One against six in Labor’s battle for reform

Dr. Labor must once again contend with a powerful alliance of political, corporate and media forces as it prepares major housing and tax reforms, writes Victoria Fielding.

Although DETAILS are not yet known, Treasurer Jim Chalmers He has made clear that he has ambitious reforms related to housing to be announced in this week’s Budget, including negative gearing changes to capital gains and tax concession trusts.

As the details of these reforms are revealed, it is time to consider how difficult it will be for Labor governments to implement much-needed reforms such as these plans, which essentially address wealth inequality.

The unequal status quo has a huge advantage in Australia because Labor always faces a six-sided challenge whenever governments propose ambitious progressive reforms. Whether it’s redistributive tax changes, climate action, workers’ rights and wages, or any major investment in health, education or infrastructure, Labor is not playing on a level playing field, instead having to fight it alone against six rivals.

The first of the six players that Labor is fighting against is the political opposition. Where this was traditionally Liberals and Nationals, we now have Liberals, Nationals and One Nation. With these three parties locked in a fight over which can be the most aggressive far-right MAGA, bipartisanship has no chance of solving the housing affordability crisis. Instead, as usual, Labour’s political opposition will launch a massive fear campaign based on lies to defend the interests of those who benefit from wealth inequality, because that’s what they exist to do.

Apart from its political arm, the second player against Labor is the corporate sector and its billionaires, who benefit from inequality and are very much like an unfair and unequal taxation system.

Of course, this industry never accepts: “I don’t like paying taxes and contributing my share to the society that I enrich myself with.” That would be too honest. Instead, they will restart their rinse-and-repeat scare campaign in alliance with the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation to claim Labor’s tax changes will damage the Australian economy and cost jobs; However, we all know that this is nonsense that concerns our own interests.

The third player is conservative media outlets such as News Corp, who will campaign against Labour’s reforms because, like the other two players, that is what they exist to do. They will pretend to be journalists when they are really engaged in a political war against progressive policies.

There is no weight in the Australian media to balance this conservative media power. Even where there are exits on the left, they are never on the Labor Party side. This means the Labor Government will be vilified, attacked and lied about and the media can ignore them, with no one in the media to defend them except themselves.

If these three players are not strong enough, Labor will also have to contend with a fourth player: the rest of the mainstream media. While the non-partisan media do not campaign for corporate interests, they are too weak and too afraid of conservative politics and the media to adequately publicize the campaign and clamor against Labor’s reforms.

Instead they will weakly quote “both sides” as Labor tries to sell the benefits of its reforms and the Liberals/Nationals/One Nation completely misrepresent them. They won’t say the scare campaign is a lie because that would sound like they’re siding with Labour. What they don’t seem to realize is that they are siding with Labour’s rivals by allowing false fear campaigns.

The fifth player is linked to all of the above, but I’ve given it its own scope because it represents a major obstacle to Labour’s reforms: scare campaigns of lies and disinformation used across mainstream and social media. This player is used like a weapon by the other four players. The public will be told that the tax changes will ruin their lives in countless ways, that they are completely unfounded, patently wrong, and ridiculously absurd.

Labor knows this storm of manipulation and lies is coming – Chalmers that’s all he said – and there’s nothing they can do about it. Those who spread lies and disinformation are too powerful and well-resourced to oppose; So Labor needs to accept that the storm is coming and keep fighting no matter what.

The sixth player is a player who should know better; that is, progressives angry at Labor. Whether he’s a supporter of the Greens, the Blues, or just hates politicians in general, this player spends all his time complaining that Labour’s reforms aren’t good enough, they don’t go far enough, they’re not radical enough, and so they can’t support them.

Instead of giving Labor credit, accepting the challenge of beating the other five players, and pragmatically supporting them even if their plans are not as radical as they would like, anti-Labour progressives become just another player for Labor to despise in its quest for a solution to wealth inequality.

So Labor is permanently stuck between a right-wing campaign that calls its plans too radical and disruptive to the economy, and a left-wing complaint that it is not radical enough.

In this stuck situation, Labor must not only deliver nation-changing reforms, but also seek to retain government while doing so, because otherwise the reforms will not only be impossible, but will be canceled and rolled back.

The result of Labour’s head-to-head struggle against the remaining six was to make reform much more difficult than it needed to be.

Chalmers acknowledged this when did he say Regarding the predictable fear campaigns against tax reforms:

“Tax reform is really hard in this country, and there’s a reason for that… There’s very little incentive in our politics for big, hard reforms like the ones we envision, and we recognize that, of course.”

The six-man team against Labour’s team is a major deterrent to progressive reform. Labor is still looking at the six-headed monster because it’s the right thing to do. We must at least acknowledge the difficulties he faced in doing so, and how remarkable it was when he fought the hard fight and won.