willedoo

That's one thing the accountant told me which is a good concession. The two hectares doesn't have to be contiguous, so you can squeeze all the high value infrastructure in to the exempted area. I'm not up to date on whether you can still self value. I went through it with the accountant in 2021.

All Elon would have to do is saddle him up, pull the plug and the hot air would propel them all the way.

One of the few times you and I would agree Nev. The Courier Mail is a shocker. Go back 40 or 50 years ago and it was a fairly normal paper, but these days it's more like a trashy tabloid. One thing I'm not happy about is that almost all regional and local papers in Queensland are owned by Murdoch. That means you can't read them online without a subscription. In the google news feed for example, you might see a news headline from a different region and when you click on it, it's paywalled. I know media businesses have to make money, but getting a monopoly on local news can be a bit manipulative in my opinion.

I wonder how those countries with really low flat tax systems get their revenue. Hungary and Bulgaria have 10% flat tax. Maybe they have high resource earnings, and they might not spend as much on the population as we do. We get more annual revenue from excise on beer than we do from the petroleum resource rent tax, 2.7 billion to 1.5 billion. That sounds like a lot of beer, or a lot of tax on it.

Thanks Pete, I know well the two hectare ruling and have been through it all with accountants back when I was thinking of selling a few years ago. I was referring to the idea of taxing those under two hectares as well, which would make every suburban house up for CGT. That idea was floated recently by someone at the ANU but I haven't found any reference to Labor looking at the option. All I couldd find was some older stuff about the unrealised capital gain issue that was newsworthy a while back. With the CGT ruling on blocks over two hectares, I'd be happy if they bought in an exemption if you've lived there for more than twenty years, hadn't run a business on the property and used it as your primary residence. That should be proof enough that you're not an investor and speculator. They have that twenty year exemption for pension eligibility. No tax system is ever equal. If I sold here, I would be up for between 50 to 300 thousand in tax depending on some details. A mate just recently sold his farm for six million and didn't pay a cent of CGT because he owned it before the CGT introduction date.

Litespeed, just a suggestion, maybe tone down on the insults to posters you don't agree with and try posting on your position without playing the man. It's a bit disrespectful, and I've really noticed this forum getting quite toxic lately. Forumites can be polite and still disagree.

They're not rants, just long posts putting forward a lot of points that can't be squeezed into a one-liner like a lot of replies on the forum are. I've seen rants on this forum in the past but none with Jerry's signature. And to clear one thing up, I'm not defending Jerry because I'm pro Israel, I'm not. I'm not pro either side and personally couldn't give two hoots if both sides battled it out to the end, as long as they don't bring their hatred here to our country.

Well, I hope to stay here full term Marty. Getting rated off the place would be the only thing stopping me, but at the moment it's affordable. And it suits me not living like a king. I've got a lifestyle here kings could only dream about.

Can you provide some links to the articles? I haven't seen anything apart from that ANU bloke dreaming about it.

Specifically to get a bite from you Nev.

I haven't read a lot of news on the government plans, but haven't seen any reference to anybody thinking of introducing tax on the family home. The only reference I've seen to it is the daydreams of an ANU twit in this article: https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/4m-pensioners-how-australia-s-tax-system-subsidises-wealth-over-work-20260227-p5o666 I could originally read that article yesterday, but opening it now has the subscribers only block on it and turning javascript off doesn't unlock it. Maybe it only allows a free reading by one IP address once.

I doubt even each way Albo and co would be silly enough to levy CGT on the suburban home block. It would be political suicide. Most of the country would vote for whichever party vowed to reverse it. It would be like banning beer and television (some would say that would be a good thing).

People like myself get caught up in the CGT trap if we sell. I've owned my place for 38 years, principal place of residence only, no business ever run on the property. I'm just an age pensioner with the arse out of my pants but I would still be up for a minimum of $50,000 tax, possibly quite a lot more if I sold. When people talk about scrapping the 50% discount if you've owned the property more than 12 months, they think it's all rich investors involved. They are largely ignorant of the fact a lot of non rich ordinary people get caught in the net as well. People in glass houses are good at throwing stones but they'd squeal if they were no longer eligible for the CGT exemption on their suburban block. My big tax crime is that my block is bigger than two hectares and I bought it after 20th. September 1985. If you have more than two hectares, with the pension, you can get an asset test exemption if you've lived continuously on the property as principle residence for twenty years. They knocked me back on the first application due to me giving up work to look after my sick, elderly father for a while. I stayed at his place with him and gave centrelink that address for correspondence regarding the carer's pension I received. Because of that period, they used the angle that I didn't live at my place for twenty continuous years. I ended up putting in a stat dec saying I still considered my place principle residence during that period and gave evidence such as power and phone still connected, mail still delivered there and stuff like that. They ended up granting me a full pension, so fingers crossed they don't change their mind in the future.

The only similar experience I've had was not with the Greens, but with our local environment council which is an independent organisation. Back before the tree clearing laws came in, a landowner near me with a 20 acre block on the side of a hill got a dozer and cleared the lot, then got an excavator to terrace the whole block like rice paddies. It looked awful, like a giant rock quarry and could be seen for miles. Probably the worst eyesore I've ever seen in the district. I decided to let the environment council know without naming names, just to inform them of the type of thing the shire council was approving. I thought it might be in their interest. They were barely interested, and all they seemed interested in was shoving brochures and membership application forms in my face. I walked out of there fairly disgusted that all they seemed to want was membership money. I think it was probably individual staff on the day to blame rather than the whole organisation.

When the war finished they had a lot of Japanese held in pow type camps awaiting repatriation back to Japan. In a lot of them they didn't have allied soldiers guarding them, they were doing it themselves. One night my dad and his mate were returning back to camp from a local watering hole and walked past one of the camps. All hell broke loose, the sentry called the alarm and the camp commandant roused the whole camp of Japanese out of bed to form up on the parade ground. He got my dad and his mate who were full as a boot to inspect the troops. The old man said it was one of the craziest experiences he had over there, two private ranked Australians with the wobbly boot on walking up and down the Japanese ranks inspecting them. He told me they hammed it up a bit and did a fairly dodgy officer impersonation to give the commandant a bit of face.

Over time there seemed to be a lot of fairly solid evidence against him.

Getting off topic a bit here, but this photo of my dad and his platoon making their way up through Balikpapan was taken on the first day of the landings. The same day, another platoon in their company got strafed by a trigger happy American plane. Lucky nobody was killed but some were wounded. They were right out in the open as well, in clearly visible land just off the beach.

I'm sure the M-16 three shot burst setting was designed with US troops in mind, but I reckon a lot would have used auto a lot. Giving them an auto setting is a bit like giving a kid the keys to the lolly shop. When you see a lot of Vietnam footage of them firing, they seem to hugely misinterpret the concept of covering fire. Apparently they were a bit that way in WW2 as well, although they mostly had semi-autos there. My dad always used to say when he was up in the islands that they felt safer fighting the Japanese than they did being anywhere near the Americans.

I reckon the GE miniguns would account for a fair percentage of the total. They used them like whipper snippers.

The last federal election I voted for an independent. It was a choice of probably the pick of a fairly poor selection of candidates in our electorate. She didn't seem too bad compared to some of the others, and I think she might have had some connection with the teals. Labor never does any good there and it's a very safe Liberal seat. A big influence in the Liberal vote there is the demographics of the electorate. Heaps of small business people and tons of self funded retirees, many of them interstate migrants. The Greens always get around 10%, similar to a lot of electorates. The only time I can remember the seat not being Liberal was that brief period when Clive Palmer was our local federal member. From memory, I think he hardly ever showed up in parliament. A mate joined his party and went to a couple of meetings but left, like a lot of other people, once they realised what a dud Clive was. Just a lot of hot air.

I was just reading this article about inter and intra generational tax inequality. In the article the ANU Tax and Transfer Policy Institute director is calling for the primary residence family home to be taxed and included in asset testing to qualify for a pension. Note that he keeps referring to means testing, but I think he means asset testing. I don't think his idea would be too popular with pensioners. Under the current system the family home is exempt along with two hectares of land. For example, if you have a house on four hectares, two hectares of it is taken into account as assets. Under this bloke's plan, every pensioner living on a suburban block in town would be shafted. I can't see how any government would survive politically if they introduced a system like that. A lot of retirees are not rich and own their house and not much else and are cash poor. https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/4m-pensioners-how-australia-s-tax-system-subsidises-wealth-over-work-20260227-p5o666

Five counts of war crime murders the news reports are saying.

Regarding stored fuel, I'm planning to set up a proper diesel backup generator for thunderstorm and cyclone seasons. When we had the cyclone last year I bought a little 2kva petrol generator from Kings and had to run it for 40+ hours, but got caught with about 20 litres of petrol left over and not much to use it in. At least with diesel it will store for a lot longer and stored fuel can be rotated through the vehicle. On another note, over the years there has been a fair bit of diesel theft from farms where thieves come in with empty storage on a ute or small truck and clean out the farmer's overhead diesel tanks. I wonder whether there has been an increase in that activity since the price hike.

I was referring to the Greens. The Greens don't consider themselves far left but a lot of the rest of the country does. Labor faithful probably don't. Most people right of centre do.

I beg to differ Marty, I would say I'm bang on the point. That's just my opinion, you're entitled to yours. I'd consider myself centre right politically and you support a far left party so we're never going get an echo chamber thing happening here.