Political Corrections

with Mungo MacCallum

Media tackles the big issues

There's one thing about Rupert Murdoch: he knows exactly where his priorities lie.

At last, his erratic flagship, The Australian, hooted last week, the Labor Party is starting to talk about the real issues.

Does he mean climate change, with its catastrophic impact becoming clearer as disaster follows disaster on an almost weekly basis? Or the chaos in Iraq, which looks increasingly like a choice between endless civil war and a fundamentalist Islamic state far more hostile to the west than Saddam Hussein ever was? Or the looming confrontation between America and China, with Australia forced to choose between the super powers? Or the black hole of Australia's balance of payments, with the current account deficit now clearly escalating out of control? Or even the collapse of our sporting prowess under the government of John Howard?

Well no, none of the above. For The Australian there is only one real issue: reducing the top marginal tax rate of 47 cents in every dollar earned over $125,000.

Ordinary people might feel that this is a problem that has little relevance to their own lives, but that just shows how narrow and self-centred they are. The 47 cents tax rate is critical to Australia's lack of competitiveness in the modern world, Rupert's (presumably well paid) minion insists - although, puzzlingly, the minion goes on to insist that under the sage and benevolent guidance of Howard and his own minion, Peter Costello, our economy is already the envy of that same modern world. One can only assume that the 47 cents rate is the only thing standing between us and absolute perfection.

Howard himself seems to agree: prompted by tables prepared by Parliament's richest man, Malcolm Turnbull, in what cynics might see as an act of blatant self interest (not to mention self promotion) Howard mused that he had long felt that the 47 cent rate should be lowered. So, unsurprisingly, did the moguls of the Business Council of Australia, the Associated Chambers of Commerce, and, no doubt, most multi-millionaire members of the mythical Croesus Club. If you read nothing except The Australian you could be forgiven for thinking that there was hardly a dissenting voice - well, at most just the one.

The unlikely standout was the afore-mentioned federal treasurer, who snapped rather peevishly that this kind of urging from the penthouses was all very well, but politically it might look rather odd if the debate about tax reform centred purely around the rich, who had already received a ginormous tax cut just two months ago, and could be considered a trifle greedy for lining up with their wheelbarrows for another helping quite so soon. This perception of unbridled avarice could be heightened by the uncomfortable fact that only three percent of taxpayers actually paid the 47 cents rate on any part of their income, and even then it was only on the bit over $125,000.

While he himself was the last person to succumb to the politics of envy, as the old fashioned demand for a fair go had been quaintly rechristened by the Howard Government, there was just a faint chance that not all of the other 97 per cent of taxpayers were quite so farsighted, and under the current system of government they still had votes - unfortunate, but there it was.

Unless and until Howard was able to use his Senate majority to restrict the franchise to those whose incomes exceeded those of small Pacific island nations, it would be prudent to make tax reform somewhat more inclusive. This, of course, would involve considerable expense, and this might be a good time to remind the prime minister that he had pissed most of the money which would be available for the foreseeable future up against the electoral wall last year in his huge (and, admittedly successful) vote buying spree.

So, he was always open to suggestions about lowering the top or indeed any other tax rate, but in the meantime he was taking a plane load of media cheerleaders on a swift tour of Indonesia, so toodle-oo. And the real issue, of course, was a smooth leadership transition, and when do we want it? Now.

There have been many grossly offensive lines uttered by politicians while drunk, over-excited or merely exasperated: one of my favourites came from Peter Howson after he was appointed by Billy McMahon as Minister for Aborigines, Environment and the Arts - certainly a pretty strange grab bag. Asked by a colleague what he had been given, Howson snarled: "Boongs, trees, and poofters."

John Brogden's mail-order bride sneer, while grossly offensive, is hardly on the same scale. It was the stupidity of making it in a group of journalists, and then having his office deny it, that really made him unfit for office. Once again, refer to Stubbs Three Rules of Politics: (1) Sooner or later everyone stuffs up. (2) Any attempt to justify or cover up the stuff up is invariably worse than the stuff up itself. (3) Everyone forgets rule (2).

So Bronwyn Bishop wants to ban Moslem schoolgirls from wearing headscarves. So who cares? It is a very long time since anything the mad blonde did was news, and even then the judgement was dubious.

These days Bishop is not so much a has-been as a never-really-was. Rather than publicise her ravings the media should indeed concentrate on the real issues. But then again, maybe they think they are. Help.