Tony Abbott’s campaign to return to the prime ministership came into the open at The Australian over the weekend with the Chief Loon writing:
The first law of governing is that you can’t spend what you can’t raise through taxes and borrowings; and the second law is that today’s borrowings have to be paid for — with interest — by tomorrow’s taxes. Governments, like households and businesses, have to live within their means.
With more than $250 billion of cumulative deficits under the former Labor government, the need for budget repair was the constant refrain of the Abbott opposition and the task of budget repair was the most important work of the Abbott government. We were far from fully successful but made a determined effort. Certainly, no fair-minded judge could accuse us of shirking the challenge.
In 2014, launching Paul Kelly’s book on the Rudd-Gillard era, I said that the mission of the Abbott government was to prove that the age of reform had been interrupted, not ended; and that the Rudd-Gillard years were an aberration, not the new normal. To then lose the prime ministership in a partyroom coup was to repeat recent history, not to change it. Still, for two years, the Abbott government squarely faced up to our nation’s challenges and did much that will stand the test of time.
As a citizen paying a mortgage, let alone as a senior minister working to a budget, I had always understood very well that everything has to be paid for. Every single thing that government does — maintaining the police and armed forces, administering justice, paying for social security and facilitating schools and hospitals — all has to be funded by taxpayers. So ensuring that government spends no more than it really must is not just an economic imperative, it’s also a moral one. It’s the respect that government owes to taxpayers for whom every dollar is hard-earned.
…The key to a strong and prosperous economy was getting government spending down so that tax cuts could responsibly be delivered. This, in fact, is the constant challenge of government: keeping its own spending under control so that tax can be low and private sector confidence can be high.
Even if the fate of the Abbott government owed much to the particular personalities that comprised it, its vulnerability in spite of its record lends weight to Paul Kelly’s thesis that good government is becoming more difficult than ever. As the head of the European Commission recently observed, “We all know what to do; we just don’t know how to get re-elected after we’ve done it.”
If governments and leaders are required always to be ahead in the polls — as well as to win elections — tough but necessary decisions will rarely be taken.
Apart from being strong on national security, in Australia’s current circumstances, the one absolute requirement of good government is the readiness to reduce its own spending. Yet cutting benefits that people merely anticipate, let alone benefits they already have, is never popular. At most, it might grudgingly be respected on election day.
Yada, yada, yada…soaring rhetoric runs higher with towering delusion. Tony Abbott had no idea what economic reforms were needed and still doesn’t. He offered virtually zero structural reform – in fact, explicitly ruled it out in tax concessions – and his push to lower government spending for tax cuts badly backfired because it took money out of the hands of those that needed it most to pay for their enormous mortgages and put it into the hands of those that needed it the least. The electorate immediately recognised it as a killer blow and revolted against it.
That is not to say that Australia does not need Budget repair, nor indeed to roll back entitlement, it needs both, but to do it reform must drive productivity gains not middle class hollowing out.
Something John Howard can’t seem to get his head around, either, as he dramatically pushed the Abbottalypse 2.0 campaign forward, also at The Australian:
John Howard believes Tony Abbott would have won the coming election had he remained prime minister but understands why Liberal MPs became “nervous” and replaced him.
“I think he probably would have won it but I can understand why the colleagues got nervous. Politics is always driven by the laws of arithmetic and the arithmetic was not good at the time,” Mr Howard told The Weekend Australian.
“Politics is a tough business but it is always tougher and more humiliating when you are removed as a sitting prime minister after a relatively short period of time,” he said.
And then he dropped this clangor, again at The Australian:
John Howard has declared that the argument for tax reform and raising the GST to ease the personal income tax burden on average Australian wage earners is “overwhelming” and urged the government not to “sit around and do nothing”.
As the Turnbull government comes under fire for lacking economic leadership and dumping plans to raise $30 billion from an increased GST to fund tax cuts, Mr Howard believes hard tax reforms must be made for “the long-term economic benefit” of Australia.
“The argument for the change in the tax mix at some time in the future, and it’s a matter for the government to decide when, I think is overwhelming,” Mr Howard told The Weekend Australian in the most expansive interview he has given on current political and economic issues. “There is long-term economic benefit in this country in altering the mix between direct and indirect tax in a revenue-neutral way.”
…When asked about the decision to drop the planned GST rise because of the political risk not being worth the return, Mr Howard said: “I can understand there are medium-term or short-term tactical political considerations.”
While urging inevitable reform to the tax mix, Mr Howard said he was not “convinced” that changing the tax breaks for negatively gearing property investments was a good idea. Mr Turnbull and the Treasurer are considering changes to top-end property investments, which Mr Morrison has described as “excesses”, while attacking Labor’s plan to restrict negative gearing to new residential property from 2017.
…Mr Howard said he remembered how the Labor government that restricted negative gearing in 1986 “retreated very quickly, and my recollection is that had quite an impact on rents particularly in Sydney”.
That lie has been comprehensively debunked by MB but you have to ask yourself why John Howard is appearing now to repeat it, giving succor to the rebels in the Coalition ranks.
I mean, seriously, the Turnbott Government is close to complete disarray with no leadership, no policies, active disunity, no consistent narrative within or without and here comes the old goat and pushes it all along when he should be rallying the troops for a fast approaching election.
The Coalition is disintegrating before our very eyes.
