There’s quite a lot that went into this column and then had to be taken out for lack of space. The first draft began “The memes are out in force again I see”, because it seems to me that the tax debate, like so many public debates develop more like an infection than a decent conversation.
You don’t worry too much about the quality of the arguments (Malcolm Turnbull’s initial paper was surprisingly thin). You just keep serving up the lines and then, instead of helping people assess the quality of the arguments, the media start race-calling. It all becomes obvious ‘must do’ stuff to the commentariat. Voila, lifting thresholds is not ‘real tax reform’ and cuting rates is – independently of the respective merits of the two positions that is.
(If you tread on some well entrenched institutional toes – and the institution has any stuffing as for instance the Treasury does, sometimes you get some quality pushback as Michael Chaney did today from Ken Henry. But that’s the exception rather than the rule.)
I also wanted to talk more explicitly about the dual role of the welfare state as ‘Robin Hood’ and ‘piggy bank‘. But I only had room to hint at these things.
Thanks to various people for helping me with their suggestions for the column including Peter Whiteford, Naomi Parry and the indefatigable James Farrell as well as some others.
Remaining errors are (probably!) mine.
Pun warning. There’s a rather dumb joke at the end – not really even a pun. I wrote it very quickly so it had the shape of a finished draft to hand to someone before I went out to an appointment. Then when I said I was going to get rid of it various people said they liked it. So while I take responsibility for the piece, I’m writing this to wriggle out of responsibility for the last line!
Anyway, enough of the navel gazing – the column is over the fold. Continue reading