Reader reply: Who is really limiting the voices in our tax debate, Bernard?

Bernard Keane is the primary reason I maintain a subscription to Crikey. I don’t agree with everything he writes, but he always makes me think and his scathing analysis of the parlous state of our policy debate is usually spot on. On Monday, though, he published a shocker of a piece about the “reckless spending” of government on Medicare and the nature of our tax debate, one I can’t let pass without a response.

Firstly, let’s address this howler. Despite linking to an article in the Financial Review about Ken Henry’s excellent speech last Thursday at Per Capita’s Community Tax Summit in Melbourne, he went on to assert that the “only players in the tax reform debate are greedy peddlers of self-interest like the Business Council, their shills in the media and the beneficiaries of the existing tax system — AKA wealthy baby boomers and gen Xers — who want to keep the rip-off of young people going.”

Just what does Keane think that summit was all about, if not a demonstration by 15 community and non-profit organisations that they, and the people they represent, are keen participants in that tax debate?

We worked collaboratively over summer, when most of the “beneficiaries of the existing tax system” were lounging at their holiday homes in Portsea and Palm Beach, to kick off a big conversation about tax reform ahead of the federal election.

It’s not easy to get ordinary people, and those who work at the coalface of addressing poverty and disadvantage in Australia, together to talk about tax reform. As Keane has often bemoaned — and apparently intended to again on Monday — that debate is dominated by vested interests, rent-seekers and those with the means to pay more to financial advisers. Those advisers help them pay far less tax than they would if they just contributed their fair share of tax on big business profits and wealth from tax advantaged assets.

So it’s passing strange that Keane wouldn’t even acknowledge that Henry was given the platform for his excoriating speech by a group of poorly funded, independent, non-profit organisations who are desperate to wrest control of that debate away from the powerful.

Along with Ken’s opening address, we heard keynote speeches from tax expert Professor Miranda Stewart and well-being economy leader Dr Katherine Trebeck. Panel discussions covered tax’s interrelationship with housing, healthcare, social assistance and welfare and featured speakers such as Cassandra Goldie, Angela Jackson, Roger Wilkins, Saul Eslake, Travers McLeod, Alan Kohler, Sharon Bessell and Kasy Chambers.

Other panels canvassed options for broadening the tax base such as revisiting carbon pricing, better ways to tax wealth and assets including superannuation and land, shifting incentives away from rent-seeking and speculation towards investment and productivity gains, and tackling international tax avoidance. These conversations were led by experts such as Helen Hodgson, Jason Ward, Mark Zirnsak, Warwick Smith, Miranda Stewart, Thomas Walker and the Superpower Institute’s Baethan Mullen.

Keane mentions none of them. He also overlooks the excellent research and advocacy work being done by Tax Summit partners to broaden the scope of our tax conversation, such as Think Forward’s Tax Wealth Not Work campaign, Oxfam’s Takers Not Makers, and Per Capita’s own Annual Tax Survey, which is now in its 15th year.

All this material was sent to Crikey ahead of the summit, along with other media outlets, but our records show that editors didn’t even open the email with the comprehensive media pack attached.

So who’s responsible for limiting the voices in our public debate on tax? Is it the 15 community sector organisations and more than 300 people across the country who participated in the two-day summit, or the media who fail to cover — or apparently even notice — any voices other than the usual suspects?

I could leave it there, but I can’t ignore Keane’s ideological attack on universal health care.

To claim that “Australia does not need to be spending $8.5 billion encouraging GPs to bulk-bill everyone — and especially not the half the population with above-average incomes” reveals a clear ideological opposition to universal healthcare in favour of a US-style user-pays system with just a “safety net” for those who are unable to pay market rates for primary care.

I won’t go into my family’s recent experience with the health system in Australia, but suffice it to say that, even when we were both working and had an above average household income, the cost of treating and managing my late husband’s chronic and compounding illnesses, disability and eventual death meant we came close to losing our home. It’s been a mammoth struggle to restore financial security for myself and our young daughter since his death two years ago, and I have myself skipped going to the GP on more than one occasion because the out-of-pocket costs were too high.

Personal anecdotes aside, the overwhelming evidence is that universal services are the most effective means of providing excellent, well-funded, efficient health care. The US spends almost twice what we do for a privatised system that leaves them with one of the worst outcomes in the OECD.

And if Keane wants to link health spending to the urgent need for tax reform, he could begin by acknowledging that only by providing universal, rather than means-tested, access to essential services such as health care and education can we guarantee that wealthier people will hold up their side of the social compact that requires them to pay proportionally more tax to support strong services for everyone across society.

Indeed, if he’d read the tax survey we published last week (also in the unopened media pack), Keane would know that more than 60% of Australians say they would be personally willing to pay more tax for better health and aged care services. You don’t get that level of support for a means-tested system.

The choice ahead of us at this election is between a government that is committed to genuinely universal health care, and an opposition that has a strong track record of running down Medicare to the point that we will end up with the system Keane would apparently prefer: world-class primary care for those able to pay for it, and a threadbare safety net for the rest of us.

If the media keeps ignoring the voices of the 80% of Australians who aren’t being served by our current tax and transfer system and want reform to ensure that everyone in this wealthy country can live a safe, healthy and happy life, I fear the latter is what we will end up with.

Have something to say about this article? Write to us at le*****@********om.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.