On company tax rates

Peter Matters writes: Re. “The economic case for a company tax cut is collapsing“(yesterday). I suspect the discussion about reducing or not reducing company tax is a diversionary election trick. Tony might have taken the company tax reduction proposal to a pre-election budget. One might reproach Malcolm of arrogance, but not of stupidity. Instead, the odds are the budget might contain a bagful of pork barrelling to bribe the electorate. Apart from its inherent dishonesty, such a move might turn out to be even more damaging to Australia than company tax reduction. Furthermore, if that sort of brain washing were to ensure the government another term, the 2017 budget would make Tony’s 2014 budget look like a work of kindness.

Rex Bevan writes: If you measure the company tax rate by what rate of pre-tax corporate profits the government collects, then it is already down to 20%. By all means have a company tax rate of 25%, but only if dividend imputation is got rid of first. Dividend imputation is just another way of describing upper class welfare!

On Safe Schools

Mark Petrolo writes: Re. “Safe Schools is not important and the left needs to shut up about it” (March 24). At first I thought I hated Safe Schools, but I’ve come to realise it’s more the left’s haste to defend it that infuriates me. It’s as if being a religious fanatic or bowing down to Safe Schools no questions asked are the only two options people seem to have. And the less people know about Safe Schools is the greater their conviction.

Nobody seems to care that the need for Safe Schools implies that teachers aren’t being given the tools to deal with LGBTIQ issues in the first place. For some reason when it pertains to LGBTIQ students the left refuse to believe there isn’t a magical state-funded rainbow-powered cure to bullying. Safe Schools is no different to that crappy cautionary anti-drug/alcohol play they made you watch in high school. Even before making wild claims about saving lives, just the name Safe Schools bothers me. The implication being that schools aren’t safe without it is so arrogant. Maybe if Gonski’s plan was called the Real Schools program the left might have made a fraction of the fuss to support it.

Rant over. Thanks as always Helen for being the one voice that doesn’t make me want to kill myself. Even if I’m the only LGBTIQ person whose life is saved by this article it will have been worth it.