Tag Archive for 'Ken Henry'

The Henry Review

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 3 weeks ago
in Government, Policy and Politics
. 36 Comments

A summary of Ken Henry’s tax review can be read at Peter Martin’s blog.

The report’s emphasis changed a fair deal along the way, a topic treated of by Martin in another post.

If you’ve been wondering why Kevin Rudd’s focus has recently been on the country a few decades hence, Henry provides the answers. The report frames its recommendations around the theme of an ageing and growing population. When the government responds, we’re likely to see further development of a point of contrast they want to hammer home in an election year; the claim that Rudd Labor has long term plans for Australia’s future while the Opposition plays base politics around the headline of the day. Much will also be made of proposals to raise more revenue from resources, something a nationalist and populist Coalition will have trouble countering, if they’re inclined to do so.

Make of that what you will.

Big Australia

Published
by
Robert Merkel
4 months, 1 week ago
in Australiana, Climate change, Environment, Immigration and Policy
. 131 Comments

It’s been a couple of weeks since Ken Henry’s speech at QUT kicked off something of a debate about Australia’s future population. Henry – noting carefully that he was speaking only for himself, not Treasury – raised concerns about the effects of projections of a population increase to 35 million people by 2050, notably on our large cities, and the broader Australian environment. Kevin Rudd stated – in a rather revealing off-the-cuff response in an interview with Kerry O’Brien – that he is unambiguously in favour of a “Big Australia”:

KERRY O’BRIEN…Does that suggest to you, when you think of all of the associated problems about trying to plan for that, in terms of urban … he talks about Sydney with a population of seven million, Melbourne a population of seven million, Brisbane four million. Is this going to be a time for national leader to come well and truly to the fore across the whole spectrum of problems thrown up by that?

KEVIN RUDD: Well first of all Kerry, let me just say: I actually believe in a big Australia. I make no apology for that. I actually think it’s good news that our population is growing.

Contrast that with many countries in Europe where in fact it’s heading in the reverse direction. I think it’s good for us, it’s good for our national security long term, it’s good in terms of what we can sustain as a nation.

Secondly, on the specific national leadership questions that you point to, I agree with you 110 per cent. Why do you think that we are now, for the first time in this country’s history taking national leadership for the roll-out of national infrastructure, and new national broadband network. For the first time the Australian Government investing directly in urban rail projects across Australia, for the first time the Australian Government taking a direct engagement with the planning of our cities, and also with, for example, the housing approval processes and land supply arrangements of the states and territories and local government. Why? National leadership is necessary to plan for the future of our population, a challenge which has left languished before.

Continue reading ‘Big Australia’

Lame claims: invoking the Reserve Bank and Treasury politically

Published
by
Mark
7 months ago
in Economics, Media and Politics
. 16 Comments

Sometimes, in politics, it might be better to remain silent.

Glenn Milne’s latest intervention, talking up a line from Liberal MP Scott Morrison, has to be one of the lamest ever political attack lines. [For those who don't want to wade through a farrago of fallacies expounded at excessive length, his core point is echoed by Sinclair Davidson at Catallaxy, though without attribution to Milne. Rendered in short form, the basic logical fallacy is starkly evident.]

So, there’s going to be an “emissions financial crisis” and the Reserve Bank wasn’t consulted by the Government before climate change legislation was prepared? A non sequitur built on speculative and incoherent fantasy does not make for an effective political attack. ‘OMG! Governor didn’t read legislation! Rudd FAIL!’…

The political syntax of this claim, of course, is that Rudd and co successfully berated the Liberals for ‘ignoring 20 (or whatever it was) successive Reserve Bank warnings’ in the lead up to the 2007 election. Now, we have the Liberals, and their echo chamber, arguing that the Reserve Bank should have been given a chance to warn. Somehow a hypothetical and unlikely warning was pre-empted by the Government deliberately choosing not to do what it doesn’t have to do. Try to make any sense of that.

What would be far more interesting to examine would be the politics of invoking the Reserve Bank (and for that matter, Treasury and its ubiquitous Secretary, Dr Ken Henry). Continue reading ‘Lame claims: invoking the Reserve Bank and Treasury politically’

Death, taxes and the Henry Review

Published
by
Mark
9 months, 3 weeks ago
in Activism, Culture, Economics, Government, History, Philosophy, Policy, Politics and Sociology
. 5 Comments

The latest issue of the Centre for Policy Development’s online mag, Insight, is out, and ‘Taxation for Our Times’ focuses on the Henry Review. I make no claims to any expertise in the technical aspects of taxation policy, but I was chuffed to be asked to write something from the point of view of cultural and political sociology. I think it is important that major aspects of our governance – and our relation as citizens to each other and to the state – are scrutinised in a frame that transcends some of the immediate implications and interests at stake. You can read my piece – ‘Death and Taxes’ – here, and I’d encourage you to have a look at the other articles too!

How might the Senate tinker with the stimulus package?

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 1 month ago
in Politics
. 37 Comments

Simon Jackman has the good oil on what Bob Brown and Steve Fielding are putting on the table as Senate deliberations on Kevin Rudd’s fiscal stimulus continue. Both are emphasising the unemployed and job creation (with Brown arguing for green measures as well). I suspect that this manoeuvring might factor more into what comes out of the Budget sausage machine. The government has clearly been shifting its rhetoric on the unemployed, and I would expect the minors to be told that people on benefits will benefit as a result of the Henry Review. So it may be that some commitments might be made for future measures in exchange for current support. That would still, however, give the minor party Senators a real chance to shape the response to the economic downturn.

The Liberal bottom line

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 1 month ago
in Economics
. 36 Comments

Since everyone else is, I thought I might add in my $950 two cents’ worth into the great stimulus package debate. I’m also in the camp of thinking Malcolm’s nuts, and while some have been decrying those who discuss the stimulus package in terms of its politics rather than its policy robustness, I’m a tad surprised Turnbull and his crew haven’t copped more flak for a deeply cynical move to try to capitalise on the country’s misfortune – is it the price we need to pay for Turnbull’s desire to be “relevant” – as articulated today? It’s becoming clearer from what’s been reported in the press about the party room meeting that the main factors in the Coalition’s thinking are purely political.

Continue reading ‘The Liberal bottom line’

A lapse in judgement? Or too many barristers?

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 4 months ago
in Economics, Ethics, Law, Markets and Media
. 47 Comments

The Coalition’s apparent belief that everything that they read in the (Australian) newspaper must be true has got them into all sorts of trouble this week. The bizarre spectacle of a gaggle of Liberal Senators piling on Treasury Secretary Ken Henry in Senate Estimates was quite extraordinary… and all this to score what would have been quite a minor debating point, if there’d been any veracity to the story in the first place. It was quite clear in fact that it was wrong, or w r o n g ! if you prefer, before the inquisition even began, but that didn’t stop Eric Abetz and Helen Coonan from reviving some courtroom tricks. In fact, the spectacle of George Brandis in full flight – declaiming as though the Treasury Secretary were some sort of a hostile witness in a criminal trial – was really quite the thing to behold.

Henry’s testimony led to a most unedifying spectacle where Malcolm Turnbull failed pathetically to dig himself out of his hole on the 7 30 Report. It was – quite seriously – one of the most appalling interviews I’ve seen a political leader give.

Michelle Grattan claims, in a column that – among other things – recites some of Turnbull’s own talking points, that the opposition leader suffers from “periodic bad judgement”. I’d like to ask – quite seriously – if someone can instance for me an example of Malcolm Turnbull exercising good judgement. When are the media going to realise that Turnbull’s not the Messiah, just another arrogant barrister with an inflated ego?

Update: If anyone was wondering about Dennis Shanahan’s “we were right!” stuff in today’s Australian, Bernard Keane puts it to the test and gives it the epic fail.

Malcolm Turnbull haunted by Paul Keating

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 4 months ago
in Economics, Howardia, Markets and Media
. 28 Comments

As I’ve commented before, it’s always a bit difficult to keep track of Malcolm Turnbull’s economic narrative du jour. At least with Emo Man Brendan Nelson, we could always rely on undiluted populism with not even a minimal pretense at making any sense. Turnbull’s supposedly better than that, but in the lead up to the budget we had accusations that Labor were wimping out by not cutting spending aggressively enough, followed in very short order with claims that the surplus was unnecessarily large. We’re being treated to something comparable now, with the switch apparently flicked randomly between solemn appeals for bipartisanship, insinuations that the fiscal stimulus package is too big, loose language – subsequently repeated – about the global financial crisis being “hyped”, and now I think the beginnings of a “don’t spend the surplus” theme.

Jacques Chester, I suspect, has pinged what’s going on with all this:

It’s a lawyerly way of arguing. Pick an argument, any argument, that might be plausible, and throw it at the judge. You never know, it might stick.

There are certainly some straws blowing in the wind over the past few days, which in the way of these things, either represent columnists in The Australian flying kites for the opposition to grasp, or reciting lines fed to them by the Coalition. Continue reading ‘Malcolm Turnbull haunted by Paul Keating’