Re: No speedrail, Badgerys creek or Kurnell

[presterjohn16@my-deja.com]

The trouble with tax concessions, and the reason Treasury and the ATO
hate them, is that they are a bottomless pit.

I used to police the R&D Tax Concession, including the infamous R&D
Syndication scheme, which was probably a rort the size of the bottom-of-
the-harbour schemes, in what it finally cost the taxpayer.  You won't
ever hear it get the Four Corners expose it deserves though- too many
Labor and Liberal MPs were involved with various of the 'R&D projects'.

The problem is that the consultants will try to fit every item of
expenditure under the particular head of expenditure which gets the
concession. So in the R&D scheme we had the government paying for large
chunks of machinery that needed some fine tuning to get them to work.
The machinery cost was an eligible part of the 'R&D' project.

Under R&D syndication, the government paid for the building of such
items as a large ferry, a smelter, a large and old mining dredge . . .
the list goes on. All these were classed as 'prototypes' and there was
very little new or innovative in any of them. Syndication lasted 11
years, cost I think $800m and paid for wonderful offices and salaries
for the big four consulting firms.

Meanwhile, down at street level in 2000, fifteen years after we started
outlaying taxpayer funds (or foregoing tax, it's the same thing) on
this so-called R&D, Australia is still the stupid country.


>Yup - our politicians have about as much vision as Mr Magoo!

We get the politicians we vote for.  It is disingenuous to blame them
alone.  If Australians want politicians with vision, we, and we alone
can vote for them.  So far, the track record shows that we don't vote
for them.

PJ


> >> Why doesnt Speedrail simply go ahead without the tax concessions?
> >

> If the tax concessions represent a no net cost to the Govt ,and have
> to be paid back over time ,then effectively the consortium is asking
> the Govt for nothing,so why ask in the first place.


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