Dr Shorten and Mr Bowen, the ALP and the budget
Labor’s budget day pronouncements reflect its wish both to capitalise on the lingering working class anger at last year’s budget – from which a number of harsh cuts remain in the 2015 budget – and its desperation to prove itself a “responsible”, friendly-to-big-business economic manager.
Opposition leader Bill Shorten’s pre-budget address to the federal Labor caucus on Tuesday morning was pitched to rallying the troops into opposition:
“Twelve months ago to the day, we stood here and we said that we would fight – that Labor would fight for fairness … you can’t just buy fairness. Fairness is something you believe in. Fairness is not what you say on one night in a year … Fairness is something you believe in and you do every day. You are fair, you be fair, you do fair … In 2014, we fought for fairness.”
Stirring words, if you don’t choke on the repetition. But, true to form, Shorten still managed to sound like a voice box attached to a wet paper bag. “You know the roll call of the battles that we’ve had” over the last year, he said. “Remember all of the times with our relentless questioning in the parliament?”
The real battle-hardened MPs in the caucus room cut their teeth against the jungle of red tape surrounding travel expenses claims, not fighting the budget. Still, this was a pitch to the left, a welcome posture that still has the potential to entrench into capitalist politics the narrative of “us”, who work, labour and look out for each other, and “them”, who live in a parallel universe of entitlement and greed.
Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen’s post-budget interview with Leigh Sales on the ABC’s 7:30 cut the other way. Bowen pitched to the right, complaining about the Liberal record of high spending, high taxes, increasing budget deficits and expanding government debt. He even complained that Labor in government had attempted to lower the corporate tax rate but was stymied by an alliance of the Greens and the conservatives. Bowen was orienting – perhaps crawling is a better word – to big business. Here was the ALP not of fairness but of the exploiters’ best pal.
The two postures are the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde at the heart of the ALP. Its problem is that Dr Jekyll struggles to captivate or motivate its tired, ageing and hollowed-out base, while Mr Hyde is really only the B-team for the Australian ruling class, which remains firmly in the camp of the Liberals and hostile to a party with organic links to the trade union movement.
The contradiction is stark in the ALP’s policy proposals. It has made a running on making the big end of town pay its fair share in the budget “repair”. But the measures nominated, which target superannuation tax concessions and multinational tax evasion, hardly show much commitment to ending the racket for the rich.
Labor’s proposed reductions in super tax concessions for high income earners would save an estimated $1.4 billion per year. This is pitiful. The total value of the concessions is estimated to be more than $35 billion per year. Treasury’s November Financial System Inquiry estimated that the top 10 percent of income earners receive more than 35 percent of all concessions. The top 20 percent claim more than half – at least $18 billion per year.
“If we are elected”, Bowen said when announcing Labor’s policy last month, “these are the final and the only changes Labor will make to the tax treatment of superannuation”. So the ALP makes a song and dance about fairness, but says it will take a drop from the ocean of handouts to the rich, and nothing more.
The ALP estimates that $300 billion was moved out of Australia by companies to overseas subsidiaries or parents. How much of this was profit shifting is impossible to know. But the recent Senate inquiry into corporate tax evasion found that almost all Australian sales revenues of Apple, Google and Microsoft are taxed in Singapore at something like 15 percent or less. Labor’s policy would increase tax collection on such firms by $7.2 billion – over 10 years. Another ocean, another drop.
The Liberals’ budget is an attempt to reset and recast their fortunes. It is an election budget. Labor’s response – half-arsed measures and pretending to run with the hares while hunting with the hounds – could leave it sitting in the same ditch as its UK counterparts.
