James Campbell: Tick a box, get a grand off your taxable income. Seriously, how good is Australia?
In earlier times no doubt there were pillars of journalistic rectitude who felt the need to point out that encouraging people to lie on their taxes is not something a government ought to do. But that’s a very 20th Century way of looking at things.
James Campbell
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Tick a box, get a grand off your taxable income!
Seriously, how good is Australia?
America’s founding fathers only wanted to end taxation without representation – Albo is promising he’ll end taxation without documentation.
In earlier times no doubt there were pillars of journalistic rectitude who might have felt the need to point out that encouraging people to lie on their taxes, is maybe, you know, not something a government ought to be doing.
But that’s a very 20th Century way of looking at things.
It’s a different world out there in 2025 and from what I can see in the press release, far from regarding it as an imposition, the government seems to almost see it as a saving.
“The time saving alone from reducing the burden of record keeping on millions of taxpayers is estimated to be worth about $200 million,” it explains.
See, it’s really a productivity measure, the cost of which the press release doesn’t mention for some reason, but a colleague tells me is $2.4 billion over the forward estimates.
Compared to that, the $1.4 billion the Coalition reckons it will cost over the same period to allow first home buyers to deduct their mortgage payments is small beer – though one suspects that one has the potential to ramp up quite steeply in the medium term.
In fact it’s barely worth mentioning in a world in which the Coalition is planning on spending $10 billion rebooting the Low and Middle Income Tax Offset – to be renamed the Cost of Living Tax Offset – to give up to $1,200 back to everyone with a taxable income of up to $144,000.
On top of the $6 billion Peter Dutton is spending on cutting fuel excise for a year.
Actually, strictly speaking none of these are spending measures in the same way the NDIS, subsidising aged-care workers, rewiring the nation or Dutton’s dream of a fourth squadron of F35 fighter planes are.
All the government is doing is generously offering to return to us some of the money it had otherwise decided it should be paid.
Even so it would be nice at this stage if both sides could cut to the chase and just give each of us a final figure of how much we will be better off if we vote for them.
No doubt I don’t need to describe them because you will all have been glued to the set, but on Sunday afternoon both leaders strutted their stuff at the respective campaign launches – Dutton in Sydney, Albo in Perth.
But for the tiny minority of my readers who may have missed them through some kind of family emergency I will try and sum them up.
Dutton was up first and he was his usual cheerful self – opening with a reminder it was a year since the Westfield Bondi Junction in which six people were murdered – before moving on to the collapse in living standards, the collapse in domestic manufacturing, the “renewables-only policy train wreck,” the release of more than 300 hardcore criminals from immigration detention into the community, and a passing reference to “sexually assaulted women and children,” which I noted down but for some reason couldn’t find in the official transcript.
He also charged the Prime Minister with allowing crime gangs to run riot in many communities.
In fact there was so much crime it was hard not to wonder if Dutton hadn’t missed his calling as Premier of Queensland.
Not there weren’t upbeat moments, the housing policy for example.
But the overall impression painted of modern Australia was dystopian, a darkness which was made worse because the pictures from the launch’s feed were so poor it was hard not suspect the contract to produce them had been given to someone’s brother-in-law.
After that it was over to Perth and Labor’s altogether brighter and slicker – show.
For those of us who have spent the past three years watching the Prime Minister stumbling from mess to mess, the past two months have been bewildering.
Where we have been wondering has the doofus gone who can’t stick to his talking points and struggles to land a blow?
Where is the bloke who appears to have no great operating knowledge of, or interest in learning about, how large swathes of the federal government operate?
Instead we have been presented with a sharp operator who aside from falling over – OK that wasn’t great – hasn’t really put a foot wrong.
Seriously if he were a racehorse the stewards would already be heading to his stall to make sure he hadn’t given a mixture.
Yesterday he was bright, upbeat, his delivery was sharp, his familiarity with the speech he was delivering was obvious.
Aside from the tick-a-box tax deduction the content was entirely forgettable but he looked and sounded sharp.
In short he gave every impression of a bloke who thinks he’s going to be around after next month.
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Originally published as James Campbell: Tick a box, get a grand off your taxable income. Seriously, how good is Australia?
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