An 86-step strategy for fiscal rescue

TONY Shepherd and his Commission of Audit report stand in stark contrast to Tony Abbott’s blizzard in their view of what the coming Budget must deliver.

The no-nonsense two-volume (with three volumes of appendices) audit, is, as Shepherd firmly stated yesterday: “A report for government, not by government.” This is unlike the cyclonic shower of leaks about policies such as the deficit tax which are clearly the work of policy advisers determined to stay working for a government. Shepherd’s report contains 86 recommendations, many of which Treasurer Joe Hockey admits will be unpopular. That’s called reality. Shepherd, chairman of the Greater Western Sydney Giants, a former Business Council of Australia president with a background in the construction industry, is a practical person. “National interest and not special interest must prevail,” he told reporters in Canberra. That would make a real change in the national capital, so used to quick political fixes which have in recent years had an alarming tendency to explode, sometimes lethally, more often though in massive uncapped budgetary blowouts. The other Tony, the Prime Minister, and his economic team, Treasurer Joe Hockey and Finance Minister Matthias Cormann, are still too intent on mixing their political interests (and in Abbott’s case, his very personal political interest) with the national interest. The proposed deficit debt tax is a clear case in point. The Shepherd report does not canvass such a revenue-raising measure. The audit is primarily a cost-cutting venture. The mooted new tax is, at this point, Abbott’s baby, but there is no logical reason why it should make it into the Budget papers and plenty of reasons why it should be permitted to disappear between now and May 13. From the constant repetition of the “spreading the pain” mantra, it is clear that Abbott thinks (erroneously) that hitting up those Australians who already pay the overwhelming bulk of income tax will in some way make those who pay little or no income tax feel more kindly toward his government. That is the sort of soak-the-rich attitude that unthinking generations of Labor trade unionists and politicians used to kill industry and stifle growth. The Labor and Green voters, for whom this sort of pandering rhetoric is ambrosial, are never going to change their votes. They are as wedded to madness and hypocrisy as Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, Greens leader Christine Milne and Clive Palmer and his mindless moppets are to their plans to block economic reform. While the sums involved may not cause those at the top end of town too much pain, the damage caused to the Abbott government by such an impost is not worth the price. In raising a sum which would do little to meet even the interest bill on Labor’s $123 million deficit, Abbott would destroy the single greatest point of difference between himself and the last two Labor prime ministers. He would have broken faith with the public who believed he was not lying when he promised no new taxes. He may call any new tax a levy but that is the sort of hair-splitting sophistry that he decried when he was in opposition. The suggested tax is the sort of thought bubble that should be pricked now. Abbott has already shown some flexibility with a backdown of sorts on his proposed Paid Parental Leave program, reducing the recommended payments to a maximum $50,000. What he should do is speak to some of the young mothers around the nation and he will find they are not as interested in his PPL as getting some action on childcare — that’s what they are most concerned about. If some missionary streak — some essence of the liberation theologist — remains within Abbott from his seminary days, there are plenty of meaningful and painful reforms within the Shepherd report that he could embrace — forcing all high-income earners to take out private health insurance, for example. But it is the nation that needs to wear a hair shirt — every single one of us. Labor may continue to deny that it was a failure but the books don’t lie. Not one of its promised surpluses was ever realised, not even the one it boasted of in the campaign literature for last year’s election. Labor’s economic platform was one big lie. Abbott would be a fool to even try to sustain the level of spending Labor promised for such illusory programs as the NDIS and the NBN while it is still borrowing to pay for failures such as Labor’s degraded border protection program. The Shepherd medicine may be bitter but it is necessary — and it need not be taken all at once. The strategy Shepherd lays out looks to build a sound economy for future generations of Australians. Tony Shepherd and his team have sent a clear call to the Abbott government, Tony Abbott must take an icy shower and steel himself to deliver the hard cuts the nation must wear if it is to prosper in the future. NEVILLE WAS NIFTY BUT THE REST LEAVE A LOT TO BE DESIRED NSW Labor revisited an ­almost forgotten age in farewelling former premier ­Neville Wran. It had to. Nifty would not have had much time for the legion of spivs and charlatans who infiltrated and took over the party after his ­departure. Not one of his Labor successors has embodied the talents and skills Wran possessed. Barrie Unsworth, Bob Carr, Morris Iemma, Nathan Rees and Kristina Keneally … all overshadowed by Wran’s personality and achievements. Then there was the extraordinary attack on his integrity by the ABC and the Fairfax media. Gossipmongers like Mike Carlton embraced the baseless rumours that Wran was corrupt. “For a long while we believed that Neville Wran was corrupt,” he wrote. “We” being that amorphous mass of politicians and their camp followers, journalists and their editors, talkback radio pontiffs, television current affairs producers, Phillip St lawyers and those business and sporting figures who have long made up Sydney’s gossiping classes. “It was taken as read: Nifty must be bent, as NSW premiers had been so often and ever would be,” Carlton wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald last weekend. But there was no proof, no evidence, nothing, and, after stepping down while a royal commission investigated the smear, Wran was happily exonerated of any wrongdoing. Carlton, at least, belatedly recanted but is still happy to claim “Sir Robert Askin, who retired in 1975, had been almost brazenly crooked”. Such smears were only published after Askin’s death and thus have never been tested, nor has any proof ever been presented to support the claims, nothing more than the same sort of bar talk used to blacken Wran’s name. Such brave ethical journalism. Another who announced his departure from the political stage with fanfare this week is Senator John Faulkner, who has variously been described as a statesman and a ­reformer. The record shows Faulkner gained a reputation as a bully in estimates hearings and was leader of the pack which viciously hounded former governor-general Peter Hollingworth from office. He was also instrumental in tearing down the Howard government’s successful border protection policy, a coup which led to the deaths of more than 1000 people seeking illegal entry, and the detention of tens of thousands — at a massive cost to Australians. As for reforms, what ­reforms has this ALP “mover and shaker” actually implemented? Gauging by the past six years of Labor chaos and dysfunction, the Senator has been as much a part of the flawed Labor culture as any of the other miscreants. Wran may have had a colourful description for such people but it is unlikely that a family newspaper would have been able to publish his pungent words.