The worst thing a government can do, according to a raft of opposition politicians and a decent whack of the commentariat, is to break an election promise.
The wailing engulfing the nation was prompted by Treasurer Jim Chalmers last week starting a “conversation” about the sustainability and fairness of the tax breaks in the current arrangements for retirement savings.
None of the more thoughtful critics disagree with Chalmers’ argument that for a tiny minority superannuation has become a very lucrative tax shelter, but it is the issue of the government’s trust that the opposition has seized on.
No doubt Tony Abbott and his then treasurer Joe Hockey would be quick to agree trust supersedes everything else in light of the shellacking they received for their first budget after the 2013 election.
That fiscal handiwork broke every major promise Abbott had made literally on the eve of the election just months before.
No comparison
Let’s be very clear that this is not what the current prime minister or his treasurer did in their first budget last October, nor is it what they are proposing to do in their second outing in May.
The record shows Chalmers early last year said: “Australians should expect no major changes to superannuation ‘if the government changes’.’’
And Albanese, virtually on the eve of last year’s election, said he had “no intention” to change anything with super.
That was still his position in an appearance on Ten’s The Project at the weekend.
But interviewer Hamish Macdonald clearly thought the Prime Minister was using weasel words when he said others like the Grattan Institute and even the industry itself have begun a serious conversation about the costs and fairness of the status quo.
Albanese says he’s letting the conversation run and “if we make an announcement, then you can scrutinise what that announcement is”.
The position of Albanese and his treasurer is vastly different to Abbott’s unequivocal: “No cuts to education, no cuts to health or the ABC and SBS, and no changes to pensions.”
Budget repair
Taking a leaf out of the Howard government’s first budget 18 years before, Abbott and Hockey in the name of budget repair junked all these undertakings.
They forgot that John Howard and Peter Costello spent months talking about the shock budget black hole and how it meant they had to postpone some of their promises.
Also in 2013 there was no surprise “black hole” because the charter of budget honesty did away with the chance to use that ruse.
Liberal veteran Russell Broadbent on ABC TV on Monday said the government needs to seek permission from the Australian people by spelling out why changes are necessary, and be clear that they will benefit the vast majority of Australians.
Broadbent was in Parliament through all the conniptions over budgets in the past two decades.
He doesn’t believe in this instance Albanese needs an election – he just needs to mount a convincing argument.
So far Chalmers has been far more convincing than his opposite Angus Taylor.
Show me the money
The Treasurer’s starting point is the inherited trillion dollars of debt and the cost of servicing it, and that’s before you can talk about funding an improved NDIS, aged care, hospitals and defence.
The billions of dollars the budget forgoes in concessions to multimillionaires could be rationally directed elsewhere without taking one cent of their accumulated savings from them.
I just wonder how the absurdity of the shadow treasurer’s arguments against it can be put with a straight face.
Just as Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said he opposes any changes, Taylor on Sunday said: “Labor’s coming after Australians’ money because they don’t have enough of their own.”
He is talking about the government of Australia which, like all governments, relies on tax revenue to fund the security and wellbeing of the nation.
Taylor says “the sustainability Jim Chalmers is talking about is the sustainability of his spending habit”.
Excuse me?
This week the Treasurer will release a tax and expenditure statement. It will lay out principally what the government has inherited – the spending of Taylor and his mates in the Morrison government.
In a nutshell, it will show outlays on all programs far exceeds the revenue needed to fund them.
Albanese and Chalmers know that as a Labor government they need to be even more careful with their explanations than Howard and Costello were back in 1996-97.
The wall of doomsaying and fantastical predictions of gloom from vast sections of the media will convince them of that already.
They may take some encouragement from Russell Broadbent’s optimism that the Australian people can be properly persuaded and give their permission.
Paul Bongiorno AM is a veteran of the Canberra Press Gallery, with more than 40 years’ experience covering Australian politics
