John Howard needs to make Kim Beazley explain himself, and fast. How about this? Yesterday, he said: “We always like to give tax relief when we can. We are a low tax party. The Labor Party is a big spend, big tax party”.

 

In normal circumstances, Howard would save tax cut promises for the election campaign. But we’re in one now – Howard is throwing out policy change at a great rate and all parties are campaigning furiously in Ryan. Howard can’t save up goodies because he must stabilise his plummeting support base now, then start to build.

 

Say he announced tax cuts in the May budget, and introduced legislation soon after. What would Labor do? Beazley is contradictory on tax. He says in one breathe that tax cuts are not on his agenda because government cash is necessary to invest in health and education. Better to bring back equity in these vital areas than cut tax and expect people to pay their health and education expenses on credit card, he says.

 

Yet in another breath he says Labor would prefer tax cuts through a GST rollback. Labor sources told the Herald yesterday that the Party would be forced to back any personal income tax cuts in the budget. Just like they got hoist on their own self-serving populism on petrol, and were forced to agree to an end to petrol excise indexation. That’s politics.

 

But what say they got brave and said no? Howard is busily wrecking any budget surplus, both to stay in power and to stymie spending initiatives by an incoming Labor government. There’s no point having big plans to invest in the knowledge nation and restore social equity if there’s no money to do it. So Howard gets his ideological way even if he loses.

 

Early last year, when John Anderson was acting Prime Minister, he said he believed tax cuts were no longer attractive to Australian voters, because they realised it was just some money in one pocket and more out the other to make up for reduced government services. Is he right?

 

It’s a brave politician who’d test the theory. A Howard tax cut would be the perfect opportunity for Beazley to finally articulate a new vision on the role of government, and to strongly differentiate himself from the Coalition, whose vision is being rejected by an increasingly large number of Australians.

 

Would Beazley have the guts to do it? Could we see early in this year-long campaign some genuine philosophical debate in mainstream politics? Don’t hold your breath.

 

To Ryan, and my prediction of a Liberal win (Webdiary Friday) is looking shakey. That’s the nice way of putting it, after the incredible 16 percent swing to Labor predicted by the latest Newspoll. I’m losing confidence in my instincts as a Queenslander – my only comfort is that if Labor does win it would be the first political contest this year in which the result was not a surprise. WA was supposed to stay conservative. Queensland was supposed to sneak in a win for Beattie, not a landslide.

 

Howard today is doing the heartfelt appeal thing, saying he knows Liberal voters want to send him a message, but can’t they see he’s already got it? Why don’t they send a message to Kim Beazley instead, that they expect him to announce his vision and policy platform to win it, not rely solely on negativism. It’s a unique pitch.

 

JOHN CROCKETT says I’m wrong on Ryan. “Since the Olympics there has been a shift in attitude towards the Conservatives.The Olympics demonstrated potential, a sense of what could be, another way of seeing ourselves and as one of your correspondents has said, this government lacks imagination. The Coalition, and for that matter Labor, have lost the capacity to address in any creative fashion who we are and how to engage with the global economy. Neo-liberalism cannot address these issues — the concept of a social compact falls outside the parameters of this rather crude ideology. The Coalition will lose government. The conservatives can take confidence in the fact that I am invariably wrong.”

 

TIM DUNLOP thinks I could be right. “Howard has done virtually everything voters are supposedly asking him to do. However – and this is a cruel and unusual punishment for any political leader – it might turn out to be that they dump him for that very reason. As you’ve pointed out, he’s backflipped from here to Kingdom Come on every major policy issue, trying to give people what they want, but now that they have it, they might judge him as merely opportunistic, weak and not to be trusted. The backflips risk him looking to be merely finding the most expedient way to save his own skin, not to be responding to community concerns. If they think this, he’s gone. I reckon they might give him the benefit of the doubt (they are, after all, from Ryan!). Then they’ll judge his sincerity from now until the federal election. If there are more backflips and if it becomes increasingly obvious that he’s only out to save his own skin (and he said on radio this morning something about being more determined than ever in his life to win the next election) THEN they might dump him and his party. What odds on winning Ryan now and losing it at the Federal election?”

 

We’re starting to plan our Election 2001 site, and a big theme will be interactivity. We’ll have a marginal seats section where we’ll put your reports and add your updates as they come in. So far, we’ve had reports on Bennelong, Mayo and Paramatta, with a promise of a report soon on the ultra-marginal northern NSW seat of Richmond, held by National Party minister Larry Anthony. I’d like many more, so if you live in a seat of interest, please consider getting involved.

 

I’d love to get volunteers for regular reports on political advertising, polling, and the issues that matter, including health, education and environment policy, so anyone with expertise in these areas who’d like to report for us, let me know.

 

What would YOU like to see on our Ballot 2001 site? All ideas gratefully received. I’d like to make our site the people’s site.

 

I lost most of your emails yesterday, again, so if you wrote anything you want to see in print, please resend. My apologies. My computer is now working, so I hope that’s the last glitch for a while.

 

Today, my favourite correspondent Don Arthur spoofs a typically crass column in the Herald by Imre Salusinszky on Monday, headlined “Your Guide to the Perfect Australian Idiot”. Ain’t it great how the hard-line rightwingers are getting increasingly hysterical as their certainties fade away? In his quotes from idiots, he includes this from me: “To me, the Liberal mantra of equality of opportunity necessitates redistribution of income because it’s only when a society can guarantee that that individual freedoms mean anything”. Merrill Pye is depressed and frustrated by the petrol excise freeze and the new homebuyers subsidy.

 

DON ARTHUR

 

Once again the mighty Imre Salusinszky comes to life — standing tall and straight against the idiocy of the Australian left. Imre’s been reading a Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot — an often humorous look at the intellectual failings of Latin American populist-nationalists. It’s inspired him to tap out another devastating critique of our own flaccid, left slouching intelligentsia.

 

Imre fingers a number of local idiots including Margo Kingston, Hugh Mackay, Natasha Stott Despoja and whoever that idiot is who writes policy statements for the Australian Democrats. Imre lists five beliefs that are central the mindset of Australian Idiots:

 

1. “The market is a mechanism for grinding human dreams to dust.” I hadn’t realised this but it’s well known that the Australian Democrats plan to abolish capitalism. Hugh Mackay and Margo are, of course, fellow travellers with ‘Red Meg’ Lees and ‘Nationalising Nat’ Stott Despoja. If this lot have their way the government will nationalise Woolies and we’ll be forced to buy whatever our collectivised agricultural system feels like producing today. Look forward to bran for breakfast.

 

2. “Tariffs advance the interests of Australian producers against those of their foreign counterparts.” It’s not immediately obvious but Dick Smith, Pauline Hanson and Bob Katter are left wing intellectuals just like ‘Red Meg’ and Margo.

 

3. “Local content laws save our culture from being overrun by el gran Satàn”. Racism against our fine American friends leads to idiocy like Water Rats, Play School and that new Paul Kelly thing on the commie channel. What’s wrong with Sesame Street and re-runs of that show about the Civil War? Anyway, if kids learn to speak with a proper accent they won’t have to take expensive pronunciation lessons when they go to Hollywood. Russell and Mel must have spent a packet – it’s so unnecessary.

 

4. “The role of government is to abolish the gap between the rich and the poor.” Imre sorts out that pathetic bolshevik Hugh Mackay for suggesting that governments ought to spread wealth around a little bit. This kind of interference in the natural order seems to be a favourite with banana republicans. I looked up redistribution in my copy of Hayek for Dummies and it said that even a little can lead to war, famine and pestilence so I guess Imre must be right. It’s just a matter of time before it reduces the whole of western Europe to third world status.

 

5. “Things were better 20 years ago, before free-market economics.” It’s all Phillip Adams ever talks about isn’t it – how good things were back in the 70s. Imre says lefties grandstand on “traditional values” and oppose population growth. By doing this he cleverly unmasks the left’s pretensions to progress – they’re more reactionary than Bruce Ruxton! I’m looking forward to Margo’s column on the importance of returning to family values.

 

It’s a good thing Imre’s warned us about this. A lot of this nonsense is propagated by the ABC so it’s probably best to stay away from the Idiot Channel for now — at least until Jonathan Shier fixes things up. For Late Night Live listeners, however, there’s some good news. Due to popular demand Phillip has agreed to join the Liberal Party and become ‘The Right-Wing Phillip Adams’. He said so himself. (MARGO: He said so in his Saturday column in the Australian newspaper.)

 

MERRILL PYE

 

Do we have anyone who cares for the future in any position of power, or is it only the ruthless, grasping & generally thoughtless who bother to obtain or can plot to get it?

 

On March 5th’s Webdiary you said John Howard said “…It is the people’s money, and they want it used in an intelligent fashion, particularly when we’ve retired so much debt already.” Whether justifying a previous denial of basic supports to a decent human society by producing a surplus was “wrong”, or not, this petrol excise cut is NOT using it in “an intelligent fashion”!

 

Jerry Schneider, professor emeritus of civil engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle: “It makes me very sad to see large sums of money being spent on … dumb things instead of technologies … that hold some potential for dealing with the truly horrendous congestion, carnage and pollution that we are experiencing in all of our large and medium cities.”

 

The same goes for the ruddy pathetic, disgustingly short-sighted policies our government has recently been following.

 

I have similar feelings in relation to the new home payment. What about the idea of only getting the allowance IF assorted sustainability/low energy/recyclability/use of recycled material/water saving/&c, &c, technology was used? And a higher allowance for more such features! These are things already available, just awaiting some large-scale use. Quite a few are Australian products.

 

I was bitterly confirmed in my contempt for the cupidity &/or stupidity of various groups by the lost opportunities in a number of large-scale developments in the last 5 years or so. Ignorance is curable & can be forgivable; stubborn unwillingness to improve or learn is less so, particularly when the results are so damaging.