It’s a super struggle for our cashed-up teal MPs
THE problem with rich lefties is that sooner or later they end up having to choose between being rich and being a lefty. Spoiler alert: they always take the money. Treasurer Jim Chalmers last week raised the spectre of changes to the superannuation scheme, rightly noting a system that spent more on super tax concessions than it did on the age pension didn’t seem to have its priorities in order.
Chalmers made an excellent point. The only problem was it was a point the ALP had studiously not made during the election campaign, when fear of another franking credits debacle meant super was a Labor of love that dare not speak its name.
That small-target strategy was the right call. It ensured that while Labor did not win as big as it could have – losing three Brisbane seats to the Greens, for example – it nonetheless locked in the win.
When an election is yours to lose the most important thing is not to lose it.
But politics is a zero-sum game. You can’t expect the electoral benefit of being a safe pair of hands in campaign mode then expect bouquets for being a big-picture reformer in government mode.
In other words, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Chalmers’s problem is he has a big, expansive brain and – like all treasurers – a primal drive to bring the budget back into the black.
It is difficult to look at something as perverse as poverty-level pensions and tax breaks for multimilliondollar super accounts and accept the fact that despite having all the power to fix it, you can’t just because you said you wouldn’t.
And so, as with the Stage 3 tax cuts, Labor would be better off sticking to its promises – albeit through gritted teeth.
There is enough disillusionment and discontent with political institutions without Australia’s oldest and largest mainstream party breaking faith with the electorate and risking voter upheaval.
In short, Chalmers’s super micdrop, this early on, is good policy but bad politics.
Nonetheless, the Treasurer has performed an impeccable public service – in keeping with a fine Albanese government tradition – by exposing the base venality of the “teal” independents.
The teals delight in preaching about abstract values of integrity and self-sacrifice and the greater good, but when the rubber hits the road they invariably hit the canvas.
When the newly elected Albanese government determined they would have the same amount of staff as all other backbenchers – no more, no less – they howled blue murder. How dare they be treated equally.
Likewise uber-teal Monique Ryan’s most noteworthy contribution to the parliament thus far was to shame Coalition MPs for not wearing masks. How dare they put their comfort above the collective good.
Let’s set aside the fact the most recent comprehensive study led by Oxford epidemiologist Tom Jefferson found masks did sweet FA to reduce the spread of Covid.
Instead, let’s focus on the teals’ crusading commitment to integrity and equality. Two of Ryan’s six “policy priorities” on her own website are “Integrity and honesty in politics” and “Equality, respect and safety for women”.
That all sounds great. So what is her position on the proposed super changes, which at least have policy integrity and honesty, and would go a fair way to delivering more equality?
“I don’t have a position on any potential changes to superannuation laws at this point,” she told The Weekend Australian.
But why was she even being asked by The Weekend Australian? Maybe because three of her teal quasicolleagues had told the Australian Financial Review the day before that they opposed a $3m super cap.
Allegra Spender, representing Sydney’s ultra-rich eastern suburbs electorate of Wentworth, Kylea Tink, the bastion of the leafy lower North Shore, and Zoe Daniel, the member for Melbourne’s Brighton set, all seemed to think that any deceleration of the gravy train for multi-millionaires to ease the living standards of poor little old ladies would be an unconscionable idea.
If Labor is truly committed to bigpicture reform it should have the courage to take it to the people at the next election, at which – by every measure – it would likely increase its standing. Meanwhile, the teals know they can never back any measure that adversely affects the rich because they’d never be re-elected.
And so the inevitable has happened: Elite and wealthy selfappointed “progressives” are now actively opposing the interests of middle- and working-class Australians.
Never forget this day.