Nate for Senate 2025

What I Support

1. Lower Income Taxes

Propose tax relief to all citizens. Fairer tax reduces crime, increases economic activity and makes people happier.

• Lift the tax-free threshold to $45,000 for individuals, and combined $100,000 for couples.
• Increase GST by 2.5%.
• Reduce excises on tobacco and alcohol.
• Remove luxury car tax & increase depreciation limit on cars to $120,000 for efficient cars and $100,000 for all other cars.
• No fringe benefits tax where business use of an asset is greater than 50%.
• Stage in a resource excise for all LNG, Coal, Oil/Gas exports, expanding to all mineral exports in the future.

2. Freedom of choice & privacy

These are both concepts that are being lost between to two major parties. Australians are young and free, and we should stay that way.

• We need a privacy law that protects ownership of personal data legally, protects our legal rights, and the legal rights of others from all actors, including government, from access to metadata and surveillance without significant oversight by the legal system.
• This ultimately needs to be expanded into the newer frontiers of Artificial Intelligence and social media. For example:
  • Even if signed in a EULA, social media data relating to the person belongs to the person, and not to the platform. The platform can only use that data if the person authorises the use of that data. That data is worth something, so the platform should negotiate a fee to the person for access to that data.
  • When entering information into a GPT or LLM, data must be denatured before being used for the machine learning algorithm.
• Freedom of the press/media and social media platforms, guaranteeing a separation between state & commercial interests away from our media.

3. Energy Security

Solar power is fantastic. It has to be said, many a day has gone by I’ve dreamt about getting my own solar installation. But then I think: ‘When it’s out of warranty, who will really maintain it?’
‘How long will it really last?’,
and lastly ‘who’s really paying for it?’.

Well the scheme is subsidised by other power users, meaning those who can’t afford to put solar panels on their roof, have to pay for everyone who can afford to put panels on their roof.

The uptake of the scheme has been fantastic.People want to save the planet. That’s great!

But the glass that’s in each solar panel costs carbon to make, the minerals, carbon to extract. So what is the breakeven point of carbon inputs into the creation of these things? Is it 20 years?

And recently, the to solve an issue with too much power going back into the grid, the government has suggested another scheme, whereby they want households to buy batteries, where the household pays 70% and the government pays 30%.

So then I ask, who’s really paying for this?

It’s either the taxpayer or, more likely, the people who can’t afford to buy the batteries and solar.

So I suggest the following:

• Review the current state of the network.
• Review the current available technologies available, including but not limited to; Natural Gas, Thermal, Hydro and Tidal, Wind, Solar, Coal and Nuclear.
• Renew any baseload power generators with newer, more efficient or better technology generators.
• Make sure if we choose to go Nuclear, installations are away from water sources and food bowls.

4. Conservation of environment

The current focus to lock out everyone from national parks, only walk on paths and limited camping opportunities should be stopped. Users of the national parks are almost always responsible with their use, and understand we want to conserve the environment so we can all enjoy it.

• Appoint people who have the ability to implement conservation programs whilst allowing a balance of conservation with users of the parks.
• Maintain fire barriers and trails on crown land.
• Provide guidance to visitors to encourage protection of flora and fauna.

5. Affordable Housing

This is one of the most important problems we face today. Our land values are inflated with increased competition from international investors and permanent residents. Our building costs inflated by supply side inflation, increase in demand for new buildings and green building standards that provide diminishing gains.

Putting a roof over a young family’s head is more important than saving some energy. We suggest:

• Reduce green tape on new houses. Every dollar counts for first home buyers, Any standards that are not safety related should be optional. Such as:
  • Instead of an expensive solar hot water system for $10,000, install a simple hot water system for under $2,000.
  • Basic air conditioning, not 5 star energy rated.
  • Basic insulation in roofs and in key areas.
  • Allow single glazing instead of double glazing.
• Give the Foreign Investment Review Board greater powers to enhance requirements for foreign investors and allowing them greater powers to reject applications by implementing tests and reviews.
• Make the cost of owning a residential property tax deductable to an extent. This would have a condition that the home is owned for at least 7 years and be in the form of:
  • Mortgage interest deductions for the first 5 years of the purchase of a first home up to a cap of $750,000.
  • A depreciation allowance of 2% per annum on approved renovations, not just maintenance, required up to $100,000 for the first 7 years of owning the home.

Kind regards,
Nate Ritter FIPA FFA MACS(Snr) CP