Scott Morrison’s crackdown on travelling tax bludgers
UP TO 150,000 Australians will be banned from heading overseas if they refuse to pay outstanding debts to the tax office, Centrelink or another federal agency.
NSW
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UP TO 150,000 Australians will be banned from heading overseas if they refuse to pay outstanding debts to the tax office, Centrelink or another federal agency.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia’s strong economy was not there to pay for “welfare fraud” or support a “fiscal fat fund”, declaring an international travel ban is being slapped on debt dodgers to help recover up to $800 million owed to government agencies.
Mr Morrison made the policy revelation during his most candid interview yet, speaking exclusively to The Saturday Telegraph about he and wife Jenny’s heartbreaking 16-year struggle to conceive, the importance of religion in his life and his political influences, which include Teddy Roosevelt, William Pitt the Younger and John Howard.
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He also explained why he would stay committed to meeting the Paris emissions targets and stressed the need for new laws to protect religious employees and faith-based institutions from being penalised or deprived of government funding if their beliefs did not accord with legislation like that of same-sex marriage.
“Your own personal beliefs are just that, they’re personal, and that shouldn’t stop you from serving as a director of a public company, it shouldn’t stop you from being a partner in a law firm, just because you put something on Facebook about your own beliefs all of a sudden you become persona non grata,” Mr Morrison said.
“That’s not where I want us to be.”
In announcing the international travel ban, the Prime Minister said he did not want the fruits of Australia’s strong economy to be squandered by bludgers who refused to pay their bills to the Australian Taxation Office, Centrelink and other government agencies.
Scott Morrison on the beliefs that will drive him as PM
“I don’t want a stronger economy to pay for welfare fraud. I don’t want a stronger economy to pay for tax fraud,” he said.
“It’s not there to create some largesse, it’s not there to create a fat fund, a fiscal fat-fund, it’s there to ensure that you can put the investments into hospitals and the schools.
“It’s not an anti-welfare thing, it’s an anti being treated like a mug thing.”
Already, 20 people have been prevented from leaving the country.
In one of the first cases, a Sydneysider was banned from boarding a flight for an outstanding $10,000 debt to the Australian Taxation Office.
Now, more than 150,000 Australians who are no longer on welfare could face a travel ban if they refuse to enter into a payment plan.
“If you’ve got welfare debts but you can afford to get on a plane and go overseas, well — no,” Mr Morrison said.
“If you’ve got longstanding tax debts and you’ve been warned and warned and warned and warned and warned, and you’re thumbing your nose at everyone else paying tax and you’re saying, ‘Tough for you. I’m going to get on a plane’, well, you’re actually insulting your fellow Australians who pay for the welfare system.”
He said there was no “nastiness” about the move and that Australians were supportive of the welfare safety net but were “aggrieved” when it was abused.
“People don’t want to be played for mugs on welfare. They think it’s important but it should go to people who really need it and it should help them get back on their feet,” he said.
“When it gets taken advantage of, whether it’s immigration or tax or welfare, the integrity of it is really important because people want to make sure the government is always protecting its integrity.”
Over the past decade, parents who refuse to meet their child support payments have faced travel bans.
But now this has been extended to people who owe money to all government agencies if they ignore multiple warnings. Interest payments will also apply to the unpaid debts.
In the extensive interview with The Saturday Telegraph Mr Morrison, who has not yet moved into Kirribilli House, spoke about how he was still settling into his new role as Prime Minister.
“On Saturday night I wanted to make a curry but the convoy that was involved in going to Woollies to get the ingredients was just all too much, to get some coconut milk and pick up the lamb and whatever I was short on,” he said.
“I’ve got to get more organised for this because I was used to just ducking up and doing this, so we’re making all of those adjustments.”
Describing himself as a “mortgage-belt Liberal”, Mr Morrison said he has dealt with financial pressures over the years, like most families, and said his home still had an average-size mortgage with “lots of zeros on it”.
While saying it was not a topic he liked to talk about, out of respect for families who are struggling to have children, Mr Morrison reflected on his and his wife Jenny’s 16-year battle to conceive, which he said seemed “like an eternity”.
He describes his two daughters, Abbey, 11, and Lily, 9, as “miracles”.
“It was hard. It was terribly hard, and it was hard watching the person you love go through something, as you were going through it, but you’re more concerned about what she was going through, while dealing with your own stuff about it,” he said.
“And it was a long time. It was a really long time. But this is why Jen is so amazing. She just never gives up hope, always has her faith, as I do, and just kept believing.
“The reason why we’ve always been careful talking about it is because we know that (for) those who are going through that process, there are no guarantees and sometimes the happy stories are the stories you don’t want to hear — and we understand that.”
WE’LL STICK WITH PARIS DEAL: PM
SCOTT Morrison has refused to pull out of the Paris climate accord, saying Australia made a commitment to the international community and keeping it is a matter of principle.
Despite energy policy playing a key role in bringing down former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, Mr Morrison is standing firm that he will not walk away from the emissions-reduction targets the government committed to in 2015.
He said it was wrong to compare Australia with the United States, where President Donald Trump pulled out of the agreement.
“The difference between what happened in the United States is that President Trump reversed a decision of the Obama administration,” he said.
“What will happen in the US is that the juggernaut of the US economy will keep doing what it’s doing and I imagine that won’t have much impact one way or the other on what their forward plans are.
“(But) our government made that decision. This wasn’t a commitment the Labor Party made. This was the commitment we made after the 2013 election and it was made and it was pitched, you know, in the middle of the pack. It wasn’t some big statement. It was done, I think, conservatively.
“Our government keeps its commitments.”
Mr Morrison said if Australia were to break its Paris commitment now, it would lose standing and raise questions about the confidence other nations have in any future commitments we make internationally.
PM TO FIGHT FOR RELIGIOUS PROTECTION
WORKERS who disagree with same-sex marriage because of their religious beliefs should be protected from being sacked or penalised, Prime Minister Scott Morrison says.
In an interview with The Saturday Telegraph, Mr Morrison told of his concern over instances where individuals who didn’t agree with gay marriage had suffered severe consequences in their workplaces.
In the case of Christian organisations, he said it was not appropriate to have “beliefs imposed on them by the state”.
“Your own personal beliefs are just that, they’re personal, and that shouldn’t stop you from serving as a director of a public company, it shouldn’t stop you from being a partner in a law firm. Just because you put something on Facebook about your own beliefs all of a sudden you become persona non-grata, or you can’t appear on the radio or things like this,” he said.
“That’s not where I want us to be. Is this an overwhelming problem at the moment? No. Are there examples of this happening? Yes. Is there a risk that this could get more of a problem in the future? Yes.”
While Mr Morrison did not comment on any specific legislation he could introduce in the wake of Philip Ruddock’s review into religious freedoms, he spoke of the need to protect religious institutions so government funding was not withheld because of their beliefs.
“I want to be sure whether it’s a Christian school or a Jewish school … a faith-based hospital or whether it’s a charity, that those organisations have their own belief structure,” he said.
“Now that might not be the belief structure that other people share, but they started it as a product of their beliefs so they should be able to keep running it in accordance with their beliefs and not having other beliefs imposed on them by the state, regardless of even whether there’s public funding which can be attracted.
“I mean they’re not getting the funding because of their faith, they’re getting their funding because they do a good job and they deliver outcomes for the government, whether that’s reducing homelessness or educating children properly in accordance with the standards that are set.”
Originally published as Scott Morrison’s crackdown on travelling tax bludgers
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