From negative gearing to cappuccino multiculturalism, Taylor and Hume are swinging through today’s crises with yesterday’s ideas, writes Dr Michael Galvin.
IF YOU WANTED to make a movie about the soporific 1950s, with a particular focus on the government of Robert Menzies, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor and Deputy Jane Hume would be the perfect actors you would be looking for. Taylor being the very model of a 1950s Menzies minister, and Hume his perfectly coiffured wife from Melbourne’s leafy eastern suburbs.
They both look and speak as if they were born for their parts in this trip down memory lane.
This raises a startling thought. Of course, Taylor is too old-fashioned for the last Liberal governments (Abbott’s excluded). But he’s also too old-fashioned for the Howard Government. Or even the Fraser Government, for heaven’s sake!
Yes, you have to go right back to Menzies to reach Taylor’s natural habitat. In just a few days, he has shown he really is that anachronistic, floating around in a time and space bubble that is bewilderingly alien to most Australians.
It is already clear that Sussan Ley’s nine months in the job were a meaningless interregnum. She was so flakey, it was impossible to know whether she said what she thought, thought what she said, or had ever given serious thought to anything much.
But things are different now with Tarzan, Jane (and Cheeta, their sidekick from out the bush somewhere). All the old 1950s nostrums are back with a vengeance. And there can be little doubt that Tarzan and Jane really believe them.
For example, how often have we heard in the last few days some variation of the phrase: “The more you tax something, the less there is of it; the less you tax something, the more there is of it”? Jane seems particularly enamoured of this rhetorical conceit. It drips off her tongue like honey. As if it is so self-evident that only a moron could possibly doubt it.
And yes, this assertion might be true in some cases. For example, the consumption of tobacco. It might also be true when it comes to building new houses.
But tax policy is obviously irrelevant when it comes to existing dwellings. You can do what you like with tax policy, but it will not make the number of existing properties suddenly disappear into thin air or change how many there already are.
And it is worth remembering that about 80 per cent of the tax-advantaged investment money that goes into housing goes into existing properties, doing nothing for expanding housing supply.
Of course, Tarzan and Jane will defend negative gearing with their lives if they have to. Any more egalitarian or sophisticated understanding of tax is unthinkable for them. As is the idea that there might be some connection between the lack of new houses and the self-interest of the millions of Australian property owners, whose main interest is seeing the value of their own property go up.
Who would want to add to supply when the lack of it increases the scarcity value of your own existing property?
This article is premised on the idea that Tarzan and Jane are genuine 1950s true believers. The idea is reinforced with nearly every cliche that comes out of their mouths.
For example, Tarzan’s Jane is enamoured of this particularly reckless generalisation about the Albanese Government:
“It’s the worst government in this nation’s history.”
Albanese’s is a far-from-perfect government, but this statement belongs out there with assertions that the moon is made of green cheese. It’s both nonsensical and politically useless.
So the question becomes: how on earth does Menzies Jane convince herself that this absurdity is true? Because the taken-for-granted beliefs in her own mind determine that it must be true.
To reach this conclusion, Jane needs only a few logical steps:
First, by definition, the less the Coalition is in power, the worse the government must be. Second, the Coalition has never been in less power than it is now. (Or a Labor government more dominant.)
Ipso facto, this Labor Government must be the worst in history simply by virtue of the fact that it is the most electorally dominant when the Coalition is least so. It’s as simple as that for Tarzan and Jane.
We can look forward to many more examples of the Menzies team clinging to old beliefs to solve new problems. This will be as true for social policy as economic policy.
A particularly choice example popped up in Tarzan’s first speech after he was elected Liberal Leader. It is worth unpacking at some length.
Reaching for something positive to say about multiculturalism in the middle of a speech that was mainly about attacking “bad” (sic) immigration and defending the (Anglo) way of life, the deep-thinking Taylor hit upon the ubiquitous cappuccino of his Cooma childhood to illustrate what he considers one of the great successes of post-war immigration.
Seriously, could anyone come up with a lower common denominator of successful immigration or social cohesion than the cappuccino? Even Senator Pauline Hanson probably allows herself this minor aberration from her own Anglo fish and chips way of life.
Does Taylor not realise what a gutless, vapid sign of successful multiculturalism he picked on for his example? It’s on a par with what any redneck in an Australian pub might say if asked to say something positive about immigration. The food! The food!
Does he not realise that Italian immigrants – to stick with the cappuccino theme – have performed brilliantly in every aspect of Australian society and its professions and to focus on a hot drink as the exemplar of their contribution is really a back-handed insult? A condescending trivialisation.
Of course, Taylor could have used a bagel, a falafel, a tandoori or a banh mi to make the same point, but each of these examples would have required some courage and capacity to prosecute a particular polemical political point on his part.
It was never going to happen — not with this Tarzan and Jane (and lest we forget, Cheeta) from 1950s central casting.
Dr Michael Galvin is an adjunct fellow at Victoria University and a former media and communications academic at the University of South Australia.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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