I’ve repeatedly criticised Kim Beazley for adopting a small target strategy aimed at peeling off marginal voters from the government while not upsetting anrybody. But his response to the Budget has been as strong as you could hope for. Of course, the press gallery sports commentators are almost uniformly convinced that it’s a bad move, though, as far as I can see none of them denied the point that the tax cuts give a lot to the well-off and hardly anything to the great majority of Australians.
Anyway, well done Kim!
More from Tim Dunlop, Ken Parish and Mark Bahnisch
John Quiggin 
Mark Latham is back, only this time he is called Kim Beazley and unlikely to ‘implode’.
Kim Beazley rulez 07
Nice to see some praise from your quarter on this one comrade.
Beazley made a mistake to come out and say that he would block the tax cuts in the Senate. He should have stated that he would seek to amend the tax cuts to make them fairer. The latter is what the ALP is set to do, however Beazley’s initial rash reaction gave the government an easy line of attack, and the ALP will struggle to get its underlying point across because of this.
Beazley also errs in making politician’s tax cuts the issue. It may well be popular, but there is only so long that the ALP can continue immiserating pollies for populist reasons. Politicians’ salaries are not excessive when the nature of the job and the amount of work involved is taken into consideration. Compared to private sector salaries politicians’ salaries are low.
Benno is right: the Bomber’s response smacked of Lathamite populism. Will he implode? Given how full of hot air he is, I doubt it.
What you say Guardian is true. While I think his alternative budget is good policy and good politics, he could have played his cards better. Mark Latham was superb at briliant tactical poltics until about 2 months before the election when he became bolshy with ‘save the trees’ and ‘lets flush private schools down the toilet’. I actually liked all of that stuff, but it didn’t see Labor win.
I have read a suggestion that he still could have said Labor would block the cuts, but not until his budget reply speech. Thus avoiding media attacks and caucus leaks. However things are looking up as it appears Kim is adopting and learning various tactics from Latham. What that man did with pollies super and the free trade deal was nothing short of brilliant.
I also think the federal parliamentary ALP is angst ridden. They are suffering a crisis of identity which is the cause of all of the cowardly leaks, otherwise known as disgruntled ‘backgrounding’. It is Cowardly behaivour, similar to what Costello supporters were threatening with the wrecking of the liberal party.
define populism please.
Tax cuts for the poor is not going to be the headlines: It’s going to be “ALP BLOCKS TAX CUTS” and “LABOR: POOR ECONOMIC MANAGERS” and “KIM BEAZLEY IS COMING TO EAT YOUR CHILDREN”… The proposed tax cuts are a great idea, but politically very difficult to spin. Maybe the ALP should try and stick to policies where they’ve got a chance (such as health and education, at least according to Newspoll) and gain some credibility before trying the knock-out budget blow. On the other hand, when the coalition gets control of the senate, it might be difficult for the ALP to get air time on anything.
Obviously what they need is a consultant for budget blocking activities in the Senate. The only person who I can think of who is remotely qualified is Malcolm Fraser. Now *that’s* irony!
Finally, does anyone think it’s a little odd that it was Beazley who came out with the alternate tax policy and not Wayne Swan? Surely as shadow Treasurer this came under his ‘portfolio’!
I have read the Labor Women’s statement which is a very good analysis of how women are faring under the Howard/Costello duopoly.
Not well and the IVF/abortion argument was a small distraction but also a telling indication of the general attitude – it seems that not only is chivalry dead but it is having its head kicked in as well.
Whether women will lose their voice and place in society is a little publicised item and Labor is at least beginning to address the silent undermining of women’s position in society.
Oh please, get off your feminist high-horse! A $3000 baby bonus and Family Tax benefits that mean a single mother with two kids pays no net tax until she earns around $45,000 per year? Where do you get “women losing their place in society” from?
Or is it because single mothers will now have to satisfy a work test when their youngest goes to school? Well, you can’t have it both ways: either women have both the right and associated responsibilities of workforce participation or they have neither.
Oh please, get off your feminist high-horse![
Bit rude isn’t it, anon?
The mother with the two kids isn’t seeing any of that baby bonus. It wasn’t paid retrospectively!
We still live in a sexist society.
It is a sound tactic to block the budget. It keeps it on the agenda until the senate coup in July. The ALP may end up losing the public battle, but is good to see them having a go. If they passed it, then the budget would be off the radar. This way, the unfair tax cuts and the barmy mechanism for filling the pockets of bankers (the future fund) will be there under the spotlight.
Flute – exactly what ‘Senate coup’ are you talking about? Not the change in power voted for the by the public?
As for the ‘unfair’ tax cuts – there has been a lot of commentary that both the rates of tax are too high and the brackets need to be changed. I would be interested to see a solution that you thought was fair, that both significantly increased the brackets and significantly reduced the rates of tax.
One matter on which Kim Beazley has not been universally praised is his decision to “declare victory and get out” on the Tasmanian forests issue by endorsing the Federal Government’s final Tasmanian forests package as a “vindication” of the general approach which Labor took to the last Federal election, and effectively declaring the issue resolved.
Whilst I disagree witn Beazley’s stance, I can understand the realpolitik behind it. To have done otherwise would have been to have invited two and a half years of continued conflict with the most bloody-minded and mischievous tribe of the labour movement, i.e. the anti-environmentalist sub-faction of the right and soft left. These are the people who:
(a) backed Bjelke-Petersen against Malcolm Fraser over sand mining on Fraser Island in 1976;
(b) thought the Franklin Dam was such a great idea they were prepared to destroy the Tasmanian Labor Government of Doug Lowe on the issue;
(c) lined up with Pauline Hanson to oppose the agreement by Peter Beattie, the peak conservation groups and the Queensland forest industry to preserve native forests in south-east Queensland in 1999;
(d) lined up with Howard against Latham in the last Federal election.
I can therefore understand Beazley’s reluctance to invite a two-year war of attrition from these elements over an issue which Federal Labor can’t do anything about until after the next election, and on which Beazley, as Opposition Leader, doesn’t have the political strength that Bob Hawke had as Prime Minister to face down the anti-environment Labor tribe during the 1980s.
What I find less than clear is the Australian Democrats’ stance on the issue. Their statements on the matter include a column by Greg Barns in Monday’s Australian blessing the Federal Government’s package, and a press release by Andrew Bartlett on the Democrats’ web page which is generally non-committal but phrased in a way which could be interpreted as approval of the Government’s policy. Certainly there is nothing in the Democrat’s statement which indicates endorsement of the criticisms expressed by Australia’s peak conservation organisations. Andrew, can you clarify?
This is all very much like the ‘people’s liberation front of judea’ and the ‘popular judean liberation front’ and etc… By that I mean the greens, the democrats and the various factions of the ALP and previously the DLP, not that I would know anything about that.