Wayne Swan 2.0: Why Jim Chalmers is so determined to raid well-off super accounts
The super tax is about punishing well off independent retirees who have had the temerity to accumulate wealth in a system Labor designed, writes James Morrow.
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So, let’s just make sure we’ve got this straight.
Australia’s overall GDP is plateauing.
On a per capita basis, we’re going backwards — again.
Businesses are undertaking what can only be called a “capital strike”, finding our highly regulated economy not worth the risk.
And productivity improvements, which should allow us to create more wealth with less work, are nowhere to be seen.
Given this set of circumstances, the ordinary person might think the nation’s Treasurer would be doing everything in his power to get out of this malaise and reset the economy to boom.
Yet Treasurer Jim Chalmers has instead decided that his hill to die on is, instead, taxing the unrealised gains of the nation’s top tier superannuation accounts.
Really?
Pretty odd given that Chalmers – that’s Doctor Chalmers to you – is from Labor’s right faction, and wrote his thesis on the great reforming treasurer-turned-prime-minister Paul Keating.
Even odder given that Chalmers’ boss, Anthony Albanese, emerged from the socialist left of Labor, with all that implies, yet seems more willing to cut a deal with the Coalition.
To understand what’s going on, just remember that the old designations of left and right, at least in the Labor party, don’t matter so much as the simple quest for power.
For the PM, luring the Coalition into talks over the super tax is a trap for new shadow treasurer Ted O’Brien and his party room, who will be neutralised as good faith consultants but remain ever the bridesmaid come election day.
For the Treasurer, he’s playing his own power games.
And while he may have studied Keating, he learned his trade working for the big spending Wayne Swan, whose Mining Resource Rent Tax (MRRT) was the super tax of its day.
Touted as a big hit on rich miners, the tax raised nowhere near as much as it promised.
In fact, it cost the government money in its first year, before it was eventually speared by Tony Abbott.
The same will likely be true of any super tax, as it drives investors to simply change behaviours to duck it.
As with Labor’s hostility to big miners, the super tax is about punishing well off independent retirees who have had the temerity to accumulate wealth in a system designed by Paul Keating rather than give their money over to a union-linked fund to manage.
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Originally published as Wayne Swan 2.0: Why Jim Chalmers is so determined to raid well-off super accounts
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