At the rate Kevin Rudd is going, there's every chance tax reform will go the same way as "the greatest moral challenge of our generation". After two years of telling us Australia would lead the world on climate change, and that Australia would slash carbon emissions regardless of what anyone else did, this week we found out the truth.
On Wednesday the government announced it would maintain its relatively modest target of reducing the country's emissions by 5 per cent by 2020. One moment "our children's fate -- and our grandchildren's fate" depends on decisive climate change action. (That's what the PM said in November). The next moment the Climate Change Minister is issuing a press release saying Australia won't do anything more on climate change until "the level of global ambition [to reduce emissions] becomes sufficiently clear". (Which is what the minister did two days ago).
It's hard to avoid the impression that the government's climate change objectives were as much about gaining political advantage over their opponents as they were about saving the planet. Now that the politics of climate change has got harder against a Tony Abbott-led opposition, the fate of our children and our grandchildren has become less important.
It looks like tax reform is being subjected to the same sort of political machinations that climate change policy suffered. There's the charade of the government refusing to release the report into the tax system it was handed a month ago because, in the words of the Treasurer, the government needs to "examine" the report. What is there to "examine"? According to Wayne Swan, the review panel headed by Treasury secretary Ken Henry is "independent". So if the review panel is independent, and if its recommendations are not government policy, what is the Treasurer afraid of?
Of course it's debatable just how "independent" a review panel can be when two of its five members are public servants. And the picture becomes even more confused when it is remembered that the person who will be examining
the report -- Ken Henry -- is the person who wrote the report in the first place. Presumably one of the benefits of the Treasury secretary examining a report he's just written is so he can correct any typos or misprints in its 1000 pages.
What we do know is that the report is 10 centimetres thick and it is printed on A4 paper. And this we know because these facts were reported in the media at weekend. But still the public isn't allowed to see the report. Instead we're treated to a series of selected and carefully positioned leaks, hints and suggestions about what might be in it.
In a speech last week, Henry warned that Australians might have to work longer and pay more tax to pay for an ageing population. This can only be described as Henry doing the government's dirty work for it and softening up the public for what's coming next. However, what the Treasury secretary thinks is largely irrelevant. It's up to the politicians to make the decisions. Ultimately it's a political choice whether taxes go up and whether we end up working beyond 65.
If policies are to change they will change because of political leadership.
There's not too much leadership in having public servants let loose public policy balloons while politicians stand< at a safe distance. On the ABC's AM program a week ago, the interviewer pointed out to Swan that Henry's
comments were not "much different" to what Peter Costello said as treasurer in 2003. At the time, Swan complained that Costello wanted to force employees "to work until they drop". It's a revealing example of how the process of policy debate has changed under Labor.
Whereas once a Hawke or a Keating or a Howard or a Costello would have braved the challenge of telling the public the facts of life, the task is now left to public servants.
From the Treasury secretary's speech last week we learned what we've long suspected.
He said "it would be prudent to plan on the basis that the tax system will, over time, have to generate revenues to meet substantially larger fiscal costs". Translated that means -- no tax cuts. If Henry's review doesn't recommend tax cuts, and if it is only about how to tax more people to get more money for the government, the review deserves to go the same way as the Prime Minister's climate change policies.
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