Labor last year announced that it will not make changes to the stage three income tax cuts if it wins the upcoming federal election. It also abandoned the negative gearing and capital gains tax reforms taken to the past two federal elections.
Both changes followed in the wake of Labor formally dumping its franking credits policy, which would have abolished franking credit refunds for people who paid no tax.
To add insult to injury, Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers also spoke out against lifting JobSeeker from its pitifully low level of $44 a day.
Now leader Anthony Albanese has abandoned his longtime support for the Buffett rule, which would increase taxes for very high income earners by $2.5 billion a year:
The Opposition Leader has ruled out implementing a minimum rate of tax for the highest-income earners if he becomes prime minister, despite leading the charge for the reform within Labor under Bill Shorten’s leadership…
Consideration of the Buffett rule was also supported in the last term of parliament by ALP president Wayne Swan and former left-wing union leader Tim Ayres, who is now a Labor senator and close ally of Mr Albanese.
At the ALP’s 2015 national conference, Mr Albanese sponsored an amendment urging the next Labor government to consider implementing the policy, which he said he supported.
“This proposal is the creation of a minimum tax rate levied on the total income of high-income earners,” Mr Albanese said at the national conference…
“The National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling has research that showed that just for the top 1 per cent of income earners, this could produce $2.5bn revenue each and every year”…
The modelling Mr Albanese referenced applied a minimum 35 per cent tax rate to people who earn more than $300,000 a year, limiting their ability to apply for deductions including from negatively geared properties and charity donations…
He referenced “unacceptable” Australian Taxation Office data showing 75 millionaires paid a total of $82 tax on a combined income of $195m.
“The nurses, the teachers, the miners, the construction workers -they shouldn’t be paying all the tax while the millionaires simply are able to minimise theirs,” he said.
What is the point of Labor if it is merely a Coalition-lite party that endorses pretty much the same neoliberal policies?
Australia’s two-party system means voters essentially face a devil’s choice between the corrupt and useless Morrison Government or China-groveling Labor. Pick your poison.
