If there’s been any polling relevant to the federal tier over the past week or so it’s escaped my attention, other than the weekly Roy Morgan numbers, with have Labor’s two-party lead in from 58.5-41.5 to 56.5-43.5, from primary votes of Labor 37%, Coalition 34.5% and Greens 13.5%. This was conducted last Monday through to Sunday, with no detail provided on sample size or survey method. The tracking polling of international leaders’ approval conducted by US pollster Morning Consult has recorded a slight weakening in Anthony Albanese’s standing over the past few weeks, with a current result of 57% approval and 31% disapproval, respectively down three and up four from the start of the year. The BludgerTrack poll aggregate, which makes use of results from Newspoll, Resolve Strategic, Essential Research and Freshwater Strategy, likewise records a declining trend in Albanese’s net approval over the past two months.
S3 is terrible policy and posters should feel entirely justified in their opposition to it.
Those defending the ALP have reason to do so based on the politics.
There is plenty of room for agreeing to disagree without hysterics, hyperbole, or agro.
meher baba @ #93 Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 – 10:15 am
Me either. However, the thing that stands out is that this was not a hasty action. Clearly Labor knew exactly what they intended to do when they first opened this can of worms – something they didn’t need to do at all – and they also didn’t give two hoots that it broke an ironclad election promise. It was a premeditated action, probably planned since before the election, but the reasons for Labor taking this particular hit at this particular time are obscure.
Was it simply because Labor believe (correctly) that they can afford to take the damage now? but think they may not be in a position to do so later? In which case why not also get the stage three tax cuts sorted now for the same reason?
Or was it that they needed a distraction from their failures in other policy areas – something for which they were finally starting to take some heat?
All this hand wringing of a superannuation change that doesn’t start till 2025.
The West Australian has a lurid cartoon front page with Albanese as Dr Frankenstein standing over his monster with the main head “it’s alive” and sub headings franking credits, negative gearing, Stage 3 tax cuts and super profits tax followed by question marks.
And “Albo breaks superannuation promise and raises fears of what’s next”
Sure to go down a treat with the retirees in the leafy western suburbs.
Inside there’s the inevitable interview with a couple talking about being punished for working hard.
Of course this doesn’t start till 2025 (mentioned well down in story) and surely the Libs will win and just repeal it?
Which Angus Taylor refused to commit to this morning.
@P1:
“You are all admitting that the stage three tax cuts are far more consequential than the superannuation changes.
So, Labor is happy to break ironclad promises for minnows, but not for whales?”
The super changes are an election promise for 2025, they don’t come in before the next election. No broken promise no matter how hard the likes of you and Taylormade would have it (I actually haven’t been keeping up on the thread, I’m just assuming on past evidence what Taylor is saying).
Albanese (on RN with PK) seemed at odds with Chalmers (on Sunrise), even – at least impliedly – on the possibility that CGT might be imposed on the family home, though if I heard correctly, Albanese said he wouldn’t have a bar of it. Time to synchronise the messages. As for the high-end superannuants, few of the 99.5% who’ll be unaffected will have much
sympathy for those who will face a higher tax impost, the hysterical response by media outlets & Taylor should quickly die a natural death.
Andrew_Earlwood @ #99 Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 – 10:23 am
Just the assistance we so desperately needed (but still haven’t had) would have been nice.
Re negative gearing: it would be courageous for any government to attempt to reform it when vacancy rates are so low and rents are skyrocketing.
As I have long said, a sensible, lasting reform, would be to place a cap on how much of a deduction from other income that any individual taxpayer could claim on losses from rental property or, alternatively, not permit any individual taxpayer to make a claim in relation to more than one such property.
Grandfathering would not be possible on such a proposal, so perhaps it could be transitioned into effect over a number of years: which would also help to allay concerns about it putting even greater pressure on vacancy rates.
The other thing about rental housing that will need to be thought about at a national level is the longer-term impacts for the current surge of enthusiasm among state and territory governments for making it more difficult for landlords to evict tenants. First and foremost, safeguards need to be in place to ensure that landlords simply don’t switch from long-term leasing to Air BnB. But governments also need to work with landlords to find ways of making it profitable for them to invest in housing for long-term renters with low incomes.
The disinvestment in social housing that took place from about the early 1990s (initially promoted, I’m sorry to say, by the Hawke-Keating governments) was a terrible mistake which will take decades to recover from. There is a large population of people who will be under housing stress for the whole of their lives, and the answer to their problems is social housing, not over-subsidised and over-regulated private rental housing.
The dreamers of the 1990s thought that moving away from social housing would break down stigma because low income renters would be living among higher income renters and home owners. Social housing was often pretty poor: but it provided people with a guaranteed roof over their heads. We need it back.
Cronus @ Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at 10:10 am:
“I think Ukrainian success in Crimea is plausible (in the longer term) and of course justified but there will be a trade-off. All effort expended to achieve such a goal means effort (equipment, resources, soldiers etc) not used elsewhere either to launch a Spring offensive or even to defend areas currently under siege such as Bakhmut etc.
This is not the time for such action as movement of the necessary troops would leave Ukraine’s Northern and Eastern flanks exposed or at least weakened. Ukraine simply doesn’t have a fighting force of the necessary size to attack on all three fronts by adding Crimea in the South at this time imo. It’s a matter of priorities.”
================
Cronus, thanks for this. Your point about priorities, and their timing, is a crucial one.
I understand from Dearnley’s paraphrase of Hodges that the retired general sees Ukrainian assaults upon Crimea as consisting predominantly of their taking out Russian military bases and other assets with long-range munitions, combined with their cutting Crimea off entirely from Russian land resupply routes, ie Kerch bridge plus Kherson/Zaporizhzhia. This latter drive is what most observers say is an elemental component of Ukrainian couteroffensive success whether or not Crimea is being aimed for anyway. My understanding is that Hodges doesn’t envisage any major Ukrainian land amphibious assault as being necessary for Russian military occupation of Crimea to become unviable.
Arky @ #104 Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 – 10:33 am
Classic doublethink.
Griff @ #88 Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 – 10:02 am
Player One took snark classes instead when Maths was on. 😐
Re negative gearing: it would be courageous for any government to attempt to reform it when vacancy rates are so low and rents are skyrocketing.
So how come there are so few properties to rent right now? Shouldn’t there be a surfeit if NG was working as it should?
@Team Katich:
“S3 is terrible policy and posters should feel entirely justified in their opposition to it.
Those defending the ALP have reason to do so based on the politics.
There is plenty of room for agreeing to disagree without hysterics, hyperbole, or agro.”
Indeed this is all true.
s3 is terrible policy which Labor opposed at the time.
However, after losing the 2019 election, it was obvious Labor is very vulnerable to scare campaigns around tax and voters gave Labor no points for its various tax reform policies.
Thus Labor made a tactical decision to say it would not repeal s3. And Labor won government.
You can argue until you are blue in the face whether Labor would have won without that promise but it’s a hindsight argument. Labor won. This is not insignificant in a country where Labor has only beaten a sitting Lib government 3 previous times in the nearly 80 years since World War 2 (Whitlam, Hawke, Rudd).
Having won with that tactical decision, to break the promise would be bad politics and even further erode trust in our system. Governments ought to do what they said they would do.
Any case for changing s3 despite the promise would need to be made carefully and be tied to reducing inflation and cost of living. This is a double-edged sword since if inflation and cost of living don’t reduce afterwards…
CAREFULLY. Not with a big megaphone and rhetoric about economic redistribution.
It might well need to be done as an election promise too.
C@tmomma @ #110 Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 – 10:41 am
Where do I sign up for your masterclass, C@t?
Perhaps Arky could also offer a masterclass in doublethink.
Wow, some of my favourite policy topics are in the news today.
Re the CGT on owner-occupied housing. It’s a great idea, and about as likely as peace in the Middle East.
Those who go on about superannuation as a form of estate management should consider that the family home is a much more widely-used one: and according to my understanding, is not subject to any CGT when passed on as long as the recipient sells it within two years, as opposed to superannuation, from which the ATO takes a significant clip when it passes from the deceased to adult offspring.
Until pigs fly, the best we can hope for is some sort of reform to the age pension system that takes account of the capital embedded in high value housing occupied by pensioners. (Some sort of win/win arrangement in which some of that capital is accessed and shared between the government and the pensioner). But even that looks pretty unlikely to me.
C@tmomma says:
Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at 9:27 am
Erdogan is a bit preoccupied at the moment in Türkiye. Trying to get re-elected, as well as attempting to put his country back together again.
————————————————————
I know which one is his main priority.
@P1: It’s not doublethink. There was no promise to never ever in the history of Australia look at ever changing anything to do with super. That would be a ridiculous promise. Labor isn’t doing anything to super in this term. That fulfils the promise. They are seeking a mandate from voters to make changes to super in the next term of office. That’s democracy.
Doublethink my ass. If you’re really a Green, this is why the Greens get such a bad name. Far more interested in helping the Libs smear Labor than actually working for progressive improvements in policy.
Take that rubbish back to The Australian where it belongs, you fossil fuel cartel member you.
Socrates says:
Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at 10:27 am
One of the many aspects of governance left to rot under the Liberals was product testing. Leave it to the market! What could possibly go wrong? As it turns out, plenty.
For example, when the VW Dieselgate scandal hit, it turned out that Australia was not even doing lab testing of (imported) cars for fuel economy or emissions. The Fed Env Det website simply printed the manufacturers claims as their actual emissions and fuel economy on its (useless) website. FAA testing of a sample showed most claims were wrong, some false by up to 40%.
For example, when the VW Dieselgate scandal hit, it turned out that Australia was not even doing lab testing of (imported) cars for fuel economy or emissions.
Now in the rush for EVs, Japanese testing found that BYD is using Hexavalent Chromium in its electric buses. This is both toxic and carcinogenic. We should not be letting these vehicles come here.
https://www.sustainable-bus.com/news/toxic-chemical-hino-byd-bus-stop-japan/
There are some aspects of government product testing, or at least government oversight of it, that really need to be re-implemented. China is a particular problem. The best Chinese products are excellent. The worst are faulty. And they don’t recognise Australian consumer law in China. You need product testing to tell which is which.
____________
Sometimes I think the EV market – at least at the moment – has more wrinkles than my late parents.
Serious question – is there a probability that BYD is also including Hexavalent Chromium in its cars – like the Atto 3.
I ask about the Atto 3 because it has many similarities to the Tesla 3 but much, much cheaper.
For a while, Ms Snappy and I considered buying a BYD Atto 3 this year, but then BYD’s Australian partner played silly buggers with the warranty (3 years on this bit, 6 on that, 4 on the other – whereas NZers can buy and Atto 3 with typical, blanket coverage) AND servicing prices (the schedule resembles the costs for internal combustion engine vehicles, which is unjustifiable as EVs are not propelled by a series of explosions).
Instead, we found a 2006 Prius which had its hybrid battery replaced 9 months ago. NOW insurers want to argue the “market value” of our not-very-expensive Prius is less than half what we paid for it AND having a hybrid battery replaced IS NOT a significant alteration/accessory!!!
Note: I surveyed the market. You can get old Prii for less than the price we paid, but they’ve done three times the km or ours and don’t claim to have recently replaced batteries. In other words, we paid a reasonable market price. The organisations like Redbook that estimate “market value” are not taking into account factors relevant to purchasing used hybrids/EVs, like, you know, BATTERY LONGEVITY!!!
Chapter 59 in “Why I Hate Capitalism”.
Snappy Tom says:
Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at 9:32 am
Just as Labor gave John Howard no latitude over his GST strategy, the Coalition will give Labor none over this, writes Phil Coorey.
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/chalmers-never-ever-super-moment-aims-to-get-the-politics-right-20230228-p5co2z
The AFR editorial judges that Labor’s super tax caps strike a fair balance.
https://www.afr.com/policy/tax-and-super/labor-s-super-tax-caps-strike-a-fair-balance-20230227-p5co0m
____________
Faint praise from the Fin.
Well, let’s explore Coorey’s GST parallel.
25 years ago, Fairfax (as it was then) led the msm trumpet calls for a GST (“tax reform!”) AND explained to the electorate that Howard breaking his “never ever” promise would be true leadership.
Where was Costello media’s call for super reform in recent weeks?
——————————————————————————————-
So Coorey is comparing a change that will impact 80k wealthy Australians with a change that impacted every single Australian. Worst comparison ever.
@Mavis:
“Time to synchronise the messages”
Yeah. I understand Chalmers probably didn’t want to play the “rule in/rule out” game beloved of stupid press gallery journalists but inevitably if you refuse to rule something out they jump up and down and claim that means you’re interested in doing it. Albo gets that and stomped hard on any possible grassfires. Chalmers needs to learn to handle those games a bit better.
Yet another way China is assisting Russia in its efforts to kill and displace as many Ukrainians as possible:
“The west has been slow to respond to China spending billions globally to spread poisonous disinformation, including messaging that is completely aligned with Russia on Ukraine, a US special envoy has claimed.
James Rubin, a coordinator for the Global Engagement Center, a US state department body set up to “expose and counter” foreign propaganda and disinformation, made the remarks during a European tour this week.
“The well has been poisoned by Chinese and Russian disinformation – it’s pernicious,” said Rubin, a broadcaster and former official in the Clinton administration and broadcaster.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/28/china-spends-billions-on-pro-russia-disinformation-us-special-envoy-says
China is behaving as an enemy towards Ukraine. It is not surprising they would treat Ukrainians as mere roadkill along their glorious ‘belt and road’ across Eurasia. After all, what is a country of a mere 40 million inhabitants to a regime which thinks in hundreds of millions, and treats all of them as disposably as they do?
If Labor dumped S3 tax cuts, the pile on from almost all the media would be relentless, why Chalmers and Albo won’t go there, but I wouldn’t rule out S3 being rejigged in some way
meher baba says:
Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at 10:34 am
Re negative gearing: it would be courageous for any government to attempt to reform it when vacancy rates are so low and rents are skyrocketing.
As I have long said, a sensible, lasting reform, would be to place a cap on how much of a deduction from other income that any individual taxpayer could claim on losses from rental property or, alternatively, not permit any individual taxpayer to make a claim in relation to more than one such property.
Grandfathering would not be possible on such a proposal, so perhaps it could be transitioned into effect over a number of years: which would also help to allay concerns about it putting even greater pressure on vacancy rates.
The other thing about rental housing that will need to be thought about at a national level is the longer-term impacts for the current surge of enthusiasm among state and territory governments for making it more difficult for landlords to evict tenants. First and foremost, safeguards need to be in place to ensure that landlords simply don’t switch from long-term leasing to Air BnB. But governments also need to work with landlords to find ways of making it profitable for them to invest in housing for long-term renters with low incomes.
The disinvestment in social housing that took place from about the early 1990s (initially promoted, I’m sorry to say, by the Hawke-Keating governments) was a terrible mistake which will take decades to recover from. There is a large population of people who will be under housing stress for the whole of their lives, and the answer to their problems is social housing, not over-subsidised and over-regulated private rental housing.
The dreamers of the 1990s thought that moving away from social housing would break down stigma because low income renters would be living among higher income renters and home owners. Social housing was often pretty poor: but it provided people with a guaranteed roof over their heads. We need it back.
____________
Sir Humphrey: That would be a courageous decision, Minister.
Hacker: (trembling, slightly) What?!
Mavis 10.33
[ Albanese (on RN with PK) seemed at odds with Chalmers (on Sunrise), even – at least impliedly – on the possibility that CGT might be imposed on the family home, though if I heard correctly, Albanese said he wouldn’t have a bar of it. Time to synchronise the messages. As for the high-end superannuants, few of the 99.5% who’ll be unaffected will have much
sympathy for those who will face a higher tax impost, the hysterical response by media outlets & Taylor should quickly die a natural death.]
I think they’re at odds over a few things including S3.
I suspect Chalmers is prepared to have a crack at things like S3 but Albo not so much.
meher baba @ #93 Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 – 10:15 am
Thanks for your thoughts on this.
Not to criticise what you’ve said, it is important to understand (which I am sure you do) that the intervening 30 years has fundamentally changed how any political/policy discussion takes place.
Hawk and Keating had leisure time to consider the media call/response cycle. They could effectively wait a week to see how the TV and newspapers responded and adjust their tactics accordingly.
Now we dont even have a 24 hour news cycle, we have an instant news cycle. The second Albo or Chamers pushed air out their throats with the words “changes to superannuation” was the second it was no longer in their control.
It may look inept but I’d say they managed it as best they could in what is an impossible environment for policy discussion.
Arky @ #117 Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 – 10:49 am
Why on earth would you think I was a Green? Just because I point out that Labor stealing their climate policies from the COALition was probably a bad idea?
Comedy Classic!
c@t: “So how come there are so few properties to rent right now? Shouldn’t there be a surfeit if NG was working as it should?”
Negative gearing is a lousy way of ensuring a supply of rental properties. But getting rid of it is nevertheless certain to put additional pressure on the rental housing market because a lot of new investors who would have entered it will no longer have an incentive to do so. The Shorten proposal of continuing to allow it on newly-constructed dwellings would help a bit, but investors are still likely to discouraged by the fact that, when they come to sell their dwelling, purchasers who are not owner-occupiers will not be able to claim negative gearing and will therefore be less inclined to bid for it.
Many good rental properties – eg, apartments in large blocks – are not as attractive to owner-occupiers, so – all else being equal – the average capital gains on such properties will fall over time.
As I said in my earlier post, the best solution is to get in a time machine and go back to the mid-1980s, when Federal and State Governments decided that they collectively wanted to invest much less in public housing, and try to change their minds. Failing that, we are going to have a rental crisis in this country for decades to come, and getting rid of negative gearing will only make it worse IMO.
“Shouldn’t there be a surfeit if NG was working as it should?”
If NG only applied to new build housing then yup. The tax concession $ spent on it would have. It should be a driver of supply increase IF it was working as it should.
Having NG apply to existing properties doesn’t do a thing for increasing housing supply. But it does help bump up House Prices and drive on paper “wealth” creation and tax avoidance. 🙁
And forget Newscorp and 2GB, David Crowe in today’s Nine papers argues that Dutton yesterday was effectively wedged by Albo and Chalmers.
So will Dutton use the Aston byelection campaign to argue that very wealthy people shouldn’t pay tax on their superannuation accounts?
@P1 I know I know, I should have realised you’re just another Lib troll like Rexy the entire time. It was the constant COALition stuff that made me think originally you might have just been a genuine if misguided hardcore Green, my apologies for being slow on the uptake.
Jeff Kildea wears the wrong spectacles.
https://johnmenadue.com/the-never-ending-brexit-story-an-end-perhaps/
I suppose if you’re framing a completed Brexit as requiring a happy conclusion to Britain’s leaving the EU then Brexit will always be a never-ending story. Framing it like that adds nothing. It does, however, perpetuate the original lie, which may be paraphrased as, “There is a benefit, if only we can get it right.” And it supports the comfortable narrative that Britain always muddles on. It’s no-one’s fault, really.
That it was a “Hard Brexit” is conveniently irrelevant to this framing, but it is relevant to an alternative framing, namely that Brexit was done, as promised, by the Johnson government, and it was a Hard Brexit. Now there are actors, fault to be found, and problems to be sorted. And those problems are caused by Brexit, and not due to an “unfished Brexit”.
And by the way, the accompanying graphic willfully misrepresents where the line was drawn. The EU stops at the border between RoI and NI. That’s where the concern is focussed. Like this:
“purchasers who are not owner-occupiers will not be able to claim negative gearing and will therefore be less inclined to bid for it. ”
Which will reduce the rate of growth of house prices. A lot of people would like to see that mb.
Yah, the “market” is in a downturn now but i think we should learn the lesson of the boom in property prices and scale back over time to deal with what we know will be a problem again.
Hey, make existing houses in un-viable areas worth less so the investment goes into new housing where it wont get flooded twice a decade??
Arky @ #130 Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 – 10:58 am
Doubling down on stupidity rarely ends well.
Who thinks, and it would have to be in the next term, thus taken to an election for a mandate, that the government could leave the NG tax concession where it is but change the rules around it to only apply to new builds? Or is that still a 3rd rail issue in toto?
@Evan: “And forget Newscorp and 2GB, David Crowe in today’s Nine papers argues that Dutton yesterday was effectively wedged by Albo and Chalmers.”
I found that very interesting, Crowe going against the usual press gallery groupthink. If he’s right then politics in Australia really has changed. I’d like to think he’s right, but let’s see.
@p1: I know, you should remind yourself of that more often.
I dont recall what happened at the time, did Howard get away with his “not a core promise” line? Wasn’t it his first term and he probably rightly judged he’d get away with it?
It’d be impossible to measure, but I wonder how many times a government can change their stance on things they claimed they would/would not do whilst in opposition.
Arky @ #130 Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 – 10:58 am
So you missed Player One’s strident advocacy for ‘Gas Peakers’ then? 😐
Mostly Interested,
You’ve just given me PTSD! ‘Core and Non Core’ Howard promises. 😆
Mostly Interested: “It may look inept but I’d say they managed it as best they could in what is an impossible environment for policy discussion.”
I agree things are more difficult now than they were a while back (although, in my experience, politicians absolutely adore the 24 hour news cycle, no matter what they say about it).
But I’m struggling to see what policy discussion actually took place as a result of Chalmers and then Albo opening their mouths and talking about super in a rather rambling sort of way. They started with a proposal of capping super concessions on funds with more than $3m in them and – after a lot of kerfuffle – they ended up there. I can’t see that anything was achieved other than a lot of predominantly unhelpful media coverage.
As I have posted before, the longstanding protocol within government is that revenue policy changes are considered behind closed doors: in a small Cabinet sub-committee that rarely meets and where strict security has almost always ensured there are no leaks (unfortunately, the security around confidential consultations with accounting firms doesn’t appear to have worked quite so well). Policy changes are finalised as close as possible to the date of announcement.
The one major exception to this rule was the Hawke-Keating tax summit of, I think, 1985 which, if I recall correctly, was dreamed up by Hawke during an appearance on a talk show. That was a bit of a mess too, but at least we did get CGT and FBT out of it. And the abolition of neg gearing for a while, but then the government backed down at the first sign of a tightening of the vacancy rate in Sydney, in an unsuccessful effort to save the undeserving Unsworth Government (but Barrie was a “mate”).
C@tmomma @ #138 Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 – 11:02 am
Gosh, and guess where we are now?
Whouddathunkit, eh?
The Shorten proposal of continuing to allow it on newly-constructed dwellings would help a bit, but investors are still likely to discouraged by the fact that, when they come to sell their dwelling, purchasers who are not owner-occupiers will not be able to claim negative gearing and will therefore be less inclined to bid for it.
And this would be a good thing for First Home Buyers, surely? Also, good politically because the Millennial demographic is now our biggest and they want to buy a house, damnit! 🙂
C@tmomma @ #139 Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 – 11:03 am
My view is that political parties can no longer get away with that stuff, they get punished at the next election fairly reliably these days. The Campbell Newman government in Qld is a shining light of an example, and I’d say Tony Abbot paid for it even before his chance of reelection, and Turnbull carried the can a little for it too.
Mostly Interested @ #143 Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 – 11:07 am
Definitely. Though I think Howard ruined it for everyone with that malarkey.
Victoria says:
Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at 9:46 am
Cronus
Hope you are recovering well from your surgery?
———————————————————————————-
Thanks Victoria
All proceeding to plan thus far, apparently slow and steady wins the race but that’s not normally my thing. In any case, I have a goal to aim for, our annual week long trip to Melbourne in May so best I follow the doctor’s orders.
Barrie Unsworth saved Gough’s family home from being demolished and for that he will have my eternal gratitude.
meher baba @ #140 Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 – 11:05 am
I guess that’s my point, you cant have a policy conversation on this kind of thing very easily. The recent job submit was what passes for a considered policy conversation, but in my view that was a publicity stunt to give every stakeholder coverage to say lets not get too far in front inflation on wages cause that’s not good for business (Labor included).
They laid a trap for Dutton to defend wealthy people, whilst getting some kind of tax concession change in front of the voters for the next election. I’d say it was smart to get this out now and not have to fight it during the election proper. It’ll be old news in 2 years time and they will want to be electioneering on other stuff.
Mostly Interested @ Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at 11:00 am:
“I dont recall what happened at the time, did Howard get away with his “not a core promise” line? Wasn’t it his first term and he probably rightly judged he’d get away with it?”
===================
Mostly Interested, IIRC, the “core/non-core promise” distinction was Howard’s attempt to wave away a multitude of commitments he made in the leadup to the March 1996 election not to cut this or that area of spending (unis, environment, ABC, arts, etc), which he then egregiously cut in the 1996 Budget. His ‘core promise’ to voters, so he retrospectively announced, was to bring the budget back to balance, and so in this view he could expect forgiveness from voters for breaking ‘lesser’ promises which ran counter to this ‘core’ one.
The GST backflip was justified, not so much on those grounds, but more as a matter of “that was a promise made last election, and we’ve kept it ever since, but now this is a fresh promise for this election for the next term”. Again, the “never, ever” bit was just airily waved away, I guess on the grounds that a fresh election mandate is a hard reset.
Cronus @ #145 Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 – 11:12 am
You should stop in to Sydney on May 21 on the way back for the Bludgers Lunch.
From downthread re EVs…..
I would be avoiding Chinese branded EVs for now. Unless they have had several years in Aus conditions – so the MG has potential.