Will the real prime minister stand up please, from The Australian:
Malcolm Turnbull is leaving room to retreat on a controversial change to negative gearing in the face of backbench fears and a warning shot from Tony Abbott about the government’s economic direction.
…The Australian understands the Prime Minister has been considering the move over recent days even as his supporters insist the cuts to negative gearing remain part of a draft tax reform that will raise most of its revenue from tighter rules on superannuation concessions.
In a dramatic escalation of the internal tensions on tax, Mr Abbott made a rare intervention in the Coalition partyroom yesterday to warn against changes to negative gearing and urge Mr Turnbull to focus instead on the tight spending controls that dominated the government’s 2014 budget. Mr Abbott backed the criticism of several MPs who worried that the Prime Minister would increase taxes by changing negative gearing when he should use spending restraint to improve the budget bottom line and make room for income tax relief.
The former prime minister, who was deposed last September, praised Mr Turnbull for “brilliantly’’ destroying in parliament Labor’s negative gearing proposals but used this point to argue against any government move on the same front. “The corollary is that we can’t go down this path ourselves,’’ Mr Abbott told the partyroom meeting. “If we do our words will come back to haunt us.’
After a messy retreat on the idea of a GST increase last month, the government is clearing the ground to rule out significant changes to negative gearing, in order to sharpen the political attack on Labor in the coming election. Liberal MPs told The Australian that Mr Turnbull’s response in the party room yesterday was “reassuring” to those who wanted negative gearing off the government’s agenda.
Backing away from negative gearing reform will not help Turnbull or the Coalition. The nation wants this reform. It also wants a rational and national interest focused Malcolm Turnbull. If he abandons both the election will be about two things:
- Labor’s negative gearing policy (handing it leadership), and
- Malcolm Turnbull’s shattered credibility.
Given how illegitimate Bill Shorten is considered by the polity this would reverse the Coalition’s natural advantage at the election: instead of it being about dodgy Bill it’ll be about dodgy Mal.
Negative Gearing reform is not another carbon or mining tax. It is simple, people know what it does, and those who opposed the reform will not be able to bamboozle by blowing smoke. It is a very concrete issue of housing affordability for children and that makes it a moral cause.
If Turnbull thinks he can carry that argument to a winning election he’s got rocks in his head and I suspect Tony knows it.
