school’s invitation to a drag queen ‘to spend time in the library reading stories to children’. Drag queens perform regularly at LGBTQ+ functions, and this person advertises that they are willing to ‘bring colour and campness to any event’.

Celebrating IDAHOBIT day each year is just another example of the way students are taught gender and sexuality, instead of being biologically determined and God given, are social constructs where each child has the right to decide where they sit on the LGBTQ+ spectrum.

Since the inception of the Safe Schools in 2013, described by one of its designers as heralding a neo-Marxist revolution in gender and sexuality, students have been told Western societies like Australia are hetero-normative and guilty of promoting cis-genderism.

In school libraries children’s books like She’s My Dad and The Gender Fairy are increasingly common, gaining prominence based on the belief traditional stories like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella are no longer acceptable as they promote a romanticised, binary view of sexuality.

In primary schools, children are warned against using gender specific pronouns like ‘he’ and ‘she’ and kindergarten teachers are told children ‘have multiple and changing identities’ and must be taught about ‘identity formation that encompass gender identity and gender expression (with a non-binary dichotomy) and family diversity’.

In this brave new world, victimhood and identity politics prevail, and the fact the overwhelming majority of babies are born with either XX or XY chromosomes, is denied… Also denied is the majority of Australians who are happy to be men or women and that there is nothing inherently bad about heterosexuality.

While unfair discrimination is wrong as everyone, regardless of gender and sexuality, deserves respect and equal treatment, the reality is indoctrinating primary and secondary students with radical gender theory is an egregious example of schools failing in their duty of care.

Parents are their children’s primary educators and moral guardians and schools are wrong to indoctrinate students with radical gender ideology. Subverting the role of parents is especially unacceptable for those parents of religious faith who believe gender and sexuality are God given.

As written in the Bible, God created Adam and Eve and the sanctity of marriage is based on the belief men and women join for the purpose of procreation. In response to the argument gender and sexuality are two different things it is also the case the Catholic Church believes they are inseparable.

Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia argues ‘biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated’ and to ‘attempt to sunder what are inseparable aspects of reality’ is to be guilty of ‘trying to replace the Creator’.

One of the reasons Republican governors including Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Virginia’s Glen Youngkin are so electorally popular is because both support parents in their fight against radical gender theory. A lesson yet to be learned by the Opposition Leader John Pesutto and his leadership team in their cancelling of Moira Deeming.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/idahobit-victorian-schools-add-another-activist-event-to-the-calendar/ ?

************************************

The Voice is cackling on

Whoever said that the Voice would usher in a new era of reconciliation, unity and love was either excessively optimistic or a complete fool. Everywhere I look, I see division and disunity and it is all generated by the Voice. Not only is it generated by the Voice but by putting up a proposal that is unnecessary, half-baked and full of flaws, its advocates have made it one that will achieve nothing of value for Aboriginals and generate nothing for the country but further division. You only have to listen to the invective and denigration by Noel Pearson of anyone who disagrees with him to see how true that is.

The NSW Bar has already been divided by its decision to take a partisan position to become advocates for the Voice. Now, it is the turn of the Victorian Bar to be divided. Here, we are grappling with two rival proposals before us. The first is a proposal that the Voice is clearly a contentious political issue on which the Bar should not take a position of public advocacy for one side of the argument or the other. That is so because the Bar has always taken the view that it should be non-aligned on political issues and that its sole approach should be to ensure the proper administration of law and justice for the whole of society.

The second proposal is that the Bar should abandon this time-honoured position, support the Voice and publicly argue for its adoption at the referendum. If that proposal is passed, the Bar will no longer be independent, but a political body arguing for the fashionable cause.

You will notice that the Bar is not being offered a third choice that should be there, that it should not take a stand, but that if it does, it should argue for the No side. Here then, like a good lawyer, are my reasons why the Bar should not take an official position and why, if it does, it should support the No case.

First. Those who say that they support the Voice because they want the best for Aboriginals are being fooled and should look at just what the Voice entails. This objection has been put, and far more eloquently than I could express it, by Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price in the best argument against the Voice so far. If passed and it goes into the constitution, she argues, the Voice will be there forever; it is unthinkable that there could be another referendum to take it out. This means that Aboriginals are, and always will be, seen as so hopeless that they will never stand on their own feet and will forever need a government vehicle to prop them up, think for them and demand a never-ending series of government handouts to solve a never-ending list of grievances. This will give Aboriginal people nothing to look forward to but a life of misery and permanent dependence on the state.

Second. It is now beyond argument that the very existence of the Voice will divide us on lines of race. Only those who claim they are indigenous will have the right to vote for it, and only they will be allowed to take part in its activities. If that were being proposed for the old South Africa, we would be appalled by its effrontery. We should be similarly outraged when it is being proposed for our own country.

Third. The argument that the Voice would generate litigation every time it is not consulted and every time it does not get its own way, has now been won. Its own supporters not only acknowledge that litigation over advice from the Voice will be the result, but they expect it and welcome it.

Fourth. This inevitable torrent of litigation will upend the stable system of government that we have and that has made Australia one of the oldest functioning democracies. On any test it will be a rival government, not even elected by all Australians. It will expand its own jurisdiction as it claims that one after another area of government or commercial activity is a matter ‘relating to’ Aboriginals and therefore an area on which it can give its so-called advice to the parliament and the government.

Fifth. Moreover, this argument is not diminished by the Solicitor-General’s opinion but enhanced by it. The Solicitor-General said in the sanitised opinion we are allowed to see, that it would be ‘desirable’ for the government to consider advice from the Voice. If it is ‘desirable’, that is the first thing the courts will say gives them the justification to stop or delay decisions on which advice has been given, but not considered or to stop decisions being made until that advice has been sought and given. So much for our representative system of government where decisions are made by the elected government for all, and not just one segment of the community.

Six. The Voice proposal will not stop at setting up a talking shop for indigenous issues. The next step will be min-voices with all the trappings of the state, including the power to enter into treaties. Already, the proponents of the Voice are arguing that its establishment will link up with the new Victorian structure that has set up a train of inquiries, ‘truth telling’, treaties and, the next cab off the rank, reparations for the terrible burden of having to live in one of the most prosperous countries on earth.

I hope this charter makes it clear that this contentious issue should not be endorsed by a professional association like the Bar. But if the Bar decides that it should intervene, it should not rush to endorse the Voice. There are strong arguments against it and it is a lot to risk. Above all, the Voice will do nothing but turn Aboriginals into one tribe of a society based on race and guarantee their continued and soul-destroying dependence on the state.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/brown-study-271/

************************************************

Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

***************************************