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Five years of Aged Pension or seven years of Newstart or six months of Tony's PPL!?
Week four of the federal election...
By Richard McEncroe
Last night, Australia’s political leaders again presented themselves to the punters, this time in Western Sydney. I imagine the “Reserved” signs went for an hour on the poker machines at the Rooty Hill RSL and a couple of dozen “real people” shuffled from the gambling lounge to the function room to talk to these two blokes in suits making promises. Heckle and Jekyll smiled and nodded empathetically at concerns from the floor about politicians who don’t tell the truth; foreign investment by “Asians” and the disappearing habitats of the Aussie Bloke and the Christmas Beatle – not even Kev had a prepared response to that one.
Breaking the tedium of tired facile platitudes was “Ian”, who got to his feet to share something that is nagging at him ''I just think, that a fork-lift driver from Mount Druitt should not be paying his taxes so a pretty little lady lawyer on the North Shore on 180 grand a year can have a kid''. Hmmm, not a bad point that Ian!
Mr Abbott fired back saying that Ian was mistaken because big business funded the scheme, via a levy, not taxpayers. Wait a second Tony, sounds like a pea and thimble trick to me. It is true that the bulk of the revenue for the LNP’s PPL Scheme is to come from his new business levy, but what nags at Ian and also sits uncomfortably with me, is that expenditure of funds raised by the levy on the scheme is still expenditure of public money and should be subject the same principles of equity and efficiency as any other government expenditure.
In government circles, raising funds for specific purposes by the application of a specific levy, tax or charge is known as hypothecation. Pollies tend to like this tactic, because, as Tony Abbott is doing currently, it allows them to sell a perception that particular budget expenditure is outside of the main pool of funds, by directing funds away from Consolidated Revenue. Tony can fund this Scheme without funding the Scheme apparently because the funds raised by this tax levied by Government are somehow different to every other dollar raised by Government by levies and taxes. These funds are magic because they are not really public funds according to Tony. Trouble is, they are.
Hypothecation leads to improved transparency, it is argued, because there is a clearer line of sight between funds raised and monies spent. Funds from the Medicare levy being spent on hospitals, car rego on road maintenance, gambling taxes on problem gambling programs and environmental levies earmarked to be spent on tree planting are all examples of hypothecation. Treasuries, as a rule, don’t encourage hypothecation. This is because funds raised by hypothecated taxes cannot be readily re-allocated as needs or priorities change. Treasury officials have also learnt from bitter experience that the levies and charges applied often prove to be inadequate fund raisers for their task, and programs need to be topped up from Consolidated Revenue anyway.
Tony Abbott’s proposed PPL Scheme varies considerably from traditional hypothecation models though. Unlike most levies which are universally applied, Abbott’s levy is narrowly based, (1.5 % levy on top 3000 businesses), and broadly and generously applied. This is the opposite of how most of these things work. And be clear, the ring fencing of public funds is a Treasury trick of the light anyway. Public revenue is public money, whichever bucket the accountants slop it into or out of.
It is the inequity of disbursement not the breadth of the application of the PPL Scheme that really sets it apart as a policy beast. Forget for a second about how the money is raised and think of the PPL simply as expenditure of public funds – which it is. It is at the point of determining how monies will be distributed from the PPL Fund that sound policy principles should be top of mind. You know old fashioned notions like fairness; a sense that resources are scarce and need is great, so careful and targeted use of resources important.
A guy who loses his $150K job does not get his unemployment benefits paid at his old wage. He gets what the people as represented by the State considers reasonable, fair, equitable and sustainable based on those same old fashioned notions of public resource allocation. A reasonable PPL scheme should operate in a similar way, but somehow I can’t see the pretty lady lawyer from the North Shore rocking up every fortnight to Centrelink!
Confusing the PPL debate is the insistence by Abbott, Hockey et al that PPL is not a welfare payment but a workplace entitlement. If it is a workplace entitlement, like Sick Leave or Annual Leave as Abbott maintains, then employers, not the Government, should pay it. The public purse can, if required, be relied on to provide assistance to employers to meet their obligations as required, and raise the necessary funds to do so through whatever means it likes. That way, government assistance will flow to businesses that need assistance to retain staff that are also parents, rather than using public funds to maintain lifestyles of rich people who also happen to be parents.
Labor's scheme provides 18 weeks pay at the national minimum wage of $622 a week. The Coalition's scheme would offer working women 26 weeks parental leave at full replacement wage up to a maximum annual salary of $150,000, plus superannuation. So under this non-means tested welfare transfer payment, a high income individual could receive $75K of public funds over six months. That’s about five year's of Aged Pension, or seven year's of Newstart!
At a time when the LNP want us to believe we are in an economic emergency and low paid Australians are facing cuts to services, I can see why Ian is struggling to see the fairness in it all.
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Richard is a former Senior Economist at the Victorian Department of Treasury and Finance.
Chewing the electoral cud...
Week one of the federal election
By Richard McEncroe
The 2013 Election Campaign is not yet a week old, but the flavour of the contest is starting to settle on the electoral palate. To my taste at least, the offering so far is disappointingly bland, difficult to digest with the promise of a lingering bitter after taste. Many ingredients have combined to produce this bitter stodge, but a few dominate for me right now.
The first is that despite considering itself to be the government in waiting for three years, the Coalition is on the back foot and desperately lacking in policy depth or imagination. Second K-Rudd and his oh so hip to the groove (social) media team will have to beat Rupert Murdoch as well as Tony Abbott to hang on to power. A third thing that is becoming apparent is that social policy, in particular improving the lot of Indigenous and other Australians enduring serious disadvantage and poverty, is not a priority for either of the mainstream parties. And lastly, and responsible for the bitter after taste, is the major party’s apparoaches to asylum seeker policy.
Polling coinciding with the death rolls of the Gillard administration seduced the Opposition into believing their assumption to power was a fait accompli. After all, Australians are known for voting Governments out rather than in. Surely, they thought, Labor’s penchant for eating their own and their tax and environmental policy flip foppery, will combine with greed motivated official corruption in NSW to make Labor totally unelectable. But, with Julia dispatched and Rudd back wearing the head chef’s hat the game has changed dramatically. Kev has so far managed to excise himself from the disasters of his NSW colleagues and Australia from its own migration zone. He has neutralised the carbon tax issue and, um guess what folks, he wants to talk about the future.
This quite simple reorientation of the public debate from the past to the future has left Abbott flatfooted. Tony wants to talk about the past as unwaveringly as Kevin wants to talk about the future. Invoking the “Howard Government way” at every opportunity, Abbott is, and is seen to be, out of touch. He and his mates have been exposed as being underprepared on several policy fronts. On economic policy, the big LNP play exacerbates rather than addresses the core structural problem – not enough revenue. Australia’s ageing population, groaning infrastructure, and ever increasing health care expectations means we need to be creative about new revenue streams. Abbott has opted to reduce revenue by reducing the company tax rate. The Opposition asylum seeker policy, such as it is, is confused, and has been developed in a consultation vacuum. No criticism will be brooked, and even very senior defence personnel have had their concerns about the policy turned away – when it is safe to do so.
The future versus the past theme of the election extends beyond the policy subject matter to the means of engagement between the contestants and their electors. Both camps use social media, but Labor’s embracing of the medium contrasts with the LNP’s concession to it. Abbott would always prefer a Murdoch tabloid to a Facebook page when it comes to pitching his messages – such as they are. Kevin13 can’t get enough of social media, and doesn’t seem too fussed about having Rupert off-side. Given that the daily circulation of the Tele is about 350,000 and that 11 million Australians are on Facebook I’m not surprised - lol.
And what of the policy ‘options’ themselves. Tony keeps telling us there is something so terrible happening we need a ‘better future’. They both want us to know they are ‘fair dinkum’ and want us to live in a ‘stronger Australia’ – whatever that is. The trouble is, for all the people for whom life here is really crap, as opposed to just not quite as nice at it might be, our leaders have nothing.
Homelessness in the big cities; the grinding poverty and disadvantage in Indigenous communities; and chronic double digit unemployment in regional centres are not election issues. It seems as though in the eyes of the Government the NDIS has used up all the social policy air time and budget, and there’s no room for any more. The LNP site their paid parental leave scheme as evidence of their social policy contribution. Good policies both, but not enough, not nearly enough.
The electorate is being asked to chew on and somehow digest a pretty bland chunk of Australian political cud right now. The convergence of political thinking to a point somewhere just to the right of centre has neutralised so many of the real issues such that there is no genuine contest of ideas. But there will be a contest over the next few weeks and it will be between invoking the past and imagining the future and between new and legacy media. Who knows, maybe Mr Murdoch is not quite as influential as he (and Tony) think he is? Gotta zip!
Drab meanderings and suppositories...
Week two of the federal election...
By Richard McEncroe
On ABC TV’s QandA this week Adam Bandt, the Federal Member for Melbourne and Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens, made a rare meaningful contribution to the public debate when he described the first leaders debate of the 2013 Election Campaign as “drab meanderings around ever decreasing points of difference”. He could just as well be describing the entire campaign so far.
The electorate was briefly startled from its slumber in week two of the snore fest when Tony Abbott inserted his unique style of clumsy sexism, enema style, into the gloom. Tony showed he certainly was not the suppository of all knowledge and wisdom when he decided to list the main attributes of a female LNP candidate as young, feisty and having sex appeal. Gee, thanks boss! But Tony’s penchant for mangling the language now and then and his patronising and belittling attitude to women are not new developments, are unlikely to be vote changers, and serve as nothing more than a brief respite from the drabness.
In stark contrast to earlier versions of himself, especially Kevin 07, Kevin 2.0 is adding to rather than alleviating the drabness. Earlier Rudds have been high energy, here to help types, relentlessly happy and positive. But, like a Melbourne Cup runner that has drawn a wide gate and had to be ridden up early to find a position in the field, Ruddy is looking tired coming to the halfway mark of the race. Rudd is off the bit and chasing and his performance in the debate exposed his lack of spark. He struggled to get to the nub of his points and lapsed into waffle under pressure; resorting to notes to supplement his once famous capacity for detail. With Rudd flat, to the extent that there has been any colour and movement in the campaign so far, it has been from Abbott, which is really saying something.
The meanderings have been just as drab as the meanderers. Principally this drabness of content comes about by similarity. Whether it is asylum seeker policy, climate policy, taxation or education policy the differences between the two parties are visible, but only just. With a determined eye or a good pair of glasses you can spot some differences at the margin of the major parties policy positions, but it’s hardly worth bothering. Neither party has a policy which meets our moral obligation to resettle our share of the world’s displaced people. Neither party think climate change is important anymore apparently, and both think health and education is good, taxation is bad. Yawn.
The similarities, the lack of difference and therefore electoral engagement, is as much to do with what issues are on the agenda as it is with which issues aren’t. Not only do both parties have almost identical positions on the issues that are considered “key”, they have apparently agreed which issues are not on this year’s electoral menu. Indigenous Policy has not been mentioned so far by either camp. Reconciliation with Australia’s first peoples through Constitutional recognition is not an issue, nor is addressing the entrenched levels of disadvantage, neglect, abuse and poverty in Indigenous communities. Homelessness in Australian cities, the crisis in youth unemployment, regional structural unemployment; are examples of issues which will be for discussion at another time apparently. If there is no real difference between the parties on the issues that are on the agenda and common ground on which issues are not, how can the debate be anything but bland?
The campaign certainly needs an injection of energy – a suppository of substance perhaps. Having neutralised Abbott on asylum seekers and carbon pricing, Kevin needs to drive some points of difference for the remainder of the campaign. Marriage Equality is a potential candidate, but Kevin has to go further than promising a conscience vote to galvanise the support within the community for this way overdue reform. Were Kev to make Marriage Equality party policy he could leverage his existing support from Gen Y, enliven voters in safe seats and drive home his advantage in the future versus the past dichotomy with Abbott. Issues like Marriage Equality can have a wild card effect in the electorate too because people tend to divide along generational rather than socio-economic bases. This could be a big plus for Labor.
Also a plus for Labor would be “positivising” their messaging for the run home. There is no doubt Rudd did draw a bad barrier but he can’t focus on the negatives. It is true that, unusually for an incumbent PM, he has to come from behind to win this election. It is also true that the Murdoch press are, and will continue to be, merciless in their treatment of him and his party. But by pointing those facts out all the time, as he and others have done extensively in the first two weeks of the campaign, he runs the very real risk of sounding negative and more than a little bit “poor me”.
You can’t complain your way to an election victory. Time to get positive Kev!
Tony contemplating sexy candidates and suppositories...
Looking like Tarzan… playing like Jane....
Week three of the federal election...
By Richard McEncroe
I’m not sure if I’m using a footy analogy to describe politics or a political analogy to describe footy, when I compare Labor’s campaign effort to date and the recent on-field performances of the Essendon Football Club. But, being a footicopolitical junkie, I don’t really mind.
When they should be hitting top gear, preparing to ‘breast the tape’ so to speak, both Labor and Essendon are limping to the line, offering seemingly token resistance. In Hird and Rudd both camps are led by men fiercely confident they will be vindicated, but who are also becoming increasingly isolated, in charge of a collectiion of individuals marking time as opposed to a team. Like Essendon players these past three weeks, with a few exceptions, Labor candidates seem to be going through the motions, listless. Bill Shorten answers questions from the media with all the enthusiasm of an exhausted midfielder with a dodgy hammy chasing his opponent down the wing.
After a great start to the year, Essendon have lost their last four games by a total of 39 goals. Two of those losses were to teams that won’t make the finals. The way they played in those games is much more interesting than the scores though. The Bombers players have lost their mojo and they are getting cut through like butter. There is a yawning gap between the rhetoric and the reality at Essendon. The more determined and ferocious the denials of wrongdoing become off the field, the more lacklustre and defeated the performances have become on it. For every over the top emotional message of unity and “love for the Club” there is a corresponding underwhelming physical reality at play on the park.
Footballers these days are so good, so fit, and work so hard off the ball to chase, tackle and make position that it becomes a matter of course. You hardly even notice it. But boy you notice when it doesn’t happen. It stands out like the proverbial when blokes just don’t chase opponents out of defence, don’t make that second effort. The Bombers this last month appear deflated, depressed even, as though barely able to bring themselves to turn up.
Football, like politics, is a game you can’t win if your heart’s not in it. You can have all the skills, all the talent you like; you can mouth all the right words, and send cool selfies, but it is passion and belief in what you are doing and saying that will get you the chockies. Ask an Essendon player or a Labor Candidate and they will happily tell you that they are right behind their respective icon. Hirdy’s a legend after all and hence infallible, Kevin, well, he’s the best we’ve got and he’s not Tony Abbott so of course we’re behind him too. And sure, the Players, and the Candidates will all turn up when required, but it’s what they are bringing, or don’t bringing to the fight, that is telling right now.
That the rank and file of both Labor and Essendon are a bit sub-prime and jaded right now is not hard to understand. Both have torn themselves to shreds over the past year or three. Both, in a pathological determination to gain an edge on their rivals, perceived or imagined, internal or external; have pushed ethical and moral boundaries. In parallel slow motion own goals, both organisations have cannibalised their leaders and jettisoned their ethics in the quest for short term advantage. Prime Ministers and Board Chairs, Treasurers and CEOs have been terminated and supporters and voters alike have been left confused, disenfranchised and disillusioned.
The heavy casualty toll the internal bitterness has taken on Labor is only now really being appreciated. Several proven and experienced Labor players who would otherwise be on the field in this campaign are either sitting on the bench or have been carried off on stretchers. The polls reflect this self administered ‘talent-ectomy’. Gillard, Emerson, Roxon, Crean, Garrett, Combet have all been either injured or omitted on form. Swan is on the bench for the duration and Shorten, the Jobe Watson of the line up, is allowed to play but only if he promises not to get a kick – oh, and Peter Beattie is the Sub, yet to be activated.
To the extent that coach Rudd does have a strategy it goes something like...big Kev wins the ruck tap down to little Ruddy who dodges three rabid Libs, baulks an Asylum Seeker and kicks a long bomb inside the 50 meter special economic zone where Keeeevviin Ruuuud You Beauty! takes a screamer and slots one straight through the chop sticks.
If there is a bright side for the Bombers and Labor in all this, it is perhaps that there is still time before Grand Final day to turn things around - but only if they want it badly enough. There is still time for Shorten to decide, stuff this, I can’t just stand by and let Abbott win, and force himself into the contest.
There’s time in this season and this campaign for Brendan Goddard to tear some games apart and for Greg Combet and Tania Plibersek to get into the game by waking the electorate up about what an Abbott Government would mean for low paid workers. There is still time for Michael Hurley to show some presence and demand the ball inside 50 and for Penny Wong to do the same and demand Marriage Equality become Labor policy. There is still time for Paddy Rider to switch on and time to stop the electorate from switching off on the environment. No point looking like Tarzan and playing like Jane.
For both Labor and the Bombers there’s still time.
As they search themselves for inspiration, they could do worse than to reflect on the immortal words of the legendary St Kilda and Hawthorn coach Alan “Yabby” Jeans when he implored his players to “DO... don’t think ...don’t hope...DOOOO!”.
