Labor turns left on taxes, holds firm on boat people
CANBERRA: The Australian Labor Party has put inequality at the centre of its election pitch but leader Bill Shorten is emphatic he is not channelling Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn with his rhetoric.
Following a landmark speech he gave on Friday, Shorten says people have lost confidence in the Government and growing inequality is at the heart of that.
‘‘This is a government whose only economic recipe is to give more help to the people already at the front of the queue, who are already well off,’’ he told ABC TV yesterday.
‘‘My party is taking a different attitude.’’
Mr Shorten lamented what he called a twoclass tax system.
‘‘For most Australians we’re now at the end of July and many of them will have filled in their tax returns and they’ll claim a couple of vanilla deductions, maybe a salary sacrifice motor vehicle if they’re lucky and maybe some work costs,’’ he said.
‘‘But then there is another tax system where if you have enough money, you can basically choose to opt out of many of the taxes.’’
Labor already plans to end negative gearing, overhaul capital gains tax and limit the amount of accountant fees people can claim as tax deduc tions and Mr Shorten said the opposition would soon announce further tax policies to take to the next election.
Some of his rhetoric has echoed that of leftwing United States presidential hopeful Sanders and UK Labour leader Corbyn, whose popular versions of socialism garnered more support than many expected.
He respected wealth, he said, but the people who made lots of money did not get him out of bed in the morning.
‘‘The people I want to help are the people for whom the link between hard work and rewards seems to be fraying,’’ Shorten said.
‘‘The fact of the matter is that the most likely predictor of whether or not you’re going to be able to buy a house at the moment is to have rich parents. That isn’t good enough.
‘‘That’s not the deal which we promise our kids, that’s not the deal we promise Australians for working hard.’’
Shorten insisted Labor did not want to see people smugglers back in business and the party’s policy was still to ‘‘never, ever’’ settle asylum seekers arriving by boat in Australia.
Debate over the Opposition’s policy reignited last week after former prime minister Kevin Rudd claimed asylum seekers held in offshore detention under an agreement he initiated in 2013 should have been resettled in Australia after a year.
At the time he signed the deal, Mr Rudd said they would never be resettled in Australia.
Mr Shorten said Labor had been clear in its policy.
‘‘The Government wants to say that Labor wants to see the people smugglers back,’’ Shorten said yesterday. ‘‘We absolutely don’t.’’
Asked twice if that meant refugees would never, ever settle in Australia, Mr Shorten said: ‘‘That is part of it, yes.’’
He understood disquiet among Labor members and the community about the Government failing to send refugees to third countries.
‘‘I, for one, want to see this government succeed in its arrangement with the US and I would like to see them do more to tie up arrangements with other nations.’’ — AAP