After adjusting for inflation, the average Australian is over $100 a week worse off since the election of the Anthony Albanese government.
The Prime Minister told us just last week that “wages are growing at their fastest rate in almost 15 years.” He failed to add that prices are increasing at their fastest rate in 50 years. A higher wage is of no use if the price of milk, electricity and basic necessities are increasing at a faster rate.
Over the past 2 years, real wages have fallen by a faster amount than any time on record. No doubt this shocking decline in our standard of living is behind the almost just as precipitous fall in the Prime Minister’s approval ratings.
The PM has looked desperate since his loss on the Voice referendum last year. While Australians were struggling with the cost of living, the PM spent over $300 million on a divisive and pointless referendum on the Voice. Now he wants to show that he cares.
The PM has chosen a strange way to go about trying to win back support. He has decided to break his promise to deliver the so-called Stage 3 tax cuts. These tax cuts were agreed to back in 2017 and the PM had said he supported them more than 30 times during the election.
As their name suggests, the Stage 3 tax cuts followed two other tax cut rounds that had reduced taxes for lower and middle income taxpayers. The Stage 3 tax cuts would have given everyone that earns over $45,000 a tax cut but the savings would have been greater for those on higher incomes because they pay more taxes.
Under the Stage 3 tax cuts everyone would pay lower taxes over time. That is because they would have abolished the 37 cents in the dollar tax bracket. Under Stage 3 most Australians would never pay more than a 30 cents in the dollar marginal tax rate, even as inflation increases their incomes over time.
The PM has instead decided to keep the 37 cents bracket, break his promise on the Stage 3 tax cuts and instead paint himself as some kind of saintly Robin Hood figure stealing from the rich to give to the poor.
As far as I know, however, Robin Hood never gave to the poor only to come back a few years later to steal it back from them. Yet that is what the PM’s broken promise does.
Labor’s new plan is not a tax cut it is a tax increase. Labor’s own advice on their broken promise shows that tax revenue will increase by $28 billion over the next decade. This is because of “bracket creep”, which happens when inflation pushes more and more people into higher tax brackets.
The Labor Government must think we are all mugs. Do they think people will thank them for giving them some crumbs today only to take away much more in the near future?
The final insult is that even today the average income earner hardly benefits much from Labor’s tax changes. Under the PM’s plan an Australian on the average wage will get a $15 a week tax cut, which hardly makes up for the fact that this Australian is more than $100 a week worse off since Labor came to power.
I do not think Australians will cop being lied to for the sake of a large Big Mac meal a week.
