A poll in the Fairfax press yesterday showed that the majority of Sydney people had got jack of the Catholic Church’s World Youth Day once they realised how disruptive it would be. While the men who run the world’s premier institution of misogyny and paedophilia should never have been allowed to hold their medievalist frolic in public in the first place, the event has undoubtedly been affected by the Iemma Government’s Sadim touch.
Typically, the NSW Government buggered up the organising of the event, leading to an extended stoush with the racing industry which was only resolved via a large bribe to the horse floggers, which came on top of tens of millions already gifted to the Catholics to help celebrate such bizarre concepts as transubstantiation, virgin birth and zombie messiahs.
John Watkins – apparently one of the talented ones in Macquarie St – then applied his usual “shut the place down” approach of handing police ridiculous powers and closing off half the city, which worked so well during APEC that the Chasers were waved through to within bombing distance of world leaders. He also claimed that the event would generate $190m in tourism revenue, but refused to release the basis for the figure, suggesting it’s the usual creative arithmetic of magical multipliers and outlandish assumptions employed by events organisers over the years. Youth Day organisers preferred an even sillier estimate of $230m offered by the local Chamber of Commerce. This was at the same time they were pleading for local Catholics to volunteer to have “pilgrims” billeted on them.
But while Alex Mitchell has previously explained how much taxpayer money has been showered on the Catholic Church, that’s not the end of it, not by a long stretch. Don’t forget that religious groups do not pay tax – including company tax, GST, FBT and capital gains tax, or even council rates, stamp duty or land tax. Even the for-profit services run by religious groups – which frequently compete with other business – are exempt from company taxation.
In 2005, Adele Ferguson did the hard work of estimating the revenue of Australia’s main religions for BRW. She found that the Catholic Church earned the bulk of the more than $23b in revenue earned by the ten largest religious groups – $16.25b. At the same growth rate identified by Ferguson, this would be $20.47b in 2008. If even just 5% of that revenue was profit, that’s more than $300m that the Catholic Church will avoid this year in company tax alone. Ferguson estimated that the Church had more than $100b in assets, the bulk of which would be property – which would mean several hundred million dollars more in land tax that state governments are missing out on.
So, courtesy of our exempting religions from taxation, the Catholic Church alone keeps the best part of a billion dollars a year minimum. Throw in everyone else – the Uniting Church, the Anglicans, the happy clappers and their coffee chains, the Salvos – and we’re talking a billions of dollars a year in tax revenue forgone. The $160m being poured into the Youth Day is small beer indeed.
You’re right Tim, my language was a little intemperate. After all, it is so impolite to point out to people that their beliefs are baseles, their actions reprehensive, and their practices harmful to themselves and others. I will try to be more polite in the future.
Your assumptions about my schooling are interesting. Is it unthinkable to you that a catholic-educated child would be able to so comprehensively discard the indoctrination?
The “zombie messiah” crack was intended to get people thinking how absurd the beliefs of even a massively mainstream religion like Catholicism actually are. Not content with adopting the very intelligent, if somewhat derivative, philosophy espoused by the historical Jesus, the early Church crafted the myth of his returning from the dead and walking around inviting people to stick their fingers in his wounds before levitating into heaven. Otherwise intelligent, sane adults actually believe this stuff, and – much worse – our taxes support them to do so.
Holy hell that’s alot of comments to digest. What I wanted to add as a reformed alter boy, never abused either, was – how can Iemma stuff up an ANZAC day solemn religious festival pic fac (NZ soldier statue on major landmark bridge, excludes relatives of esteemed artist and NZ citizens tripping all the way across the ditch). I just had to laugh at the foot in dog poo tv images of cranky folks on 2, 7 but not 9 etc. And another thing – I swear I saw smokin Joe Tripodi traipsing up the steps at St Peters Basillica (yeah really the one in Rome) in early June 2002. Or a swarthy gent that looks very similar. Damn hot day, still wearing double breasted dark grey. World Youth day pitch? Or just a cousin from the old country? Confession after a certain AD staffer in distress? Like religion itself, it’s a mystery.
Nice try Peter Machi, however again it would seem your type will continue to try and pull the wool over peoples eyes by not being completely honest with you figures. Below is copied from the Australian Depart of Immigration website “… Visas to attend World Youth Day (WYD) will be free of government charges, and will allow a standard stay of three months. The Electronic Travel Authority (ETA) and the Tourist visa are the most appropriate visas for pilgrims attending WYD.” Thus your $40M from fees is blown out of the water. Plus Pell is now saying that the pilgram numbers will be 225K, so your 500-600 and again your associated revenue blown out of the water. As of 29 JUne 2008, as reports on line in The Daily Telegraph in Sydney “…More than 132,000 pilgrims have registered with World Youth Day organisers. Another 64,000 registrations are partly completed.” I might be wrong but that adds up to 196,000 (how many of these are paid up registrations – well short of the orginal numbers put forward and the adjusted numbers now being put forward by Pell. I also note that the cut off date was 1 June – what deal has the federal government done to allow late – including the above 64,000?
Plus the majority of pilgrims will be billeted in private homes and at schools etc and they pay for packages based on wealth of the country they come from – I’m not aware that the government or tax payer is get this money from the packages( obviously there are operational costs there too) and hotels are indicating they expect occupancy rates to by lower than there are normally at the same time – and again your associated revenue blown out of the water, private companies are also supplying food at the event, so your revenue blown out of the water again.
All of the follow up tourism boom has been tried before – particularly after the 2000 Olympics – it simply did not turn out in the dollars people like you push. Whether your are deliberately trying to be deceptive or not or you are simply following the leader you are WRONG and it’s Sydney that will suffer. By the way what’s the Catholic Youth Youth Days’ deffinition of “youth”? And will they try to bodggy the numbers?
How much of the $85+ millions of NSW public money being spent on this function is being used to keep both Australian and visiting children and youths secure and safe from sexual assault by the many predatory catholic priests and brothers who will be attending?
It is clear from the well-documented history of paedophilia and sexual assault by priests and brothers in virtually every country of the world over many years that they will pose a far greater risk to our children than any potential terrorist threat.
What precautions are the organisers and the AFP taking to protect our children?