Federal election 2016: ABC’s ‘budget fairness’ victim pays no net tax

Duncan Storrar, the man on Q&A who railed eloquently against tax relief for the wealthy, pays no net tax after a difficult life marked by ill health.

Duncan Storrar with daughters Indica, 8, and Jakayla-Rose, 6, in Geelong yesterday following his Monday night appearance on the ABC’s Q&A. Picture: David Geraghty

Duncan Storrar, the audience member on national TV who railed eloquently against tax relief for the wealthy, pays no net tax and relies on Austudy payments after a difficult life marked by ill health.

Mr Storrar, 45, caused a social media storm on Monday’s Q&A on the ABC when he personalised the claim that it was unfair to give tax advantages to high-income earners rather than the working poor.

He told the panel he had been on the minimum wage all his life because he had little education and a disability, which he revealed yesterday was a decades-long ­battle with post-traumatic stress disorder triggered by sexual abuse.

Visiting his partner Cindy’s housing commission home in Geelong, about 80km southwest of Melbourne, where his daughters, Indica, 8, and Jakayla-Rose, 6, are raised by their mother, Mr Storrar said his life had been tough.

He and his wife are separated and he lives with his mother, sporadically working as a truck driver on $16 an hour and ­relying on a $520-a-fortnight ­Austudy ­allowance to survive.

But he was not seeking more handouts, just arguing for an ­increase in the $18,200 tax-free threshold so he could survive when he worked reduced hours because of his ­illness. “A lift in the tax-free threshold will change my daughters’ lives,” Mr Storrar said, adding that he wanted them to go to university.

Mr Storrar is studying youth work and mental health at a not-for-profit disability educator.

“I get $16 an hour (driving trucks) ... there is this whole level of people like me, we work below the radar, we don’t complain and there is a whole heap of things set up to make it really easy for people to exploit us,’’ Mr Storrar said.

“One of the things is if you leave a job, you automatically lose your payments for 12 weeks.”

He added that it was unfair that the wealthy were getting tax breaks and incentives to invest. Instead, he said the government should allow housing commission tenants to buy properties from the government with the fortnightly subsidised payments.

Mr Storrar, who is a disenchanted former Labor voter who thinks it is now in the same camp as the Liberals, said he was upset by the response of the panel to his question about why the rich were getting tax breaks.

Ai Group chief executive Innes Willox, a panellist, pointed out that Mr Storrar would pay little or no tax.

Mr Storrar described Assistant Treasurer Kelly O’Dwyer’s re­action — when she spoke about jobs and growth — as “disgusting”.

“Is that really what politicians think? Our country is not a business, it’s a country,’’ he said.

On ABC radio yesterday, Labor leader Bill Shorten said: “We understand, unlike Mr Turnbull, that a lot of Australians are doing it hard. That’s why we won’t go down the inappropriate path of providing a millionaire ... a $17,000 tax cut whilst people like Duncan get nothing in their tax and face harsh cuts.”