On Wednesday this week, Joe Hockey, decided to start his return from holidays with a bit of humour. He went on national TV and called for a “sensible, mature debate” on tax reform. Yes. Feel free to snigger.
“A sensible, mature debate” from the man who a month ago in response to a question about superannuation concessions said that “Labor not only wants to raid your savings accounts and wants your house to fall in value, but they want you to have less money in your superannuation”.
As ever from Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott, and anyone else who happens to be whinging loudly about the need for a mature debate, that need apparently ends the moment someone else puts forward a proposal.
The Treasurer’s call for a mature debate over tax was primarily about changes to the GST. In a speech to the PwC Tax Reform Forum in Melbourne he noted that a number of submission to the government tax review had “called for the abolition of these taxes and a broadening of the GST base, or an increase to the rate, or both”.
But far from being one to take a stance and argue for what he believes should occur, Hockey, would supposedly lead the mature debate, instead cowers, and immediately states that “but when it comes to the GST, let me be very clear: no change will be considered without the unanimous agreement of state and territory governments and bipartisan support in the Federal Parliament”.
How scared do you have to be to ensure that the transcript of a speech put on your website actually has “no” in bold?
He told the audience that “I heard that the Premier of Victoria today ruled out any change to the GST. Just ruled it out. Flatly, no broadening of the GST, no increase in the GST. Let me be very frank, the Federal Government is not going to be arguing for a tax change that the beneficiary actually doesn’t want. You can waste a lot of capital in the debate on reform. But if the beneficiary of that reform actually says, no, we don’t want it, you’re on your own, it’s effectively game over”.
So we have a Treasurer who thinks we need to change our tax mix – to shift from a dependence upon income and company taxes to consumption taxes. And yet on day one, when encountering some pretty standard and inevitable disagreement, he gives up.
Pathetic.
Reform – whatever you choose that word to mean – does not come about from spontaneous bipartisanship. It comes about from someone willing to first champion the issue and argue for it; to convince others the argument is right.
But no, that is not Hockey’s way.
Those who want a mature debate, just want it because they want their own version of reforms achieved without a fight.
Not for Hockey is the fight waged by Paul Keating in the 1980s when he took his “tax cart” around the country trying to get a consumption tax introduced. Even though he failed, he still had fought the fight and famously quipped that “It’s a bit like Ben Hur – we’ve crossed the line with one wheel off”.
But we’ll never see that kind of verve or intellectual drive from the current Treasurer.
No, put up the white flag and complain that it wasn’t given to him on a platter.
Hockey of course won’t give up the drive for a change to the GST, but rather than argue the case as would an adult, he instead will seek to starve the states of funds and attempt to force them to ask for an increase to the GST.
It’s a pretty snivelling way to go about changing the tax system.
Those same people in business and the media who decry the quick negativity associated with any mention of GST changes are also generally the same ones to be guilty when it applies to anything they dislike.
Those who suggest there hasn’t been any economic reform in the last decade or so, invariably forget that the Gillard government put a price on carbon, which is about as sweeping an economic reform as you can get.
When the news.corp papers this week ran a story that the ALP was considering taking a carbon price to the next election, it took next to no time for the “sensible and mature” response from the Prime Minister to start with his suggesting “you can’t trust Labor” and that the carbon tax was back.
It also didn’t take long for business groups – the very same which harp on and on about the lack of reform – to tell the media they thought the ALP should be hold off on any moves. The Business Council of Australia suggested “What we need in Australia is careful and sensible carbon policy while maintaining our competitive position”. This from the same organisation which last year argued that Australia needed “bold reforms”. Clearly only bold if they agree with the BCA’s viewpoint.
To their credit at least Bill Shorten and shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen have not backed away from stating that their policy is to introduce a carbon price via an emissions trading scheme. This is no real shock given Shorten said as much last October.
And it’s a good thing too, because to argue for bipartisanship on such a matter, to argue for caution, to argue that we wait for others to come on board is to argue that nothing gets done. Change doesn’t happen through spontaneous agreement; you have to make your case.
Let us hope we see both sides doing that between now and the next election.
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