#bobhawke

YOUNG HAWKE

David Day

2025

Book about Bob Hawke's younger years. He is considered one of Australia's best Prime Ministers. He was known to enjoy a drink or two. He married Hazel Hawke, but was also in a relationship with Blanche d'Alpuget.

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The major economic reforms in Australia were unleashed by Paul Keating and Bob Hawke in the 1980s. John Howard and Peter Costello rode in on their coat tails and tweaked the knobs to benefit the wealthy, during his time as PM. Changes to the capital gains tax discount and then to superannuation have greatly favoured those with money to hide from the tax man. Governments today are asking themselves about the best ways of undoing the wrongs of John Howard. There are trillions of dollars in super funds; and some self-managed ones have tens and hundreds of millions of dollars squirreled away within. Superannuation was not designed by Hawke/Keating as a bolthole for the wealthy to stash their money. It was, rather, a scheme to create retirement savings for ordinary Australian workers. https://www.paulkeating.net.au/shop/item/the-story-of-modern-superannuation-31-october-2007 “In 2007 Costello reduced taxation on income earned from superannuation to zero for Australians over the age of 60. At the same time he removed the superannuation surcharge. The superannuation surcharge acknowledged that the benefit of superannuation tax concessions flowed mainly to high income earners. It meant that those on high incomes paid a higher concessional tax rate on their super contributions and earnings. Costello abolished it in 2005 which meant that high income earners paid a flat 15% tax rate on all superannuation contributions and earnings.” - (Richard Denniss, Aust Inst.)

John Howard’s Deals For The Wealthy

This is what you get when scheming politicians purposely set no limits on things like tax discounts on capital and superannuation. I mean, it would be pretty bloody obvious to any economist that if you do not establish any limits on how much money or capital asset value can be parked in these discounted measures then it is open slather for the rich. These things do not happen by accident. They are wrangled out by those representing the big end of town, usually, in return for some favour or another. Australia finds itself in American territory here with the super wealthy increasing their wealth and taxed at a fraction of what it should be. The amount of dollar value in residential property and superannuation in Australia is in the trillions so we are not talking about anything inconsequential here – it is a huge amount. “In 1999 Costello introduced the capital gains tax discount. Capital gains tax applies when someone sells an asset for more than they bought it for. This includes things like shares or investment housing. The capital gains tax discount means that for assets owned for more than 12 months only half the capital gain will be taxed. According to the Treasury this is worth $5.8bn per year.” - (https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/peter-costellos-five-most-profligate-decisions-as-treasurer-cost-the-budget-56bn-a-year/)

Howard & Costello’s Betrayal Of Ordinary Australians

This has been a betrayal of ordinary Australians by the Liberal National Coalition under the auspices of John Howard and Peter Costello during their years in federal government. Wealth is something that serves a nation best if it is shared among its people as equally as is reasonably possible. Moneys that should have gone into tax revenue, to be spent on government services, have instead been stashed away in bloated super accounts for individuals to bestow upon their beneficiaries. This kind of thing actively distorts the equitability of a nation and feeds the ‘haves’ at the expense of the ‘have nots.’ The Residential Property Market On Steroids We live now in 2025 in a country where  a large chunk of the population can no longer afford to purchase a home of their own because property prices are way too expensive. Indeed, rents on residential properties are, also, unfairly eating away at most incomes of workers in the current era. Million dollar properties are the norm in Sydney and elsewhere. Australian banks have grown incredibly wealthy on the back of lending in this inflated market on steroids. Governments are wary of adjusting the economic settings established by John Howard for fear of the voter backlash from property owners and aspirants. Things like the capital gains tax 50% discount and negative gearing for property investors are promoters of the ever burgeoning property prices in Australia.

Who Pays Tax In Australia? How To Get Ahead In Australia The name of the game has long been ‘how to get ahead in life’ and investing in property in Australia is seen as the sure fire thing. Governments are loath to mess with such fundamental aspirations if the mob don’t overwhelmingly support it. Bill Shorten’s name is brought up as proof positive of the fate of politicians who dare to swim against the current. Now, however, is an interesting time in the political cycle, with Donald Trump the US president on the nose downunder. This icon of the Right and billionaire deal maker par excellence, according to Trump’s own PR, represents avarice in its purest American form. Could it be that Trump’s insulting imposition of tariffs, on allies like Australia, and general unsavoriness is turning our aspirational attitudes away from blanket, anything goes, acceptance? Is the mob downunder growing a conscience? Or is it a generational shift, with younger voters locked out of the property market bringing their ire to bear upon political parties like the LNP who are Trumpian in nature? Temu Trump, Peter Dutton was recently consigned to the political dustbin with both barrels losing the election as leader and his own seat. Of course, Dutton has profited enormously during his many years in parliament with his family benefitting from many astute investments and changes to laws. Indeed, he could be a symbol of what is wrong with this country in terms of its inequity and where his party took us. The Robodebt Systematic Abuse Of Australians Undoing the wrongs of John Howard and his political children like Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton will not be easy. These small men have wanted to turn Australia into the 51st state of the US. Neoliberalism and its privatisation agenda has seen the largest transfer of asset wealth from public into private hands. What used to belong to all citizens is now in the hands of a few very wealthy folk. Less accountable government has emerged via reductions in the civil service and the expensive use of private firm consultancy like PwC and KPMG. Robodebt, the great abuse of half a million Australians by the LNP federal governments of Abbott, Turnbull, and Morrison was aided and abetted by PwC reviews over its 6 years. A Royal Commission and a $1.8 billion settled class action against the government followed this betrayal of the people by a government and its senior bureaucrats. Vulnerable Aussies killed themselves out of despair over Robodebt – never forget, I say. Welcome to the early application of AI by government downunder via the algorithms applied in Robodebt upon Centrelink welfare recipients. We are still awaiting anybody being held accountable for it. The weasels in government look out for each other.

The Rich Must Pay More Tax Undoing the wrongs of John Howard is something that 21C Australia must do if we are to avoid heading any further up that highway to hell American style. Inequality, where wealth is amassed in the hands of the 1% is a recipe for social disaster. Good communities are not ones where extreme wealth lies in the hands of a select few. No this is oligarchy or a return to feudalism. Right now, the decades and centuries of progressive enlightenment are at risk from the economic distortions enabled by neocons like the Reaganite Republicans and their neoliberal agenda over the last 40 years. The tax rate at the top in the US has been lowered from in the 90% range, just after WW2, down to 37% today. Yes, billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are only taxed at this rate, if they pay any tax at all. The tax system is what funds nations and states; and if it is abused via those that can afford it not paying a reasonable share, then, things fall apart. We live at a time when corporate entities are avoiding paying their fair share of tax on revenues via clever accounting schemes and locating their head offices in low tax places like Ireland or the Cayman Islands. Governments are weakened and there is less to go around for everyone. Trump promotes a dog eat dog world, where the children of the rich, like Donald Trump, maintain a huge financial advantage thanks to lawyers and having company vehicles with which to invest and do business. Poorer folk without the bank of mum and dad are disadvantaged in expensively overinflated markets, where they cannot even afford a roof over their heads. This kind of world ends up in violent uprisings and all the guns in the world won’t make things safe or a nice place to live.  

America Do You Want To Go There? Australia is a beautiful land and the people are blessed by their lifestyles, but things are changing rapidly. We are being Americanised every single day of our lives. Stop and have a think about the technology you interact with all the time and which companies own that. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Starlink, PayPal, Apple, IBM, Oracle, Nvidia, Uber, Intel, Dell, Palantir and many more. Social media is a US invention and most Big Tech is American. The modern commercial world is defined by the US. How we do business is very much in the American mould. Most experts think that we are, generally, about 10 years or so behind the US in trends. Look to that future and tell me if you want to go there?  Politicians like the Libs want to take us there faster, as their track record clearly shows. Accelerate toward a grossly inequitable society of extreme wealth for a few and a rubbish life for the rest. Tony Abbott tried to privatise the higher education sector and make degrees at our universities really expensive. The Coalition has tried to kill Medicare for decades without success. These folk believe in private health, private education, user pays for everything and the market determines the price. This is where we are with the residential property market – it is unaffordable for great swathes of our population. Younger people are forever locked out of the market. Capitalism without some government controls does not work. Neoliberalism has not been a success for the majority of Australians. Democracies are for all denizens of a nation and not just a few who are given the inside economic running. John Howard was either irresponsible or determined to make a nation which greatly endowered the propertied and the entitled at the expense of everyone else. “Do you know why wage earners pay the bulk of taxation revenue in Australia through income tax? It is because ordinary Australian workers do not have lobbyists and tax lawyers making noise on their behalf to lower taxes. Whereas big corporations and business groups have these things and buy government attention via campaign donations to political parties. Who pays tax in Australia? Those that can least afford to do so, whilst the big end of town minimises their tax on billion dollar revenues. Democracy works via special interest groups with pull making enough noise to achieve their aims. The majority of folk can, often, get left behind on this basis.” - (https://www.housetherapy.com.au/who-pays-tax-in-australia/) Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of Money Matters and America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump. ©HouseTherapy