Labor’s shift on capital gains tax and negative gearing should be judged by whether it makes the tax system fairer, not by a hypocritical “liar” campaign that treats every broken promise as a moral crime.
By attempting to change arrangements for payment of capital gains tax and benefits from negative gearing, a Labor government has made a modest effort to add an element of fairness in an unfair taxation system.
But in the preceding election campaign, the Prime Minister insisted that Labor would not introduce such policies. Fearing status quo interests, he and his ministers remained cautious. They ignored any public hope that, with regard to the housing market, a new government might attempt to improve younger people’s chances of obtaining a home of their own.
In crafting the budget, the government changed its mind.
Almost immediately, from the battlements of News Corp, from right-wing extremist sources, from One Nation supporters and Trump devotees, there was moral outrage about broken promises.
This weird, hypocritical morality says little about the merits or otherwise of new policies, but it engineered an emotional fundraiser – $2 million at the last count – by calling the Prime Minister a liar and encouraged the easy, self satisfying argument of bullies, ‘I am right, you are wrong’, ‘I’m moral, you are immoral’, ‘Trust us, not liars.’
At the heart of a loud dogma lies the assumption that promises can never be broken and if they are, dreadful consequences must follow.
Culturally, politically and psychologically, that is nonsense.
To make that point does not imply support for the Trumpian notion that telling lies is an honourable political technique. It does seek consideration of the context in which promises are made. It does ask for a reminder of the benefits of breaking a promise, of reframing questions and starting again.
Contributors to the Pauline Hanson ‘liar fund’ are claiming a moral high ground. That is perverse. The reverse could be true.
If influenced by a thoughtful media, by politicians of all persuasions willing to reflect, the voting public would not be carried along by a repeat of a familiar mob morality: ‘off with his head’, ’outlaw asylum seekers’, ‘deport refugees’, or the Abbott Australian version, ‘ditch the bitch’, or was it ‘ditch the witch’?
Instead, consider the benefits of promises broken.
It could be highly beneficial to end a marriage which has been damaging to adults and kids. The couple parts. Conflict is lessened if not abolished. Each party breathes a sigh of relief and can start again.
In another instance, a couple buy a property, realise they have not made the best choice, so they renege on the deal and look elsewhere. The wisdom of hindsight operates again.
For the long-term benefits of their voting publics, political parties have broken promises and changed policies in order to achieve benefits which would have stayed unimaginable if previous assurances had been kept.
The British Labour government of 1945 had assured the British Medical Association (BMA) they would not interfere with doctors’ freedom to practise as they saw fit. UK Labour subsequently nationalised medicine and created the National Health Service, and in a 1940s equivalent of the Hanson ‘Liar’ campaign, an angry BMA and their supporters called Health Minister Nye Bevan ‘vermin’. Badges with the vermin slogan sold nationwide.
Bevan responded by insisting that to create the NHS he would have to fill the BMA’s teeth with gold, but by intervening in this way, this gutsy leader gave birth to a new morality.
Universal health insurance in the UK was judged to have introduced ‘a gift relationship’, ‘reciprocity almost unlimited’, ‘a benefit given to a stranger without expectation of reward’.
Instead of being damned for broken promises, Bevan and his colleagues introduced altruism as a feature of social policy and avoided the alternative: a cruel US-like system of imposing enormous costs to lessen the fear of being sick.
In the ‘Liar’ campaign, a holier than thou morality has appeared in the attitudes of those who may have never given much thought to being considered even slightly moral. It may be pleasing to shout ‘liar’ at the Prime Minister, but that anger does not provide the foundations of any well-considered policy.
That is a lofty way to describe the goals of the Australian Labor government’s budget, but more thought and less outrage should direct attention to the value of trial and error in policy-making. Promises may have been wrong. Mistakes made have to be corrected.
Such a ‘more thought please’ perspective reminds us that hindsight coupled with awareness of historical precedents shows there is nothing permanently wrong with broken promises, even if the act of breaking them may never be a means of raising money.
Stuart Rees AM is Professor Emeritus at the University of Sydney & recipient of the Jerusalem (Al Quds) Peace Prize.