Having called for Alexander
Downer’s head yesterday, The
Oz takes the bit between its teeth and bolts off into the wild
blue yonder, with Henry cheering wildly.

Reporting a 20%
increase in Disability Support Pensioners in the last five years, massive increases
in health spending and an increasingly unfair taxation system, the anonymous
Oz editor says: “ten years of John
Howard’s supposedly conservative leadership has turned Australia into something of a
socialist utopia. No wonder the prime minister is
so popular: with the vast income redistribution schemes his government has put
in place to take people’s money and then hand it back to them, cynics might well
say that there is more vote-buying going on in Australia circa 2006 than in
Chicago during the 1890s.”

Henry had a good yarn with a few
blokes in the Canberra Chairman’s lounge yesterday afternoon. The pollies were
demob happy, and the gimlet-eyed advisors were making sure they knew Who’s Who
(ie, who is up who). “Peter Costello is the only bloke in Australia who is opposing tax reform”,
was the theme in Henry’s group. “What’s wrong with him?” We know he’s trying
to protect us all from the folly of excess demand, but the right approach is
surely to figure out a simpler, fairer, flatter tax system and announce that it
will be introduced over the next x years, provided the voters keep re-electing
the government. Suppose x was five and part of the end point was a 30% top
marginal rate. The top rate would need to be reduced by 3 points each year, and
it is hard to believe other budgetary changes could not be made to ensure that
fiscal policy was not too expansionary – here is our
blueprint.

Lots more happening in our great
nation. The Chinese Premier is due to arrive next week and may sign an
agreement that will boost exports of uranium. The AWB inquiry has summoned the
ministers for Foreign Affairs and Trade. The new IR laws and regulations would
be helping Labor in the opinion polls if it were beating up the gummint instead
of itself. Resource stocks continue to roar, with most Australians getting
wealthier almost by the day. The West Coast Eagles beat the Saints in the first
example of “Thursday night football”. Following the Comm Games and, with the
Grand Prix in town, one assumes our rulers have learned well that bread and
circuses are a winning double.

Read more at Henry
Thornton.