Your editor certainly has taken a pasting this year from bloggers who accuse us of scare-mongering over our “Government wants to steal your Super” commentary.
Here’s a sample of the posts to the Money Morning and Daily Reckoning websites. First off, a post railing against last week’s effort:
“Passing legislation in Australia takes at the minimum a month of two, from the initial bill to formal implementation, and if the government even mentioned proposals to confiscate individual super assets the result would be obvious. Every SMSF would sell its assets immediately, the ASX would crash immediately, and thirdly all money from the sales would leave Australia asap. And all this would happen while the legislation was still being discussed. Sayce’s article is paranoid nonsense.” – Ken, Daily Reckoning Website
Then there was this comment following an article we wrote on “Super Theft” back in May:
“Are you crazy? How do you justify a jump from the Govt recouping money from Super funds that is unclaimed by temporary workers a little faster than previously to them taking ALL Australian’s Superannuation? I cannot believe you are a fully-qualified advisor (assuming you are) and hold those views. I guess not all financial advisors are equal.” – Russ, Daily Reckoning website
Or this, commenting on the same article:
“Your logic is one of the more courageous leaps I have witnessed for some time. While your sentiment is appreciated your argument has a fatal flaw. This is still a relatively well functioning democracy and with so many voters having a stake in this system expropriation is still a fraught strategy for incumbent Governments. It can only occur in Argentina and Venezuela because they are affectively one-party states. I expect a more subtle approach will be more likely i.e. greater tolerance for inflation” – DG, Daily Reckoning website
And finally this one:
“Is this article some sort of experiment to determine the gullibility of readers of the Daily Reckoning. Will there be another article pointing us to a safe haven investment for our super where it is kept safe from the government? Maybe somebody will be able to suggest something that will keep it safe from us as well.” – Charfcutter, Daily Reckoning website
Of course, there were posts agreeing with our position as well. But we prefer to point out the ones that disagreed.
Well, it looks as though while we were tapping away on these thoughts and you were either reading them or ignoring them, the cheeky scamps in government have already been drying the ink on the next phase of the Super Theft campaign.
Don’t worry about the Henry or Cooper reviews, when you’re in government it seems you can get away with almost anything you like.
And what better cover than the Copenhagen conference – isn’t that playing out beautifully for the politicians? Headlines about the conference being in disarray and a stalemate, “Oh no, the world will end if we don’t do something!”
Then just in the nick of time, the world leaders arrive. What are the odds on a ‘solution’ being found and leaders being hailed as heroes? The odds are unbackable, just make sure you’ve put enough money away to pay for it when the bill arrives.
Anyway, no mainstream journalist is going to bother themselves covering government thievery and deceit while there’s a brawl happening in Denmark.
Internet Censorship policy is a perfect example. Bring that old chestnut out while no-one’s looking.
You’d think the press would be up in arms over a potential threat to press and individual freedom. But no, the best the lame saps at the Australian Financial Review and The Age can do is to consign the story to the technology sections of the paper.
If you think that’s as far as the government will go with Internet censorship, think again. Because it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Once a government gets its foot in the door on one issue, it calls in the heavies and before you know it the whole front door is barged down and government is camped out in your lounge room bossing you around, telling you what to do, and ordering you to hand over more cash otherwise they’ll beat the ‘carp’ out of you.
And that’s exactly what’s happening with Super Theft.
Earlier this year we warned the first tip of the iceberg was the theft of foreign temporary worker superannuation. This was the one where if foreigners who had accumulated Super subsequently left Australia, the super fund would be required to send those balances to the Australian Tax Office.
In effect, foreign temporary workers would be subject to a 100% tax on their superannuation if they left it here.
How about that, a 100% tax on a 9% tax. You can’t beat that for ingenuity.
What would happen to the money? That’s the best part – from the government’s perspective – because it goes straight to Consolidated Revenue. In other words, straight to the Federal Government’s bank account so it can spend it on useless trinkets like free home insulation and “Climate Change” solutions.
That little bit of thievery was estimated to add around $800 million to the government’s coffers.
Well, if foreign temporary worker super theft was the tip of the iceberg then what I’m about to tell you about is the bit of the iceberg just below the surface of the water – there may be a scientific name for it but I’ll be blowed if I know what it is!
As I mentioned above, while we were tapping away writing about the next phase of Super Thievery, on December 2nd the crooks in government and opposition nodded through a proposal that would steal $238 million worth of superannuation from Australian citizens and residents.
I’m not kidding. And I can’t even claim the credit for uncovering this scoop. And no, it wasn’t even our hapless friends in the mainstream press that spotted this one either.
Instead it was from intrepid Money Morning reader Steve.
The details are all contained in the mundane sounding, “Tax Laws Amendment (2009 Budget Measures No. 2) Bill 2009″. You can download a copy of it for yourself by clicking here.
Do you remember all the hullaballoo about the new tax arrangements for employee share schemes? You know the one, that’s where the government wanted to crack down on fat cat executives who were giving themselves a whole bunch of shares and minimizing their tax – terrible, terrible! Only the proposal managed to also capture a whole bunch of, erm, well, not fat cats as well.
Well, this little bit of superannuation thievery is tagged along in that bill.
And as the document notes:
“This Digest is an historical Digest, published after the Bill was read a third time in the Senate on 2 December 2009. The Bill was passed by both Houses unamended.”
We haven’t been able to locate details of how the vote went in the Senate, but odds are it was waved through by just half a dozen semi-comatose Senators.
So, what’s the deal with this bill? As I mentioned, this is the part of the iceberg below the tip. We’re not talking about the full scale theft of your superannuation – not yet anyway. For that we’ll probably have to wait until the Henry and Cooper reviews have reported.
This bill is just the government having another nibble to see what it can get away with.
Out of the 20-page document, the latest round of super thievery isn’t explained until page 18. In fact, it’s pretty clear that this proposal has nothing to do with the rest of the bill.
It has been tagged in there as an afterthought. It’s clearly a deceitful and malicious attempt by government to grab $238 million from everyday Australians with as little scrutiny over it as possible.
Here’s the details of what it means:
“[T]o require superannuation providers to give the Commissioner of Taxation details relating to small accounts of lost members and inactive accounts of unidentifiable lost members. The superannuation providers must also pay to the Commissioner the value of any such accounts.”
It goes on to state that a “lost member account” is where the super fund has been unable to contact the member and “the balance of the account is less than $200…”
Now, you may think, “Aww, if it’s less than $200 what are you fussing about you idiot? You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. 200 bucks, who cares!”
Like I say, the big scam is coming. This is just the hammy warm-up act. Besides, the bill widens the definition of what constitutes a “lost member account” to include where:
“the superannuation provider has not received an amount in respect of the member within the last five years; the superannuation provider is satisfied it will never be possible for the provider to pay an amount to the member, and the account does not support or relate to a defined benefit interest”
We love how they’ve specifically excluded defined benefit schemes. Could that be because the coercive (public) service is the main beneficiaries of defined benefit schemes? Of course it is – the crooks.
The amazing thing is, the amount of cash the government is set to steal from Australian super funds is more than they’ll grab from the much publicized employee share scheme (ESS) tax.
According to estimates the ESS will reap about $135 million, while the Super Theft will clock up $238 million.
Although in typical government fashion that’s the gross amount. Because they estimate it will cost them $8.4 million to implement the proposal.
Not satisfied with plain old stealing your money, they’re going to charge you for it as well!
If there was still any doubt in anyone’s mind whether governments are a monumental waste of space with the sole aim of ripping ever greater amount of dollars from your wallet, then this must surely wipe that doubt from your mind.
The next stage of this distasteful affair is to see what Emperor Henry and Jeremy Cooper concoct in their reviews.
Whatever the result it’s likely to involve less control for you, more control for government, and the eventual expropriation of money which you thought was yours into the hands of the thieving tax man and government.
Cheers.
Kris.
60-Second Market Round Up
by Shae Smith
The S&P/ASX200 did very little yesterday, gaining only 19 points to close at 4,673.50. The Aussie market has opened down this morning thanks to the lead in from the US.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics releases a couple of reports today, including the gross domestic product (GDP) data, at 11.30am. Keep an eye out for those reports.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished lower by 49 points yesterday, closing at 10,452.00. The Federal Reserve has been locked up in a two day meeting regarding monetary policy. Read more here.
Overnight in the UK, the FTSE ended the day down by 29 points, to 5,285.77.
The Nikkei finished the day at 10,083.48, down by 22 points.
Gold is still down from the highs earlier in December.
The price of spot gold in Australian dollars is trading at $1,241.15 while in US Dollars it is trading at $1,123.50. The price of silver in Aussie dollars is $19.22 and in US Dollars it is $17.41.
The Aussie dollar versus the US dollar is trading at USD$0.9057, and against the Japanese Yen JPY81.17
Crude oil closed at USD$70.87.
For the biggest movers on the market yesterday click here…
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Ah, good point, GB. I almost forgot about it. So, if we put 2 and 2 together, this is China’s dilemma:
Either they will agree to cut/limit cheap energy production and be policed over said cuts, or their export based economy is chocked with import taxes. Either way, China’s growth will be controlled and stunted. And if they don’t like it, that will be just too bad.
China is just too vulnerable with its external dependency on raw materials, which can be choked off if there is a standoff and military tension. Same scenario as Japan’s pre-WWII. Plus, China is internally vulnerable, too. Ujghurstan and Tibet are just two examples where the West can create untold problems for them by simply financing and training resistance fighters.
Anyhow, this climate change scam seems more and more purposeful to me, and the country most being cornered and threatened by it is China. Even so, I am not at all sure whether I like this rationale any better than the purported one of saving the planet from boiling. It is still the big boys with their big toys playing a stupid power game while the rest of the planet suffers from it.
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist (hope we all accept fact is sometimes stranger than fiction) I noticed that in the last round of govt ads on the tv regarding getting immunisation shots for the swine flu that they inferred it was your responsibility to get one so that you kept your community safe. So the ground work is being set to isolate those who dont believe everything they are told. Just for the record if you are pressed just tell the medical person thingy that you are allergic to eggs. Apparently those with an egg allergy react badly to the swine flu serum. Its also noting the report recently where hundreds of thousands of swine flu vaccine produced in a French laboratory have been recalled……. (and now the conspiracy theorist part)….. does anyone remember the talks that suggested a link between the outbreak of aids in africa and the massive program of innoculations that the yanks had carried out in the same regions a few years earlier…….. or are we happy to continue to blame the african green monkey?
“In Politics,nothing happens by accident.If it happens,you can bet it was
planed that way.” F.D. Roosevelt
“Every Government is run by liars and nothing they say should be
believed.” I.F.Stone
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble,finding it everywhere,diagnosing
it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedy.” Groucho Marx
“If it is hard to believe in GOD,it is NO easier to believe in man.”
Dame Margot Asquith 1864-1945
Earl, I share your weariness about coming across as a nutter, as a conspiracy theorist. But, in our defence, we should also keep in mind that if they are really after you, then you are not paranoid.
Anyhow, it would not surprise me in the least if there was substance to the suspicion. A US vaccine company has tried and has been called red-handed several times releasing genetically engineered disease bacteria in various parts of the world through “contaminated” vaccines. The latest killer bug that has hit the Ukraine, for example, has been alleged by credible sources to have been engineered as it combines elements from birds, humans and pigs in its makeup. And the suspect company in question has its laboratories in the Ukraine, and some speculate that the whole thing is no coincidence.
One thing is for sure, though: if a pharmaceutical company manufactures and releases a bug, and then the antidote to it, it can make money, big money, and wherever money can be made, you cannot be suspicious enough.
Two great headlines in the one issue of the SMH today:
“Racecourse workers lose savings in super fraud
STUART WASHINGTON , April 19, 2010
LIFE SAVINGS of 250 low-paid racecourse workers have been caught up in a $123 million fraud case that could become the biggest superannuation theft in Australian history.”
But Astarra Superannuation Fund look like complete amateurs in the industry compared to this:
“$1.5b super fee gouge revealed
JACOB SAULWICK April 19, 2010
AUSTRALIAN workers and consumers paid $1.5 billion in commissions to financial advisers last year, bolstering the case for government reform of the financial industry, new research suggests…”
Superannuation is theft, pure an simple. We know that it’s another way to transfer wealth from the taxpayer to funnel into their giant Ponzi scheme. Look at what happened in the credit crisis, people’s funds were wiped out! One thing is a fact, the credit crisis was INTENTIONALLY orchestrated to collapse economies and transfer wealth into the pockets of the international banking cartel that controls western nations. They want to collapse economies in order to make people poor, weak, desperate and scared enough to welcome the Orwellian world government they’re pushing through. The flawed premise regarding super is that the Government cares about your future. Previously as they were preparing their world government end game they needed a certain amount of prosperity to provide the foundation for their schemes. Now they’re collapsing society to bring in the new world order global serfdom, they no long need to maintain the infrastructure nor their feigned interest in our existemce, hence all of our freedoms and basic human rights being removed. Bottom line, only naive idiots think Super is not theft.
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