Hi Paul Sheeans's "Tale without a narrative heads for an unhappy end" includes the striking line "the country faces the risk of drifting into the European malaise of unsustainable welfare spending".
The one European country that has indulged in unsustainable welfare spending is Greece, and it wasn't unsustainable because the welfare spending was too high, but because the Greek government didn't collect as much tax as it should have.
Tax evasion was rampant at all levels of Greek society, and if Greece had invested in more tax collectors, and given them a mandate to collect the taxes owed by everybody, despite the horrible unpopularity that might ensue, the welfare payments would have been perfectly sustainable, as they are in Germany and Sweden.
If the Greek example was the one that Paul Sheehan had had in mind, he would be encouraging the Abbott government to go after Australian tax avoiders, as documented in the Fairfax media, who earn lots of money in Australia, but contrive not to earn any taxable profits in this country by shifting the income to tax havens before declaring it as profit.
Welfare dodgers certainly exist, but they don't collect on the scale of international tax avoiders.
Bill Sloman, Unit 60, 1 Tewkesbury Avenue, Darlinghurst NSW 2010, phone
02 8958 6567, mobile 04 3822 7734