The final week’s scare campaigns

Hate media

“Forget about what you’ve been told by the ABC, the Guardian and other hate media. By election night, 6pm, we will have won this election.”

Some may see it as Dutton’s rally to the troops, a natural reaction to poor standing in the polls.

But why “hate media”?

Writing in The Conversation Denis Muller of the University of Melbourne explains that Dutton’s Trumpian “hate media” message rings alarm bells for democracy:

The inescapable conclusion is that Dutton equates scrutiny of him by journalists with hate speech. … It is designed to play not just on people’s longstanding distrust of the news media in general – though not of the ABC – but on some voters’ sense of grievance at the way governments have treated them.

Although Dutton specifically named the ABC and The Guardian, he refers also to “other” hate media. That could be everything that isn’t in the Murdoch stable.

The ABC has to treat this attack as just another news item, but The Guardian has a strong article, written by Ben Smee and Sarah Basford Canales, drawing attention to sinister intentions Dutton has for public broadcasting and independent media.

In fact the ABC has been indulgent to Dutton. For the last two years prominent ABC journalists have been talking about a “cost of living crisis”, implying that everyone is doing it hard, and that their hardship started on election day 2022. It was ready-made for Dutton to add one word and call it “Labor’s cost-of-living crisis”.

Some ABC journalists have generally let Dutton and his frontbench get away unchallenged with outrageously misleading statements about fiscal figures, immigration numbers, electricity prices and food prices. Some of these figures are plucked out of context, while others are plain lies.

The same journalists have treated the Coalition’s nuclear energy plan as if it is subject to only a little dispute at the margin, rather than a ridiculously expensive idea without any economic merit, and have let Dutton and O’Brien go unchallenged when they have deliberately misled audiences by confusing energy bills and energy prices.

Also on energy some ABC journalists have consistently hounded Labor politicians on the $275 power bill promise, a promise made in good faith on the basis of assessments by experts who didn’t have the foresight to predict that Russia was about to invade Ukraine. Yet they have hardly mentioned the Coalition’s deception of deliberately suppressing updated expert advice until after the election.

Throughout the campaign the ABC seems to have interpreted “objectivity and impartiality” as a requirement to give equal treatment for the two old parties. If anyone has reason to complain about the ABC it’s the independents and the Greens who probably didn’t get a third of airtime. And rather than calling independent experts to comment on parties’ policies, the ABC has given far too much time for Coalition and Labor politicians to read off their speaking notes.

When a serious contender for high office refers to the ABC and to a well-regarded paper as “hate media” we should be worried. We know what previous Coalition governments have done to appropriations for our public broadcaster. We know that the Liberal Party Federal Council has voted overwhelmingly to privatize the ABC. And we know what has happened to independent media in countries like Hungary and Russia.

Negative gearing

This is a strange one. The Coalition is trying to convince voters that a re-elected Labor government will make changes to negative gearing and possibly to capital gains tax. When challenged Albanese is a little vague in that he avoids answering a question about whether he would rule it in or out – the over-used journalists’ gotcha trap.

It’s possible that the Coalition is referring to the Greens’ policy of grandfathering negative gearing and the 50 percent capital gains tax discount – a policy that makes sound economic sense in terms of taxation theory. If after the election Labor is a few seats short of a majority, and the Greens have the numbers to close the gap, it is plausible that the Greens could make assurances on supply and confidence dependent on changing these concessions.

But does the Coalition’s raising the issue qualify as a scare campaign, or might it actually be helping Labor and the Greens?

Only around 20 percent of taxpayers own at least one “investment” property, and only about 6 percent own two or more. (The Greens would allow those with one property to keep their concessions.)

In May last year Essential put to respondents statements about measures to reduce wealth inequality:

“Cap the number of residential properties on which someone can claim negative gearing tax concessions.” Responses were 59 percent support, 15 percent oppose.

“Cap the number of residential properties someone can own.” Responses were 50 percent support, 22 percent oppose.

Because it was in the specific context of reducing wealth inequality this support for reform may be higher than if the question were framed in a more neutral way. In October last year the polling firm Freshwater asked people specifically about maintaining or abolishing negative gearing. By a small majority 44 percent supported its retention, while 39 percent were opposed. Young people and renters in particular were opposed to maintaining negative gearing.

There is a strong belief however, reported in the Freshwater poll, that scrapping negative gearing would lead to higher rents.

The logic behind this belief is based on the assumption that owners would increase rents to compensate for the withdrawal of negative gearing, and that because many owners would be selling their properties in response to the concession being withdrawn, the supply of rental housing would fall. Maybe, but if “investors” sell, the supply of housing for others would rise, having a price effect. Also not all “investors” are negatively geared, and fewer will be as interest rates fall.

A more recent poll conducted for the ABC put to respondents a number of statements about ways to address housing affordability. It put forward two changes to present tax breaks:

“Limit negative gearing” – 47 percent support, 27 percent oppose.

“Halve the CGT discount” – 57 percent support, 22 percent oppose.

From these surveys it’s hard to be conclusive about how people would react at the ballot box if they thought these concessions were to be dropped. But it appears that in assuming the idea of withdrawing these housing concessions would be bad for Labor’s prospects Dutton has been talking to his party’s base, which includes owners of multiple properties who have never had any idea of voting Labor or Green.

The Conversation has an article on negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions on “investment” housing – Housing affordability is at the centre of this election, yet two major reforms seem all but off-limits – with contributions from four housing and finance experts. Their well-researched explanations are detailed, but their general message is that these concessions impose a huge cost to our public finances and that nearly all the benefits are enjoyed by a small number of people who hold multiple properties.

So why is Labor so determined to retain these concessions?

There are three possible reasons Labor has been nervous about abolishing negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions. The first is that they have over-interpreted the causes of their 2019 election loss: subsequent research suggests that stupidly-conceived change to dividend imputation was far more damaging than changes to housing taxes. The second is that there are many people who “aspire” to own multiple properties. The third and most likely reason is that people are guided by an “if you don’t know vote no” scare campaign.

It’s clear that people don’t understand the housing market or the tax system. For example in the ABC poll referred to above 73 percent of respondents supported the idea that boosting the first-home buyers’ grant would make housing more affordable, with only 18 percent opposed. Similarly that idea of halving the CGT discount has superficial appeal, but in terms of fairness and allocative efficiency it’s a terrible idea: the Greens’ proposal to abolish the discount altogether and to restore indexation makes far more sense.

But in an election beliefs count, no matter how poorly they are formed. It is hard to see Dutton’s attempt to run a scare campaign working however, because it cuts two ways.

Defence

In these roundups I don’t cover defence: for informed comment on defence it’s hard to go past Pearls and Irritations. But there are broad political issues around defence which should be on the election agenda.

Our Catalinas are ageing – can we have some F35s?

The Dutton-Hastie media release – Landmark increase to defence spending to keep Australians safe – reads like a generic template generated by artificial intelligence rather than a policy statement.

One would expect such a statement to start with some assessment of the threats faced by Australia, followed by some specific statements about where our defences need strengthening or reallocating, and finally a figure on the costs – both fiscal and manpower.

But there’s hardly any of that, just a commitment to spend $21 billion to lift defence spending to 2.5 percent of GDP within five years. The only concrete proposal we learn from an earlier statement is that a Coalition government would buy another 28 F-35 joint strike fighters, which wouldn’t be in service until the first half of the 2030s.

Commenting on the Coalition’s announcement, Peter Layton of Griffith University, writing in The Conversation, says that Australia needs bold ideas on defence, but the Coalition’s spending plan falls disappointingly short. He notes that the $21 billion is spun out over many years. This idea of a slow build-up does not align with the Coalition’s statement about Australia facing the “most dangerous strategic circumstances since the second world war”.

It’s unlikely that the Coalition will enjoy an electoral boost from this promise. Also writing in The Conversationthree military and history academics from the University of New South Wales point out that only about a third of Australians believe there should be an increase in defence spending.

It seems that our military strategists believe there is a need to boost our defence preparedness, but their message hasn’t come through to the public. The Coalition has jumped in with a figure, but not with a case.

Family trusts

The revelation that Amelia Hamer, Liberal candidate for Kooyong, is beneficiary of a $20 million family trusthas not helped her campaign, in which she has been presenting herself as a struggling renter. The Liberals are desperate to take back Kooyong, once the jewel in their crown, from independent Monique Ryan.

Now there is the Four Corners revelation that while he was a cabinet minister Peter Dutton failed to declare his interest in a childcare business. as prescribed under Parliamentary law. That program included a revelation that his family has had a long business history with childcare mogul Eddy Groves and his family.

The full Four Corners program, towards the end, records Dutton saying about his business dealings that they have been “tools of wealth creation”. But from what Dutton explains it appears that his financial fortunes stem from property speculation and idle investment in a business relying heavily on government subsidies. By any reasonable reckoning that’s wealth-shuffling, not wealth-creation. Of course he is entitled to engage in such activity, but his perception of such endeavours as “wealth creation” reveals a serious misunderstanding of business and economics.

These are political embarrassments for the Coalition, but they also draw attention to the promise Labor took to the 2019 election to implement a minimum tax rate of 30 percent on distributions of discretionary trusts – at that time estimated to claw back about $2 billion a year for public revenue. (The Greens had a similar but slightly more encompassing proposal.) Labor’s proposal was welcomed by ACOSS as a means of raising revenue and closing off an avenue of tax avoidance.

Since then, there hasn’t been a squeak out of Labor about discretionary trusts, even though Australia is almost the only country in the world that legalizes this tax rort.

More recently Treasury has done more work on tax-avoidance measures in its December 2024 paper Tax expenditures and insights statement. ATO data reveals that about 1.8 million individuals reported an income of $67 billion in trust income. They do not calculate the amount of revenue forgone, because in addition to that reported $27 billion distribution there would have been unrecorded distributions to individuals with declared incomes below the $18 200 taxable income threshold.

Anti-Semitism

Why did Dutton feel the need to make a statement outside a Jewish centre equating the Greens with Nazis and white supremacists?

There seems to be no letup in his determination to equate opposition to the Netanyahu government’s war against Gaza with anti-Semitism.

It’s idiotic and divisive. And it would be hard to find groups further apart in their ideologies than Greens and Nazis.

Dan Sheer, writing in The Jewish Independent, describes how Dutton’s cultivation of the Jewish vote has been so damaging to all Australians, Jewish and non-Jewish: If Labor wins, the Jewish community faces a challenge rebuilding bridges.

That cultivation of the Jewish vote hasn’t been about shared values or interests: rather it has been about accusing Labor of being weak on antisemitism, implying that Labor has been encouraging people to mount anti-Semitic attacks. It’s a specific example of Dutton’s setting Australian against Australian as a political weapon.

One positive outcome of the election is that both parties contending for government have pledged funding for Sydney’s Jewish museum and for education on the Holocaust as part of the high school curriculum. Perhaps this will help Australians, as it has helped Germans, understand the processes that led up to the Holocaust – the efforts of a populist strongman who nurtured people’s feelings of resentment, and who turned that resentment against so-called elites.

Welcome to country

Really? Is that where Dutton is focussed?

Because a small handful of neo-Nazi louts tried to disrupt Melbourne’s Anzac Day Dawn Service, Dutton suggests we should give in to them and abandon welcome to country introductions on Anzac Day commemorations.

Sydney Morning/The Age journalists Natassia Chrysanthos, Olivia Ireland and Mike Foley cover Dutton’s behaviour in their article Dutton says veterans don’t want Welcome to Country on Anzac Day. RSL branches say otherwise.

On Radio National, in an 11-minute interview, you can hear former Liberal Party minister Ken Wyatt explain the meaning of welcome to country ceremonies. It’s a meaning Dutton and some others just don’t understand: “Disappointed”: Ken Wyatt on Welcome To Country furore. “I think that the political debate on this issue does not help with the harmony of this country” he says.

Dutton was right to condemn the behaviour of the Nazis who behaved atrociously on Anzac Day. But he was quite wrong in suggesting that we should support their vile cause by abandoning welcome to country ceremonies. As Wyatt said, those seeking political office should not make a political issue of the question of organizations conducting such ceremonies.