The Coalition white-anting against the party’s announced superannuation reforms rolls-on today, with former minister Eric Abetz continuing to lead a backbench assault against the changes, blaming the policy for the Coalition’s poor electoral showing. From The ABC:
“When you have had such a big kick up the pants, as we have had as the Coalition, and especially the Liberal Party element of the Coalition, then I think it is worthwhile to ask the question; ‘why did we haemorrhage so many seats? Why did we haemorrhage so many votes?’,” Senator Abetz told Radio National this morning…
He nominated the Coalition’s budget plan for a $500,000 lifetime cap on after tax superannuation contributions as a key area of public concern for Coalition voters.
“The superannuation measures were presented to the partyroom at the budget and then the budget was immediately announced to the people and we went off to an election, so this matter has not been properly ventilated through the partyroom,” he said.
“It’s quite clear now from leaks from within Cabinet that there were misgivings within the Cabinet and backbenchers right around the country have indicated their misgivings.”
Senator Abetz said there might be a need for “recalibration” in response to the way people voted.
Seriously Eric, where’s your evidence that the superannuation reforms cost the Coalition votes?
As shown in the below table from The AFR, there was no correlation between the wealthy electorates hardest hit by the Government’s proposed super changes and swings against Coalition MPs:
In fact, of the ten seats most affected by the Government’s super reform package, five Coalition MPs increased their vote at the election and five experienced swings against them. Given that there was an overall 3.5% swing against the Liberal Party, and that all of the seats above performed better than the average, this could just as easily suggest that the super reform package was actually a vote winner.
Moreover, why won’t you acknowledge the massive Budget benefits from the superannuation package? These reforms are projected to save the Budget some $2.9 billion over four years, in addition to funding the low income superannuation tax offset, which means those earning less than $37,000 would not have to pay more tax on their super than they do on their income.
Instead of blaming your superannuation policy for the poor election result, how about you instead look at the conservative nutters within the Coalition, which have continually white-anted leader Malcolm Turnbull and prevented him from delivering on his promise to the Australia people:
“Ultimately, the prime minister has not been capable of providing the economic leadership our nation needs… We need a different style of leadership. We need a style of leadership that… respects the people’s intelligence, that explains these complex issues and then sets out a course of action that we believe we should take… We need to respect the intelligence of the Australian people. We need to restore traditional cabinet government [and] put an end to policy on the run and captain’s calls”.
– Malcolm Turnbull, launching his leadership challenge, 14 September 2015.
In just nine months we witnessed a Prime Minister largely devoid of policy, while performing a U-turn and going against many of the things that he previously stood for (e.g. climate policy, reforming property tax concessions, etc). In the meantime, Labor took the policy lead on multiple fronts, bolstering its economic credentials.
Second, if you want a specific policy to blame, how about you instead look at the announced reduction in the company tax rate from 30% to 25%?
Arguing to gift tens-of-billions of dollars of taxpayer money to foreign owners/shareholders, in the belief that it would magically lead to a slew of new investment and jobs, was never going to resonate with the Australian people, who care about everyday issues that affect them directly.
It’s not like you weren’t warned, either. In the lead-up to the election, ABC’s Vote Compass conducted polling of Australian’s attitudes towards cutting company taxes, and found that an overwhelming majority of Australians wanted large businesses and multinationals to pay more tax, with a small majority of respondents wanting small businesses to pay either the same or more tax:
Not only is your company tax cut policy an expensive dud, but an unpopular one as well. So why aren’t you lobbying against these changes, rather than conducting a faux campaign against the sensible superannuation reforms?
