For (most of) us, tax cuts are a bad idea
For (most of) us, tax cuts are a bad idea
The narrative on the tax cuts has exposed a translucent line between the political class and everyday Australians, revealing a disparity in wealth and opinion
The press lauded the stage 3 tax cuts when Morrison got them over the line a few months before COVID changed the landscape forever, going as far to say that they were a “win” for the new government. At that point, the collective press apparatus had gotten used to the flow of things under a long term LNP government, and were getting settled in for a more comfortable ride under Channel Nine’s newly converted Fairfax papers, the ever present Murdoch position nestled among an increasing centre right position from the ABC.
Fast-forward to today, and we heave under the breath of an ongoing pandemic (declared over), global economic instability and war. The tax cuts are here to stay. The previous Prime Minister that the collective press tried so hard to get behind turned out to be the most ineffective and negligent in modern history, leaving an independent streak of teal in the nation’s capital, a rancour on the nation’s politics and a feeling of hopelessness in the detached voting blocs.
A bloke whose term could be summed up by the urgent need for an ICAC has gotten away with his tax cuts. They are now being protected by the new Labor government, who seem scared to talk about them for what they are: a bad idea. Australians looked towards the new government to bring things back, but Labor allowed the tax cuts a special place in their election campaign. Their support was marked with the pledge to leave them alone, and coupled with favourable recognition among the complicit beneficiaries in the press, they became Labor’s tax cuts.
When Tony Abbott campaigned in the election he eventually won, he did so with the promise to repeal the carbon tax. He slowly ripped it up in front of the whole nation, as he promised, with a little bit of gusto. This time around, the ALP campaigned in the shadow of Scott Morrison’s abominable Prime Ministership and chose to play “small target”, boasting that it wouldn’t be raising the dole, and it would be keeping the tax cuts, no matter which way the winds chose to blow. Labor sat on its hands, came up with some stuff on childcare, aged care, and lukewarm climate targets, eventually winning an election more on the repudiation of the former government than the ambition of their progressive policy platform.
After barely securing a 76-seat majority, Labor plays out a hand of mediocrity from a deck of cards dealt out in spite by a press apparatus who cannot encourage debate on issues of public interest due to the lack of collective lived experience, and a limited remit bestowed by them by their subjectively motivated corporate employers. Any courage our new government might conjure in the face of a crisis seems to be stifled by the relentless framing of the issue by the media, even when such a change would have the support from the majority of people that stand to gain the most.
Anthony Albanese said he wouldn’t break an election promise when he voted to end Jobkeeper, yet he extended it with the insistence of National Cabinet and looked more diplomatic and pragmatic than duplicitous and untrustworthy. What is different here? CPI, inflation, and rate rises push the bar out of reach for so many. The uncertainty compounds and mounts in unimaginable ways to the privileged political and media. In the lack of this government’s ability to change wages with CPI, or its will to spend on safety nets and domestic economic security to countenance that reality, a few words of reassurance may go longer than leaning on the electorate to second guess and empathise with major party-political gamesmanship.
The butterfly effect of the cacophonous echo in the small reflective chamber that houses Australia’s journalistic hive mind are beautifully fluttered by the industry’s best on the ‘Insiders’ program, or callously fumbled in an Op-ed by a rich journo within the Australian. All these voices lack one component: the experience of living on the edge of poverty, and an understanding of the worsening real-time pressure on millions of Australians. The general narrative around these tax cuts demonstrates this deficit in experience and empathy and ensures an imbalanced perspective on an issue that affects large swathes of the population.
$243 billion sits ready to disappear into the savings of high earning Australians, while new sections of the population experience unforeseen hardship, broken on the wheel of an imbalanced system. The nation building that Australia is longing for sits within the centre of these bad tax cuts. The government needs only the courage to articulate that, and the press could recognise the dire need of Australians and help to communicate it to get it over the line. Except the former is hampered by an unattractive form of political sheepishness, and the latter is unable to tell the story of Australia anymore.
Most of the talking head journos earn equal and beyond the favourable high earning beneficiaries of the stage 3 bracket, and many of them come from affluent backgrounds that have not yet felt the sliding scale of poverty turning household cheque books from black to red, fraying the edges of Australian families that unravel under unanticipated financial strain.
In a land with jobs shortages throughout the gamut of industry, our government won’t signal any real wage rises. And while the budget is shaping up to offer no relief to those on $46 per day, it isn’t looking to address the cost-of-living crisis either. The fuel excise is back on track, wages are not going anywhere, the Reserve Bank has not been able to restore any credibility through their contrarian actions on rate hikes after their disastrous flanking attack on the wages and mortgages of Australian workers, and the confidence in the voting public wanes against the creeping march of poverty in this country. The government’s refusal to make changes to the tax cuts may have felt politically expedient, but to many, the gesture is another psychological blow to the resting state of this nation.
Excellent analysis of the state of our nation. Labor is Liberal light. Many voters would have put some faith in Labor alleviating crushing cost of living through wage rises and increase in welfare payments to above the poverty line. Instead it’s the same old neoliberal trickle down bullshit.