In the course of last year’s Australian Federal election campaign, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the conservative parties – including the ‘Liberal’ and ‘National’ parties – sought continuously to match each other, especially in the field of taxation. The announcement of tax cuts amounting to approximately $AUS 34 billion by the conservatives – all but matched by Labor – cast a regrettably long shadow over proceedings. To get this in perspective, the Australian economy is worth somewhere in the vicinity of $AUS 1 trillion GDP annually.
Labor’s ‘shadowing’ of the Coalition, flattening the overall PAYG income tax scale, provides for little in the way of progressive redistribution. New ALP Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has promised to keep almost all of the Coalition’s $AUS 34 billion in tax cut commitments, while deferring $AUS 3 billion for those on over $AUS 180,000/year. He has also committed Labor to ‘simplifying’ the PAYG tax system from four brackets to only three. http://www.smh.com.au/news/economy/rudd-outlines-tax-vision/2007/10/19/1192301012405.html
So significant were the cuts, there was little scope to expand the social wage, or promote progressive policy innovations in health, aged care, welfare, and education.
Labor’s failure to differentiate itself significantly enough from the Coalition was disappointing and underwhelming. To some extent Labor ‘hemmed itself in’ during the campaign, committing itself to a substantial surplus and promoting a mere
$AUS 3 billion in budget savings with which to fund its promises. Since then, the new Labor Federal government has committed to further budget cuts in order to fuel a larger surplus and ‘rein in’ inflation. Again – it must be remembered that the overall economy has now climbed to a value of over $1 trillion dollars.
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Hi. My name is Tristan Ewins. I'm a freelance writer - based in Australia.
I publish the progressive blog 'Left 'Focus' which covers Australian and international issues, and has had almost 50,000 hits at this time of writing.
See: http://leftfocus.blogspot.com/
We're regularly considering new material; so if you have something on theme feel welcome to send material through to me for consideration.
I\'ve also been published widely elsewhere - including in \'On Line Opinion\', \'Znet\', Australia\'s \'Centre for Policy Development\', \'Australian Socialist\', \'Labor Tribune\', \'Arena Magazine\', \'Agora Magazine\', the \'Evatt Foundation\' web site, \'The Canberra Times\', and others. Also, a chapter of mine (on an \'active/critical\' model of Civics and Citizenship education) was published in \'Labor Essays 2004: The Vocal Citizen\'.
Finally, I\'m the moderator of the left-wing Australian discussion group, \'Australian Broad Left Network\'... Feel free to join, participate or look around: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/broadleft/
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My academic background is as a First Class Honours Arts graduate - majoring in Sociology. I\'m also qualified as a teacher (insocial studies, history, and English) - but writing is my real passion; and it is something I dearly wish I could make a career from. Currently I'm undertaking a Politics PhD.
Depending on perspective, I guess my politics could be described as \'left social democratic\' \'or \'liberal democratic socialist.\' I hope to make a real difference to debate on the broad Left - in Australia, and worldwide. If you\'re reading this, then - I guess that\'s a pretty good start. 🙂
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