So just how long is a week in politics? There has been speculation about the fate of the stage 3 tax cuts for some time now. About a week ago, the quality of attention from political journalists changed: could the tax cuts, and the government’s election promise to deliver them, be scrapped as soon as the October budget?
This speculation was partly a result of small shifts in wording from the treasurer and finance minister, and partly a result of briefings from the government. Throughout all of this, the government’s public position was that its view had not changed. Privately, it was clearly keen to emphasise a similar, though not identical, point; that no decision had been taken. But it was equally and clearly raising the possibility that a new decision might be taken soon.
Illustration by Jim PavlidisCredit:
It is true that a final, final budget decision has still not been made. But it is also true that sometime between Friday and Saturday a view formed at the highest levels of government that the public debate had gone as far as it should go.
At the level of each sentence, most media commentary was still cautiously refraining from conclusion, but at some point the vibe had definitely shifted: that the government would break its promise in the budget was close to becoming an established fact. If, in reality, the government was not yet absolutely committed to that shift, then it could not afford to let the speculation gather still more steam. And so, the government shut it down.
Was all this chaotic? In some ways. Backbenchers have been out there making contradictory cases, media speculation was rife, the government was clear nothing was going to happen, then it seemed like something was going to happen, and now it seems like something is going to happen but just not now. But here we come back to the length of a week. For those at the centre of the storm, both politicians and journalists, the week would have seemed quite long, the shift in atmosphere around the tax cuts significant. But has the wider public begun to register the pressures on the budget or the problems with the tax cuts, let alone the (irrelevant but rhetorically useful) Truss experience? For most people, the political week was a blip, as the government, with its decision not to switch quite yet, rightly recognised.
Which direction? Anthony Albanese delivers a speech at the Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue on Friday.Credit:Peter Rae
But this cuts both ways. The government would no doubt like some credit for the mature way in which it allowed the debate to run. On the other hand: it was only a week! This is not quite the shift back to an older style of national conversation some of us had hoped for. But then again, this may be a little unfair because the main thing to come out of last week is the fact that the tax cuts will almost certainly go – just not right away. What the government has really done is ensure that this tax cut discussion, accompanied by a focus on intense budget pressures, will run for months and months.
In one sense, this is an old story about senior ministers in a government learning the finer points of how to use the megaphone they have just been handed. A pattern often repeats: ministers (including prime ministers) come to their positions determined to have honest conversations with the public. Once their big, blunt words have been over-interpreted a few times by journalists accustomed to having to read fine tea-leaves, they give up and start speaking in tea-leaves themselves, knowing journalists will do the rest.
But there is a newer story, too, with several strands. One is the lightning-fast media cycle; another is a public sphere in which, just as fast, blame is doled out and sides are picked (in this context it was interesting, last week, to see just how quickly Essendon acted in the matter of now-ex CEO Andrew Thorburn). Another, less remarked upon, is the growing pressure on institutions – political, corporate, regulatory – for a new type of honesty, free of nullifying jargon.
The economist Richard Holden wrote perceptively last week about the Reserve Bank’s recent shift from offering “meaningless truisms” towards attempting actually to explain what it is doing. This is especially noble given the RBA’s last sort-of-clear statement – that interest rate hikes were likely a long way away – is still giving it trouble.
Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers hands down his first budget on October 25.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
The advantage of this, for institutions, is that it forces them to look their arguments in the face, as it were. The problem of speaking in tea-leaves is that, freed of the obligation to actually make the argument for what you are about to do, you fail to think completely through the decision you are about to make. It is possible that the government’s reliance on tea-leaves last week was an indication of the best reason not to proceed with the tax cut changes quite yet: the government is not ready to make the argument because it has not quite finished thinking about what the decision means.
And that is because what it means, ultimately, is dependent on the context in which it takes place: the other government decisions that surround it, and the greater project of which they are a part.
Reading the various policy prescriptions of economists and others, you sense that, beyond their uniform conclusion that taxes will have to rise, we are on the precipice of a much broader necessary rethink of the way that government works in this country, involving what we have a right to expect, how much we are willing to give, our relations to each other, and what our conception of a fair and good life is.
The economist Rod Sims spoke last week, and on climate change and a carbon tax posed this question: “are we only in favour of this massive change to our way of living provided it is completely painless?”
It is a question with far broader application, and one that may define this government. A genuine national conversation about it will take years, made up of many long weeks. And this should be the government’s greatest fear: what if, after all that chatting, the answer is still “yes”?
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