Most of the discussion of the Abbott government’s recently announced revenue raising measure has focused on semantics: is there a meaningful difference between a levy and a tax, has the government broken its promises and so on. All of this is boringly predictable. The last government to treat its election promises as binding obligations was Whitlam’s. Perhaps Rudd would have kept his promises if it weren’t for the GFC (I don’t think he broke many before that), but with that exception we’ve got used to the various theatrical devices associated with ditching promises: Black Holes, debt crises, Commissions of Audit and so on. The reaction of Bill Shorten and the Labor Opposition is equally predictable. The job of the Opposition is to oppose, and in particular to excoriate the government for breaking any promise, no matter how ill advised.
On the other hand, I’m disappointed that the Greens have taken the same line. Their job, in my view, is to use their leverage to promote sustainable social democratic policies, and to oppose regressive market liberal and environmentally destructive policies, regardless of source. So, for example, they were sensible to wave through Hockey’s abolition of the debt ceiling, even though it involved breaking a silly promise. They can’t stop the government breaking lots of promises on the expenditure side, so they should try and achieve balance by supporting sensible proposals to raise additional revenue.
The case in favor of an increase in taxes for higher income earners[1] is obvious. The big cuts promised by Howard in the leadup to the 2007 election, and largely matched by Rudd were unaffordable at the time and became even more so when the GFC led to slower growth in real and nominal incomes and therefore to less of the bracket creep that normally pays for such cuts. Along with Costello’s massive handouts to “self-funded” (but publicly subsidised) retirees the previous year, these cuts are the main reason it has been so hard to achieve a return to surplus after the GFC stimulus was wound back under the Labor government.
So, it makes sense to increase the rate, and to keep it high until bracket creep finally works its magic and restores the revenue raising capacity of the income tax to something like its pre-2007 level. I haven’t done the numbers but it seems as if four more years ought to do it. So, a temporary increase that can be called a levy makes sense. And, if everything else is held constant, an increase in revenue translates one-for-one into a reduction in debt.
Summing up, if Abbott wants to increase income tax on high earners, I’ll support him. And, if he wants to call this policy a “debt reduction levy”, I don’t have a problem with that.
fn1. Doubtless, we’ll get objections that taxpayers on $80 000 a year aren’t really high income earners, although the median wage for full time workers is around $60 000. But the extra tax payable by someone on $80 000 is precisely zero: the levy is only payable on income in excess of that level. Even at $180k, the levy is only $2000/year or about $40/week – a small fraction of the discretionary spending of most people earning this kind of income.
John Quiggin 
I agree that the Greens should let it through but with some special concession to further rub Abbott’s face in it – like insisting it be permanent or directed to the the states in part to make up for their lost GST revenue.
The problem is one of honesty. If Abbott was saying “Look if you all want to be kept in the manner you’ve become accustomed then you’ll have to hand over some extra cash” but he hasn’t said that. He’s claiming that it’s an emergency brought on by the ALP and that it requires an extraordinary response. This is what irks me and I suspect a number of other people who understand that there are a number of other measures that might also recoup revenue from high income earners but they wouldn’t able to be sold in such a dramatic fashion. And of course there’s always the possibility that Abbott knows that it won’t get up which will allow him to play the victim, a role he seems t relish. All in all I wouldn’t support the plan on the basis that’s it’s a disingenuous, cynical and dishonest ploy.
Sorry PrQ … I don’t care what it is called. We Greens are right, in context, to oppose this.
I don’t even agree with your ‘rose by any other name’ assertion in this case. The case for ‘debt reduction’ is quite poor. Debt service is not unmanageable. The Commonwealth is not crowding out investment or compecting for limited capacity in labour. The currency is probably overvalued by about 10%. Buying into balanced budget fetishism is something which we Greens, and indeed anyone left of centre ought to reject.
I especially object to this because the regime is casting aside the revenue it would have earned from the MRRT and from the ETS and tossing large sums into an indefensible paid parental leave scheme, and looks set to take apart the RET. It is committing itself to 12 billion in fighter jets, and $40billion in submarines. It is vandalising the NBN at great expense. It will cut company tax — against our strenuous objections.
Even at the petty level, Abbott, advocate of smaller government, has expanded the PM&C from just under 500 in Rudd/Gillard’s time to over 1700 staff.
And the corker? Let’s just recall what the current regime, when they were in opposition said about the flood levy proposed by the last regime?
So no. Just no. The regime is malign, unserious, achieved power whuile openly in league with the enemies of humanity and deserves, figuratively, to be run out of town and have a nest of hornets hurled at its head as it flees. It has no standing to claim even what the Howard regime might have in 1996 or 1998. As odious as those regimes were, they had a shred of competence and had at least won playing by the generally agreed rules. One could support, with conditions, their G&ST and their Timor and Ansett levies — as I did at the time.
But not this mob.
@Michael S.
Give it to the states? I don’t think so.
Actually what the Greens have said this morning, as I understand it, is there won’t be any new taxes while the LNP are intent on dismantling the Carbon Price or diverting monies away from education, or if they haven’t removed fuel tax credits first.
I actually thought it was pretty clear.
I especially object to this because the regime is casting aside the revenue it would have earned from the MRRT and from the ETS and tossing large sums into an indefensible paid parental leave scheme…
Fran, just wondering what you think about where the Greens stand on this PPL scheme.
Cross posting with Fran Barlow. Thanks Fran very clear.
(I was fairly confident we Greens weren’t dismissing it simply BECAUSE it is a broken promise).
@Fran and Pete
OK, if I understand you correctly, the Greens position implies opposition to any budgetary measure proposed by this government, on the basis that it is part of a package that includes the bad policies you mention.That’s pretty much the ALP position also. Reading your post more generally, you want to extend that to any and all measures proposed by the government (even though the Greens have already voted for quite a few).
As I said in the OP, this kind of logic makes sense for the official opposition, but not for a third party, and especially not for one that holds the balance of power for the next ten weeks.
Well I don’t know the exact amount but higher income tax rates will hurt the State’s GST revenue – and the states are often the providers of the most important government services.
@John
I don’t see how it’s fair to expect the Greens to do the right thing, but argue that the Labor’s role in opposition exempts them from this. (This is separate from the argument whether it’s in Labor’s electoral interest to reciprocate the libs behaviour in opposition and oppose everything)
@Michael S.
This. If the government wants its debt levy, make it compromise on something else on the way through.
I have to agree with Fran. “Buying into balanced budget fetishism is something which … Greens, and indeed anyone left of centre ought to reject.”
Better ways need to be found to combat inflation than using high unemployment to do it. I would suggest curbing debt money creation (bank lending).
Comments about deficit fetishism are way off the mark. Focusing on whether or not the budget is in deficit in some given year is indeed silly, and deficits are appropriate at some points in the economic cycle, but in the long run, public expenditure must equal tax revenue.
If you don’t want higher taxes on high income earners, you have to be willing to tax the poor or cut public services. If you don’t want to admit this, don’t expect me to take your views seriously.
@Michael S. I agree that it isn’t fair to expect more of the Greens, but it’s still necessary. If they are to sustain their existing support and attract more, they have to be better than the major parties. That said, I fully agree with you and Robert M on the desirability of extracting a price for supporting the levy. That’s exactly what a third party should do.
Finally, the revenue side of the budget is considered and the PM at least talks about income distribution.
A levy is a tax in terms of who pays and who receives the dollar amounts. Is there a difference in terms of the speed at which the levy rate and the tax rate can be changed?
While a tally of broken promises can be kept for purely party political reasons, one should not object to a government revising its plans in an appropriate fashion.
Part of the problem is the habit of specific election promises. They act like key performance indicators with known negative consequences under uncertain conditions.
If this is, as some commentators have noted, Tony Abbott’s “Gillard moment”, then the irony is delicious and will be savoured by many. Beyond the short-term entertainment, however, perhaps the various parties will reconsider how they frame and then renege on election commitments, and resolve to take a more thoughtful approach. Absent from the present discussion, of course, is the notion of a “mandate”. What are the chances of all parties lifting their game? The ALP under Shorten is delivering at best a lacklustre performance, and shows no originality, let alone any sign of raising the standard of economic and policy literacy. Wider and longer-term issues of tax reform (including “tax the rich”)? Serious consideration of changing demographics (even Uncle Joe is half right when he says we need a “mature debate” about how ageing will affect the budget)? Growing inequality? The dearth of affordable housing? What are the chances of getting all or any of these matters onto the political agenda?
I was very critical – publicly – of aspects of the Costello superannuation reforms but couldn’t even get Labor shadow ministers interested in opposing the ridiculous open slather it gave to the very rich who could put $1million plus into super for young family members – even infants – and, if the rules weren’t changed later, allow some genetically or sentimentally favoured youngsters to look forward to tax free incomes of tens of millions of dollars in retirement. In other words, as I pointed out, a sure fire recipe for upsetting people with future policy changes that shifted the goal posts. And there was all that “middle class welfare” that Howard forced on Costello – just like the way Howard was treated by Fraser in the run up to the 1983 election. (Interesting that Fraser now, as well as being grumpy about the US – with reason even if he draws the wrong policy conclusions and talks waffle about international law – has also criticed the Costello superannuation regime – from the virtuous position of the impotent of course: he being too old to benefit).
I am able to comment on the proposition that those with incomes over $180,000 can properly be levied from a position of near perfect impartiality if not equanimity. Remember it is pre-tax. And remember too that the need for the marginal dollar varies enormously between individuals with nominally similar incomes. The retired judge or senior executive might treat bite of $5000 as a mere fleabite – just a reason for putting off for a year or two an upgrade to her level of opera patronage. Not so gor a 30 year old just finished specialist training or a postgraduate degree and beginning on big mortgage payments and budgeting for all costs associated with having three children who will be educated at fee paying schools for good enough reason.
@John Quiggin
It doesn’t strike me as unreasonable for The Greens to effectively say; while you’re dismantling, defunding or refusing to reform existing schemes we helped implement, we won’t be helping you implement a clear second choice.
I’m otherwise failing to see it as more complicated than that I fear.
@Michael S.
I’m for dismantling the states.
@John Quiggin
Plainly not. The key question at the last election outside of “boats” was as usual “economic management” defined as “whom do you trust to bring the budget back to surplus?”
Both parties ran on this but it was bogus then and it’s still bogus now. There are occasions when the Commonwealth should run a surplus, but outside of a moral panic about debt there is no reason to have one any time soon. Hockey is not promising one any time soon, but he’s dogwhistling as if this is his aim. We Greens need to be pointing the finger at the major parties over what lies behind their dogma. If we start playing their game we are no better in this respect.
I’m not denying that.
As you know my position and the Green position, adducing this strawman ill-becomes you. I am, amongst other things, totally in favour of the tax burden being shifted more heavily onto higher income earners, including people on my income. There is an entirely separate question as to how that should happen. I have long said that good process predicts good policy and bere we have neither. This regime is simoly incompetent, indolent, malign and openly mendacious. It deserves no confidence at all.
In order to mobilise the populist vote against progress it lied insistently and blatantly, promising what it could not deliver while being shielded by the Murdoch Press. Now it hopes that others, us included will simply suck it up and play to its convenience, the better for it kick at humanity.
I say no way, and I very much hope that my party will do likewise. As far as I’m concerned they won by cheating. Now they can be exposed for the scoundrels they are. Let them take responsibility.
PS: You mention us lifting the debt cap. This too was consistent with our view that the debt cap was cheap populism. Comments about deficit fetishism are way off the mark. Focusing on whether or not the budget is in deficit in some given year is indeed silly, and deficits are appropriate at some points in the economic cycle, but in the long run, public expenditure must equal tax revenue.
PS Re the debt cap. We wanted the LNP to essentially admit that the debt cap was about political grandstanding rather than fiscal rectitude. That’s why we voted to abolish it.
Hmm … Using an ipad on a crowded train can produce unintended results. Please disregard the remarks between cheap populism and the second unintended post script, which were still on my clipboard and belong to PrQ.
@yuri Costellos Simple Super has been a disaster for the govt and a disaster for low to middle income earners but a bonanza for high earners, self employed and SMSF managers. I believe Costello cynically used super to buy votes.
The levy was pathetic for two reasons: (1) it is a breach of a promise and a sleight of hand by not calling it a tax, and (2) it prevents a radical restructuring of government expenditure and priorities which is needed from the pressure an ageing population will place on fiscal policy.
FB, I can only say, this line seems utterly unconvincing. If the Greens committed to vote against every piece of government legislation, I guess there would at least be a defensible claim of consistency.
To vote against good but possibly unpopular legislation, while waving through uncontroversial/neutral stuff seems to me like rank hypocrisy. Your defenses only make it look worse. I can’t imagine a word you and Pete Moran have written that wouldn’t sound better coming from Bill Shorten.
Another problem that arises from your position PrQ is that you would have us extract compromises in exchange for supporting the levy when really, the regime is simply not going to entertain any measure we could conceivably want in trade.
Would the regime consider for example, abandoning mandatory detention and rendition, which earnersis not just inhumane but also hideously expensive?
Hardly.
Would they abandon FHC subsidies and put a proper price on carbon? How about a robust mining tax, abandonment of tax concessions on super for high income earners?
Of course they won’t.
What about committing to all the Gonski funding and abandoning funding for wealthy private schools?
Again, improbable.
For us to expressly ask for this would be absurd, though perhaps worth doing in the spirit of “invitation to treat”.
So in practice, what you’re really asking for us to help Abbott out in trade for a pat on the head. That makes no sense at all.
@John Quiggin
What makes the levy good, in this context, PrQ?
The only way a levy works for the left is that it gives people the scope to say “see, you didn’t feel that at all and government spending has not been cut”. It breaks the cycle of cutting personal income taxes and creates the conditions for lefties to argue that higher income taxes can be used to fund public services and that they “won’t hurt”.
I’m conflicted. That there are more efficient, pigovian and inequality-unfriendly alternatives is obvious, but this may be the only way, before 1 July, to get a better balance between revenue and expenditure measures.
Why aren’t tax expenditures on the table? I don’t understand why it isn’t be considered. According to the Australia Institute report recently, the tax concessions on super to the top 5% of income earners alone cost the federal budget $9 billion a year. Add to that the massive depreciation allowances and other tax breaks for the mining industry at another $4 billion or so.
I’m with Fran on this. By all means make higher income earners pay more, but don’t do it while maintaining indirect subsidies to the wealthy elsewhere and withdrawing the carbon pricing and resource rent taxes.
Another problem that arises from your position PrQ is that you would have us extract compromises in exchange for supporting the levy when really, the regime is simply not going to entertain any measure we could conceivably want in trade.
What about dropping the PPL policy, which you describe upthread as “indefensible” but which the Greens basically support? Do you think the Greens are wrong on this one? Serious question.
The thing is very expensive, and if the Greens are planning to waive it through the Senate, they might want to give some thought to higher income taxes to help pay for it.
@Fran Barlow
Tony Abbott on Australia Day 2011 (according to evidence at ICAC yesterday he enjoyed a lovely private dinner with Leigh Sales the previous evening, but that is an aside here) on the topic of the flood levy:
So the short answer is: “It’s different when we do it.”
I don’t understand the Greens position at all.
The deficit levy/tax is increasing the amount of income tax paid by high income earners. It goes some way towards reversing the trend that’s made our income tax system less progressive – something I thought was Greens policy. Even it’s only temporary, it’s better than not at all.
Just because Abbott is trying to get rid of carbon pricing and the revenue that goes with it is no reason to also oppose a seperate measure which on its own is good and progressive policy.
It doesn’t matter whether the ‘Budget emergency’ is real or not (and plainly it isn’t), higher income earners should be paying a larger share of tax.
@Fran How about offering to support the tax in return for no cuts to disability benefits. That’s something the government might go for. Even if they didn’t accept, the Greens would look a lot better putting that position than playing politics to attract high income voters who don’t want to pay more tax, as they and Labor are doing at present.
objection to the left about the debt levy has been bizarre. He seems determined to balance the budget now and this is the path of least pain.
I’m not sure Labor should automatically oppose. With Palmer having a big say in the senate, I’d hope that they would talk to the Libs just to stop Clive getting his greedy hands on stuff.
Also, when watching the nasty internal schisms in many countries, I can’t help but think that it would be nice not to have an all out war between our major political parties. Maybe a recognition (however hard for me to accept) that the Libs won the election and do have some right to implement their policies. It is worth noting that the Libs in opposition under Turnbull adopted this approach, but dropped it like a hot potato when Abbott took over.
@Christine Black
I should say that although I’m a Greens member, I don’t determine party policy. This news is quite recent, so I’m merely speaking as an individual Green. I don’t always agree with my party as Gerard notes above.
That said, it really is quite simple. Firstly, nothing like a case for a levy has been made out. Whatever its absolute and relative merits at this time, and count me completely sceptical on that score — as yet, the regime has not even explicitly endorsed a proposal.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, even if the levy were a defensible policy, this regime is indefensible. If it has a raison d’etre, it is to strike at the disempowered and tear down anything associated with the last regime that a left-of-centre person might not wince at.
Rather than asking whether this or that policy is indefensible or not, one should ask whether any specific service to the regime is ethically defensible since it may tend to increment its ability to carry out its basic desire to inflict harm on the marginalised and line the pockets of its privileged fellow travellers.
A part of the mission of progressive parties is to promote political education amongst the public. Inclusive governance is unthinkable while the public misapprehends the players in public discourse. In the period 2010-13 the then LNP opposition declared the regime a pariah on the basis that it was recklessly spending and repeatedly claimed that it could get the budget back to surplus just by cutting the fat and waste. It claimed it could spend more on defence, preserve existing transfer payments to middle income earners and introduce new ones, protect the value of pensions, abolish the mining tax and carbon pricing, not introduce new taxes that were not fully offset and much more. It said there was a terrible crisis in public finance caused by the ALP-Greens alliance that they couldn’t wait to fix. They said that only the ALP Greens would introduce new taxes.
In the more than six months since their swingeing victory, they have not substantially cut spending and are now winking at new taxes, while pretending these taxes are not taxes. The irony has not been lost even on the RW populists the LNP courted. We Greens need to be able to point and say — we told you so. These people are lying swindlers, who played their supporters for fools. Let those who supported them and have not yet abandoned them prove they were not swindled by attempting to deliver on their program. They have a huge majority, so let them take responsibility for explaining themselves and their needs rather than hiding behind people they condemned little more than six months ago.
If they wish to admit the truth — that their campaign of 2013 was nothing but a collection of barefaced lies and slanders and bigotry covered up by their backers from Murdoch, and give an honest account of the actual problems in public finance and invite a rigorous discussion of the options, then by all means, let’s explore solutions. Until that day dawns however, I say they have not earned a conversation on the matter. To do so would aid and abet the campaign of these criminals against the public, and against that background, of what possible utility is a fairly minor adjustment in tax rates on middle and upper income people?
As the AFR admitted accidentally the other day, the ‘world is fukt’ and until we have a process that can produce remedies, we ought to work on that rather than tinker with this or that half-baked idea.
@John Quiggin
I am much less interested in how we look than the role we play in shaping politics and insight. Unless and until the regime is discredited for its scandalous and reckless conduct, no worthy goal can be attained or defended. Demolition of this regime’s standing and the standing of its apologists, by exposing their swindling and bigotry and showing its consequences for humanity and even their own supporters ought to be our number one priority.
Only then can we hope for an audience of sufficient magnitude to break the two-party consensus on doing over the marginalised.
@Fran Barlow
So even if Tony Abbott puts forward Greens policy (which I note favours “strengthening the progressivity of the income tax and transfer system”), the Greens should vote it down because it is Abbott putting it forward? Seems rather self-defeating (and also inconsistent with the Greens previously supporting some of Abbott’s Bills, as Prof Q pointed out)
On that logic, the Greens shouldn’t have supported the Gillard government’s carbon tax, even though it broadly matched Greens policy, because Julia Gillard said she wouldn’t introduce one. Should the Greens have insisted the Gillard Govt persist with the absurd 2010 election promise to hold a citizens’ assembly first before looking to price carbon?
@rog
As I said I was a critic of Costello’s super reforms which the then opposition was just as cynical about. Presumably they were regarded as vote winners. But they did include considerable and commendable simplifications of accumulated complexity and I believe that Cosrello was advised that they wouldn’t cause long run costs (which was probably wrong and, for a former Baptist who wasn’t into profligate spending, pretty odd when it ignored what it gave to the seriously rich).
But why do you say they were bad for low and middle income earners? And have you taken account of the fact that, thanks to Howard’s vote buying 80 per cent of the retired grt at least some pension and health cards?
We haven’t mentioned so far that SMSFs were effectually restricted to 4 members to appease the big super fund managers including industry funds and commercial like the bsnks and AMP.
@Fran Barlow
Why do you populist lefties do it? Especially when factual BS discredits your case?
Name me one “wealthy school” in Australia. Or are you content that this piece of cant, a unique redefining of the notion of wealth, should thrive despite it’ evidence of Green dishonesty (or ignorance if you insist)? How can any natural or legal person be described as wealthy despite having negligible private income other than fees for service which are, except occasionally in the very short run, consumed bh the expenses of keeping the school going? Especially when it has no readily realisable assets and the more expensive buildings and facilities it acquires the greater the costs of maintenance. And don’t give me the irrelevant BS about some of the parents of students at schools with the best equipment and facilities being very wealthy. That’s a different point entirely.
@yuri
Well, here in Perth we’ve got Christchurch, Scotch, Hale, Wesley (boys), PLC, MLC, and St Hildas (girls). That’s not a complete list by any means. I’m sure people in other states could help you out if they can be bothered. It is fairly common knowledge.
Professor Q: PM Rudd didn’t break promises? Really?
He was elected on a promise to speed up our broadband for $4 or 6 billion and then reneged on that and in one of his chataceristically chaotic processes gave us the extravagant NBN. And it was the way be lost people’s trust and consequently his standing in the ALP as a vote winner over an emissions trading scheme post – Copenhagen that led to his defenestration.
As to his and Swan’s claims to have “saved us from recession” the only credit they deserve is that, in a blue funk in September 2008, they accepted the advice of Ken Henry and team until they recovered their cockiness and gave us the pink batts and school hall building schemes that couldn’t be terminated or scaled back.
Greens leader Christine Milne was on ABC AM Tuesday talking about the PPL:
Isn’t it fair to say that the Greens don’t have a firm view on “it” because Abbott hasn’t presented “it” yet (in any detail which would allow judgment)?
This is just Abbott’s ‘NDIS’ in one sense – all vague promises of wonder and light with nothing concrete to argue about.
@Patrickb
Have you really missed my point so completely – or maybe you just read the opening words?
If you are content with “common knowledge” rather than the facts you could get from the schools’ balance sheets and profit and loss accounts (whatever they call them) may I nontheless ask why you would apply the word wealthy to any of those schools? How long could they stay open on nothing but their investment income?
@Fran Barlow
Well, if you did that tomorrow, you’d be left with the Abbott government as the only source of authority in the nation. Would you be happy with that?
I’m a federalist — power is best when it’s most widely distributed.
JQ–I think you are being a bit easy on the Labor party. Why shouldn’t they offer to cut the same sort of deal? That way they’d get something they want, and also look fiscally responsible.
@Christine Black
Don’t be silly. The regime isn’t contemplating the introduction of Greens policy. The reason for this is obvious — they think our policies are paradigmatically wrong and utterly at odds with their constituency rather than merely sub-optimal. Perhaps even more importantly, the point you and, it seems, PrQ keep missing is the process question. Politics for those of us who believe in inclusion, is not about playing a crafty game of hornswoggling the representatives of the elite into tossing some sop to the excluded in exchange for papering over some inconvenience they may be experiencing. It’s about engaging the excluded in public discourse in ways that allow them to understand what lies behind what the elite propose. You speak as if public policy may be some entirely random process like playing cards or casting dice when the reality is that it’s not random at all.
Politics is mystifies and disengages most people. We want to engage most people by demystifying it. Only on this basis is inclusive governance possible.
Of course not. The ALP claimed to stand for similar policy objectives as us on carbon abatement — but in this case their process differed. The Gillard regime did not tell gross lies about itself or this area of policy or us. We were entitled to propose an alternative process for effecting abatement — and the MPCCC reflected that.
@yuri Super (compulsory) is generally bad for low to middle income earners because the nett return on investment is low and the lost income could be better spent on reducing home loans. Instead workers are using home loans for holidays etc then paying down the mortgage with a lump sum upon retiring.
The financial industry are doing very well out of super.
The nett result is that the govt has not been relieved of caring for retirees.
@JKUU
Sigh … again, consider process. It won’t and can’t happen tomorrow. There would need to be a process for reconsidering how to deliver those services.
@yuri
Your post is incoherent. Can the rhetoric and try making a specific claim.
@John Quiggin
Again, that does not follow. In practice, the regime is unlikely to give us much we can support and posturing against minor quotidian matters seems like a waste of time. We have more important things to do.
Not at all. It’s a question of how best to make use of the limited access we have to public space and the things we regard as defining what we stand for.
That’s an admission of want of imagination. Bill Shorten has far less standing than we do to attack surplus fetishism since his party were enthusiastic urgers of it. Equally, his party still backs the defence procurement boondoggle. His party gutted the RSPT to placate Big Dirt. His party favours lower company taxes. He was reportedly amongst those favouring abandonment of carbon pricing. His party tried winning an election based on kettling asylum seekers on Manus Island and that at very considerable expense.
We are in a far better political position than the ALP to assail the regime.