Labor’s word is shown to be utterly worthless

If Labor is rewarded for breaking its word on the stage three tax cuts, the lesson for future generations of politicians will be that lying works.

There are two aspects to Labor’s broken promise on stage three taxes: the question of integrity; and the economic value, or otherwise, associated with the backflip.

Even if there is merit attached to breaking the promise, which I’ll test later, doing so locks this government in as deeply untrustworthy, now and forever more. It should erode their ability to be believed during any other political debate, sapping the credibility of future promises.

Political integrity either matters or it doesn’t. Yet Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers may well be rewarded for their deception. They are banking on the public taking a cynical view about truth in politics such that they let this egregious example of deceit pass. If that happens, it will further embed politicians breaking promises, eroding trust in the political class.

The stage three tax cuts were legislated, with Labor’s support, with a pledge they wouldn’t be altered. They were locked in at the election, with a promise they wouldn’t be repealed. That commitment was solidified post-election with assurances time and time again that nothing would change: the tax cuts would take effect as ­legislated.

Their word is their bond and it’s now utterly worthless.

The temptation is to label the PM and Treasurer liars, pejorative terminology to be sure. But what phraseology better encapsulates what they have done?

The cabinet and Labor caucus shouldn’t be let off the hook for this deceitful act either, even if reservations were expressed before the public show of unanimous solidarity. No one resigned on principle, arguing that integrity in politics matters.

All Labor MPs deserve the wrath that should now follow electorally but probably won’t.

The Treasurer claimed this is a politically difficult decision. Yet it’s one made in the hope of appealing to the winners from the broken promise. A politically difficult decision would have been to take the backflip to an election, like John Howard did at the 1998 election campaigning for a GST.

How voters respond to this broken election promise will say a lot about the level of abuse we are willing to cop from politicians. About how far our political culture may have sunk.

The Treasurer and PM claim they decided to break the election commitment only at the beginning of the summer, which is bad enough because the denials continued to come thick and fast after then. Given we now know they deceive for a living, can you even trust their claims around timing?

Julia Gillard could at least claim she had to break her “no carbon tax under a government I lead” pledge because it was required to forge the alliance with the Greens to form minority government in 2010. And her policy transitioned to an ETS. Albanese and Chalmers have no such excuse.

They are trying to falsely manufacture circumstances that required the breaking of the promise, but that too is just another act of deception. In his National Press Club address, the PM spun that circumstances have changed since the stage three tax cuts were first thought up. But what he claims has changed happened well before he ever committed to retaining the tax cuts, over and over again. As George Constanza says, it’s not a lie if you believe it.

The pandemic, the war in Ukraine, cost-of-living challenges and rising inflation and interest rates were all known knowns when Labor pledged not to adjust stage three tax cuts. In fact, Chalmers has repeatedly claimed inflationary challenges were well known during the last election campaign in a bid to obfuscate his responsibility as today’s incumbent. He can’t have it both ways.

Trust in politicians has always been low, but it will now sink even further. Labor is banking on the notion that if the public has low expectations of the political class it won’t have a visceral reaction to yet more evidence they lie for a living.

The government now deserves to lose the next election, to save integrity in politics, as painful as re-electing the Coalition so soon after it was turfed out of office might be. I slammed the loss of integrity in politics on Scott Morrison’s watch and I deplore what Labor is doing now. What will the teals do, having campaigned for change using “integrity” as their catchcry?

If you can’t honour commitments, don’t make them in the first place. If you want to break them, take the change to an election. Labor had every right to change their mind if they followed that simple script.

Maybe Albanese and Chalmers never really believed integrity in politics mattered. Maybe campaigning on bringing it back was a con job from the start.

If Labor gets rewarded for this broken promise, the lesson for future generations of politicians will be that lying works. Say whatever you think helps win votes before doing whatever you want afterwards, relying on voters having the memory of goldfish.

The deception and the untrustworthiness of what Albanese and Chalmers have done is the worst aspect of this broken promise, but the claimed economic merit of it is also questionable. Do not discount the negative policy con­sequences of what they are doing.

Bracket creep is a scourge on productivity. Support for aspiration within our taxation mix is teetering. Millions of Australians have moved into higher tax brackets, resulting in higher levels of taxation, and millions more will do so in the years ahead under Labor’s redesign. The government wants wages growth to match inflation. If that happens, especially in these high inflationary times, many taxpayers they currently claim will be better off under their redesign will soon be worse off. Will broken stage three promises then come back as stage four reforms to address that?

When Labor MPs spruik the broken promise as necessary, think about the hypocrisy of their condemnation of the RBA’s Philip Lowe when he put interest rates up after predicting they probably wouldn’t need to move until 2025. He’s not even a politician, and that wasn’t even a promise, much less one taken to an election. Yet Labor MPs, the Greens and the unions all called for Lowe to be sacked, and the Treasurer didn’t renew his contract. The hypocrisy is staggering.

But voters will get their chance to deliver a verdict on politicians lying and deceiving come the next election. Labor is hoping self-interest can buy enough of them off with this redesign. They hope others will forget or be cynical enough to assume broken promises of this magnitude are business as usual. That’s the government’s strategy in all its debasing and unedifying glory.

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.