the senate

[Rainbow Moonlight]

Should Labor be trying to find a double dissolution trigger? Would that be politically sensible?

[Hebe]

If they get any more legislation blocked - yes. Otherwise they're impotent and will be blamed for doing nothing, instead of doing things people don't like.

Or they could wait the three months and go for the combined vote, but that would cost them a lot of revenue, wouldn't it? How bloody stupid of Fielding to block that vehicle tax. If he's worried about farmers using them, he could have moved an amendment to accommodate bona fide users who really need them

Unless he did?? Update: Ah yes, he tried. What a wasted opportunity.

Let's see what the alcopops bring. If the Senate keeps blocking legislation, I think we're in for the DD.

[freediver]

The luxury vehicle tax was a bad idea.

[Rainbow Moonlight]

I think the luxury car tax is a good idea. Simple transport needs do not have to be met by a 57000 + vehicle.

[freediver]

That doesn't make a tax a good idea.

[Hebe]

The luxury vehicle tax was a bad idea.

Very convincing.

It was a great idea. Half of Tasmania's public servants are driving around in them, most of the doctors and all the private school mothers. Get the bloody gas-guzzlers off the roads.

[Aussie]

As you know, I run some Cabs. One of them is 77. A Ssang Yong. Seats me plus six. Cost = below $40,000.00.

I am there, every day, right among the traffic, taking my 'school kid' to and from school.

What am I most confronted with?

One huge four wheel drive, being driven by one Mum (it is always Mum) and one kid.

I would better define what should be grabbed by this tax.

[freediver]

Get the bloody gas-guzzlers off the roads.

That rational way to do that would be to tax fuel, not luxury cars, some of which are very efficient.

Taxing luxury items is bad economic policy and most economists will advise against it. This is because it tends to have a far stronger impact on the industry than other taxes. That is, you don't so much harm the people buying the goods, because they just buy some other luxury item instead - a luxury item being by definition something you don't really need. The people you do harm are the people who make the items. You send them out of business. A good tax policy targets taxes at those items whose production/consumption will be least affected by the tax. That is, you design the taxes so that the market looks as similar as possible to what a free market would look like in the absence of taxes. That is why the luxury car tax is vote grabbing nonsense. Both major parties actually understand this, which is why they only pull them out occasionally and on a limited basis - just enough to win the votes of a few people who don't understand economics, but are jelous of people with flash cars.

[Aussie]

That rational way to do that would be to tax fuel, not luxury cars, some of which are very efficient.

Yeah.....how do you do that....at the bowser?

[Oliver Nickezoff]

some of which are very efficient.

I'm pretty sure labor and the greens negotiated an amendment which excluded the expensive but very efficient models from the extra tax. That's what won greens support for it in the senate.