Acronyms. It's not always as easy as ABC.

There is a lot of talk today about the need to carefully prepare undergraduate teachers so that they are well equipped to educate the next generation of Australians. I have always been interested in nurturing the next generation of teachers. I actually spent two years at Graylands Teachers College lecturing trainee teachers in Science and Mathematics. Of course, student teachers are now more fashionably called, Pre Service Teachers. I try to avoid the term Pre Service Teacher. To me it sounds like something that you pop into the microwave or maybe pick up at an IKEA store.

 
I have been retired for some time now, but I think I may try to get back in to an education faculty at one of the universities to provide what could be the most important education course of all, Educational Acronyms 101.

Yes, these days no educator can conduct an erudite conversation about schools and schooling unless they have a good understanding of educational acronyms. I mean NAPLAN, PISA, AITSL, SBM, GERM, RED, LOTE, SID, ERG, FTE, ESL, BER,  SAER, HRMIS, IPS, RAMS and now SCFM are just a few of the acronyms that crop up in daily conversations between principals and teachers. Conversations about SID and ERG are usually conducted with quivering voices. These are just some of the hundreds of important acronyms that student teachers will need to comprehend and be able to drop intelligently into their conversations with colleagues, if they are to gain and maintain professional respect.

About the only acronyms going around in the 1950s were HM for Headmaster or Headmistress and DHM and FM for the Deputy and First Mistress. It should be noted that a First Mistress was not a Headmistress but the female equivalent of a Deputy Headmaster. WAPPA had its origins with the formation of the Headmasters and Headmistresses Association on November, 25, 1953, which gave birth to the acronym HHA. In the early 1970s the Education Department decided to call primary Headmasters and Headmistresses, Principals, so around 1974, the HHA morphed in to WAPPA. We all know what WAPPA stands for. It stands for no nonsense where the Principalship is concerned.

 When I started my teaching career, back in the depths of the 20^th Century, about the only acronym I needed to know was ED, which of course were the initials of the Education Department. Over the years ED became EDWA, WAED, MOE, DET and now the DOE. There were a couple of others: PE for Physical Education and PEAC, a programme for extending and challenging gifted children. PWD was the Public Works Department that visited schools at least every seven years for a Repair and Replace maintenance programme. Over the years the PWD acronym changed as did, sadly, the quality and frequency of the maintenance. PWD became BMA, then CAMS. Not sure what they call it today, which is probably just as well because it probably isn’t printable.

During the 1970s we then met up with USSR, not the communist dictatorship, but an acronym for the Uninterrupted Sustained Silent Reading programme. The idea was that after lunch everybody in the school would read silently for ten or fifteen minutes or until somebody interrupted. Some problems occurred when hard working teachers actually fell asleep during this glorious period of golden silence and nothing else happened until some brave, or foolish student, managed to wake them so that lessons could resume. 

In the 1980s an interesting group of fun loving, retired educators used to meet for social occasions in the State School Teachers Union building. In order to attract more retired teachers and administrators to these friendly gatherings, some wit decided to advertise the meeting times and the venue in the Union’s newspaper, The Western Teacher. These adverts ran for about three months before somebody in authority at SSTUWA decided that the group’s acronym was not suitable for publication. So, sadly, the Retired Officers Of The Education Department group gradually disbanded. You can work it out.

I was so keen on using acronyms that I even made up two of my own to use in the school programme at Donnybrook District High School in the late 1970s. It was at the time when Manual for boys and Sewing for girls was being replaced by more general craft activities for both sexes on each Thursday afternoon. We decided to devote Term Three to having a variety of art/craft options, which children from Year 4 to Year 7 could choose to join. By utilising the skills of the staff and various parents, we offered Macramé, Tie-dying, Knitting, Clay Modelling, Design, Woodwork, Metalwork (Well it was a District High School and the Manual Arts teachers were keen), Puppet Making, Electronics, Motor Mechanics, Basket Making and Cooking. I taught science to the Year Ones so that Mrs Tricia Gibbs could take the macramé class. We had about 8-12 students from Years 4 to 7 in each group. After five weeks students moved to their second preferred option. The programme worked quite well. We called it Child Hobbies And Other Subjects.  That’s CHAOS for short.

Then we thought if we can do it for art and craft maybe we can do it for sports as well. This led to children being able to choose from a variety of sporting activities instead of the usual football and netball, however, we made sure that the sports option programme started after the football and netball season finished.  Once again, by utilising staff and parents, we were able to offer basketball, soccer, hockey, lacrosse (junior version), tennis, golf, badminton, softball, table tennis and lawn bowls. As per the CHAOS programme, children from Years 4 to 7 indicated their first and second preferences and we changed groups after five weeks. We had between 8 and 16 students in each group. We conducted this programme on Wednesday afternoons. We called it Really Interesting Other Type Sports. That’s RIOTS for short.

Both of these programmes worked quite well. Indeed, the only real problem I had with them was when the South-West District Director, Barry Godley, visited the school and noted that, according to the timetable, RIOTS and CHAOS occurred  each Wednesday and Thursday afternoon. Of course, when I explained the situation, Barry was very happy for CHAOS and RIOTS to continue at Donnybrook District High School.

I suppose this was when I first realised the value of everyone knowing exactly what an acronym stands for. In my recent role on the WAPPA Support Line I have noticed more and more how principals tend to use acronyms as if they were actual words.

“My RED and CRO did not support my BER proposal at all. Now they tell me SID and ERG may become involved. I have made an appointment with EASE.”

“According to PISA and NAPLAN we are making good progress as far as the OECD is concerned but ACARA says AITSL will need to be revisited if we are going to improve LOTE and ESL."

“I looked on RAMs for a redeployed TDSC, but because we are an IPS the RED said I needed to rationalise my AFTE with my SFTE.”

Fluent acronym speakers will have no trouble translating the above examples, although a few may struggle with the principal searching RAMS for a Teacher Development School Coordinator, that's  TDSC to anyone fluent in Acronymonia.

Today on the WAPPA website I saw an advert for a SKWIRK. I do not know what the letters stand for but I found out that it is an online teaching resource. I am not sure if it is a true acronym or just an eye catching alphabetic pot pourri. There could be a worrying trend developing, where pseudo acronyms infiltrate Educated Acronym Eduspeak (EAU). This could create confusion in all Eduspeak conversations. On second thoughts, maybe I need to expand my Student Teacher Acronyms 101 course in to full blown PL programme for all WAPPA members. Thanks to modern IT I can run it from my own website. I will call it Basic Acronym Learning: Online Now Every Year.  That’s BALONEY for sure!

This article was first published on December 1, 2014, on The Font of Noelage at noelswriting.blogsite.com.au

It's the poor wot gets the blame

Centrelink Rorters versus Non Tax Paying Rich People.

The rich are winning by a mile...make that billions.

When I was a  student at Graylands Teachers College in the mid 1950s I enjoyed many camps at beautiful Point Peron. A song that we students sang lustily and with deep emotion at those camps was an old Cockney Music Hall classic, "Ain't it all a bloomin' shame." My mind grows dim but I fancy the last rousing chorus went something like this:

"It's the same the 'ole world over,

It's the poo-ah wot gets the blame.

It's the rich wot lives in clover,

Ain't it all a bloomin' shame."

It seems that nearly sixty years later nothing has changed. Recently, the West Australian newspaper published what it called the state’s Rich List. Over our morning coffee we learnt how many millions or billions some of our wealthiest citizens have acquired. Very enlightening.

Perhaps it would be even more enlightening for us to read about our state's Highest Tax Payers. It is possible that many of those on the Rich List would be nowhere to be seen on the Highest Taxpayer List. For the sad truth is that many of our richest people and corporations pay little or no income tax whatsoever.

Politicians and the media are generally quite outspoken about the perceived rorts being perpetrated by those in receipt of Centrelink welfare payments. Unemployed people on the dole are invariably referred to in the media as job snobs, dole bludgers and disability pension rorters.

 Our current Minister for Employment, The Honourable Eric Abetz, seems quite convinced that the unemployed are either malingering or not trying hard enough to find employment. Earlier this year, Mr Abetz announced that unemployed people would not receive any dole money until they had been unemployed for six months. He added that in order to get the dole, unemployed people would need to apply for forty jobs per month. That means applying for two jobs every working day. After a large public outcry Mt Abetz reduced this requirement to twenty job applications per month, or one per working day. 

As reported in The Australian newspaper at the time, Abetz also mooted the need for unemployed people to report to job agencies if they wanted to retain their benefits. A “reasonable excuse” would not now be acceptable. Only “extreme excuses” would be acceptable, like a bushfire or the very recent death of an immediate family member. Being mentally ill would not be an acceptable excuse, the Australian reported. Being assaulted was acceptable, but only if it happened within 24 hours of the appointment.

The fact is that unemployment in Australia is an unwanted and unhappy state that most employees have no control over. Most of those currently on the dole have worked before and will work again. The official jobless figure at present is around 800 000. Total job vacancies in August this year were 150 000. It doesn’t matter how hard you try or how often you apply, no one can overcome that mathematical imbalance between those seeking work and the number of jobs available.

Similarly, Centrelink’s official figures do not support the charge that their clients are all job snobs, bludgers and cheats. Between 2006 and 2010, Centrelink conducted 4 000 000 reviews in each of those years, covering 60% of its clients. As a result of this extensive investigation into people’s personal circumstances there were, on average, 3192 people referred for prosecution. That represents 0.04%. In 2012 the figure was less than 1500. So, yes, there are some rorters, but a very small percentage.

On the other hand  a great many rich people and highly profitable corporations have made an art form of rorting the income tax system. They are very rich people living in clover alright. These “Fat Cats” have been aided and abetted by the Federal government, which has sacked Australian Tax office workers,severely cut the ATO budget and closed down whole departments in order to save money. Upon taking office in 2013, Treasurer Joe Hockey, proposed laying off 4700 ATO staff over four years. He said this was part of his deficit reduction plan. He never thought to reduce the deficit by hitting the rich with higher taxes. Obviously, Joe knows that a lot of rich people don't pay any taxes.

Australian writer and broadcaster, Richard Cooke, in a recent article in The Monthly Magazine, said that Hockey’s explanation for running down the Australian Tax office was baffling. “Cutting funds to the tax collection arm of government may be the single most inefficient form of austerity there is - each dollar spent on enforcement brings around six in additional revenue.”

Richard Cooke also quoted American economist and Nobel Laureate, Joseph Stiglitz, who bluntly stated, “They are trying to give a free ride to rich people.”

Roman Lamis, a senior lecturer, and Ross McClure, a Ph.D. student, are two accountants at the University of Technology, Sydney. They strongly believe that Mr Hockey and the government are not doing enough to chase down serial tax avoiders. 

In an article in The Conversation magazine on October 2^nd this year, they point out that the recent report commissioned by the Tax Justice Network claimed that over 30% of companies listed on the Australian Stock Exchange have an effective income tax rate of 10% or less. Obviously, unprofitable companies will not pay any tax, but Lamis and McClure assert that some companies “use abnormal debt making devices to carry forward losses which produce future tax benefits.”

The Tax Network Report says that if “the largest Australian listed companies paid taxes at the statutory corporate rate of 30% it would produce an extra $8.4 billion in annual revenue.” However, as Lamis and McClure point out, the government has cut the ATO budget so that it lacks the resources to

*Monitor and audit corporations at risk

*advise government on tax policy issues, and more importantly

*litigate major cases.

They go on to say that the government is thinking of outsourcing the ATO’s tax audit function to private accounting firms. These are the very same accounting firms that are being paid huge amounts of money to advise companies how to avoid paying taxes to the ATO. A bit like asking the burglars to investigate their own robberies.

The Australian Securities and Investment Commission, the supposed watchdog for corporate fraud, has an appalling record in its pursuit of high flying tax avoiders and corporate cheats. During the Global Financial Crisis it did practically nothing. Richard Cooke points out that in the five year period to February, 2014, ASIC prosecuted just 32 insider trading cases. Cooke says, “It boasts failed or non-existent prosecutions in some of the biggest episodes of fraud and collapse in Australia’s corporate history, among them Securancy, Banksia Securities, LM Investment Management, Storm Financial, RAMS and the Australian Wheat Board scandal.”

Most recently, says Cooke, ASIC failed to press charges against former Trio Capital executive, Jack Flader. Flader is the mastermind behind the greatest superannuation fraud in Australia’s history. Trio collapsed in 2009 with its executives creaming $180 million dollars of the top for themselves. The government then paid out $54 million dollars in compensation to the jilted Trio investors. It took ASIC three years to interview Flader before deciding not to prosecute.

ASIC also did virtually nothing when financial advisors with the Commonwealth Bank caused thousands of Australians to lose their entire investments.

Cooke says that Gina Rhinehart’s Hancock Prospecting company failed to lodge its financial reports on time for seven years. If an unemployed person is late reporting they lose their entitlement. As Cooke points out, “With that attitude to filling in forms, Rhinehart could find herself in trouble if ever she is unemployed.”

We do not know how much personal income tax Mrs Rhinehart pays, but Peter Martin, Economics Editor for The Age newspaper, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald on May 13, this year, said that ATO statistics show that “75 ultra-high earning Australians pay NO INCOME TAX at all. Each of them earned more than one million dollars from investments or wages and between them they accumulated $195 million, an average of $2.6 million each. But they paid no tax whatsoever. They paid no Medicare levy, no Medicare surcharge, even though 60 of them had private health insurance.”

Why did these very rich people not pay any tax? The reason , says Martin, is that they all managed to cut their combined taxable incomes to $87.00. That’s a miserly $1.10 each of personal income.

Cutting your income to almost nothing does not come cheaply. Martin says that 45 of these very rich Australians claimed a total of $64.5 million for “the cost of managing their affairs. That is a staggering $1.4 million each.” And it is all tax deductible.

But, Martin points out, it is not only millionaires who avoid tax. He says ATO figures show 1095 Australians earning in excess of $150 000 each, also paid no income tax. However, they did pay an average of $223 000 each for tax avoidance advice, which is of course also tax deductible.

Most of these non-tax payers use Negative Gearing to reduce their tax liability. They lose large sums of money on properties that they rent out at a loss. These losses destroy their taxable incomes so that they pay no tax. Then they sell the property for a very handsome, but lightly taxed, profit.

The biggest corporate rorters of all are the international companies. They transfer funds from one tax haven to another tax haven and pay only minimal tax in the country where they amassed their huge profits. Richard Cooke gives several examples of massive corporate tax avoidance and quotes Joseph Stiglitz who points out that it is government legislation and inaction which enables such tax avoidance to flourish. 

Stiglitz says “there is an asymmetry between corporations taking benefits from the legislation, subsidy and other government actions, and their willingness to contribute.” That is, corporations use government laws and subsidies to make it possible for them to avoid paying any tax.

Stiglitz goes on to say, “You can see it across the board. Apple in the United States, its very existence almost depends on the internet…that was created by the government. The company uses American institutional infrastructure, the legal system, the courts – and it doesn’t pay any taxes.” Cooke points out that Apple now has greater cash reserves than the US government itself.

Cooke refers to the complicated profit shifting arrangements of these non-tax paying international corporations as “The Double Irish Dutch Sandwich” technique. He says Google, for example, earns billions of dollars from advertising in Australia, which are then paid on to a company called Google Ireland Limited which in turn pays them to a Dutch subsidiary which then pays them back to another Irish company. Cooke say, “Google is an Irish company, except when it is in Ireland, where it is a Bermudan company.” As a result, Google pays very little income tax in Australia, where the money was made.

The Chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, told Bloomberg that he is very pleased with the way his company had set up this elaborate structure to avoid paying Australian income tax. “We did it based on the incentives that the governments have offered us to operate…it’s called capitalism. We are proudly capitalistic. I’m not confused about this.” He isn't confused but many taxpayers are.

Google also noted, quite rightly, that a lot of other upstanding companies pay even less tax than they do. The Tax Justice Network says one third of ASX 200 companies pay less than 10% tax while 575 operate subsidiaries in tax havens so as to minimise their income tax.

The recent G20 had on its agenda a proposal to make corporations pay tax to the country in which the money was acquired. Point 13 of the Final Communique stated in part, “Profits should be taxed where the economic activities deriving the profits were performed.” It went on to say that in order “To prevent cross border tax evasion, we endorse Global Common Reporting Standards for the automatic exchange of tax information”. The G20 hopes to have a tax avoidance regime in place by the end of 2015. Hard done by  PAYE taxpayers of the world will watch with interest how that all unfolds.

In the meantime, it is certain that highly paid tax avoidance accountants are already calculating the huge fees that they will require in order to steer their non-tax paying corporate clients into even more sophisticated tax havens.

Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch, who controls 70% of Australia’s media, is continuing to focus on those greedy, job snob welfare cheats. News Corp doesn't devote a lot of space to corporate fraud...unless it involves a trade union.

Oh, yes, it is still the same the whole world over 

Ít's the poo-ah wot gets the blame.

It's the rich wot lives in clover,

Ain't it all a bloomin' shame?

References:

Richard Cooke. Writer and broadcaster. “Much obliged”, The Monthly Magazine November, 2014. Pp 26-33.

Roman Lamis, Senior Lecturer Accounting, University of Technology (UTS), Sydney and Ross McClure, Ph.D. candidate, UTS, “What’s needed for Australia to seriously tackle tax avoidance.” The Conversation, 2/10/2014.

Peter Martin, Economics Editor, The Age; “Budget pain? Not for millionaires who pay no tax.” The Sydney Morning Herald, May 13, 2014.