Labor’s shifting of the chairs on the deck of its powerful cruise liner goes some of the way but perhaps more needs to be done to make the party for victory at the next federal poll.
The political landscape has changed since the first half of the year, when it seemed that nothing Labor did could cut through. Covid has scotched that deathless purgatory and the party is now setting its sights on government.
A few niggling obstacles remained to be cleared away when I wrote that post. One which had been removed, and which I refer to in the story linked above, is the decision to reverse a policy on franking credits. This is where people who get income from shares are paid the equivalent of what the company those shares are linked to paid in corporate tax. For context, a relevant media story appeared on 2 January:
Labor has been reevaluating its prospects since then and has now dumped two other signature tax policies – the one that would’ve seen the ability to deduct expenses relating to investment properties from income tax, and which would’ve cut investors’ profits from the sale of real estate – as indicated in this story, which appeared on 26 July:
All three of the policies mentioned here were brought in before the disastrous 2019 election – which opinion polls told us Labor would resoundingly win (because everyone lies to pollsters we ended up being surprised that May when, instead, the Liberal-National coalition won). There’s still some distance for Labor to travel before it gets the policy equation right as one other tax policy remains to be removed from the books. This is the one that would “reform the taxation of discretionary trusts to prevent income from being allocated to household members in lower tax brackets.” (thanks to Accountants Daily for this digest). What the party has done so far might be enough to get it over the line, but its new conservatism is an indication of how far from its vision the community has travelled, and how long it’s taken Labor to come around to reason.
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