Albo’s tax tactics put the Teals in a terrible twist
Anthony Albanese’s tax backflip is blunt force politics at its best: incredibly ugly but incredibly effective. At its core it is an all or nothing, take it or leave it, giant game of chicken being played out on the national stage and in every Australian worker’s hip pocket.
The PM has dropped the rock in the puddle and is staring his opponents down: Yeah, I broke a promise, he is saying, but what are you going to do about it?
Because he knows there’s not much they can do.
The Liberals, for whom the stage three tax cuts were an article of faith co-authored by Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, have already done a backflip of their own, retreating at 100 mph from deputy leader Sussan Ley’s pledge that they were “absolutely” committed to restoring stage three.
But far more entertaining to watch has been the squirming and handwringing of the Teals who have suddenly been forced to actually put their money where their mouth is — or rather their voters’ money where their mouth is.
Normally of course the Teals have instantly formed unshakeably steadfast views on weighty matters of fairness and justice and right and wrong. “Put your masks on!” indeed.
In this sense they are much like myself, except that I have all the right ones and they have all the wrong ones.
Certainly I thought it was very important for both the party and the country that Labor honour its election pledge to introduce stage three. We have enough corrosion of faith in our political institutions without adding another broken promise to the slag heap.
But once it had already been declared that middle and low income earners would be getting a substantially higher tax cut and higher income earners would be getting less than initially planned, it took me about one eighth of a nanosecond to realise the jig was up.
It is one thing to address long term bracket creep and provide relief for those who bear the highest tax burden. It is quite another to propose taking money away from lower and middle income earners to give to those at the top.
And that, in one fell swoop, is what the proposition has become. The rock has been dropped.
For me that second proposition was instantly unconscionable and Peter Dutton no doubt realised it was instantly unelectable, which is why Ley’s “absolute” commitment to stage three barely made it to sundown.
But the Teals, for all their selfassured moral posturing on all manner of things, didn’t seem to know what to think. Proto-Teal Zali Steggall said the PM should apologise for the backflip while the Teal for the wealthiest seat in the nation, Allegra Spender, came in swinging for her people.
Spender told Nine media that after canvassing her electorate of Wentworth she was presented with three schools of thought.
“There are a lot of people who will be better off,” she said. “There are a significant group of people who will be worse off but still think it’s the right thing.”
So far so good — two out of three ain’t bad. But who does Spender really feel for?
“Then, there’s another group who were really relying on these for significant mortgages and childcare costs, and they’re hurting,” she said. “They’re the ones I feel the government hasn’t acknowledged.”
Yes, it is those in the very top income bracket who are getting less that Spender says are “hurting” and that the government “hasn’t acknowledged”.
Is it satire? I can’t tell. Unfortunately when Spender rereads her remarks with horror she will see in the same article that her Teal colleagues are now starting to come over to support this black and white violation of political integrity, because their own political integrity would be utterly shattered if they didn’t. The only Teal that matters is Senator David Pocock, who is the most sensible of them by a country mile and has pledged his support from day dot.
Indeed, the best thing about the tax backflip is that it is deliberately flipping the bird to upper middle class socialists and their ideological obsessions. Labor is explicitly distancing itself from the trendy inner city left and focusing entirely on the outer suburbs and regions.
The PM even knows that it will put some of the government’s wealthier seats at risk but he doesn’t care if this means a greater compact with middle and working-class Australians and convincing them that Labor is really for them and not the elites.
And that is one break that all of us should welcome.