The MIS nightmare

MANAGED investment schemes were a nightmare Australia does not need to relive.

Our taxes helped fund the transfer of ownership of Australia’s water and land to corporate giants and then, worse, foreign interests.

Australia’s wine industry was ruined by oversupply and hundreds of thousands of hectares of food-producing land was devoured by worthless monocultures of plantation timber – while logging of native forests continued.

Consecutive governments pillaged this country to please big business.

Well, here we go again.

Carbon sink plantations will enjoy similar treatment to MIS and a leading tax barrister says the owners could also write-off the cost of purchasing land, giving CSP owners an unfair advantage over legitimate buyers.

And the evils have combined – MIS companies are selling CSPs.

Both the Liberal and Labor parties support tax breaks for CSPs.

Were they not paying attention during the MIS debacle?

How can the Liberals claim to support a free market and then offer financial incentives to certain sectors of it?

The hypocrisy is breathtaking – but the Liberals have always looked after their mates in big business.

Labor is just as bad, for the same reason.

The Nationals don’t support the tax breaks, but may vote for them anyway to avoid rocking the boat with the Liberals.

Well, they should rock the boat. That’s what they’re there for.

As it stands the Greens are the only party fighting to have these tax breaks removed.

If CSPs are viable, people will invest. If they aren’t, let them fail.

The way to reduce carbon pollution may well be to … . wait for it … reduce carbon pollution.

Don’t allow big polluters to continue polluting and plant Australia out in monocultures which support neither employment nor the environment.

The fact we are likely to plant food-producing land with the aim of sequestering carbon while continuing to log carbon-dense native forest is the ultimate stupidity.

MIS should be abolished. Tax breaks for CSPs should be scrapped. Australia does not need to learn the MIS lesson twice.
Weekly Times, Editorial, http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2010/04/07/174371_opinion-news.html
A plantation of E Nitens