Olivia
Online
FarmerEm
@Farm4Future
Farmer, writer, mom, wife.
Australia
Joined August 2024
267 Following
60 Followers
137 Posts
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In the relentlessness of our world, I find my peace on the farm.
Here, we have the steady rhythm of the seasons, the gentle passing of each day.
There is comfort in the sound of horses thundering across the paddock, lambs calling to one another and playing on the rocks while their mothers happily graze.
There is an unbreakable truth in nature, and we thrive by immersing ourselves in it.
Here are a few images from life on the farm.
One of Australia’s greatest financial success stories has been the rise of ordinary people becoming investors. Over the last 30 years, millions of Australians have gradually moved from relying purely on wages and property to owning shares, ETFs and diversified portfolios. Not just wealthy people, but teachers, nurses, tradies, students and young families trying to build financial security over time.
That’s why the government’s proposed CGT changes feel like such a profound mistake.
This piece in today’s The Australian is my attempt to explain why I think that matters.
https://t.co/vYA3TcmpYf
A farmer dies in April 2026.
His son inherits the farm. The farm has been in the family since 1847.
The farm consists of: 300 acres of grazing pasture, a farmhouse built in 1892, a barn, a milking parlour, two tractors of varying ages, a Land Rover that runs about 70% of the time, and a herd of 180 Hereford-cross cattle.
On paper, the farm is worth approximately £3.2 million. This is because land near him has been bought recently by a London hedge fund looking for carbon credits, which has dragged the comparable value of every field within forty miles upward to a number nobody local can justify.
In cash, the farm produces a profit of about £28,000 a year in a good year. In a bad year it loses money. The son also works as a fencing contractor three days a week to keep the operation viable.
The inheritance tax bill on a £3.2 million estate, even at the reduced 20% rate, comes to approximately £140,000 after the increased threshold is applied. The son does not have £140,000. The son has never had £140,000. The son has £4,200 in his current account and an overdraft.
The son sells 60 acres to a developer to pay the tax. The developer puts solar panels on the 60 acres. The remaining herd cannot be sustained on the reduced land. The herd is sold. The barn becomes a holiday let.
A different family eats Brazilian beef this Christmas without knowing why the price went up.
The Treasury collects £140,000.
The land never produces British food again.
An Australian family in Perth just sat down and did the maths the government hoped you’d never do.
Cost to buy & own a home over 34 years: $2,016,850
Taxes paid to the government over the same period: $2,717,865
You paid more in tax than for your own house. Let that sink in.
Breakdown:
• $2.2M in income taxes, GST, duties & excises
• $105k in council rates
• $94k in vehicle taxes across 7 cars
• $300k in tax on your super (the money meant for retirement)
And what’s the big relief in the 2025 Budget? A $268 tax cut.
That’s $5.15 a week — less than a pie and a beer.
You’re not bad with money. You’re being taxed into the ground.
I love this country, but I’m bloody tired of everyday Aussies working their whole lives just to hand over more to the government than they spend on their home — while those collecting it face zero consequences.
The numbers don’t lie.
Time to prepare, protect and future-proof your family. The fighting spirit is needed now more than ever.
(Martene Wallace on Instagram)
What do you think? 🇦🇺
New CGT + trust taxes: $8 billion raised over 5 years — hitting regular Aussies.
A gas export levy: $17 billion raised— every single year.
It's not rocket science. We’re opting to financially cripple average Australians instead of modestly tax the foreign-owned gas giants.
Pure political choice by this Labor government.
#CostOfLivingCrisis #TaxTheGasGiants #LaborFail #AussieGas #EnergyPrices #AlboFailed #LaborFailed
@therealrukshan Just because we were having such a bloody awesome week here already. Make it stop.
“Filings show that of the $1.74bn Facebook, led by Mark Zuckerberg, generated from Australian businesses in 2025, $1.51bn was immediately paid out to a related company in the Meta group overseas.
This massive transfer of cash, revealed in new financial filings, came as the company also paid a $120m dividend to its American owners and completely drained its local bank account.
It comes as the Albanese government is this week set to release its long-awaited draft legislation for its proposed crackdown on digital platforms that fail to compensate news publishers for the use of their content.”
•••••••••••••••••••••
In all the teeth gnashing over the budget, I didn’t see the elephant in the room mentioned once.
Multinational profit shifting is bleeding this country dry.
Yet rather than do something about it Albanese is doing the media’s bidding by arguing the media should be paid, when in fact it’s Australian taxpayers that should be compensated by Facebook etc for the use of our telecommunications infrastructure and databases. Ie the people
The ATO needs to stop attacking small businesses and start going after the big corporations who are literally stealing billions of dollars from Australia.
Facebook derives its income from advertising in Australia. If both the advertisers and customers are here in Australia then the source of the income should be deemed to be derived in Australia and taxed here not offshore.
You can tell Meta are screwing us by looking at their worldwide accounts. In 2024 their worldwide operating profit ratio was 42% yet in Australia it was less the 14%, one third of their worldwide income.
Why isn’t the ATO using our transfer pricing laws to stop over inflated payments to related entities.
People First is the only political party to have a policy to stop profit shifting.
We will lift the withholding tax rate on profits sent offshore to retain our profits here in Australia.
Read our policies at https://t.co/PeAaJW2pjF
I have woken up this morning feeling battered and empty. I want to call a relationship counsellor, find a halfway house, a domestic violence hotline, but none of these will provide any help to me because my abuser is my government.
Australia relies more heavily on personal income tax than almost any other developed country. Our current Canberra establishment like to trot out the fact that we have one of the lowest tax to GDP ratios in the OECD (siting between 29% and 30%), but that doesn’t paint a realistic picture of life here.
As farmers and small business owners, my husband and I have reconciled ourselves to the fact there isn’t much to show at the end of the day. Farming is a vocation more than a profession- it’s your whole life- and it is a choice that we have made for ourselves.
On paper, we have two successful businesses (in addition to farming) that should put us very firmly into the “living well” category. We don’t take trips (the whole farmers thing), my car is 15 years old while my husband drives the “new” (it’s 6-years old) farm Ute, and we live in a century-old house that could really use a renovation, but the money always goes into the businesses. We home school our youngest and the others attend a regional grammar school that they travel to daily (4 hours per roundtrip) as boarding is too expensive. We purchased a second home in the regional town where our older children attend school a couple of years ago as a retirement plan. With farming and our businesses, there has never been enough of a cushion to set up superannuation, so that investment seemed like a wise option even if it stretched us to capacity. We want to make sure that we have something to fall back on so that we can keep the farm to pass along to the kids. Everything we do, like most parents, is to safeguard our children’s future. To give them the best shot at realising their dreams and building successful lives.
In recent years, we have been struggling under a tax burden that seems heavier with each passing month. Whether it is struggling to pay the last year’s tax or come up with the funds to cover our PayG (for those not in small business, businesses must pay a quarterly “advance” income tax based on the previous year’s tax amount, regardless of the financial realities of the business in the current financial year), it never stops. There are times where we have been on a payment plan for the last year’s tax, a payment plan for the next year’s tax, a payment plan for the GST that we had to use to pay the last tax bill… It’s not a lack of fiscal discipline on our part- our personal expenses are minimal. It is trying to carry the cost of living with the current personal tax burden for small business owners. Almost everyone we know in our small, regional community is in the same boat.
Last year, I became so concerned about making ends meet, I took a second (fourth?) job. I was working over 80-hours a week juggling farm, my husband’s business admin, my fully booked wedding business and a senior event coordination role for our second biggest city in WA. The additional income that was meant to help us get ahead instead bounced us up a tax bracket and as a result, much of the extra salary I earned ended up going to the ATO. I ended up in the hospital with bleeding ulcers. The doctors couldn’t pinpoint any other cause than stress. It was a catastrophe. “You would have been financially and physically better off never having taken that job,” my accountant said. It was a brutal reminder that we have reached a moment in this country where working harder no longer translates to increased success. If you earn it, they take it. And then they have the audacity to say we have a national mental health crisis.
The budget announcement last night was one step too far. And do you know what got me the most? It wasn’t the debacle with Capital Gains that will now impact so much more than real estate, it wasn’t the fact that this new trajectory will cripple young Australians from accruing any kind of personal wealth or being able to set up protected assets for their families, it wasn’t that they again are screwing small business to the wall and are clearly setting their sights on implementing an inheritance tax next- all of that was bad, don’t get me wrong, but what really broke me was when that absolute tragedy of a treasurer stood there with his smug smile and proudly announced that they were putting $250 back into Aussies’ pockets with a special tax offset- a “cost of living relief.” It was the most tone-deaf, insulting, patronising political theatre I have ever witnessed. When was the last time this man visited a grocery store? A petrol station? Literally anywhere outside of Parliament House? Does he understand just what $250 buys in Australia at the moment? To announce it in that way, as this tremendous generosity on the part of the ruling party, is actually disgusting. It’s gross. It's Marie Antoinette letting them eat cake. It’s the Sheriff of Nottingham scattering a few pennies on the ground while his henchmen take all the winter food stores. It’s criminal thievery and this government is culpable.
But we can’t talk about the solutions because to bring up the issues driving the imbalance is politically incorrect.
Want to highlight unregulated immigration as a straining factor? You’re a xenophobic racist.
Want to investigate NDIS fraud guzzling millions of dollars each year? You’re an ableist conspiracy theorist.
Want to examine ill-conceived Net Zero targets crippling economic growth and development? You’re obviously an environmental terrorist.
It’s exhausting. These people are exhausting. They are destroying this beautiful country and we all know it and nothing changes. Because we are all too busy trying to keep our heads above water to kick down their door and throw them out. And so they rob us blind, they destroy our home and we just say thank you for the $250 that they hand us on the way out.
How does this stop?
@AlboMP You are the worst Prime Minister that we have ever had. You and your team of imbeciles are systematically destroying this country for hard working Aussies and our families. Your lack of intellectual capacity is only superseded by your complete lack of integrity. Please go away.
@IfindRetards We need a stronger classification for this one. I heard US Congressman Thomas Massie call someone a "nenard" the other day and I reckon that fits here. A nenard is someone so retarded that in order for them to be told they are retarded, it must be said in their own language.
Tax his land, tax his wage,
Tax his bed in which he lays.
Tax his tractor, tax his mule,
Teach him taxes is the rule.
Tax his cow, tax his goat,
Tax his pants, tax his coat.
Tax his ties, tax his shirt,
Tax his work, tax his dirt.
Tax his tobacco, tax his drink,
Tax him if he tries to think.
Tax his cigars, tax his beers,
If he cries, tax his tears.
Tax his car, tax his gas,
Find other ways to tax his ass.
Tax him good and let him know,
After his taxes he has no dough.
If he hollers, tax him more,
Tax him ‘til he’s good and sore.
Tax his coffin, tax his grave,
Tax the sod in which he lays.
Put these words upon his tomb,
“Taxes drove me to my doom!”
And when he’s gone, we won’t relax,
We’ll still be after the inheritance tax.
Grok does a decent job of tracking Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese Lies… Did it miss any?
Here we go:
Broken promises, backflips and lies by Anthony Albanese since 2022:
• Promised household power bills would be $275 cheaper a year by 2025. Prices rose instead.
• Promised second stage power price cuts after 2025. Pulled the plug on rebates at end of 2025 with no further cuts delivered.
• Promised to keep Coalition’s stage three tax cuts exactly as planned with no changes. Changed and restructured them.
• Promised no changes to superannuation. Introduced new tax on balances over $3 million.
• Promised real wages would grow and rise above pre-election levels. Failed to deliver.
• Promised 450 gigalitres of environmental water under Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Delivered only 27.5 gigalitres.
• Promised 50 urgent care clinics by his own deadline. Missed the deadline.
• Promised new Pacific Engagement Visa by his own deadline. Missed the deadline.
• Promised Makarrata Commission for truth-telling and treaty. Abandoned it after Voice referendum failed.
• Promised no changes to negative gearing. Now pushing or allowing changes.
• Promised long-term immigration planning locked in. Walked away from it.
• Promised 42.5% Commonwealth funding of hospital costs by 2030 with no caps. Walked back and added funding caps.
• Promised to deliver on every single election commitment. Broke multiple as listed.
• Backflipped on removing sexuality, gender identity and sexual variation questions from 2026 census.
• Initially refused royal commission into Bondi terror attack and rising antisemitism. Backflipped and announced one.
• Backflipped on hate speech legislation by splitting the bill to get it through Parliament.
• Lied about falling off the stage during 2025 campaign event. Video showed he tumbled off; he repeatedly denied it and claimed he just stepped back one step and was fine.
• Removed the RMIT ABC election promise tracker amid scrutiny over broken pledges.
• Promised to buy back Darwin Port from Chinese ownership before 2025 election. Still in Chinese hands, promise not delivered.
• Promised a royal commission into the COVID-19 response. Delivered a watered-down inquiry instead and blocked calls for a full royal commission.
• Promised a new era of transparency and open government plus FOI reform so laws couldn’t be flouted. FOI refusal rates nearly doubled to 23 per cent and full disclosures hit historic lows.
#keepthesheep. Sign the petition. https://t.co/kSiod0b8V3
Message to Jim Chalmers:
Stealing from people's home-ownership profit, investment portfolios, superannuation, and income tax does not 'solve intergenerational wealth gaps'.
It means parents have nothing left to give their kids - because the government took it all.
It means young people have no reason to buy a house or invest in shares - because they know the government will take it all.
And it means the retirement plan forced upon them by the unions will be gone before they die - because the government wants to take it all.
Labor is CREATING INTER-GENERATIONAL POVERTY.
A wool jumper, made in 1985, washed in cold water once a month, worn through three decades of British winters, would currently be sitting in someone's wardrobe doing fine.
A polyester fleece, made in 2026, machine-washed weekly, will start to lose its structural integrity within three to five years, shed an estimated 700,000 microfibres per wash into the water system, and end its life in landfill where it will persist for approximately 200 years.
The wool jumper:
- Came from a sheep
- Required grass and rain
- Will biodegrade entirely within three years of being buried
- Will keep you warm when wet
- Will not melt if exposed to a flame
- Will probably outlive you
- Cost £80 in 1985, which is £230 today, and represents the entire jumper budget for the next forty years
The polyester fleece:
- Came from an oil refinery in Texas
- Required hexane extraction, polymerisation and dyeing in three different factories on three different continents
- Will not biodegrade in any human timeframe
- Will get cold and clammy when wet
- Will melt against your skin if exposed to a flame
- Will be in landfill within five years
- Cost £40 in 2026, which means you'll buy ten of them across the next forty years for a total of £400, and the planet will still be eating the residue in the year 2226
But yes. The sheep is the problem.
The sheep, standing in a field in mid-Wales, growing a renewable fibre from grass and rain.
The sheep is the problem.
@DoctorLemma My grandparents visited his farm in the 70s and had some of his currency as a souvenir.
In 1970, an Australian wheat farmer got into a dispute with his government over how much wheat he could sell. So he declared his farm an independent country. The government ignored him. He ruled it as a prince for the next 50 years.
His name was Leonard Casley. He owned a 75 square kilometre property in Western Australia, several hours north of the city of Perth. The Australian government had set new wheat quotas that would let him sell only about one percent of his crop. When he protested, he claimed officials threatened to forcibly take his land. So he found an obscure British law from 1495 called the Treason Act, which said a “de facto king” of any territory could not be charged with treason. He declared his farm a sovereign nation, named himself Prince Leonard, and notified Australia.
Under Australian law at the time, the government had two years to formally object. They didn’t. Leonard took the silence as legal recognition.
He went all in. He printed his own currency. He printed his own stamps. He issued his own passports. He gave his wife and seven children royal titles. He built a tiny stone palace. He set up embassies in nine countries.
In 1977, when the Australian Tax Office kept demanding taxes, he formally declared war on Australia. A few days later, having received no military response, he declared a ceasefire and announced victory. The tax demands stopped.
Tourists started showing up. At its peak, his “country” had 40,000 visitors a year. He stamped their passports for them. He sold them his stamps and coins.
In 2016, on the principality’s 46th anniversary, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom personally sent him a letter wishing his country a happy birthday.
Leonard ruled for 47 years. He passed away in 2019 at 93. His son Graeme took over, but the tax bill had grown to over three million Australian dollars and Covid had stopped the tourists. In August 2020, the Principality of Hutt River formally rejoined Australia.
$49,296 is not a middle income. Yet in Australia it is taxed as though it is. It is in fact, the minimum wage. The tax brackets at the lower end are not set high enough, and it was never the intention of the creators of the progressive tax system, to punish the lowest income earners in this way.
To give this context, the average rental in Australia costs $33,800 a year. It costs about $5,896.80 per year to fuel the car once a week on today’s prices. That is $39,696.80 before tax is even considered, and then there is the small matter of food and incidentals like clothing.
A person earning minimum wage in Australia today will pay $6302 in taxes and Medicare levy. So, after rent, fuel and taxes, there is just $3297.20 to live. That’s $63.40 cents a week - better pray that rental has free electricity.
Back in the 80’s, the minimum wage was closer to $12,000 and the tax-free threshold was closer to half that amount, the rest of the wage fell into the next bracket not the middle bracket like it does today. Back then we refined our own fuel and had the cheapest electricity in the world. Purchasing power was much higher, and a family could live on that single income.
Today, a household wouldn’t survive on one wage.
Even a couple, both earning minimum wage would struggle to rent in a capital city. After living expenses and tax, there would hardly be enough left to put a bung in a flat tyre. Heaven forbid the fridge packing it in.
No wonder we have a birthrate crisis. No wonder we have a loneliness epidemic. No wonder people are just so sad.
The greatest insult to the worker on minimum wage, paying tax as a middle-income earner in this impossible environment is - without a doubt - watching the government waste the money.
Watching Ministers blow their travel allowances and funding the waste in the NDIS is just too much to take.
It isn’t fair.
The Parliament must urgently address this problem. Tax brackets need to be completely redrafted, especially on the lower end of the spectrum where every single dollar counts. The big borrowing, big spending Dr. Chalmers must learn to live within his means and find savings – just like the rest of us.
It’s tough.
I just want Australia back.
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