My correct views on everything.
— Subtitle of a book by Friedrich Nietzsche
Well they’ve only gone and bloody done it. The mighty Australian Labor Party have lost the unlosable election, with the seat numbers between the major parties pretty much unchanged, after a couple of swaps.
Almost worse than the loss for progressives is the feeling that this was all a waste of time. All that rallying, all that energy, the agony and the ecstasy, and nothing much was said by the Australian people in their vote.
They decisively rejected Labor in certain parts of Queensland and Tasmania; they didn’t embrace them sufficiently in Victoria or New South Wales. The one or two new left independents/Greens didn’t eventuate; existing independents kept their seats. All of that for all of this.
Well, okay, a moment of Cassandra time now. Your correspondent noted in February that Labor appeared in danger of throwing this away, and so it proved. Hearing Mathias Cormann and Chris Bowen on the radio — one a rabid attack dog on tax, the other woolly and professorial, I remarked:
There is a complacency that has settled across the land, that this is in the bag for Labor, that we’re just playing out time, that can we get to May and get this over with. And it reminds me exactly, exactly of Hillary versus Trump in 2016. I’m not saying Morrison is like Trump — nothing is worse than those ‘X is Y’s Trump’ pieces — but I am saying that there is a disjuncture, an asymmetry between Labor and the Coalition that is leaving a gap for the latter through which a path to victory or a messy draw could be made.
So it has proved. Labor loyalists went the tong on that article, which was a measure of the magical thinking already taking over Labor circles: to criticise was to mozz victory. There was the same reaction when I expressed a concern that Labor was piling up big ticket items — big tax takes, big spends — without joining them together in an overall strategy, a take on the world. This was a denigration of Labor’s bold vision, the risks it was taking etc.
Well Labor was taking a risk, but it didn’t have the courage or imagination to go further and make a case as to what this was all for, what sort of society they wanted to create. They were running for federal office like it was a state election, emphasising redistribution without talking about the whole picture. As I also noted. They bore the cost of their “big ticket” strategy, and gained none of the benefit from a more comprehensive vision. Which is pretty ironic, for a party that has become so economistic in its manner.
So, yes, the Murdoch press was brutal and relentless, and Clive Palmer may have drained votes away. But these things were to be expected. There was no way to combat them, save with an alternative vision that would break through the propaganda wall.
What one heard, out in the backblocks and in the suburbs, was the opposite. Save for the groups around some independents, there was an absolute lack of enthusiasm, a deeping cynicism about politicians, a visceral dislike of Bill Shorten that intensified as the weeks went on, and a warming to Scott Morrison.
Labor seemed, as it seemed in the Beazley/Crean years, dazed and zombified. Not knowing why it was doing what it was doing, and coming to life only in death, when the Bob Hawke exequies commenced. Everyone thought this might be good for a point or two; insofar as it had any effect at all, it fed Labor’s immense capacity for self-involvement.
When on Sunday I heard that standard Labor refrain — ah, but Bill gave a great concession speech — I wondered why I had been fooled again by a party that never gave the impression that they passionately wanted power. You shouldn’t be able to give a good concession speech! Politics, like love, is meant to destroy you! You should be helped, shambling, to the microphone, to say a few short words, and get off ahead of total collapse.
The common refrain has been that Labor had two choices: a conservative small target strategy, or the “bold” one they took. It wasn’t bold at all. It was piecemeal but pricey, an inept combination, the worst possible. Missing entirely was the third possibility: one in which Labor talked of production and work, not just distribution, about how we could transform the way we live, about our place in a changing world.
Now they’re talking about waiting for 2022, as if it’s theirs. Last Saturday night, they lost the era. They can go on losing it indefinitely with that attitude. You didn’t think they could, but they’ve only gone and bloody done it.
We should all be guided by Mike Tyson in these contests:
“No plan survives a punch in the mouff”, said the famous brawler.
The Boomers not only delivered Labor a punch in the mouff, but also a straight right to the solar plexus.
Labor got a very well deserved own sock to the choppers. Fingering the punters will just ensure another loss.
All who support the nomination of Albanese and Plibersek have clearly not absorbed the nature of morrison’s victory, nor of the reality of a truly morrison Misgovernment, nor that Labor Party hacks will do no more for us in the future than they have in the past.
IMHO he won as much as anything by bullying his way to a dominance over Shorten, and by bullying the rest of the party into doing what he wanted them to do, which was to be invisible outside their electorate. Forget about any nominee who can’t stand their ground against the school bully. Although Sir Harry Paget Flashman became in the most decorated bully in the British Empire only in novels, it is alarmingly true to life.
Transnational capitalism’s man in Australia, morrison, will be the strongman driving Austerity that they wanted abbott to be. abbott was much better for us.
He was boasting that he promised us virtually nothing of the wealth to be created in the next three years. He is now setting up to aggressively deliver. He is also going to drive us towards brutal British and brutal American Austerity as rapidly and as totally as parliament and protest will let him. FYI Austerity in Britain is now murdering 39,000 Britons a year. morrison will tell us that as quiet Australians it is our divine responsibility to suffer it.
You are so right Ambrose that I’m wincing at the thought of how we will fare over the next decade. Morrison the God botherer, has no compunction about flogging the poor or needy or marginalised. Watch all the fellow travellers going along for the ride. Kick a cripple will be the mantra.
Guy, you weren’t a Cassandra…..I heard you loud and clear and got the message.
Good analysis.
The hairs on the back of your neck were telling you something, GR, and clearly excellent hairs they are, but I’m not sold that Shorten talking about “production and work, not just distribution, about how we could transform the way we live, about our place in a changing world” would have changed things.
Would such rhetoric, from Shorten, have altered the trend you saw: “Save for the groups around some independents, there was an absolute lack of enthusiasm, a deepening cynicism about politicians, a visceral dislike of Bill Shorten that intensified as the weeks went on, and a warming to Scott Morrison.” Given the “visceral dislike” could he have sold it?
I think it was dividend-dependent retirees and their children. And their children is the key. You can add other connections and acquaintances as well. Once people saw the unfairness they weren’t prepared to trust other policies. It didn’t dawn on people like me till very late in the piece that, as it stood, it was fundamentally unfair, as well as how many people it affected and/or influenced. All the bad seats are heavy with retirees.
Labour would have got over the line without the franking disaster, a truly unfair policy. Bowen’s “If you don’t like it, vote against it” was worse, in hindsight, than Clinton’s “basket of deplorables”, as an insult to the people affected.
The Age featured letter is very powerful about this today.
What’s unfair about removing tax rebates from dividends on which no taxes were paid?
The unfairness was that those paying taxes, that is, those with larger incomes, lost none of the benefit. The relevant part of the policy is
“This change only affects a small number of shareholders who have no tax liability and use imputation credits to receive a cash refund.
People will still be able to use imputation credits to reduce their tax liability to zero.”
https://www.alp.org.au/other/dividend-imputation-credits/
It is true that some of those with low tax incomes would actually be quite well off, but many would not.
So, low income retirees dependent on franked dividends were being asked to accept a cut in their income of maybe 10%, while high income retirees with franked dividends were not affected.
Meanwhile, people such as me, in a government fixed payout scheme, were being asked to make no sacrifices at all.
In abstract principle the policy is OK, but it should have been grand-fathered etc, as the letter in the Age says.
Keith – I wrote to Andrew Leigh at the time, suggesting strongly that the dividend franking refund should be grandfathered like negative gearing. He didn’t respond so I don’t know his reaction but I did think Bowen was a bit too sure of himself on the issue.
DF you were on to it and pro-active. Wish I had been.
I also wrote- to Bowen’s office, seeking clarification on some technical points. The response I got was a form one, obviously written for people complaining about the policy. I wasn’t complaining, and replied to that effect, restating the points on which I sought clarification. No Answer! I was left to conclude that the office of the Shadow Treasurer did not have the technical expertise to answer a question from a constituent. Had I been a swinging voter, I know what effect that would have had on my vote.
On the more general issue of super, it looks like it will be a no-go zone for revenue raising for some time now. Unfortunately, Labor in government did not do enough to stress that super is for retirement: it’s not for intergenerational wealth transfer. Sadly, it is now treated as exactly that, as explicitly claimed by an LNP member in Freedom Boy’s committee hearings, and not challenged (to the best of my knowledge) by any Labor person, in the committee, or outside it. So, that horse has well and truly left the stable. The franking credits “debate” revealed that quite clearly.
I live in the division of McMahon and Chris Bowen is my local member. I have never met the guy, and I could be wrong, but my impression is that he is an arrogant arsehole, who does all he can to avoid meeting his constituents. I actually preferenced Liberal ahead of Labor, knowing there was no chance they would get up in this electorate. I could not stomach the thought that my vote would end up with Chris Bowen via preferences.
I contrast that with the time when I was in the division of Blaxland, and Jason Clare spent hours outside the local IGA, and I got to shake his hand and take a branded shopping bag from one of his support crew. I am not totally sold on Labor, but I appreciate the effort Jason put in and I warmed to him.
I think you and I have a very different idea of low income. I remain unconvinced that there is any such thing as a low income retiree dependent on franked dividends – though I assume you mean dependent on refunds of unused franking credits. They’re not low income, they just like to think they are.
I spoke to a few elderly family friends who like yourself considered the policy unfair, and seemed to think that their life was and had been a struggle, i.e. that their income was low – yet they own multiple properties, retired in their early 60s, go on holiday every year, seem perfectly able to serve some pretty expensive tastes in terms of food and wine and technological goods. Not much struggle at all as far as I could see. Frankly it just revealed to me that despite claiming to be progressive types for their entire lives they never were anything but conservative, self-interested, self-serving boomers. Boorish individualists with no sense of community whatsoever. One of them told me that they could “afford” to lose $2k a year, but the policy wasn’t “fair” and so they would be voting against it. Firstly, the policy as it stands is clearly unfair – refunding unused franking credits? What a completely deranged idea. So now we come to changing something that you’ve become used to – I assume that’s what is really meant when it was claimed the change would be unfair. Well all I can say is welcome to the complete chaos of atomised 21st century Australia. Perhaps self-funded retirees could consider living up to their name one day and get out into the real world.
A fair society requires everyone to make sacrifices. My sense is that retirees who claimed this policy change was unfair aren’t really in the fairness game, i.e. they consider that they’ve already made enough sacrifices already and should be left alone. They’re wrong on that. Dead wrong.
p.s. I love that you refer us to a letter in The Age. In my experience basically only people over 40 (maybe even getting closer to 45 these days), public servants, and journalists read actual newspapers anymore.
You sound like a sanctimonious twat.
You sound like you don’t have an argument beyond the ad hominen?
Keith, if the removal of excess franked divvy rebate hits their income too hard..these shareholders need to sell some of their damned shares, ffs. It’s a saleable, income earning asset. Sell some, invest in something else. Just because someone’s stopped working doesn’t mean their capital can. And what happens when the company dividend pay out happens to dip in a given year? They lose income then, too. Should the government top that up? What happens if the company paying you franked dividends goes broke? Full refund from the taxpayer?
We can’t keep paying tax returns to people who haven’t paid tax mate. No one else in the world does it, for a good reason: it’s fiscally insane, Keith. Why should I – a night shift aged carer on $25/hour – hand over my tax money to someone just because they own a portfolio of blue chip shares that annually pay franked dividends? That’s what the excess franked divvie credits rebate is. Me (no shares) paying someone with shares a dollop if my income tax. In the same way that negative gearing is me (renter, no property) paying some of my income tax to someone who owns (most likely) at least two houses, and probably more.
It’s a measure of how entrenched the middle class welfare entitlement now is that you think changing this handout-to-the-already-asset-owning policy would be ‘unfair’. You – who ffs are on a grim fixed pension precisely because there’s not enough budget money to increase it, because…Keith, government is handing it out to people with share and property assets. (And trusts, and multiple SMSF’s etc). Privatise the profit, nationalise the risk – but nationalise the investment stake now, too! The taxpayer invests, the private citizen hoards the pay off. You buy an investment property and the taxpayer is now supposed to underwrite its annual 10-12% capital gain by not dare touching the insane investment property tax rules that underwrite that kind of (bubble) growth. The taxpayer subsidises a lifetime of superannuation and then having accumulated a big pile the astute private citizen doesn’t actually have to live off it, they can divest their received income down to below taxable…live it up off their franked divvie handout…a private company builds a PPP commercial tollway but the taxpayer guarantees minimum traffic flow revenue…
Everywhere and way you turn now, our privatised economy is underwritten by the taxpayer. Thanks to John Howard’s petty bourgeoise fantasy/conceit that he too could be a Big Posh Man Down At The Spiv Club, we now live in a fragile, bloated, quivering, taxpayer-antibiotics-pumped, artificially-accelerated-cage-grown, toxic, scabied, malformed, moulting, cocked and ready to explode State Sponsored demand domestic economy masquerading pitifully as a lean, mean Wall Street Wolf…it’s hilarious. You feel sorry for the poor sick thing. Except it’s not funny, not at all. So you don’t.
All these folks who have mistaken debt for prosperity all these last two decades are due a devastating, devastating reality check, pretty soon. As I said elsewhere…boy have Labor dodged a bullet, in losing this election…
Rundle should really be less grumpy…this brings us closer to a proper political reckoning, and a shot at genuine economic and sociopolitical rejuvenation.
Jack and Oncemoresometimes. Thank you for responding, and putting effort into it. It is much appreciated. To be clear, I want (now when it’s too late) the policy to have been grandfathered. I don’t agree with the rebates (Costello-Howard), I don’t agree with the reduction against tax (Hawke-Keating). In retrospect, I would not have trailed the coat quite so much with “unfair”.
I think that, just possibly, we have all underestimated the extent to which this issue cut through amongst retirees and their families as emblematic of the kinds of things that make people distrust Labor. That might in itself be unfair, but the policy was one of the few things that Labor could have done something about during the campaign, without over-compromising.
I think Shorten is almost un-listenable to, but I was excited by the breadth of the program. I returned from Greens to Labor because of it. Unlike you Jack I can’t take an solace in the idea of a reckoning that is to come – not yet anyway.
Oncemore, I am glad to hear that you are a lot younger than I am (not a difficult achievement!) and that you may have much more relevant antennae than I about the issues that might have gained Labor that last 1% or so. I look forward to hearing more from you.
But I would say this to both of you – Labor just went to the people with a comprehensive range of good policies and lost, very narrowly. We are not going to get over the final hurdle if we keep defining sub-sets of LNP voters as morally beyond the pale.
It’s interesting how those who pay the least tax are often the most grieved by how it’s distributed.
Really we all thinks should get a little more of the pie don’t we?
BECAUSE WAYNE IT WAS A STUPID POLICY, IT ONLY IMPACTED THE LOW INCOME RETIREES AND STILL BENEFITED THE WEALTHY, PLUS THE SIMPLE FACT THAT THE TAX WAS PAID BY THE COMPANY NOT THE TAXPAYER PLUS THE SIMPLE FACT IT FRIGHTENED OTHER RETIREES AS TO WHAT WILL COME NEXT WHO THEN TOLD THEIR FAMILY AND FRIENDS AND DONT FORGET RETIREES WERE DOING NOTHING WRONG AS THEY JUST FOLLOWED THEIR ADVISERS DIRECTIONS AND LABOR MADE THEM FEEL GUILTY BY INFERING THEY WERE GREEDY BASTARDS ROBBING THE TAXPAYERS AND THERE WOULD BE NO GAIN FINANCIALLY FOR LABOR AS THEY WOULD HAVE MOVED THE PORTFOLIOS AROUND AWAY FROM FRANKING CREDITS OR SOLD OFF ASSETS AND APLIED FOR PART PENSIONS AND THE MAIN THING NOBODY SHOULD , ESPEC IALLY THE ECONOMIC ILLITERATE, FORGET IS THEY ACTUALLY SAVED TAXPAYERS BY NOT SPENDING THEIR MONEY DURING THEIR WORKING LIVES AND PROVIDED FOR THEIR RETIREMENT AND REMEMBER, BY NOT DRAWING $35,000 PER ANNUM PER COUPLE P/A AGED PENSION FOR TWENTY OR SO YEARS (=$700,000 ) X ONE MILLION PEOPLE =7 BILLION DOLLARS FROM THE GOVERNMENT SO FORGET THE ENVY AND JUST CONCENTRATE ON BUILDING YOUR OWN SUPER UP.
Provided for their retirement????? They’re getting a taxpayer handout anyway, you dope. That’s the WHOLE POINT OF THIS ISSUE DEBATE BRADDYBEAR!! They ARE costing us taxpayers – currently around $6-7Billion a year. In another decade? $10,11,12billion…? Get it!?
**
Keith: thanks for such a lovely reply, much appreciated. You are dead right about Labor’s bad handling/selling of this policy…and also regarding intimations of moral sanctimony! The policy is law and it’s absolutely right and legitimate that people take advantage of it, without fear of personal attack. And of course that many have indeed made it a centre piece of their modest retirement planning.
Your kindness in words is testament to your decency. Forgive me if I strayed into sanctimony! Best regards.
Keith-
Not rhetoric, but a real offer. Integrating work changes, childcare, education, health. With a simple image and message. And, yes, with less or no focus on the franking-tax monster
I didn’t intend “rhetoric” negatively and I understand you wanted it to complement and frame the policies. Maybe, if someone other than Shorten was spruiking, unfortunately.
I don’t think “less or no focus” on franking would have been enough, if the policy remained unchanged. Those affected saw it, were enraged, and transmitted it to people close to them.
The Age letter bloke says it needed grand-fathering and so on, so maybe it didn’t need ditching altogether. But as it stood it was genuinely unfair, from the supposed party of fairness, and swinging voters had their worst cynical fears about Labour confirmed, unnecessarily. These people won’t consider Labour again in a hurry.
They were right on this point and Labour needs to acknowledge it PDQ.
It just wasn’t unfair keith1. Even your link suggests the same. Where are you coming from?
The problem with this interpretation is that, as BK says in his piece, it’s the affluent seats where Labor did reasonably well in NSW and Vic. Pretty sure it wasn’t franking credits that caused such a problem for Labor up here in Queensland. They switched to Pauline Hanson, not Scott Morrison.
Kfix, there are plenty of losing policies in Qld and elsewhere that I wouldn’t want Labour to have altered at all. If tey are the right policies and they lose votes, so be it. It’s about getting to 50% preferred and 76+ seats, not a landslide. But this policy was wrong and it lost votes wherever there are retirees.
A seat or two in Qld might have been saved, so might the Tassie seats. A seat or two might have been won in Victoria, WA, and/or NSW.
It also goes beyond this issue. It is a question of credibility – if the ALP got this wrong, how could they be trusted on other issues of fairness. A certain kind of swinging voter, aware of the issue either directly or through family, would feel no need to think about Labour’s complex proposals any further.
But keith1, only a tiny percentage of retiree would have been affected. How do you reconcile that, especially as the vast majority would not have had an SMSF in retirement phase? Your own internal logic is falling down around basic facts, most people would not have been touched by this.
It reinforces GRs logic that it’s about the story, not the facts.
“It reinforces GRs logic that it’s about the story, not the facts.”
Belatedly agree with that, Dog’s B.
Yeah, this. The rich were not scared of the ALP, the worst you can say is no one would have been that enthusiastic about voting FOR it, oh cool some tax tinkering. Good stuff, Bill!
“in the piece that, as it stood, it was fundamentally unfair”
Well that’s just not right keith1. It was only going to effect a small number of quite well off superannuants, and only those with an SMSF and in retireme mode where they pay no tax ( As distinct from recording low taxable incomes which is a very different thing).
It wasn’t unfair at all, and it shouldn’t have been referred to as a gift, which it was.
Thanks for the response Dog’s Breakfast – and like you I’m stunned after the result by how little I know and knew, and am trying to recover. Maybe this franking bee in my bonnet is part of a premature attempt at recovery. However, let me have a go at answering you.
If the policy were going to save $8 billion a year, how could it affect very few? I have read the policy top to bottom, including the quotes from experts – all of them seem to be referring to the revenue savings that would accrue if there were no tax break. But the tax break stays in place. Meanwhile those on pensions will also be compensated. So where is the $8 billion coming from?
If I were an SMF person who didn’t get a pension but whose SMF earnings were low enough not to pay tax, I would want to know why I was being singled out. And if I were in one of the other two groups, given the target saving to revenue, I would be inclined to distrust the whole thing.
If I am wrong, and somehow the policy was going to raise $8 billion a year, and no-one was to be treated unfairly, then of course it is still a matter of extremely poor messaging, topped off by the contempt implicit in Bowen’s comment. I don’t think it cuts the mustard to blame LNP lies and the Murdoch press. We may as well complain about the weather.
As the beneficiary of a fixed sum government superannuation, I am very conscious that no-one was proposing to change the rules that govern my retirement income. The SMF people have made provision for themselves and retired when they could afford to, given the rules at the time. Now their incomes are to be reduced.
Don’t get me wrong, I think franking credits should go – indeed in my view the Keating-Hawke franking tax breaks should go as well – otherwise the very rich are favoured. But the whole thing needed to be grand-fathered.
Final disclosure – when I first retired we had an amount to invest and I put it in the stock market. (It was April 2009 as the market bottomed, I did OK!) Of course I went for fully-franked dividends. Anyone would. The missus couldn’t take the tension of the market and I got out. Otherwise, my government super would be being supplemented by franked dividends. I don’t have an SMF but my taxable income rarely got to the bottom threshold, so I used to collect rebates. I thought it was an absolute joke, and I hope I would have had no trouble supporting the Labour policy, as it stands, on my own account. But I can understand where blokes such as the one in today’s Age are coming from.
The ALP policy on franking credits only affected 6% of retirees. The huge sums involved reflected the fact that most SMSF funds with franking credits contain a lot of wealth. What is clear is that two features of SMSF’s merged to make the franking credits policy unpopular. The first is that SMSFs are being used as wealth transfer funds rather than simply as retirement funds. To make them more like retirement funds, as the ALP policy would, affects those who might inherit some of the wealth in their parents’ SMSF. The second feature is that those who formed SMSF’s were not all very wealthy and had only followed advice to give them a good retirement fund. ALP policy recognised this by capping franking credit refunds for those who pay no tax. The cap was set at those who also had at least a part pension. The problem for the ALP policy was that this cap was too low. The cap was based on income but the level for capping it meant that people with not very great incomes were also going to be hit by changes to policy when they had only followed advice. The income cap could have been set at 25% higher than the income where a part pension might apply, remembering that those who do not have part pensions will incur greater costs because they lack pension concessions. The ALP could also have tried a combination of capping and grand parenting by capping the income where credits could be received for those who already had made arrangements and not allowing franking credits for those who pay no tax in future, perhaps after a transition period to allow people about to retire to transfer to super funds.
What you do not do is complacently assume, as Bowen did, that only a few would be affected and to tell them not to vote Labor if they did not like the policy.
The fundamental problem was that, as Guy says, the ALP policy was not focused and gave the impression that a lot of money was being spent without a clear idea of how that would change Australia for the better. Without having to repeat boringly vote ALP for policy after policy after policy, there could have been two or three reasons to vote ALP and these should always have been seen as solving problems created by the Coalition government for future generations. The Coalition has sat on its hands in combating climate change, when a concerted international effort is needed to get emissions down, where every country that has benefited by creating the problem shows that it is prepared to shoulder some of the cost of counting the problem. The schoolchildren who demonstrate on the streets for their futures stress that global warming and degradation of the environment means they ill not be as well off as those of who have taken advantage of the temporary prosperity that has created a problem for our children and grandchildren. The second problem is that workers’ wages have been stifled by the coalition, which has made it difficult for unions to represent workers effectively. The third problem is the Coalition’s obsession with small government has meant and will continue to mean that health and education will be progressively less well resourced. The Coaltion government is like a huge anaconda snake, which has wrapped its coils around the institutions that need to be supported by government and has been slowly squeezing them to death. Nearly everyone, including many poor people will have health care that costs, when they have virtually nothing to spare for heath after paying other bills. This will lead to greater costs for all down the track. Public schools will continually fall behind in their resources, so that disadvantaged kids in public schools will nt get the help with individually focussed teaching that they need to catch up. poorer children will be increasingly excluded from universities and even TAFE training. The ideological, small government fetish of the Coalition means that it abandons its responsibility to provide opportunities for poorer people, whose relative polity is the fault of the government, not them, because it denies them the means to better their conditions.
A thoughtful comment, Ian, but while I agree it may have been tactically smarter from a political point of view for Labor to have raised the income level where retirees could retain the franking credits, the very existence of franking credits at all makes no sense economically or morally – economically because no other country has them, they cost a fortune, and if we didn’t have them no-one would be considering introducing them in the current economic climate; morally because retirees already have so many perks not available to the rest of the population, which is not fair intergenerationally (higher tax-free thresholds, tax-free superannuation, cheaper PBS prescriptions, cheaper fares, cheaper all sorts of things with Seniors Cards, etc).
I’m struggling to imagine a self-funded retiree who is not better-off financially than most people of working age because of all the above perks, plus not having mortgage, education or child-care costs, plus not having to save for retirement. And of course, the statistical fact I keep coming back to is that by definition, a ‘self-funded’ retiree is richer than the 80% of retirees who qualify for some Age Pension. These are the Australians whose screams of ‘hardship’ have elicited more political sympathy than the host of Australians really doing it tough and who stood to gain from Labor’s redistributive policies.
You hit the nail on the head with your comment that most SMSF holders see them as wealth transfer mechanisms rather than retirement income mechanisms. But therewith lies the economic/moral problem – the taxpayer is subsidising inter-generational wealth transfer, and the relatively privileged recipients of this largesse were able to garnish so much sympathy at the prospect that we might actually return SMSF’s to their originally-intended purpose of providing retirement income in lieu of an Age Pension.
Thanks Ian Hunt and Peter Schulz, I benefited from these posts.
To the extent that the franking policy was imperfect I now see how an overarching vision might have made the difference, as GR pointed out Feb 05. A conversation on Friday 17th suddenly rubbed my nose in its relevance, and I was cross with myself for not paying attention earlier. I’d heard Bowen’s comment and thought his confidence (I didn’t quite hear the arrogance at the time) must mean they had it right.
Just re the 6%, maybe it wasn’t so much those who had already benefited who objected, but those who saw their path to a comfortable (and more than comfortable) retirement, being closed off.
Whatever the case, there is a lot of mulling going on over correlations – I guess it takes a long while to make judgements about which correlations might also indicate causation.
Finally, while judgements can differ about how much franking affected the result, on the general issue of how difficult it is to sell and enact rational, fair and needed increases and changes to taxation – I actually don’t think there is a more important question.
Well the lesson learnt here; come next election tax cuts for all, privatise the ABC, coal is good, fracking is good, climate change is bad, promise the Murdoch media tax gifts (they don’t pay tax, so tax cuts are not possible) give Clive Palmer what he wants, including a blow job if necessary. Ensure there is no extra funding for education and health. The next election is a winnable prospects.
Bill
That strikes me as a bit blame the voters. Is it possible that many wanted change – but never got a good account of a plan from Labor, so voted cautiously?
I do blame the voters! Dumbarses!
Totally…getting a bit tired of Rundle’s supercilious commentary… of course it’s the voters! Many claimed to care about the looming climate catastrophe but didn’t vote for the only option to address it; not personally impacted by franking credits, etc but too lazy to actually study what was being proposed.
The revenge of the brain dead deplorables, no compunction about hurting themselves just to stick it to the wanker brigade.
Guy – clearly Labor need to get to power the same way the LNP do – just lie, cheat and kick your way in, then do whatever you want once there…only do a decent job and hope people will forgive you and give you a second shot.
The job to be done is now huge, and will be a lot bigger in three years time. Abbott’s damage to trust in politicians can probably never be completely fixed, the anger was palpable on the polling booths and aimed at all parties.
One major task is figure out some legislation that will severely punish any media that blatantly lies in a manner that directly influences the way democracy works. Social media can do what it likes, but print and TV must have clear rules and set punishments.
That isn’t what Rudd had to do in 2007. But ALP supporters seem too busy running from that election to look back at what happened then and now.
There is a difference between voting cautiously and voting blindly in response to dog whistles. It is about time that two elements of this were clearly spelled out and acknowledged. 41% or even 42% of the primary vote is not a ‘mandate’; but just watch how ‘mandate’ is screamed out repeatedly, as it would have been had Labor got the 41%. Hubris brings people unstuck eventually, it might take a long time but as with Howard and now Abbott and Shorten (a reasonable person would have stepped aside long ago) it eventually happens, even to the worst. And that includes Bob Brown who still hasn’t realised that Einstein was correct and if you haven’t broken through with the message by now a ‘convoy’ into the heartland of those who mistrust you most isn’t going to do anything but damage to your cause then the sanity of that is questionable.
Bob Brown is still trying to make up for his fuck up in destroying Rudd’s ETS and triggering off the consequences that put us where we are today.
Good choice of handle.
The truth is that the Greens were excluded by Krudd who thought he could get Talcum’s support for the merchant banker job creation scheme of emissions trading.
And the blame lies with the voters. When the farmers are next bleating about drought relief I won’t be donating because they have now chosen water mismanagement and do nothing about climate change.
Far from a voters mistake, in fact, I think the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ saved us.
Sort of Jungian collective subconscious rejection of foul policy based on class hatred.
“Foul policy based on class hatred” lol. Sounds like a good description of coalition policy since Howard.
Yes, class warfare works best when it’s hidden and not talked about, sugar-coated with a dominant political discourse of ‘consensus’ and ‘working together’ (cf feudalism or slavery, including the African slaves fighting on the side of the South in the US civil war to protect ‘their’ slavery). The feudal lords and slave owners didn’t ‘hate’ their peasants and slaves – they just exploited them mercilessly – it was the abolitionists who were the ‘haters’!
Some silly old fart in a letter in the local Murdoch rag this week wrote that Labor was rejected because it was ‘divisive’ and that ‘we are a land of equals, we are all Australians, and we do not accept division’ – nice to know that I’m suddenly equal to Gina Rinehart in wealth and power.
More like the ‘wisdom’ of the fools admiring the emperor’s new clothes.