Labor still clutching at the straws of excuses for lost election

Deputy Opposition Leader Richard Marles concedes that Labor is grieving after its electoral loss. If so, the party’s Treasury spokesman, Jim Chalmers, is stranded in the denial phase of that grieving.

Last week he explained Labor’s loss: “Obviously, we couldn’t build a big enough constituency for our tax proposals. Their complexity left us vulnerable to under-the-radar lies and scares which couldn’t be countered effectively or in time.” So the complexity of the tax package and voters’ inability to take it all in as well as being hoodwinked by “lies and scares” did Labor in.

If he believes that, he may also believe Pol Pot was a good bloke and that the 1969 moon landing was a hoax.

Mind you, it’s quite extraordinary that Chalmers has secured this senior position given his joint responsibility for Labor’s complex tax proposals. That’s what factional deal-making serves up.

Most missed the joint presentation by Chalmers and the then Labor treasury spokesman, Chris Bowen, outlining with calm confidence — nay, boastful bravura — their party’s election costings. Their slick PowerPoint presentation was like watching a deeply unconvincing TED talk. It’s hard to see how the independent costings panel, made up of three ageing lefties, assisted the process.

But I’m here to lend Jim a helping hand. Here are the announcements he needs to make straightaway about what voters can expect under a future Labor government:

• Cash refunds for franking credits will be retained.

• Negative gearing arrangements will be unchanged.

• Ditto the capital gains tax rate.

• Discretionary trusts will continue to be taxed as they are.

• There will be no change to the taxation of superannuation.

• And there will be no increase, temporary or otherwise, in the top marginal income tax rate.

It’s quite a long list.

And, yes, the additional revenue that was assumed (based on the ludicrous assumption that no one was going to change their patterns of behaviour) will no longer be available for Labor to spend on the free stuff that was meant to reel in the voters.

But that should be OK because Jim will also need to ditch all that misleading crusading about reversing the Coalition’s “cuts to health and education”. He knew they weren’t cuts.

And, by the way, according to the government’s own figures, government spending will hover between 24.5 and 24.6 per cent of GDP — historically high proportions — over the next four years

There is always the option for Jim to take a modest tax package to the next election. Examples include setting a limit to cash refunds for franking credits; restricting negative gearing to two properties; and marginally reducing the capital gains tax discount.

The trouble with this approach is that even mentioning these parts of the tax code has a bad political odour. Who knows whether voters would go for more limited modifications rather than the previous full-blown versions?

The upside would be some differentiation from the government.

Jim will also have to have a chat with his comrade Mark Butler, who astonishingly has retained his role as opposition spokesman for climate change and energy — more factional argy-bargy.

Butler needs to announce that Labor will abandon its ludicrous emissions reduction target of 45 per cent by 2030.

Just think about it: when the next election comes around, Butler could be arguing for a 45 per cent target compared with the government’s target of 26 to 28 per cent (inclusive of the Kyoto carry-over), the former to be achieved in eight years. The costs would be astronomical.

The alternative for Labor is to hitch its wagon to the commitment Australia has made to the Paris climate agreement — the government’s target — and to maintain that deeper emissions cuts will be pursued if new technologies emerge and the costs are manageable.

Denigrating coalmining and the workers must also be dropped.

And no more reference to a 50 per cent target for electric vehicle sales by 2030 and charge times of less than 10 minutes. If the aim was to scare the pants off voters during the campaign, it was an effective tactic.

Who knows what the composition of car sales will be in more than a decade? But the distinct impression voters had was that Labor would seek to enforce this target when most voters are perfectly happy driving what they already own.

Jim will also need to talk seriously with the new opposition spokesman for industrial relations, Tony Burke, because the industrial relations proposals Labor took to the election were retrograde, impenetrable and unappealing. Labor should acknowledge unions, accounting for less than 10 per cent of the private sector workforce, don’t pack the punch they once did.

Making it easier to strike, allowing multi-employer bargaining, insisting on a higher living wage, restoring penalty rates, ditching the Australian Building and Construction Commission, using taxpayers to top up the pay of childcare workers — most of this failed to resonate with voters. The agenda terrified the small business community.

At a broader level, Jim has much to do to win back the hearts and minds of small businesses that, in aggregate, employ most workers. Many Labor proposals were an attack on the way small businesses operate — think franking credits, the taxation of trusts — while the industrial relations changes would have markedly increased their costs.

Small business owners don’t see themselves as part of the top end of town — one of Jim’s favourite expressions. Rather, they are typically just trying to get ahead while providing for their family. They take risks workers don’t and there needs to be acknowledgment of this.

Now you might think that my helpful advice involves a complete repudiation of the big-taxing, big-spending pitch Labor took to the electorate. You wouldn’t be wrong.

But to return to the centre, Labor must convince voters that it isn’t just about redistributing wealth; it also must understand that wealth creators deserve an even break. Aspiration and conservative family values are concepts that have been removed from Labor’s playbook — they must be reinserted, with consistent ­policies.

There is Buckley’s chance that Jim will be following my advice. But I’m happy to give it.

In the meantime, Labor needs to do the sensible thing and allow all stages of the government’s income tax package through the Senate.