Whiter shades of beige politics or a tax debate
Entering Australia last week, no-one asked for my recent Covid test, most people were not wearing masks, and yet people seemed to feel at least as safe as we do.
Ahead of us again, Australia has moved on: I didn’t see Covid mentioned in their election campaign once.
Labor’s Anthony Albanese is promising ‘‘A Better Future’’, Scott Morrison’s Liberal Party, a ‘‘Stronger Future’’. Like trying to decide between ivory white and chalk white at the paint shop.
There are some policy differences. Labor promises a ‘‘shared equity’’ housing scheme where the government would own a portion of your house by contributing a chunk of the purchase price.
The Liberal Party would guarantee a portion of the loan to buy a house, but wouldn’t put in money upfront.
Mostly this campaign has been about personality, not policy. The deputy PM, Barnaby Joyce, called his own coalition partner, Prime Minister Morrison, ‘‘a hypocrite and a liar’’. Accurate, if lacking comedic sting.
Cost of living, inflation and China dominate the election. No-one has anything interesting to say about any of these.
The polls haven’t shifted. Labor is winning. Just. The settled will of the public is for change, even if they don’t love what they’re changing to. They’ll deal with ScoMo this year, come for Albo later.
A political strategist told me Labor’s campaign has been so poor, if they’d stayed at home and tried to lose they’d probably be further ahead in the polls.
Three years ago ScoMo won by running against Labor’s climate policies.
This time, Labor has watered those down, while the Liberals may lose the election if suburban seats in Melbourne and Sydney elect climatemotivated independents.
Australian campaigns are usually less beige, more entertaining. Paul
Keating once described his opponent as a ‘‘shiver looking for a spine to run up’’. Another was, ‘‘all tip, no iceberg’’. At least in New Zealand, more than a year out from our election, we’re having a decent barney over tax.
Every campaign that involves a new tax, levy or an increase in the minimum wage, provokes the same arguments: envy, class war, businesses will close, mass unemployment to follow. Critics routinely fail to present a better idea to solve the problem, or even acknowledge a problem exists.
The problem a wealth tax is meant to solve is that the gap between the richest and poorest New Zealander has increased.
According to author Max Rashbrooke, the richest 1% of us, as few as 38,000 people, are worth nearly 70 times more than the typical New Zealander.
Reflect on that figure for a moment, and before you criticise a wealth tax, tell us how you would close that gap, or even acknowledge its existence.
Only tax policy will meaningfully reduce inequality.
I would like to see a tax-free band at the bottom of the income scale – so the first, say, $10,000 anyone earned would be tax-free.
It’s an expensive plan that would have to be paid for. Voters choke on capital gains taxes.
So I would pay for an income tax cut with a property tax or a land tax, exactly matching local government rates.
Paying for the tax cut would deal to the cost of living crisis without driving interest rates higher and slowing the economy, which is the problem with National’s plan to cut tax revenue when the books are in the red.
It makes more sense to pay your tax when you get to the top of the hill than when you are climbing it.
A tax switch from income to wealth would give the wealth-makers of tomorrow a hand up.
In the 1890s, 1% of people owned nearly two-thirds of New Zealand’s assets. Then, in the following decades, our ancestors built a fairer country while becoming one of the most prosperous places on Earth for a while.
Again, in 2022, New Zealand is looking less prosperous, more feudal than capitalist.
While some inequality is intrinsic to any capitalist economy, even a regulated and ethical one, our problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse.
Feudal societies don’t produce the likes of a Steve Jobs or a Rod Drury.
There is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this doesn’t eventually ‘‘bring the pitchforks out’’, said billionaire Nick Hanauer.
So bring on a debate about tax. As Simon Bridges said in his excellent valedictory, we need ‘‘less poll-driven, more instinctual politics’’, so our views don’t become ‘‘narrower and narrower, beiger and beiger’’.
ScoMo might be ‘‘all smirk and mirrors’’ (the one good line in this Australian campaign), while Albo is rallying voters with the very unrallying-sounding promise of ‘‘safe change’’.
But we can look to Paul Keating for inspiration:
‘‘The great changes in civilisation and society have been wrought by deeply held beliefs and passion rather than by a process of rational deduction.’’
It makes more sense to pay your tax when you get to the top of the hill than when you are climbing it.