Stark choice for voters in 2030 visions

Australia faces a fundamental choice that will determine the economic, political and taxation fate of the nation.

Bill Shorten and Scott Morrison during the final session of parliament on Thursday ahead of next month’s federal election.

The coming election promises to be more about policy, real differences between the Coalition and Labor, and more meaningful ­choices for voters than any poll in more than a decade.

While every election is important and every election is different, next month’s poll is a defining ­moment for the next decade.

Australia faces a fundamental choice that will determine the economic, political and taxation fate of the nation through to 2030.

The choice is between a big-taxing, big-spending Labor plan directed at the large number of voters who will be beneficiaries of the taxes on business, investors, self-funded retirees and high-income earners, and the Coalition’s adherence to traditional economic management, debt and deficit reduction, encouragement of growth and employment, and a long-term structural flattening of the personal tax system.

The potential change in national economic and taxation policy arising from this election is the greatest since the GST elections of 1993 and 1998 when John Hewson failed and John Howard prevailed.

There are also radical differ­ences in policies on climate change, energy, the minimum wage and healthcare.

The usual refrain of voters having no real choice between matching “Bib and Bub” major party offerings and agendas simply doesn’t apply.

Neither does the idea that every voter faces essentially the same choice when it comes to the impact of tax rises and policy changes.

Bill Shorten makes no apology for crafting $200 billion in tax increases to pay for his tax cuts and Medicare spending because, as with his promise to introduce a “living wage”, he directs the increases towards business, investors, self-funded retirees and higher-income earners, who are numerically swamped by the recipients of his tax cuts for lower and middle-income earners, pensioners, those on unemployment benefits and workers feeling the pinch of low wages growth.

Defending his “passionate commitment” to funding extend­ed Medicare coverage for cancer sufferers, the Opposition Leader says voters can support the Coali­tion, which “is keeping the existing tax system”, or Labor, which favours fewer “tax loopholes for the top end of town”.

Labor plays up the stark choice because it has proposed such potentially damaging policies — prospectively removing negative gearing for all but new houses, removing tax concessions for retirees’ share credits, and committing to a 45 per cent reduction in carbon emissions and a 50 per cent target for electric cars by 2030. It is projecting an image of a government-in-waiting, with stability of personnel and leadership and long-term policy development.

As Shorten accused the Liberals yesterday of offering the “same old” system, his Treasury spokesman, Chris Bowen, embraced the concept of a choice for the ages.

“I do think it’s a very important choice because we’ve outlined the most detailed comprehensive policy offering of any opposition in living memory,” Bowen said (assuming Hewson’s Fightback package is not in living memory).

“You know the Liberal Party agrees on the small target. Now it’s conventional for an opposition to engage in a small-target strategy. It’s a little more unusual for a government to engage in a small-target strategy.”

Scott Morrison’s overall pitch is based on the Coalition’s strength of economic credibility, evidenced by a return to a budget surplus in 2019-20 — $7.1bn — and the first down payment on repaying national debt, a belief in economic growth through stimulus and investment to create another one million jobs, and the refrain that Labor “wants to punish someone to pay someone else”.

Another distinctive factor about next month’s poll is that there are more undecided voters on the eve of an election than ever, alongside the highest level of support for minor parties and independents in history.

During the past decade the number of independents and micro-parties has grown substantially and fractured the vote for the major parties, particularly for the conservative parties in rural and regional areas, making any assumption of an easy victory, even despite favourable polling, difficult and dangerous.

Opposition finance spokesman Jim Chalmers was at pains after this week’s budget to explain that Labor couldn’t be complacent about its prospects based on opinion polls consistently showing the ALP in front for years because “you don’t give the Melbourne Cup to the horse that leads around the final turn”.

From a partisan view, a strong Labor victory would more or less guarantee two terms for Shorten as an entrenched ALP leader; a contrary result that defies the polling trends would give Morrison and the Liberal Party a chance to put the leadership upheavals of the past six years behind them.

The election result cannot be considered a foregone conclusion despite the ALP’s clear long-term lead in Newspoll surveys — a lead that has cost two Liberal prime ministers their jobs and threatens a third.

Yet there is no doubt, even after this week’s budget projected a surplus next year and the elimination of national debt in 10 years, that Labor is hotly favoured to win the election and the Opposition Leader for more than five years is set to become the next prime minister.

Morrison faces the unpleasant prospect of calling an election while the government is behind in the polls. Although Howard was behind the polls 2004 when he called the 2004 election, he didn’t lead a minority government that had lost two Liberal seats to independents and three others in electoral redistributions.

In other words, the Prime Minister must pick a date while faced with the brutal arithmetic of having to win five seats just to hold government. And that’s without any losses — not one — to Labor, the Greens, One Nation, Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party or any independent.

It’s a huge task made even more difficult for a Liberal-National Coalition that has to appeal to inner-city seats by adopting progressive positions against live animal exports, coalmines, carbon emissions reductions, renewable energy and electric cars, while seeking to appease regional electorates where primary concerns revolve around jobs, raising cattle and sheep, water shortages, a desire for new mining developments, and unaffordable power bills.

LNP MPs from Queensland are crying out for the Coalition to seal the deal on the Adani coal development before the election, while Melbourne metropolitan Liberals are threatening a revolt if the deal goes through.

It is not as difficult for Shorten, who is basically prepared to give up on business and the bush, and pick up Liberal seats in Melbourne and its surrounds as well as in inner-city Brisbane. He is confident that Labor could win government with a workable majority despite limited losses.

The Coalition optimistically hopes for gains in Tasmania, NSW, Victoria and Queensland while conceding losses in Victoria and Queensland. Labor expects gains in Victoria — possibly as many as six seats — and Queensland, essentially in Brisbane, and assumes it can hold on in western Sydney, Tasmania and South Australia, with maybe a loss or two in regional Queensland. Its budget and tax cuts are aimed at holding its base, appealing to businesses small and large, and playing to the long-held belief that the public is concerned about debt and deficit.

Labor’s budget in reply was about appealing to its base, giving bigger tax cuts to lower-income earners, making clear the “top end of town” was going to provide the $200bn in new taxes to fund the other tax cuts, and “visionary” $2.3bn cancer care enhancement for Medicare.

But the ALP has not ignored the economic necessity of reducing debt and deficit, and it has gone out of its way to neutralise the Coalition’s “back in black” campaign over the surplus by promising even bigger surpluses “as a buffer” against global uncertainty, and faster debt payments.

The economic and tax offerings are radically different and there are even greater differences in off-budget topics, such as Coalition disunity and Labor’s undefined living wage offering and climate change targets. Taken together, all these things ensure this election will be a huge choice for voters, and set the course of Australia through to 2030.