The Australian Problems of Today.

Dear readers, in this blog, we have written several posts about D.I.Y. articles that dealt with building works. Having done that, now we are writing posts about social issues. We have started with this post, Farming today is still a risky business, we want to talk about social issues that can affect all of us. We will continue with Australian social issues that we have already written in the past, when these things happened; then we will follow with what is happening these days. 

We believe that to continue and make sense, we should post what has happened since, and then try to link everything together. So in this blog let us talk about, the Australian problems of today. 

Anyhow, you can also find this article at, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com, 

My other sites; http://frankmenchise.com,http://diybrickwork.com,http://manneedsgod.co.uk  

You can see more at this addresses, DIY brickwork  and,  http://diybrickwork.com,  

To see more visit links, The Australian Problems of Today. 

The greatest problem in Australia is that half of Australia is desert, this problem becomes even worse because of the climatic change that makes rainfall unpredictable, so, nobody knows what is going to happen next. 

The Australian Problems of Today.

Talking about the Australian government.

Welcome to our article,  The Australian Problems of Today

Dear readers, today I have decided to write about what is happening in Australia. Some of these articles will be like a diary, but my intention is that I want to point out what I think can be done to solve some problems, because in Australia today we have this problem about the drought, and other problems that are affecting our way of life, so, we need to talk about them. 

Anyhow, in our last article we wrote about the Australian elections , so, to keep the record straight we want to mention that the elections were won from the coalition, so, the government has not changed. I believe that the fear of paying more taxes, if the Labor Party had won government, has stopped some people voting Labor.

Anyhow, today there are still a lot of problems that need to be solved, and some of these problems must be solved from the Australian government. If you have followed us, you know that we have written articles about these problems, starting from the drought in Australia, that is destroying farming, as we know it, in our article, Farming Today Is Still a Risky Business, we have also talked about, the Australian Social Security, because it is failing to help the farmers, and other related articles that affects other people in a negative way. In the articles, we have said what we believe is wrong, and suggested what can be done to fix them, and we believe that the government can fix them, if the government tries hard enough to fix them. But so far, they have not done much; so, we are still waiting for this new elected government to do something. Meanwhile, we are writing some articles to say what we believe needs to be done. 

Anyhow, we believe that, Australia Can Do Better, if the people that run the country, put the interest of the Australian people first, instead of bringing in heartless budgets, like Joe Hockey 2014 budget, which is still making life hard for the pensioners and the small property owners. So, let us see, what is happening in Australia today.

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What is happening in Australia today?

Today in Australia nothing interesting is happening; except for the fact that the coalition is still in power, when everybody thought that they could not win. Anyhow, everything is still the same, it has not rained much and there is no rain coming soon, so, the farmers are still having a hard time, people hope and pray God hoping that that can help, but nothing is happening. These problems that affect the entire Australian economy need to be talked about, to see if they can be solved; even the farmers must be entitled to Social Security payment, when their farms cannot produce enough to live with. Like what we were trying to suggest in our article, The Australian Social Security Must Be Equal, anyhow, we hope that the government does something to help the farmers.

Today it seems to me that climatic changes that brings these droughts will continue to happen, so, we must think what can be done to overcome the drawback that these climatic changes bring. We know that this affects the entire world. But we have to think that Australia is the driest continent on earth, therefore, we must be ready before everybody else, we cannot wait and copy somebody else, because we will be the first to be affected most, so, we are forced to solve these problems ourselves.

Therefore, this question arises, what can be done to make farming more reliable? For instance, is there a way to collect enough water in some places, that can be used during the drought? We know that this must be a government initiative, since we are talking about Australia as a whole; so, not even the largest and well-organized farms can afford it. We know also that the government have already organized something like that, and they have problems running it, because they are running out of water. I believe that in the future these water problems can become worse, because of the global warming effects. So, the Australian government must make themselves ready for a better and larger scheme; they can learn from what they have now, to do better in the future.

So, these are what I am going to write in my future articles soon. You may call them, Australia views of an old man. Now, let me tell you who I am and what I have seen. 

 

Australia views of an old man

What I have seen in my life that can help make sense about what we see today.

Today I am an old man, so, I have seen a lot of things during my life that I can talk about: I have lived in Australia for 58 years, I have lived in Italy for over 20 years, during which I have worked in our family farm, then, I have served in the compulsory army service and when I finished, I migrated to Australia.

When I came to Australia in the early sixties, I found that the standard of living was better than the standard of living that we had in Italy, and the standard of living we have today.

I was even surprised to see that the driest continent on earth, not only had enough water to drink, but they had enough water to water their gardens in their back yards, so, if you are organized you can do a lot more than you think it is possible to do.

But you must organize yourself to do those things. Now because of these climatic changes, rainfalls  will also change. So, I believe that we are going to have more ups and downs about rainfalls; therefore, we must start thinking what can be done to minimize the negative affect that they will bring. This is one of the subjects that I will be talking about in my future articles. I am also going to talk about financial support and other things. I hope that I can write my articles interesting enough for people to read them.

I believe I have said enough in this article; so, see you in our next article, where we are continuing to talk about the Australian problems, like the drought and the fire on top of the drought, which is frightening, and we hope that we can say something that can help, in our article, Australia climatic problems.

To see more click on this link, The Australian Problems of Today. 

See you soon.        

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The 2019 Australian elections can be positive.

Dear readers, in this blog, we have written several posts about D.I.Y. articles that dealt with building works. Having done that, now we are writing posts about social issues. We have started with this post, Farming today is still a risky business, we want to talk about social issues that can affect all of us. We will continue with Australian social issues that we have already written in the past, when these things happened; then we will follow with what is happening these days. 

We believe that to continue and make sense, we should post what has happened since, and then try to link everything together. So in this blog let us talk about the federal election. 

Anyhow, you can also find this article at, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com, 

My other sites; http://frankmenchise.com,http://diybrickwork.com,http://manneedsgod.co.uk  

You can see more at this addresses, DIY brickwork  and,  http://diybrickwork.com,  

To see more visit links, Australian elections 2019, The Australian Elections Can Be Positive

Scott Morrison is our present prime minister. The question here is. Will he be able to retain enough sits to continue as prime minister? Even if he has to ask the help of other smaller parties, which very likely are going to win several sits. 

Australian elections 2019 

Welcome to our article, Australian elections 2019

Dear readers, in the middle of all these problems that we have in Australia, about the drought, the assets test and other things that we have written in our previous articles, there is one more thing to worry about, the Australian elections.

Anyhow, it has taken a while for the present prime minister Scott Morrison to call the 2019 federal election. Now it has been called and it is going to be held the 18^th of May 2019. So, who is going to be the prime minister of Australia after these elections? We do not know, but the odds are in favor of the Labor party at the beginning, and Bill Shorten being their leader, he could become the new prime minister of Australia; but we can never know. Anyhow, the political parties start advertising themselves and telling us, what they are going to do for us, if we vote them in and they form government.

Now, Bill Shorten and his Labor party have the reputation of spending too much and charging more tax to the people. So, it is going to be hard to say who is going to win. You see, it also depends about other policies and because the coalition has been in government for some time, so, people may want to change.

Anyhow, I believe that it is better for everybody, when the economy is stable and there is no deficit, but it is up to the people to choose if they want a stable economy, or they prefer that the government spends more, for better services to the public and other things, because this is what the Labor party does. Anyhow, both parties have problems in running the economy properly, because there are times when, the Coalition makes mistakes, because they are careless, and they don’t work out what is going to happen to the people involved. One of these things was when they change the assets test 5 years ago. as we are going to mention this in this article and perhaps write another article to explain what we see is wrong but let us see what is happening right now.   

Looking at what is in for me.

Because everyone of us has different financial needs, we are looking at the election promises to see what is in for me. I know that this sounds selfish; but that is what everybody does. Anyhow, what I wanted to see, is not even mentioned in this election campaign, so, for me it is disappointing to see that we are going to miss out, on what we think, it needs to be done.

Anyhow, in a way we are lucky here, because we can voice our concerns for free and have our say. We can write our personal point of views ourselves in a public forum; hoping that what we are writing reaches some politicians, so, they can do something about it.we have written The Assets Test Dilemma,  where we say a few things about what needs to be done.

You see, years ago, the federal government changed the assets test on the pensions, without working out that the small property owners would get less money than those who are on a simple pension with no assets. 

Anyhow, this issue I am going to write about it in my next article, because it is not easy to show you, why the pensioners are losing money. Now this is one of my main concerns, and we believe that to be fair the pension must work out to be at least equal for everybody. But nobody does anything for them. Both the major parties are thinking the same since both have approved this assets test change. Now since they are not going to gain votes, by talking about it, they do not want to talk about it. 

But as I have said, this issue is not easy to understand, unless you work it out yourself, or it is properly explained in detail. You can look at these figures written in this article to understand what we mean; The Australian Social Security Must Be Equal. Anyhow, I am going to write another article, the Australian elections can be positive. 

Welcome to our article, The Australian Elections Can Be Positive.

I believe that The Australian elections in May 2019, can be positive, if the party that runs the economy better wins the election. 

So, whoever forms government must be careful to budget the economy the right way? Well, this is my personal point of view. Anyhow, I was waiting for better news and better policies, but nobody cares, if you can look after yourself, even if what you do is good for everybody. Here I am talking about those people that are not rich, they only have a second house, they bought it in the hope that they could earn some money in their old age, but today everything is turned against them, as we have said in our article,  Assets and pension cuts 

The present government with is coalition policies do not want to do anything, because they made the mistake. So, the owners that have a second house, it would have been better for them to have spent their money on themselves, because today they would have been better off financially. 

Here I must point out to the politicians; they must understand that it is this group of people that keeps the housing market at the right level. You see, they do not buy and sell to make a quick buck, they buy and keep their properties hoping that they can gain something from it, and above all they hope to have a bit extra money when they retire. But today all their efforts have been in vain because they are losing money, instead of gaining it. Now, this has been done from the coalition, which is supposed to be in favor of these small investors. Anyhow, now let us look at the Labor Party policies that are even worse.

 

The Labor Party positive policies.  

In these elections the Labor Party has some positive policies, the only problem with these policies, is that they need to spend more money. This has always been the problem with the Labor Party, they spend more money than they can afford. 

Now, let us go back to the Labor Party policies on properties for the small investors; I believe that they are worse than the coalition. Today they want to change the gain tax to a higher level, which again is going to be negative for those people that have invested in properties, because when they sell, they will lose too much money.

In my opinion, this gain tax should be made illegal in most cases. So, we can say that the small investors are being robbed from the government, because what they are taxing should be illegal, because of the following explanation. If you have a second house that today is worth $500,000, you sell the house to buy another property somewhere else of the same value, you cannot do that, because you must pay the gain tax to the government, which is a lot of money, plus other taxes end expenses, it can cost the small investor $100,000 dollars, if the gain tax is higher, like what the Labor Party wants to introduce; then the loss is greater, say $120,000 dollars, that the small investor cannot afford to lose.  

These are useless policies.  

I believe that the Labor Party policy on negative gearing is useless because it is made only to stop the very rich people to buy properties at a loss. But then I may be wrong; anyhow, the way that I see it is this; you must buy a property that runs at a loss, then that money that you are losing can be deducted from your other earning before they are taxed. 

Anyhow, we are waiting for the elections, to see how the people vote, then we will see what happens. So, good luck to all parties involved, and remember that we all deserve a fair go. See you after the elections when we will write other articles about future problems. 

To see more click on these links,  Australian elections 2019,  The Australian Elections Can Be Positive. See you soon in our next article. 

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The Australian Social Security Must be equal.

Dear readers, in this blog, we have written several posts about D.I.Y. articles that dealt with building works. Having done that, now we are writing posts about social issues. We have started with this post, Farming today is still a risky business, we want to talk about social issues that can affect all of us. We will continue with Australian social issues that we have already written in the past, when these things happened; then we will follow with what is happening these days. This is only our views of what we see happening, so, we hope we can say something that can be helpful. Today we are going to talk about the Australian Social Security and the problems that some people find, when they want to use it.  

Anyhow, you can also find this article at, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com, 

My other sites; http://frankmenchise.com,http://diybrickwork.com,http://manneedsgod.co.uk  

You can see more at this addresses, DIY brickwork  and,  http://diybrickwork.com,  

To see more visit link, The Australian Social Security Must Be Equal. 

This is one of the Australian Social Security offices, where people come to apply for the pension, unemployment benefits and other help from the federal government. There are various ways that they can help, and there are many rules that apply to receive help. But some people cannot get help, because they belong to certain categories that excluded from this help. Sometimes we wonder why.  

The Australian Social Security Must be equal. 

Welcome to our article, The Australian Social Security Must Be Equal. 

In our previous articles, we have talked about the farmers that cannot cat help from the government, and also some property owner that find hard to receive the right help from the government. So, we are looking for a better social security system, where everybody gets a minimum payment, which is equal to the minimum pension or unemployment benefit.

Dear readers, we believe that the Australian Social Security System must be equal for everybody, but it is not, as we have said in our previous articles, which had something to do with the Australian social security system, starting with, Farming Today Is Still a Risky Business, then, Australian Social Security, then, The Australian Parties, then, Australia can do better than this, and then, The Assets Test Dilemma, now in these articles we were talking about how the Australian Social Security System works and helps people. So, we have found that the Australian social security system, is good but not perfect, since some people cannot receive it for one reason or another; therefore, the social security system needs to be changed, to fix these unforeseen failures to help. Australia cannot claim to have a good social security system, when it fails to deliver help to those that need help.

Having said that, now we need to study the situation and try to come up with an answer for this issue, because we believe that the Australian Social Security system, must be equal for everybody. We believe that everybody in the community must be given a minimum of help, when they need help. So, we are going to write and suggest our views, hoping that somebody important reads them and does something about it.

Now, what we want to write here is not going to be popular, because it criticizes the existing social security system, since it says that it is not good enough, they need to avoid what is happening to the farmers, so, they must put in place a better system, where people in need are helped. So, let us imagine and talk about a social security system that can guaranty that.

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Talking about the ideal social security setup

What we are writing hereunder is an idealistic way for the social security system to adapt, if they can. I said if they can, because it is unlikely that this system can be approved now, because Australia cannot afford it today, however, it is important that something like this exists. We hope that future politicians, start working on this idealistic social security system that we are talking about.

We believe that all legal citizen that are unemployed or don’t have any income, must be granted from the government an amount of money that is at least equal to the minimum government unemployment benefit or pension, it would be like receiving a small wage from the government. Now, we believe that this is what is needed in Australia, and we believe that one day can be done, if we can get organised ourselves to achieve that, after all Australia is a rich country, so, we should be able to do that. I know that it is going to cost a lot more than we can afford, but if it is well planned, it can be done. Now let us see how this will affect the community and which group of people will benefit from this change.

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The people that can benefit from the change. 

The people that will benefit from this change, are those people that today don’t receive any payment from the government, and those people that don’t receive enough, so, they are forced to live below the poor threshold. In this case the poor threshold is set, as equal to the minimum government pension that today is about, $900 per fortnight for a single person, or $700 each for a couple. This is the minimum of money that people need to live, and we believe that it must be equal for everyone.

As things stand today, there are people that must live with less than the minimum government pension, because of the anomalies in the system. One of those anomalies is caused from the assets test, where the pensioners receive a smaller pension, the rest of their earnings is supposed to come from their assets, which are supposed to earn about 7.8 %; but most of the rental properties, can only earn about 2.5 to 3%, as we have shown you in our previous article, The Assets Test Dilemma, where a house valued at $650,000 did only make $8500 in a year, which is about 1.3%. So, we believe that the assets test on rental properties must be set according to what they can earn, if the government believes that we need mum and dad to invest in rental properties and keep the Australian real estate market the way it is today.

You see, today people believe to invest in rental properties and it is the way to go; but soon they will become aware that to own a second house, can be a problem when they apply to receive their pension, because the assets test will reduce their pension more than what they can earn from their assets; once the people know that they cannot make any money from rental properties, when they become pensioners, they will stop investing in rental properties.

My views are that the assets test on rental properties, must be set at a level, where it is possible for the owners, to earn at least as much as they loose from the pension. Now my views are that the assets test on rental properties should be one third of what they are now, so that the pensioners will lose one dollar per thousand, instead of three dollars per thousand. But even this might not be enough, you see if you have a property valued at one million dollars, you cannot receive any pension. The question here is; will this property earn the owner about $24,000 per year net. I don’t think so. Anyhow, these are our views.

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The property owners’ other problems. 

As we have seen in this article and our previous articles, to own a rental property is a problem and not a benefit, because people lose their pension or unemployment benefits, so, to own a second property is not the way we should plan for better retirement, since the assets test reduces the pension payments to more than what you can earn from your properties.

But there are more negative things in owning a rental property, the worst of all is the land-tax. The land-tax in Queensland is $1.7 per thousand, this means that if you have land valued it one million dollars, every year you must pay $17,000 to the government just because you own this land. They don’t give you anything at all, you just must pay, because they need the money.

Some people still believe in owning properties, because their price go up all the time, so, they think that they are better off having properties, you see, they don’t realize that there is this gain tax that will take away all their earnings and more, let me give you this example.

You own a rental house that you have bought several years ago for $250,000, which was the right market price, today you must sell the rental house, because you need to move to another town, where houses are about the same value, so, you think that it will be easy; you sell the house for $650,000 and you buy another one about the same price. But that is not going to happen, because the $400,000 dollars that you have gained is taxable. This is called the gain tax, which may well be around $100,000, it is hard to be more specific. So, in this case you may lose $100,000 dollars because of the gain tax.

The figures in this article, might not be correct, but they are close enough to what they are supposed to be for showing our views.

This is all I can say today; this setup is not fair for anybody that owns properties, because those properties in the assets test, cannot earn half the money that they will receive from the government pensions or other benefits, if they had no properties. So, for them it would have been better to have no properties; since the assets test affects the pension and other benefit adversely, starting from the farmers, as we have said in, Farming Today Is Still a Risky Business.

So, people are discouraged to own properties and to save for rainy day, because there is no benefit to own them, since they are going to lose and not to gain. Here we are asking for a chance that the scale in the assets test for properties, be set in a way that gives the property owners a chance to earn at least as much money as they lose, from the government benefit. It is not fair that people lose money because they have worked hard and saved money.

Now we are talking about money, so, if you have money instead of a property, today you are not better off, because the interest that you can receive from the bank, is not equal to the money you lose from your pension. 

Anyhow, this is all what I can think about today. I believe that at least I have pointed out what in my views needs adjustment. Because we believe that, the Australian social security system must be equal for everybody. I hope that somebody in the government reads my articles, and then thinks what can be done to make them fair for those people that have worked hard. 

To see more click on this link, The Australian Social Security Must Be Equal. 

Dear readers, we have written several articles about social issues in Australia, today in this article we have said what we believe needs to be done. Anyhow, we believe that it is not going to be easy to achieve that, because of what is happening around us. So, let us look at what is happening and at the same time, when we can remind our readers about our idealistic Social Security setup.

See you in next article, Australian elections 2019.

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The assets test problems in Australia.

Dear readers, in this blog, we have written several posts about D.I.Y. articles that dealt with building works. Having done that, now we are writing posts about social issues. We have started with this post, Farming today is still a risky business, we want to talk about social issues that can affect all of us. We will continue with Australian social issues that we have already written in the past, when these things happened; then we will follow with what is happening these days. This is only our views of what we see happening, so, we hope we can say something that can be helpful. Today we are going to talk about the assets test problem, because the assets are a problem, when they cannot produce enough income.    

Anyhow, you can also find this article at, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com, 

My other sites; http://frankmenchise.com,http://diybrickwork.com,http://manneedsgod.co.uk  

You can see more at this addresses, DIY brickwork  and,  http://diybrickwork.com,  

To see more visit links, Assets and pension cuts, The Assets Test Dilemma.   

Farmers own their land and own many farm machines, so, they have lots of assets; but when their farms cannot produce anything, they become as poor as people that do not have anything. But there are other people that have the same problem with the assets test, and this is what we are discussing here. 

The Assets Test Dilemma  

How the assets test affects property owners.  

Welcome to our article, The Assets Test Dilemma. 

Dear readers, we started to write these articles about what is happening in Australia, when we saw that the farmers were having problems to survive, because of the drought, so, we thought that the Australian government should help. But they cannot help the farmers, because they own properties and the assets test exclude them from government help; it is like other property owners that are excluded also. This is what we are going to write in this article.

I believe that we have suggested that the farmers, with some government help, need to make a collective farming association, where all the farmers can pool a percentage of their farming products and money, which should be tax free from the government, then this pool can be used to help each other when they need help.

We hope that somebody high up reads our suggestion and then do something about it, we hope they do. We also noted that the farmers cannot ask help from the government, because they are self-employed and because they have properties, so, their property are assets that stops them from receiving help from the government.

The assets test is a real problem because it is hard to know, at what level is the right level to apply it, as we will see as we continue to write about it; but that is only part of the farmers problem, because also they cannot ask government assistance since they are self-employed. But when one cannot make money for a long time, in the case of the farmers we are talking about years, I think that it would be fair to help them. But the farmers are not the only people that are affected from these government rules of the assets test, because there are other groups of people that are affected adversely as well.     

Anyhow, today in this article, beside talking about the farmers, we are going to talk about the assets test for other groups, and above all we are going to talk about the assets test, how it affects rental property owners in a more detailed way than we have done in our other articles, and then, about other unfair government taxes levied on properties. 

 

The assets test punishes rental properties owners.   

The assets test is a problem for the pensioners because it does not consider, if it is possible to earn the same amount of money that will be cut off the pension. The main problem here is that, when the treasurer makes the budget, he does not even look at this possible outcome, he just wants to save money and cut the pensions. In fact, nobody is thinking about this negative issue, I would say that the entire population thinks that people that own rental properties are rich people, so, they don’t need the government pension, when rental houses are a real problem with pensioners that own one rental house only, because if they get a government pension, the pension will be cut off so drastically that they would have been better off, if they didn’t have the house at all. I believe that the assets test on rental properties, is set three time as much as it should be for the small property owner to break even, and this is what I am going to show you in this article, where I will make it clear with an example.  

Anyhow, before I write about that, I am going to suggest that to fix this injustice about today assets test, which discriminate heavily against the small rental property owners, because it puts them in a disadvantaged position financially, the only thing that comes to my mind is that whoever makes these budget and laws, must keep in mind that he should give these properties owner a fair go, if he wants to keep the Australian economy going the best way possible, or I should say, at least as good as it was a few years ago, before the assets was changed.

The aim is to achieve the most benefit for the country, I believe that to achieve that, you need people that are self-starter and work hard, like the small property owners that have worked hard during their lives and have paid their taxes on what they have earned. They saved some money and invested it on a second house, hoping that when they would retire, they could be better off financially, but it did not work the way they wanted, because of the unfair assets test changes that the Australian government has made recently. You see, these self-starter people need to believe that if they work hard, they will be better off in the future.

Here I can only say; what is wrong with the people in Canberra? Don’t they see that they are killing the will of the people that want to progress by working hard? This is the second most important group of people that work physically hard; the first group is the workers that work for a wage. This first group of people politically belongs to the Labor Party, these people are happy to work for a fair wage, and if they own their house they live in, so, they are not self-starters.

The second group of people, the small property owners that are usually hard-working people and self-starters can belong to both parties; so, if the coalition wants more votes from this group and stay in government, they need to fix the mistakes they have made, when they changed the assets test in a way that punishes severally anyone that gets a government pension. Anyhow, read my views about the assets test that discriminate against the small property owners, in the example I am writing hereunder.

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The assets test punishes small property owners.

Now let us talk about how today assets test discriminate and punishes financially the small property owners. To show you that, hereunder we have written an example. So, we have chosen a couple that we call Mr. and Mrs Smith, they are both pensioner and receive a government pension. The figure that appears in this example are all rounded figures, but they are close to the real figures.

Now, let us write this example.

Mr Don Smith and his wife are both on government pensions, but today they do not get much pension, because of the assets test. The Smith couple thinks, that whoever made these laws are cruel people, because the assets test discriminates against those small property owners that own a house for rent, since it is not possible to live on the money that their property can earn, so, let us see how it works. One of the problems exist because of the deeming setup, where the government calculate that people can earn $3.00 per fortnight per every thousand dollars you have in the bank, or anywhere else including properties. In fact, owning properties is the worst thing you can have, because it affects the owners in a disadvantaged way, like the Smiths that we are talking about here.

The house they rent is valued at $650,000, plus a few more belongings their assets test are nearly 800,000 dollars so, they only get about $100 per fortnight each, because of the assets test.

Now, if they didn’t have their rental property, they would get the full pension, which would have been, $690 each per fortnight each.

Now, let us try to calculate how much the Smiths can earn from their rental property in Brisbane. This property is an old three-bedroom house, on a large block of land that is valued at $550,000, this house is rented at $450.00 PW, so, if they are lucky and the house is rented the entire year, they would collect $23400.00 this is before expenses.

Now, what are the average expenses for this house; The Brisbane City Council rates are $600.00 per quarter; the Urban Utilities average $450.00 per quarter; this will come to $4200.00 per year; the insurance is $1200.00 per year, the land tax (this may vary, but let us say that they have to pay it fully in this example) so, the tax is $6550.00; maintenance can vary, but let us say $1500.00, then there is the fee for the real estate agent say $1500.00 per year.

Let us add this numbers up. So, $4200 to Brisbane city Council rates and water +1200 insurance+6550 Queensland government land tax +1500 maintenance+ 1500 to real estate agent letting fee, it = $14,950

Calculate total net earnings for the year, is $23400 income-14950 expenses=8450

The Smiths have made $8450 net in one year. Do you think they can live on that? Here some people may say that not everybody pays the land-tax, but even without the land-tax, the Smiths will only earn $15,000.00 from their rental property.

This is a lot less than if they were on the government pension, which would have been nearly $36000.00 for both.

But now they only get 20,200.00 at the best, and all the trouble to rent their property.

I believe that these negative things must not happen, it is not right when you have worked hard to put yourself in a better financial position, then suddenly you find yourself worse off. Because some government idiots have made this huge mistake.

I believe that these mistakes must be fixed from the government, if they don't the people that have been hurt will vote them out of government.

Well, somehow, I have had my say, and I hope that it is clear enough what I have said. So, see you in my next article, which will be about, The Australian Social Security Must Be Equal.

There are a few more details at this link, The Assets Test Dilemma. See you soon.