Extract from The Guardian
The Labor leader, Bill Shorten,
will use a speech on Friday to argue the country needs a new focus on
inequality, because growing inequality threatens the health of the
economy and social cohesion in Australia.
Shorten will tell an economic conference in Melbourne the system as it stands is “accelerating inequality, rather than addressing it, entrenching unfairness, rather than alleviating it”.
He will say inequality has consequences beyond the economic and the social – it is also creating a fault line in politics by fostering a “sense of powerlessness that drives people away from the political mainstream, and down the low road of blaming minorities, and promising to turn back the clock”.
Labor, Shorten will say, is prepared to reach into the “too-hard basket” and look at tax policy, subsidies and expenditures for the next election – “including reforms that in the past we might have dismissed as too politically difficult”.
He says inequality speaks for a fracturing of a nation and a fraying of old links: “The link between hard work – and fair reward, the link between playing by the rules – and getting ahead, the link between Australians’ daily lives – and the political debate”.
“Inequality kills hope,” Shorten will tell Friday’s conference. “Inequality feeds the sense that the deck is stacked against ordinary people, that the fix is in and the deal is done. That it’s not what you know but who you know”.
Shorten has been under internal pressure for months to make Labor’s economic and tax policy offering more muscular, with the former treasurer, Wayne Swan, a persistent public voice in arguing Labor has to avoid being “trickle down-lite”, or offering voters “a sickening Davos third way approach” at the next federal election.
Some of the internal argument within Labor over the past 12 months has played out around whether the party should adopt a “Buffett rule” where wealthy people would be forced to pay a minimum rate of tax.
While that policy is popular with the left and some unions, that concept has been rejected by Shorten, and, repeatedly, by the shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen.
Labor has also signalled it will strengthen the national workplace relations framework as part of its policy pitch for the next federal election, with the union movement pushing the parliamentary party to campaign actively on industrial relations reform at a time when wages growth is stagnant.
Shorten will say on Friday countering inequality has become core business for every serious international economic authority, and he will point to recent remarks by the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia about the risks of low wages growth.
The Labor leader will tell the conference inequality isn’t just an abstract economic term. “It’s Australians going years without a decent pay rise – but paying more tax than their boss.
“It’s women working the first two months of the year for free, compared to their male colleagues, because of the gender pay gap
“It’s young families demoralised by a housing market where they can barely afford to rent, let alone buy.”
He will contend the Turnbull government has no ideas for how to tackle inequality, and has been engaged in a “belligerent defence of trickle-down economics”.
He says if the country is going to be able to afford new investments in infrastructure and human capital “we need to look at the old and growing faults in our tax system”.
“I believe Australians are smart enough for that conversation, indeed, I think people are hungry for something more substantial than the current political fare”.
“It’s time to go to the too-hard basket in tax reform and re-examine the issues.
“Australians are ready for an authentic debate about whether our tax system accurately reflects the values of our country – about who our system helps, and what kind of behaviour it rewards”.
Shorten will tell an economic conference in Melbourne the system as it stands is “accelerating inequality, rather than addressing it, entrenching unfairness, rather than alleviating it”.
He will say inequality has consequences beyond the economic and the social – it is also creating a fault line in politics by fostering a “sense of powerlessness that drives people away from the political mainstream, and down the low road of blaming minorities, and promising to turn back the clock”.
Labor, Shorten will say, is prepared to reach into the “too-hard basket” and look at tax policy, subsidies and expenditures for the next election – “including reforms that in the past we might have dismissed as too politically difficult”.
He says inequality speaks for a fracturing of a nation and a fraying of old links: “The link between hard work – and fair reward, the link between playing by the rules – and getting ahead, the link between Australians’ daily lives – and the political debate”.
“Inequality kills hope,” Shorten will tell Friday’s conference. “Inequality feeds the sense that the deck is stacked against ordinary people, that the fix is in and the deal is done. That it’s not what you know but who you know”.
Shorten has been under internal pressure for months to make Labor’s economic and tax policy offering more muscular, with the former treasurer, Wayne Swan, a persistent public voice in arguing Labor has to avoid being “trickle down-lite”, or offering voters “a sickening Davos third way approach” at the next federal election.
Some of the internal argument within Labor over the past 12 months has played out around whether the party should adopt a “Buffett rule” where wealthy people would be forced to pay a minimum rate of tax.
While that policy is popular with the left and some unions, that concept has been rejected by Shorten, and, repeatedly, by the shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen.
Labor has also signalled it will strengthen the national workplace relations framework as part of its policy pitch for the next federal election, with the union movement pushing the parliamentary party to campaign actively on industrial relations reform at a time when wages growth is stagnant.
Shorten will say on Friday countering inequality has become core business for every serious international economic authority, and he will point to recent remarks by the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia about the risks of low wages growth.
The Labor leader will tell the conference inequality isn’t just an abstract economic term. “It’s Australians going years without a decent pay rise – but paying more tax than their boss.
“It’s women working the first two months of the year for free, compared to their male colleagues, because of the gender pay gap
“It’s young families demoralised by a housing market where they can barely afford to rent, let alone buy.”
He will contend the Turnbull government has no ideas for how to tackle inequality, and has been engaged in a “belligerent defence of trickle-down economics”.
He says if the country is going to be able to afford new investments in infrastructure and human capital “we need to look at the old and growing faults in our tax system”.
“I believe Australians are smart enough for that conversation, indeed, I think people are hungry for something more substantial than the current political fare”.
“It’s time to go to the too-hard basket in tax reform and re-examine the issues.
“Australians are ready for an authentic debate about whether our tax system accurately reflects the values of our country – about who our system helps, and what kind of behaviour it rewards”.
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