Senator Barnaby Joyce said he was encouraged by the support from the National Farmers Federation (NFF) in their media release of 30th March where they urged the government to “pull the tax trigger to re-energize and grow the under-developed 97% of the country that is regional Australia”.
“Australia already has an incentive -based scheme started in 1947, in which Zone Tax B got you 20 pounds which is now $ 40. Today in 2010, if you work over 183 days in let’s say, Cunnamulla and pay tax, the Zone Tax B rebate gives you $ 57 off your tax bill which is hardly keeping up with inflation. I doubt if we’ll encourage people to go to places like Cunnamulla for a case and a half of beer. This is not a great incentive to re-energise the regional towns in rural Australia that are crying out for more people” said Senator Joyce.
There are many areas in regional Australia with the capacity to absorb a greater population but we have to provide these people with more than an urgent sense of patriotism to get them to move there. Zonal taxation has been part of National Party policy for a long time, and this policy with a mix of others should be placed on the table for consideration.
If we don’t move away from purely rhetorical statements about wanting to develop new areas, then this increase in population will end up residing where they currently live in Melbourne, Sydney and the south east coastal corner of Queensland. This would be an absolute failure for all concerned, especially those in these already overstretched cities.