Day 31 of the election campaign and it’s all about the economy, stupid.
Labor is set to release its 10-year economic policy – named an economic blueprint, to distinguish it from the economic plan of the Coalition – and the treasurer, Scott Morrison, still in Perth, is on the attack.
Meanwhile, the PM is hugging the coast in New South Wales talking about mental health and community projects.
The big picture
The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, and the shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, will outline a reportedly slow-and-steady approach to returning the budget to surplus at an event in Brisbane today. The economic blueprint will be spelled out in a 32-page glossy brochure, a fact that has been mentioned with a regularity that suggests glossy pages are somehow less economically serious than good sensible matt pages. Anyway.
While Labor releases its plan, Morrison has redoubled his attacks on Shorten over his opposition to the Coalition’s proposed company tax cut, which will see the company tax rate cut from 30% to 25% over five years. The treasurer has accused the Labor leader of backflipping on company tax cuts, and previewed ads yesterday that apparently showed Shorten speaking in favour of the policy five years ago.
(Kristina Keneally, former NSW premier and regular Guardian Australia columnist, has taken umbrage with this particular argument. She writes here that Shorten historically supported a modest company tax cut of 1% to 2% and still did: Labor has said it would accept a cut of one cent in the dollar for companies with a turnover of up to $2m.)
The Australian’s David Crowe reports that Morrison will discuss new economic modelling today that will show the “consumer benefit” of the $48.2bn tax cut will be worth more then twice as much as it will cost to introduce.
The modelling was produced by the Independent Economics director, Chris Murphy, in his capacity as visiting fellow with the Australian National University. It’s the second lot of modelling he has produced supporting the policy – the first was released through his thinktank. Meanwhile, the Grattan Institute and Australia Institute have released modelling that shows the benefit of the tax cut will be minimal and a long time coming.
In an opinion piece in the Oz, Murphy writes:
… the new study finds a consumer benefit-to-budget cost ratio of 2.39 from the proposed company tax cut. If our company tax rate had already been cut to 25%, the benefit-cost ratio for a further cut to 20% would be more modest at 1.96. And without a franking credits system, it would also be more modest at 1.85.
This consumer benefit-to-budget cost ratio for the company tax cut of 2.39 compares very favourably with the option of cutting other major taxes. For personal income tax the ratio is 1.31 and for GST it is lower still at 1.18. So the proposed cut to company tax is the top priority for tax reform in Australia.
In other economic news, Penny Wong has announced Labor will review three free trade agreements signed by the Abbott/Turnbull governments to remove the investor-state dispute settlement clauses, which allow foreign corporations to sue the government.
That would mean reopening the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the China free trade agreement, and the Korea free trade agreement.
As Gareth Hutchens reports, the tobacco giant Philip Morris relied on the ISDS clause to sue Australia over the plain-packaging laws.
ISDS clauses allow foreign corporations to sue the Australian government in an international tribunal if they think the government has introduced or changed laws that significantly hurt their interests.
The tobacco giant Philip Morris used an ISDS provision in the Hong Kong-Australia bilateral investment treaty, signed in 1993, in its attempt to sue the Australian government over the introduction of plain-packaging laws by former prime minister Julia Gillard in 2012.
The proceedings went for years, but in December 2015 an international tribunal ruled in Australia’s favour, saying Philip Morris Asia’s claim was an abuse of process.
Unions have reportedly begun robo-calling against the China free trade agreement.
On the campaign trail
Malcolm Turnbull will start the day in his own electorate to announce funding for CCTV at The Gap, a notorious Sydney suicide spot, before heading to Shoalhaven on the NSW south coast to campaign with the Liberal MP for Gilmore, Ann Sudmalis.
Bill Shorten is in Brisbane to announce Labor’s 10-year economic blueprint with Chris Bowen. He will stick around this evening for the second Sky News debate, which threatens to become a televised monologue owing to Turnbull’s non-attendance.
The campaign you should be watching
If there was any doubt the Liberal party was concerned about losing the South Australian seat of Mayo to the new threat of the Nick Xenophon Team it was resolved yesterday with the sudden and ominous appearance of the former prime minister John Howard, whose presence on the campaign trail is a nationally recognised symbol of an MP in trouble.
The troubled MP is of course Jamie Briggs, who resigned the frontbench in December after admitting he behaved inappropriately towards a female diplomatic staffer on a night out in Hong Kong.
Nick Xenophon thanked Howard for all the attention and said he knew he liked him, really.
And another thing(s)
The next debate will be on Facebook, and it will be innovative.
After shunning the Sky News debate in Brisbane tonight (he says he wasn’t properly invited) Malcolm Turnbull has announced he has organised an interactive Facebook debate, hosted by news.com.au, next week. Bill Shorten has said he’ll go along, because who could resist the chance to make so many digs about the national broadband when the live feed inevitably starts buffering?
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