The Socialist Alliance released the statement below on March 15.
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Billions of dollars — desperately needed for public health, education, transport, closing the shameful gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people and a real response to the climate change crisis — will be wasted if the Gillard Labor government hands down another 1% cut in the corporate tax rate.
Successive federal governments, beginning with Labor, cut the corporate tax rate from 49% (as it was until 1988) to 30% today. Now, another Labor government wants to cut it to 29%. On top of this, the richest individuals have been given extra tax cuts.
The latest 1% cut will mean that the company tax has been reduced 20 percentage points over the past two-and-a-half decades. The latest 1% cut will cost the public an estimated $1.6 billion a year.
If you add up how much has been handed over to the corporations, it amounts to hundreds of billion of dollars wasted over 25 years.
But the greed of the corporate rich knows no bounds: 29% is not low enough for them. They are demanding the company tax rate be cut 25%.
For decades, Labor and Liberal governments have been robbing the public purse to make the super-rich even richer. No wonder the gap between rich and poor has widened.
It is time for this systematic class robbery to stop.
This is not just a justice issue. It is a matter of survival. New reports from Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO show that greenhouse gases are at their highest level in modern history and that Australia’s climate is warming at an alarming rate.
We need urgent large-scale public investment in renewable energy and public transport to address the climate change emergency — not more tax cuts and subsidies to corporate profits.
Socialist Alliance says there should be not be any more tax cuts for companies. Instead, the company tax rate should immediately be returned back to 49%.
In addition, the Gillard government should scrap the watered-down mining super profits tax deal it made with the biggest mining companies and come up with a serious tax on the mining industry’s outrageous profits.
If the mining companies don’t accept this they should be nationalised.
