(Image: Private Media)
(Image: Private Media)

In Your Say, readers tell Crikey what they think about our stories. Today the Morrison government’s stage three tax cuts — among other things — have you up in arms.

On it’s a bad idea to ditch stage three tax cuts

Richard Creswick writes: In arguing it’s the wrong time to consider dumping the planned 2024 tax cuts, Bernard Keane puts forward some very cogent reasons for the opposite case. Touching on inequality, he glosses over the fact that the proposed changes involve a flattening and lowering of the scales when what is clearly needed is a much more nuanced revising of tax levels including taking more from, not giving more to, the wealthiest. We all know costs in some budget areas are going to increase exponentially, yet governments of all persuasions (everywhere) are loathe to tackle tax avoidance and evasion.

Rodney T Swan writes: As someone who wants a three-term Labor government — perhaps even four terms — I think any move against the tax cuts is politically fatal.

Ray Armstrong writes: Anthony Albanese should abandon the $243 billion stage three tax cuts that will flow, in the main, to the nation’s highest-paid workers, a view held by most economists and even some members of the opposition. The legislation was passed when we had less debt and with a surplus on the horizon, according to the then treasurer Josh Frydenberg. In the present economic climate and with a trillion-dollar debt, the cuts are unsustainable. The prime minister’s main concern is with breaking an election promise and being wedged by Peter Dutton. On the eve of the 2013 federal election, Tony Abbott promised no cuts to education, health, the ABC, SBS, and no changes to pensions. He not only broke these promises but many more. The Coalition went on to win elections in 2013, 2016 and 2019. Quite clearly, breaking one election promise does not necessarily guarantee defeat at the 2025 election. Albanese should try to persuade Dutton to act in the national interest and in an air of bipartisanship renounce the tax cuts.  

Peter Ryan writes: Amend the tax policy. Clearly times have changed. No one was expecting a global pandemic in January 2020. It’s time to start fixing the deficit problems that 10 years of an LNP government didn’t even try to fix. Its deficit just continued to increase before the pandemic. Withholding the stage three tax cuts will help. Remember John Howard broke promises and just brushed it off by saying that they weren’t core promises. The media just went off with tail between their legs saying “Oh, OK.”

Frank Ward OAM writes: I am a 93-year-old activist who in my younger days spent my energies campaigning for things that were required for my family and others, schools, hospitals and health services, but now when I am in need of services for me I find I am in the invisible zone of the aged. It appears that now we are expected to live out our lives without dignity or compassion because — as Joe Hockey said — we are leaners on the community.

As the Albanese government has pledged to reform the aged care industry he is greatly constrained by the huge deficit Scott Morrison left behind, but Keane seems to think that it is more important to fatten the rich than feed the aged and provide protection from the abuse and neglect that were recorded by the royal commission. I hope that those who advocate tax cuts to the rich remember they may get old one day and need care that never comes.

Peter Mair writes: Democracy is in peril if governments can rule from the grave by wedging
a post-dated 2024 promise before they die — especially if the ground shifts. Australia needs an electoral mechanism that stops short of a general election. How about a marriage equality-style plebiscite to guide understanding of revised proposals put by the major parties?

Colin Edwards writes: Some of us remember John Howard introducing the GST after the 1998 election.  The story before the election was that there would not be a GST.  Was that a “core promise” or a “non-core promise” that was broken?  Why doesn’t the Albanese Labor government just postpone the stage three tax cuts for a further three years?  That would not quite be breaking the promise.

On poor public funding for public education

Jim Hanna writes: Unfortunately, Bernard Keane makes the all-too-common assumption that “independent schools” automatically means “wealthy schools”. That’s simply not the case. In NSW, there are 504 independent schools, of which fewer than 10% are “wealthy” (i.e. charge high fees), and that percentage is shrinking as more schools open. Most of them educate kids from low- and middle-income families and, therefore, attract the bulk of the public funding to the sector. These are the fastest-growing and include low-fee Islamic, Adventist, Christian, Jewish, Steiner, Montessori, Buddhist and Ananda Marga schools.

While it’s true that “public schools have enjoyed only a modest real increase in funding over the decade”, that’s simply because they already have their schooling resource standard (the funding benchmark for all schools in all sectors) funded entirely by taxpayers, regardless of the income of their parents — so their funding for each student is already at the maximum level and can grow only by indexation (and by enrolling more disadvantaged students, who attract extra funding).

Non-government schools have only a portion of their SRS funded by government, based on the median income of their parents. Put simply, the higher the median income, the lower the government funding. If non-government schools enrol more kids from lower-income families — which they’ve been doing for the past decade — the sector’s funding for each student rises.

Lastly, the Productivity Commission’s recent report on government services shows that nationally in 2019-20 public schools received $20,182 each student compared with $13,189 each non-government student.

On Labor needing a blast from the left

Geoff Davies writes: Guy Rundle’s realisation is welcome that Labor is not what it used to be and many apparently still imagine it to be. But let’s mark where the rot really began: when Bob Hawke and Paul Keating took over in 1983 and introduced full-force neoliberalism. It was obvious then that market fundamentalism would undermine anything else Labor imagined it would try to do. Sure, it softened the blow a bit, but the result is the same: economic failure and social disaster.

Here’s a disturbing question: how much support from overseas did the Labor right have to infiltrate the party and neuter it?

David Edmunds writes: Rundle ignores the fact that Labor did go to an election in 2019 with the sort of policies that he espouses — and lost.  It lost not because the case for those changes was not well made, but because, as US political junkies would say, the Overton window had not yet allowed a view of a world with the changes. So in 2022 Labor won the election on a more modest set of policies, and has since been trying to move the view on more progressive policies. It has already taken a considerable suite of actions it has taken, and more are in the offing.

It is now quite obvious in Australia, at least for the present generations, a progressive agenda is not electable, even though people might like the individual policy elements. We do not need a pure progressive and unelectable Labor Party. We need a potentially progressive government that can swing the electorate and actually make policy moves, but of course those policy moves will not be perfectly progressive. So far so good. Labor has set a path for climate change action and has comprehensively won that debate.  Not good enough, but a world away from where we were. Foreign affairs policy looks heaps better.

While not sexy, Labor is committed to rebuilding the public service, and has made a considerable start on that front. It will gain the credibility that comes with a more efficient, more open and more accountable public service. Labor is implementing a federal ICAC, there are a host of issues around industrial policy that it’s addressing and are now on the table. Not bad for five months.

And perhaps most importantly, Labor is setting itself up as a natural party of government, and this is essential if it is to bend the electorate in a more progressive direction. So far so good.

Michelle Goldsmith writes: Yes, “the left” are cutting Labor waaaay too much slack precisely because “the left” keeps insisting Labor is also “the left”.  As a long-term leftie, I object to Rundle suggesting Labor is my “side”. It hasn’t been for decades and decades. That’s why I’m a Green. The Greens are the real left, and that’s why Labor despises us more than it does “the right”. A bad conscience is a painful thing.

On Extinction Rebellion’s Picasso moment

Judy Gunson writes: Your article putting down Extinction Rebellion is just so depressing. Talk about an echo chamber. Here you are amplifying the conservative tropes of the Murdoch press and Boris Johnson for heaven’s sake. Maybe you should think about another example of civil disobedience. The many middle-class suffragettes pissed off a lot of people and most of their actions were directed to their own milieu. After all, those are the people who probably have the time to do such things. But I, for one, am very happy that those middle-class women fought to give me the vote (for what it’s worth, which is sometimes not a lot).

And Rebecca Huntley on civil disobedience? Wow. She talked to some disengaged voters who parroted back to her the conservative media line about XR! Incredible insight! 

Civil disobedience is designed to piss people off and to create a social pressure which governments need to respond to. It requires very committed people prepared to act outside of the permitted framework. And they must keep pushing because that is the dilemma that society has put them in. Criticising them for being middle class? White? Well, what if they are? But in fact a lot of people in XR are pretty poor and living in tiny apartments on tiny amounts of money while they volunteer their time and their bodies to a cause they feel is deeply pressing. And a lot of them are quite old or quite young.   

Cheap shots, Crikey! And such a patronising tone. I’m so disappointed. And this when we’re in the struggle for our lives and our planet. And one thing is for sure: this action by Extinction Rebellion has generated a whole lot more conversation about climate than your article.

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