It's Not the Promise That's Broken

So let’s watch. Let’s see what happens.

There’s a boldness in what the Albanese government has decided to do with the Stage 3 Tax Cuts.

And the problem lies in the fact that I can say that: that there is anything ‘bold’ in walking back from unsuitable policy to propose an alternative that better suits the economic times and makes a better stab at fairness.

For ‘bold’ substitute ‘obvious’. Maybe ‘necessary’.

It’s a John Maynard Keynes moment. As he so famously said: ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’ (In fact Keynes may never have said that, but that would be letting the facts get in the way of the apocrypha.)

The case against keeping the cuts in their legislated form has been well made, time and again by many and various—notably by the Australia Institute here—and is so well-rehearsed it hardly bears repeating. Suffice to say that logic, common sense, economic prudence and even the most grudging notion of social equity demands change to the existing tax cut proposal.

We do not live in the world that was at the time these cuts were voted on. (The lesson there is to wonder why Labor was so craven, so desperate to present a target so small that it was basically prostrate, that it would vote for the package in the first place. However.)

Change had to come, anything else would have been emptily pig headed. Where this becomes interesting is in what happens next. It’s a moment ... can a government prosecute the case for necessary change even if it involves a departure from a previously promised position?

This cuts to the core of modern political and media practice. Conservatives and conservative media will run hard here, bit in the teeth, not on the detail of what is being offered and its impact, but on the single and purely political point of the change of mind. ‘The election was won on a lie,’ says Sussan Ley.

If the breach of faith is the winning point, if Labor does in fact get rolled on the basis of a political and media campaign dwelling on an allegation of deceit and mistrust, then we have removed from the armoury of government the possibility of adjusting the settings of promised policy to suit the realities of the moment.

Think about the implications of that. There’s an onus on media here to yes, acknowledge that a change has been made and consider its political impact, but also to contextualise that change and assess whether the new position is a thing that will bring broad social and economic benefit.

You just know that sections of the media, and certainly the Opposition, will stick resolutely to script and attack the Government for the audacity of its broken promise.

But if we have a politics that places promises above reality, that prevents coherent responses to changing circumstance for fear of purely political prosecution, then we’re in a pretty serious pickle. Ours would be a broken and unresponsive system divorced from reality and operating on the pure and intoxicating fumes of horse race politics.

We deserve, and need, much better than that. This is a test of whether our system works for the common good or some preconceived notion of the political rules.

Let’s watch.