It looks like a pretty good policy, and there’s a lot to like about it. Having said that there are some questionable features.
The basic income special case “top ups” seem to me to defeat some of the purpose of moving to a basic income in the first place. Surely it would be preferable to merely increase the basic income amount. If you must include top ups for some reason, it would be very wise to do this only where easily feasible.
Aged and disabled persons, veterans, and full-time carers should
receive an increase in the basic income to match existing pension
levels.
This line for example seems pretty terrible considering how variable existing pension payments are and how much goes into deciding how much they are. Essentially it seems to suggest that aged pension, disability support pension etc. will be abolished in name only. Something like a permanent 10% extra basic income or something upon reaching the pension age or becoming permanently and totally disabled would be much easier to manage if special case increases in basic income must be considered. I’m not advocating that precise proposal, just pointing out that it’s possible to come up with something better.
Volunteers engaged in at least 15 hours of volunteer or community work
per week should receive an additional $2,000 annually to cover incurred
costs.
Testing this sounds administratively costly. Part of the appeal of basic income is how efficient it is to administer, and this component actively works against this. It also sounds very open to abuse. I understand that we want to incentivise volunteering in some way, however we should search for better means of achieving this.
In general, I would have thought that special case top ups are just not a good idea, as they ruin much of what makes basic income proposals appealing. I would like to hear reasoning for why this might not be the case.
The land tax proposal is very opaque, non-specific and difficult to evaluate. Like with basic income, I think providing examples and more reasoning for its benefits would be a very good idea.
Land tax bills would be debited from basic income payments, with an
option for taxpayers to defer all land tax until sale of the land to
protect the income-poor.
Basic income is to be part of the income tax system. If you want to tax land, there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for linking it to basic income - why not just tax the damn land and avoid complications? Land owned by businesses and other similar entities are also obviously not applicable to the basic income stuff. I would say this section in particular needs revision.
Abolish the private health insurance rebate, medicare levy and deficit
levy, and replace with a single health services levy of 3% on incomes
over $80,000.
This levy will be deducted with income tax, and waived for holders of private health insurance.
I don’t like this. Just increase the income tax, hypothecated taxes are dumb. At the very least, the wording could be improved to make more clear that it will work like a marginal tax rate, where it’s an extra 3% of every dollar earned above $80000 as opposed to once you reach $80000 of income you start paying an extra 3% tax on your total income. (perhaps this could be achieved by changing “3% on incomes over $80,000” to “3% of income over $80,000”)
There are other things that jump out to me as being questionable, but I would struggle to mount detailed criticism. Overall though, it’s a nice policy with lots of clear improvements over what Australia currently has in place. Much of it is what people would describe as being completely politically unfeasible, but if I cared overly about that I wouldn’t have joined a minor party.