“Why, oh, why can’t we have the tax debate we need to have?” moan Australia’s political commentariat in the wake of the Albanese tax pivot. Maybe they could find the answer staring them in the face, if they’d pause long enough to look into the mirror.
It’s the Australian media’s love of conflict, and willingness to amplify and prioritise the whinging of vested interests, that continues to block any meaningful change. And underpinning it all has been the decades-long political discipline of the right-wing neoliberal low-tax voice — or News Corporation as it’s formally known.
It popped up as a sideline last week when the usually low-key indexation of excise found itself on the front page of The Daily Telegraph as “Excise Pain: Tax to Drive Us to Drink”.
The ABC’s reporting out of central Queensland was similar, if less shouty. “If you enjoy a tipple get ready to pay more,” it led, followed on by a dozen paragraphs quoting Amanda Lampe, the director of corporate relations for Diageo, the multinational owner of the iconic Queensland brand Bundaberg Rum (and former Gillard chief of staff). It also gave space to the Australian Distillers Association CEO (and former NSW Labor MP) Paul McLeay. The piece briefly both-sided the report with a few quotes from the Drug and Alcohol Foundation before wrapping up with the obligatory small business outrage from a family-owned distillery.
Think it’s a one-off? In last July’s round of excise increases, the ABC’s reporting focused on the rise in beer price, with the outrage supplied by Brewers Association CEO (and former Peter Costello and Liberal Party adviser) John Preston.
Coincidentally, alcohol companies donated $1.3 million to Australia’s political parties in the last financial year, according to the Foundation of Alcohol Research and Education, which has a remit to ensure “Australians engage with honest and accurate information to reduce the risks of alcohol harm”.
It demonstrates just how journalistic judgments of what’s news — and the active gaming of those judgments by corporate interests — shape the political discourse, long before we get to having the sort of thoughtful debate the Canberra insiders reckon they’re gagging for.
It’s not new: thought bubbles about tax have been popping off around Australian politics from side to side for close to 50 years. Back in 1978, NSW premier Neville Wran built the Labor Wranslides off the idea of Malcolm Fraser (and his treasurer John Howard) to return partial income tax powers to the states. Two years later Fraser returned the favour, winning reelection off the back of a News Limited-powered campaign over capital gains tax and the family home.
It all meant that it was not until the Hawke government was comfortably into its second term that, off the back of a major tax “summit”, that it was prepared to implement the sort of wide-ranging tax reform that widespread tax evasion had made essential, with the Fringe Benefits Tax and Capital Gains Tax.
More recently, the mining industry’s astroturfed campaign against the Rudd government’s mining tax opened the door to the Gillard leadership challenge. In return the embrace of the carbon tax rhetoric by the minority Gillard government gave the opening to Tony Abbott’s “Axe the Tax” 2013 election, before, as the ABC’s Nemesis has been telling us this month, he lost his job, in part over the increased tax (branded a “deficit levy”) on high-income earners.
The Rudd, Gillard and Abbott experiences demonstrate that the “broken promises” mantra is often just another rhetorical twist in the neoliberal low tax campaign (in the interests of taxpayers, of course) now so deeply embodied in Australian journalistic practice. It explains, too, why the Albanese tax pivot (keeping the cuts, while redistributing the money without affecting powerful lobby groups) didn’t bite the government — not so far, anyway — and why it’s unlikely to pick up the negative gearing change proposed by the Greens.
The hostility to tax reform with all the inevitable winners and losers is not unique to Australia — it’s the resistance to even having a serious debate that’s odd. Taxes and tax rates are a common matter of debate in US elections (although the structural dysfunction of a Congress responsive to lobbyists means it rarely translates into actual reform). In a higher-taxing Europe, it’s been just another of the levers to be pulled as part of the ongoing rolling crises since what the northern hemisphere calls the Great Recession of 2008.
The developed world is busy searching for the economic model that replaces the neoliberalism that crashed in 2008. Perhaps if Australian journalists could get out of their own rule-in, rule-out gotcha sensibility for more than five minutes, they’d be doing a better job of helping their readers participate in the sort of debate democracy needs, including about — gasp! — tax reform.
All true enough. To have a serious public debate on taxes would surely also need to cover the objectives of taxation and all the government’s capital and operational spending. The debate would explore and compare the social, political and economic consequences of different taxing strategies to raise a given amount of revenue. It would try to establish the amount of tax the public is willing to support in exchange for the level of services etc. the public wants. And so on…
It’s not going to happen, is it?
There’s just as much chance of having a serious debate about crim——al justice. All we ever get is more ‘cracking down’ in response to whatever is today’s Big Panic – right now it’s doxxing, and as usual the proposed new laws are knee-jerk nonsense, but no worries, because all that matters is the government can say it is Doing Something. How about a serious public debate on the comparitive effectiveness and costs of different strategies to tackle crime and related issues including social or mental health problems. What exactly is the purpose of the various sentences passed on those who are convicted, and do the sentences achieve the desired outcomes? Are there enough resources to achieve what we want? What is ‘the rule of law’, anyway, and how close are we to achieving it? And so on…
It’s not going to happen, is it?
It’s been said, ever since representative democracy with universal suffrage was first dreamt of, that to function properly it requires a well-informed electorate. There is of course no such thing. And that appears to be exactly how the politicians and the media like it.
There’s a superb new article on The Guardian website, ‘The awful truth at the heart of Australian housing policy’, by Greg Jericho, that gives some hint of what a real debate on tax policy requires, although it’s only looking at one small bit of the whole subject. Even so, please read the whole thing, then try to imagine what could be achieved if enough people would just look at the data, consider the arguments, and think honestly about what should be done.
It’s not going to happen, is it?
The only way to get people thinking about it, is to get them involved in tge decision making process.
Probably starting at a local council level, we should introduce participatory budgeting. Get the people to thrash out (a section of) the budget. Real democracy.
Being involved in such a process brings about greater awareness of the whole, and furthers interest in the topic.
Thanks, i did a minimum sign up , I find the guardian a bit of a fence sitter/ editorially constrained and l cant afford time to read and comment more than I do, but articles like that make it worthwhile.
New Scorp, the FIN, the Coalition, and sundry others will no more accept that neoliberalism is dead than they will accept that global warming is a reality.
For discussion or debate to develop about tax the owners of mainstream media would have to change. 7and 9 are clearly very neoliberal, 10 is slightly different. 10 is owned by global paramount, an enormous US corporation, is slightly more nuanced but steeped in US entertainment culture. Considering nearly all the entertainment offered is US based it isn’t surprising that language and US levels of gun violence is the norm.
There are 2 ways that discussion and debate could grow in this country, the first is legislation that required an effort to offer 2 sides to a story. This formally ended when Reagan changed US law that required an effort, which also denotes the bond between neoliberalism and media , when rupert became a US citizen and reasonable debate became redundant.
The 2nd way our country could express itself is with competition for 7,9 and 10, a media outlet with enough reach to enjoy presentation in the nations lounge rooms.
It isn’t in the ABCs charter to contest political viewpoints and ideologies.
Politicians are only as good or as brave as how they perceive they will be interpreted so they must tow the neoliberal line or be isolated , ridiculed and lastly ignored.
Tax is a favourite for neoliberal mouthpieces, after draining the shared wealth and utilities aimed at sustaining service not profit over decades in the name of corporate wealth , any alternative is ineffective and reduced to mimicking the propaganda strategies used by neoliberalism without the PR media arm that is necessary to sell an idea, a product or indeed even a lie. Mind you rwnj’s by sharing similar viewpoints to neoliberals, are doing quite well. Mainstream media loves an attack dog especially off the leash , it serves the purpose of entrenching fear.
At least the impact and significance of 7, 9 and 10 continue to diminish (along with limited news). The whole notion of a “nightly news broadcast” probably only impacts 20% or less of the population these days. Whole generations never watch them at all (except perhaps for footy finals).
The media don’t even try to shift the dial on the debt/deficit/surplus “a government budget is just like a household budget- we can’t spend more than we earn” garbage, and you think we’ve got a shot at them interrogating what taxation is and what it actually does and doesn’t do, Christopher?
Yeah, nah. Not gonna happen.
‘Active gaming’ sounds a little more sinister and energetic than stories in Australian media frequently being topping and tailing of a press release from a vested interest group or commercial entity.