Nothing new with the idea of a tax on trading - its called stamp duty and used to be charged prior to the introduction of GST.
With the introduction of the GST it was removed - it seemed like a good idea of time but with the benefit of hindsight it has just encouraged short term speculation at the expense of long term investment.
Personally I would like to see it reintroduced and payroll tax abolished. If not that then lower stamp duty across other assets. It seems unfair to me that you pay stamp duty on housing, cars or buying a business but you don't do it buying shares.
The other advantage of it is that its taxes foreigners who want to the ASX as their plaything. Given they own between 40-50% of the shares listed on the ASX its seems a good way of collecting tax without costing most Aussies a cent.
