Labor’s pedantry over the Coalition’s 0.06% levy on the big banks’ liabilities rolled on for a fourth day yesterday when it once again used Question Time to discredit the Budget’s forecasts that the bank levy would raise $6.2 billion over the forward estimates.
Once again, The Guardian’s politics blog summarised Labor’s pedantry:
The only positive thing to be said is that Labor only wasted two questions attacking the Coalition on the bank levy, versus five on Wednesday and seven on Tuesday. So their pedantry seems to be diminishing.
Still, would Labor prefer that the bank levy not go ahead, thus costing the Budget $4 billion over the forward estimates (according to their costings) and allowing the banks to receive an estimated $5 billion in taxpayer support annually without paying anything for the privilege? Because the way Labor is carrying on, you would swear they are in cahoots with the banking cartel.
Here’s a novel idea: instead of trying to score some cheap political points over the Budget costings – and playing straight into the banks’ hands – how about arguing to raise the levy further in the interests of the Budget and recovering the costs of taxpayer support?
Surely Labor can see that by opposing the bank levy, it will make its task of repairing the Budget more difficult when it next takes office. Not only would the revenue from the bank levy not be there, but the Coalition would likely return fire by mounting a campaign against any Labor proposal to raise taxes for Budge repair.
As I said yesterday, cheap political point scoring and tribalism are key reasons why undertaking reform has become next to impossible in Australia. Whenever a government comes up with a sensible policy, worthy of bipartisan support, the opposing party almost always rejects it.
Shame on you, Labor. You should have taken a leaf out of Peter Whish-Wilson’s play book rather than mounting this pathetic campaign against the Coalition’s bank levy.
