One against six in Labor’s battle for reform

As Labor prepares major housing and tax reforms, it must once again battle a powerful alliance of political, corporate and media forces, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.

ALTHOUGH THE DETAILS are not yet known, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has made clear that he has ambitious reforms to announce in this week’s Budget in relation to housing, including changes to negative gearing, capital gains and tax concession trusts.

As the details of these reforms are announced, it’s time we take stock of just how hard it is for Labor governments to implement much-needed reforms like these plans, which at their heart are about addressing wealth inequality.

The unequal status quo has a huge advantage in Australia because Labor is always faced with a six-sided battle whenever its governments propose ambitious progressive reforms. Whether it be redistributive tax changes, climate action, workers’ rights and wages, or any major investment in health, education or infrastructure, Labor does not play on a level playing field but rather has to battle on its own against six opponents.

The first of the six players Labor fights is their political opposition. Where this has traditionally been the Liberals and Nationals, it is now the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation. With these three parties locked in a battle over which can be the most aggressively hard-right MAGA, there is no chance of bipartisanship to address the housing affordability crisis. Instead, as per usual, Labor’s political opposition will mount a massive fear campaign based on lies to defend the interests of the beneficiaries of wealth inequality because that’s what they exist to do.

Beware the right-wing race to the MAGA bottom

Australia’s conservative parties are sliding into a Trump-style contest to see who can harness division, fear and anti-immigration politics most effectively.

Alongside their political arm, the second player against Labor is the corporate sector and its billionaires, who are the beneficiaries of inequality and very much like the unfair and unequal system of taxation.

Of course, this sector never admits: “I don’t like paying tax and contributing my fair share to the community where I’ve enriched myself”. That would be far too honest. Instead, they will again mount their rinse-and-repeat fear campaign in alliance with the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation to claim that Labor’s tax changes will hurt the Australian economy and will cost jobs, even though we all know this is self-interested crap.

The third player is conservative media outlets like News Corp, which will campaign against Labor’s reforms, because, like the other two players, that’s what they exist to do. They will pretend they are doing journalism when really they are engaged in a political war against progressive policies.

There is no counterweight to this conservative media power in the Australian media. Even where there are outlets on the Left, they are never on Labor’s side. This means the Labor Government will be defamed and attacked and lied about, and there is no one to defend them in the media except themselves, who the media can simply ignore.

If these three players aren’t powerful enough, Labor also has to contend with the fourth player — the rest of the mainstream media. Although non-partisan media are not campaigning for corporate interests, they are too weak and too terrified of conservative politics and media to adequately call out the campaign and bulldust against Labor’s reforms.

Instead, they will weakly quote “both sides” as Labor tries to sell the benefits of their reforms and the Liberals/Nationals/One Nation completely misrepresent them. They won’t call out the fear campaign as lies, because that would to them sound like they were taking Labor’s side. What they seem not to realise is that by giving a free pass to false-fear campaigns, they’re taking the side of Labor’s opponents.

The fifth player is related to all of the above, but I’ve given it its own guernsey because it does represent a huge impediment to Labor’s reforms: the scare campaigns of lies and disinformation used across mainstream and social media. This player is wielded like a weapon by and amongst the other four players. The public will be told tax changes will destroy their lives in a myriad of ways, which are entirely baseless, demonstrably false and laughingly ridiculous.

Boycott newsroom liars and restore Australia’s absent self-assurance

Experiences abroad show how to heal Australia’s debilitating social malaise, reports Alan Austin.

Labor knows this hailstorm of manipulation and lies is coming – Chalmers has said as much – and there is nothing they can do about it. Those spreading the lies and disinformation are too powerful and too well resourced to fight back against, so Labor just has to accept that the bulldust storm is coming and keep fighting on regardless.

The sixth player is one that should know better — progressives who resent Labor. Whether they be supporters of the Greens, the Teals, or just hate politicians generally, this player spends all their time complaining that Labor’s reforms are not good enough, do not go far enough, are not radical enough and therefore they can’t possibly support them.

In place of ever giving Labor credit, accepting the difficulty of taking on the other five players and pragmatically backing them even if their plans are not as radical as they would like, anti-Labor progressives become yet another player that Labor has to stare down in its quest to address wealth inequality.

Labor is thus permanently wedged between a right-wing campaign characterising its plans as far too radical and disruptive to the economy, and a left-wing complaint that it is not radical enough.

In this wedged position, Labor has to not only bring about nation-changing reforms, but also, while doing so, work to hold onto government because otherwise its reforms are not only impossible, but are cancelled and reversed.

The outcome of this Labor-one-against-all-the-rest-six scrum is that reform is made far more challenging than it should be.

Chalmers acknowledged this when he said in relation to the predictable fear campaigns against his tax reforms:

“Tax reform is really difficult in this country and there's a reason... There is very little incentive in our politics for big, difficult reforms like we are contemplating and we're aware of that, obviously.”

The six-sided team against Labor’s one is a huge disincentive against progressive reforms. Labor stares down the six-headed beast anyway because it’s the right thing to do. We should at least acknowledge the challenge it faces when it does this and how remarkable it is when it runs the gauntlet and wins.