‘Coming to the Party’ raises some difficult questions for Labor

John Langmore’s more traditional social democratic response to the challenges facing Labor makes a refreshing change to the implicit support for smaller government given by Shorten and Gillard. Referring to research undertaken as part of the “Australian Survey of Social Attitudes," Langmore cites research, noting that most Australians would prefer higher public spending on education and health instead of further tax cuts.

His condemnation of the Conservatives’ assaults upon the independence of non-government organisations (NGOs), following government threats to withdraw charitable status for those groups who speak out on social issues and policy, is stinging. Furthermore, he is resolute in his conclusion that the embrace of neo-liberal economic policy settings by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments led to widespread disillusionment, causing greater inequality in the distribution of income, often in breach of the party platform.

Langmore also has the courage and vision to suggest the rejection of an inequitable private health insurance rebate or at the very least the imposition of a means test.

If anything, Langmore could have even gone further in his espousal of radical tax reform, perhaps along the lines of that advocated in a prior publication of his book (with economist, John Quiggin) Work for All.

Already, Australia maintains a regime of corporate taxation that is lower than that in the United States. An infrastructure levy upon business, then, surely ought not be ruled out of the equation.

Further goals of reform could include the provision of tax credits for those on low incomes, and moving from welfare to work, paid for by the restructuring of the overall income tax system, and complemented by the full indexing of the bottom two income tax thresholds.

Finally, the strengthening of a progressively-scaled Medicare Levy, and the introduction on a progressively-scaled Education Levy could provide for desperately needed infrastructure and services in the fields of health and education.

Lindsay Tanner and Evan Thornley also make valuable contributions to the debate.

While Tanner insists that the ALP needs to retain its commitment to delivering health, educational opportunity and job security, he rejects the old Labor approach to delivering these outcomes. Unfortunately, though, he does not elaborate on what he means by this. In implicitly rejecting what many dismiss as the old Labor approach to policy, Tanner fails to convince that the traditional social democratic aims of a robust social wage, welfare state and tax-transfer system, combined with a democratic mixed economy, are now either outmoded or obsolete. Perhaps this is not even Tanner’s intention.

Thornley, on the other hand, provides a searching criticism of the Conservative strategy of framing the very language of debate and public discourse, stigmatising the issue of class and claiming the mantle of family values. As Thornley maintains, the aim of all this is simply, “to convince working people to vote against their own economic interests”. Thornley insists, “they vote against gay marriage, but what do they actually get? Tax cuts for the rich!”

In particular Thornley argues that open and rigorous policy debate is a positive rather than a burden:

John Howard has figured out that having the fundamentalist churches or even his own back bench running down his Right flank publicly on policy simply allows him to move to the Right while looking reasonable.