Opinion: Bill Shorten and his pals live in ‘top end of town’
Alternative prime minister Bill Shorten likes to talk about the top end of town, as if doing well in life is some sort of crime. In reality his own life has been one of privilege, writes Peter Gleeson.
Opinion
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ALTERNATIVE prime minister Bill Shorten likes to talk about “the top end of town’’, as if doing well in life is some sort of crime.
Educated at Melbourne’s Xavier College – where annual fees start at $28,480 – Shorten engineers his politics of envy by telling “battlers’’ that the Liberal Party is only interested in protecting millionaire bankers and fat cats.
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It’s all part of his shtick to hoodwink young voters into believing only Labor can lead them to salvation.
The problem for Labor is that by taxing Australians to within an inch of their lives, the economy will tank and those much-vaunted and expensive promises he is making can’t be delivered.
The fact that Shorten can’t or won’t put costings on his climate change policies is a scandal.
How can any major political party aspiring to run the country go into an election saying “we’ll sort that one out when we are in government’’.
It’s not as if it’s a $1500 pledge for a new kayak at the Mackay Surf Club.
Labor’s climate change folly is the biggest economic inhibitor in Australian political history. We are talking hundreds of billions of dollars.
Labor’s fiscal magic pudding policies have the potential to send us broke.
What most Australians can’t handle with Shorten is the hypocrisy.
When he talks about the “top end of town’’, he forgets about his own frontbench.
Many of Labor’s frontbench are multi-millionaires who enjoy the benefits of property negative gearing, which ends under Labor.
Parliamentary records show Labor’s 45 frontbenchers own or have an interest in 105 properties, including 57 classified as residences and 48 described as investments.
Deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek has four properties in her register, owned by her or her spouse.
Anthony Albanese lists four properties with his wife, Carmel Tebbutt.
Mark Dreyfus declares a residence in Malvern and investment properties in South Yarra, Camberwell and Aireys Inlet, owned by he and his wife.
Other frontbenchers like Joel Fitzgibbon has five properties and Michelle Rowland has six homes.
Because Labor will “grandfather’’ the negative gearing laws, Labor’s frontbenchers would continue to enjoy the benefits of their negative gearing portfolios.
Nobody begrudges Labor MPs getting ahead by investing wisely.
It’s a wonderful reflection on how the negative gearing laws work and encourage families to invest in their futures.
Just like the benefits self-funded retires accrue from franking credits, which are often used to pay golf club fees, or travel, which seems a nice way to spend those retirement years after working hard and paying taxes for many decades.
That too will go under Labor.
So the next time Bill Shorten attacks the Coalition for only looking after “the top end of town’’, take into account that most of his frontbench colleagues are safely ensconced at that top table.
It’s the hypocrisy, the tricky obfuscation on the big issues, the class warfare that needs to be called out on Shorten.
Australia will be a very different country under Bill Shorten as prime minister, and Labor comrades will say that’s a good thing.
Others may well take the attitude on May 18 that we just can’t afford that type of Bill.
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