Rich cry poor
Affluent pundits and mediocre pollies miss the mark on economic reform, while Australians continue to feel the pinch.
Turns out, over two thirds of respondents to the recent Newspoll survey approved of Labor’s plan to double the concessional tax rate for super balances over $3 million, but you wouldn’t have known it from the multitude of angular analyses that came flooding in from the subjective press apparatus that we have come to love so much. In times where average Australians desperately look for help with a peppering of PTSD riven through their thought processes, the discussion around economic reform has been as small a target as Labor’s pre-election policy stance.
“When wokeism wants your money it’s time to worry”, wrote Nic Cater and the white haired gentlemen of The Australian, forming a large part of the weak salvos fired across the cracked bow of a rudderless Australian fiscal landscape. And so, in the tiny shadow of the most modest of reforms, began a deluge of overreaction and underwhelming imagining from the press and the seemingly irrelevant opposition, who scooped shovel-loads of bulldust onto molehills, turning them into smoky mountains of detritus.
Then began the cacophony of narrow Australian punditry, made by highly paid journalists in the next tax bracket, perhaps holding shares with more than one property, many of whom work for organisations that are firmly aligned with the interests of corporate Australia. We could hear the natterings echoing over the airwaves of the rusted-on affluent media class, the Karl Stefanovics and the Ellen Fannings of the world. It didn’t matter where the analysis was coming from, you could be certain of one thing: they were rich and they were struggling to dive with any depth into the subject matter.
As people fall off the face of the earth due to the overwhelming and crushing hikes to their cost of living, the six-figured press pundits in tailored designer suits and fancy Gorman frocks hit the circuit and struggle to try and make sense of it all. From the opulent and ergonomic suede couches on the ABC’s matte, wood-grained Insiders studio, to the white-light-drenched breakfast panels beaming a halo onto Koshie’s cranium in the mornings, six-figured talking heads flapped away about a fantastically mild (and hardly controversial) superannuation reform, blocking out the sun with the vapid talking points fed through them like old IBM punch cards.
With the press openly combative to any decision that may upset the flow of their corporate overlords, they put pressure on the entire national discourse and set the paradigm. This allowed for an unnecessarily combative environment to discuss something that doesn’t affect 99.5% of the population, but it also allows the government to hide behind the noise, to feel that it has done enough. After all this tumult over super reforms to those who hold over three million dollars in super, and the press unable to articulate what real reform could look like, the government may point to this milquetoast reform as if it’s something of substance, and choose to rest on their spindly laurels without doing much else.
The ALP Government, frozen in a post-election fiscal mediocrity that has seen wages fall and the cost of living rise, has overseen the continuation of notorious RBA decision-making, the largest corporate earnings since Federation, and is somehow still unwilling to remove the hugely unpopular Coalition-engineered Stage Three Tax Cuts. This sets the pace and provides a potential barometer to how Labor may look to reform the economic landscape under its vague assertions of ‘ values-based capitalism’, all without rocking the boat too much. Anthony Albanese says his party is “making the superannuation system fairer for 99.5% of Australians”, but what else is fair for this cohort in the current economic policy landscape?
Under the new government, the RBA Governor Philip Lowe continues his course of using old Keynesian methods of interest rate management to address inflation in a post-Friedman hellscape, where the richest entities on the planet circumvent archaic regulatory requirements and gamified legislation, while friendly parliamentarians and favourable regulatory bodies hyper-extend to maintain the status quo. All this happens under the whistling rounds of a hyperactive press apparatus, primarily concerned with preserving the economic disparity of their fellow corporate class whilst waging mortal combat on working Australians who are sitting somewhere on the bottom half of the OECD in most areas these days.
The government currently acts out a form of Stockholm Syndrome in its reticence to make a change to Stage 3 Tax Cuts, so how can it provide us with any confidence that they have the capacity to enact something meaningful like corporate tax reform, or anything else that might materially address profit driven inflation for the benefit of that 99.5%? Always gesturing towards the rampantly subjective press that it refused to enact a Murdoch Royal Commission on, instead of taking them on with the full support of an angered public, Labor prefers to entangle in the slow disingenuous dance of inhibited mediocrity with the two-step regulars on Sky and Sunrise.
We all watch the reality program unfold from behind the precariousness of the red economic lines on our ledgers. One-in-six children wake up in the morning to abject poverty, the Henderson line bears down on people like an event horizon, while everyday Australians are expected to foot the bill to save the day again -- human shields for the unchanged profits of the bi-partisan protected corporate class.
We can’t dream of a wealth tax? In these profiteering waters? Can we not discuss it in a country in which Alan Joyce carves out the bones of our national airlines and gives himself another pay rise? Where the banks get together to remove rural bricks and mortar banking while profiting off interest rate rises? A place where supermarkets cruelly impose unchecked price gouging for all of us to see? Our ACCC is a toothless tiger, our AAT is stocked with former LNP sympathisers, and a blanket major party consensus is forming on new gas wells, on America-centric defence agreements and the need to raise the rates.
The press is quick to yell “class warfare”, unfurling the black flags as they wind down their billowing mainsails to break the line of what could be a good discussion. Yet this protocol seems to only occur when sighting an attempt to claw back Jobkeeper from the mega-earners, or a whiff of reviewing the booty-laden super portfolios of its executive arbiters, but never on the measures-of-a-point, slap-in-the-chops budget that hoicks all its weight on the bulging discs of a beleaguered Australian taxpayer.
Just over a decade ago, the Labor party had a mining tax in place, a price on carbon, and a bold vision to reform our economy, now it dare not even mention negative gearing lest it vanish into the night. Even then, the major parties were more in tune with the electorate – more aware of the role they had a duty to perform. Perhaps back then there weren’t as many MPs that owned up to seven houses, or it didn’t so much subscribe to the corporate junta that threatened revolt behind closed meetings at business council functions and minerals lobby dinners. Even a decade ago, governments governed closer to the ground where the people actually lived.
There was once a time when some journalists walked among us, when they spoke to people at the coalface. Less political insiders, more purveyors of the polis. And that was partly because some of them came from the places most of us inhabit, and believed in using their privileged job titles to fight like hell to ensure the voices of their people were heard. A class disparity has pervaded journalism, modifying the lens with which they view matters pertaining to their job, rendering them incapable of being able to connect with wider society, and in some cases, to develop a callousness towards the issues affecting those it is their job to responsibly inform.
It would be great if journalists could articulate the need for reform that we all scream for, to dig deep into the forgotten corners of the handbag and grasp the dusty tenets of journalism, to follow the chunky trail of breadcrumbs that delineate the gaping chasm between the people of this country and themselves. Instead, they scribe for the opulent behind gilded windows in castles on distant hills. It would be better if elected representatives had the wherewithal to take a stand against the corporate junta that hold sway over our daily existence in this competitive backwater. If only those in government and media could choose the side of the public over that of their corporate backers. But that would take some courage.
I note from other posts of yours listed below that you've been banging on about the journalistic class and their failures in particular, and the elite more generally, for years Joel. Well all I can say is, please don't stop. There's very few writers who can cut through like this; I'm hoping to support them all.
oh the imagery in this writing is so powerful and yes, entertaining. It is such a contrast to the corporate, managerial weasel words that wash around everywhere. If only there could be the sort of public discussion you write about, the opening up of (especially) economic alternatives to this piss weak "economic reform" talk dominated by neo-liberal legacy. Your writing is so important Joel.