Hey, Those Are OUR Tax Cuts

Peter Costello is more than a little peeved that Labor has released a tax plan very like the Coalition's. Less than five days after his own moment of tax plan glory, Pete is reduced to whining that Labor had copied "91.5%" of his homework, and throwing in a little union-baiting for good measure. Leaving the unions aside (please?), the man has a point. Basically, Labor's plan is Taxcutpalooza Lite: identical to the Costello plan at the lower end of the tax spectrum, but deferring the cuts for people on $180,000+ in favour of targeted tax rebates for lower income families to spend on educational goods like broadband and textbooks.

It's a clever idea. The ALP is not going to win the battle of who can tax less, even if it did, in fact, promise to tax less, because everyone knows that Labor are the deficit-loving Keynesian tax-and-spenders and the Libs are the laissez-faire Friedmanites. More to the point, it's not a battle Labor should be trying to win. Australians are not allergic to tax-and-spend Big Gummint as a concept, and although everyone does like it when they themselves get a tax cut, recent opinion polls seem to indicate that most people would prefer more spending on services, even though axiomatically that means taxing people more. When it comes to taxation versus spending, people want to have their cake and eat it.

Which is where Labor's plan hits the spot: by saying they're going to defer cutting taxes for the rich - including, as Kevin Rudd pointed out, Rudd himself - and use the money saved to help the poor, Labor is rekindling the sparks of good old-fashioned class warfare - just a little, you understand, nothing to rock the boat, and by the way Julia Gillard is not a communist. Also, directing the money at education is inspired, a soft, cuddly and eminently Labor-voter-friendly twist on the tax-the-rich theme. All this, and tax cuts for us ordinary folk! No wonder it took them four days to release it.

Hopefully, Labor have me-tooed their way out of a depressingly tax-focused campaign and can now go on with things like signing Kyoto and beating up the Coalition over WorkChoices.

Costello Cuts to the Chase

Peter Costello is never so happy as when he's announcing tax cuts, and here he is again, encouraging the very rich to keep working and buying stuff and hopefully voting Liberal while they're at it. Well, to be fair, there are tax cuts for lower-income earners too. It's a taxcutpalooza.

I don't mean to spoil everyone's fun, but... isn't it a little early for this? The election was announced a mere 24 hours ago, and we're already on tax cuts? I'm not saying I don't want my extra $67 a week - heaven knows I like my weekly manicure-pedicures as much as the next battler - but it's just that there used to be some kind of decorum with these things. The way they're beginning their campaign with tax cuts, it's almost as if Howard/Costello & Co thinks the Australian electorate can be... bought off.

Meanwhile, the resources boom isn't going to last forever, and some of us, over on the communist union-boss side of politics, have an uneasy feeling that there are better things to do with $34 billion than buying more plasma screens. Funding universities, say, or investing in clean energy technology, or even, God forbid, increasing our non-tsunami-related foreign aid budget just a little. But we - at least, our elected representatives - are not going to say it out loud. We have an election to win. Right? Right.

UPDATE, October 16: Over at Crikey, Peter Brent has his own theory about why tax cuts so soon, and predicts a "controversial announcement" the first week in November. Can't hardly wait for that one.