Government must quit tobacco tax addiction and support innovation: Matt Barrie

Colin Kruger
July 12 2016
CBD
Now that Malcolm Turnbull’s mob have cancelled the removalist vans and are settling back into government, our captains of industry are lobbing in their latest pleas for a fresh way to get the economy back on track.
Social critic and and Freelancer.com founder, Matt Barrie, has taken time out from arguing against Sydney’s lockout laws to argue the case for innovation on the basis that we can’t rely on our poor smokers to fill our coffers forever.
“We desperately need to do this because the country’s finances are in disarray,” said the founder of a business which has not made a profit in years – it deliberately sacrifices earnings in the pursuit of world domination, apparently.
But there is no disputing his tax numbers.
“The only thing floating the government finances are taxes on cigarettes which most people would be shocked to discover generates $9.4 billion in revenue, over 10 times more tax than it generates from our oil fields ($800 million), over double what it collects from fringe benefits tax ($4.3 billion) and more than it collects from tax on superannuation ($6.6 billion),” he said.
And remember tobacco is expected to do the heavy lifting in the years ahead to help the government afford its exorbitant tax gift to the corporate sector.
“Heaven forbid if the country stops smoking because the tax on a beer will be $40 a schooner,” says Barrie.
And he says the “small small steps” taken by Turnbull are already in peril due to the fact that “the conservatives within the Liberal Party are blaming the loss of seats on innovation not ‘resonating’ with regional voters”.