21 C
Byron Shire
April 25, 2024

Tax churches, legalise weed, balance budget

Latest News

Police out in force over the ANZAC Day weekend with double demerit points

Anzac Day memorials and events are being held around the country and many people have decided to couple this with a long weekend. 

Other News

Foodie road-trip paradise: Harvest Food Trail

Calling all food and farm enthusiasts, the iconic Harvest Food Trail is happening soon, over four days from May...

It’s MardiGrass!

This year is Nimbins 32nd annual MardiGrass and you’d reckon by now ‘weed’ be left alone. The same helicopter raids, the disgusting, and completely unfair, saliva testing of drivers, and we’re still not allowed to grow our own plants. We can all access legal buds via a doctor, most of it imported from Canada, but we can’t grow our own. There’s something very wrong there.

Flood insurance inquiry’s North Coast hearings 

A public hearing into insurers’ responses to the 2022 flood was held in Lismore last Thursday, with one local insurance brokerage business owner describing the compact that exists between insurers and society as ‘broken’. 

Byron Bay takes second at NSW grade three regional bowls championships

Pam Scarborough Byron Bay’s district winning, grade three pennants bowl team knew they had stepped up a grade when they...

Blaming Queensland again

I was astounded to read Mandy Nolan’s article ‘Why The Nude Beach Is A Wicked Problem’, in which she...

Try-fest for Byron Bay in local league

The Byron Bay A-grader league players left the Clarence Valley on Saturday afternoon after scoring 11 tries on their...

The Australian Sex Party yesterday put forward a $5 billion budget plan that does not involve increasing taxes on working families and small businesses.

Sex Party President and Victorian Senate candidate, Fiona Patten, said that Australia needed a new broom to sweep away decades of conditioned thinking on funding budgets and that new streams of finance lay just beneath the surface of the nation’s economy, like hidden seams of gold.

She called on both major parties to implement taxation and regulation of marijuana in Australia and said that later in the campaign she would reveal costings and revenue forecasts for a regulatory scheme that would raise over $2 billion a year in tax revenue.

‘The US states of Colorado and Washington have recently taxed and regulated marijuana to their great benefit’, she said. ‘Uruguay has also recognised the benefits of this scheme and has started the same process.’

Ms Patten said she would also reveal details of a scheme to tax religious institutions in Australia that would net a bare minimum of $3 billion dollars in its first year, rising to $10 billion.

’A conservative estimate is that income tax exemptions alone to churches and religious organisations cost taxpayers nearly $20 billion a year. Add to that GST concessions, exemptions from capital gains tax (on property and share trading), the Fringe Benefits Tax Exemption and the cost to tax payers is staggering.’

’We need to do away with the old fashioned notion that religious businesses shouldn’t pay their fair share of taxation, just because they claim to be advancing the cause of religion’, she said. ‘Religion is on the nose and being examined by a Royal Commission. People are asking how can institutions like this get away without paying tax like everyone else has to. This will be a popular tax’.

 


Support The Echo

Keeping the community together and the community voice loud and clear is what The Echo is about. More than ever we need your help to keep this voice alive and thriving in the community.

Like all businesses we are struggling to keep food on the table of all our local and hard working journalists, artists, sales, delivery and drudges who keep the news coming out to you both in the newspaper and online. If you can spare a few dollars a week – or maybe more – we would appreciate all the support you are able to give to keep the voice of independent, local journalism alive.

2 COMMENTS

  1. I understand that this Party will be giving its preferences in the Senate to the Shooters and Fishers party- an ultra right party, whose policies appear totally contrary to the policies of this Party. This party needs to clarify this issue. If this is the case, then it highlights the problems with these new micro parties, who tout certain policies then do strange deals with preferences to favour parties at the opposite end of spectrum. I wonder if the members and supporters of such micro parties are aware of such strange deals which would appear to be contradictory to to the aims and aspirations of their supporters and members.

  2. The situation with marijuana is the same as for any banned substance. It becomes more valuable. When you ban something to a child what does he hanker for??
    Adults are no different. During WW2 some things were banned and some were rationed. They were almost readily available on the ‘black market’.
    the organised crime running the gauntlets of government inspectors would have the values torn form them if the stuff was legalized and taxed. Not only would this reap a huge tax bundle but would save millions in inspectors salaries and expenses.
    There is no need for church properties to be exempt from taxation. It could be on reduced scale, but they should pay something,
    While I am on tax, the simplest and most effective taxation system is 1.5c on every dollar that moves, with NO exemptions.
    The great stopper for this is that the rich will then pay taxes, which they do not do now, and 60% of the ATO staff would be redundant.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Child protection workers walk off the job in Lismore

Lismore and Ballina child protection caseworkers stopped work to protest outside the defunct Community Services Centre in Lismore yesterday after two years of working without an office. They have been joined by Ballina child protection caseworkers who had their office shut in January.

Youth crime is increasing – what to do?

There is something strange going on with youth crime in rural and regional Australia. Normally, I treat hysterical rising delinquency claims with a pinch of salt – explicable by an increase in police numbers, or a headline-chasing tabloid, or a right-wing politician. 

Coffs Harbour man charged for alleged online grooming of young girl

Sex Crimes Squad detectives have charged a Coffs Harbour man for alleged online grooming offences under Strike Force Trawler.

Anzac Day memorials 2024

From the early hours of this morning people gathered to acknowledge the sacrifice of lives, families and communities have made in the name of war and keeping peace. Across the Northern Rivers events will continue today as we acknowledge the cost of war.