John Roskam from the Institute of Public Affairs highlights the failures of the fourth estate to hold our politicians (and other institutions) to account.
There are some days when I sit down to write this column and I scarcely know where to start. Rarely is it due to a lack of ideas; more often it is about how many important areas need to be covered.
Just this week, the World Health Organisation decided that a man wanting to be a woman isn’t suffering from a mental condition but the person playing too many video games is. As one pundit on Twitter commented “Imagine the impact this will have on the NDIS.”
In the Senate, we saw the extreme Greens outraged about my successful motion observing that US President Donald Trump managed to open dialogue to denuclearise the Korean Peninsula.
Please contemplate that for just a moment. The Australian Greens are angry that nuclear weapons will be destroyed and peninsula peace may be on the horizon, simply because it involved Donald Trump!
Bill Shorten’s Labor party are running campaign ads against the Prime Minister because he happens to be wealthy. It is worth noting that, judging from their housing investments and use of negative gearing, almost every one of the protagonists aspires to the same level of wealth that the PM has, they just haven’t been as successful. This is the politics of envy being played out on a national scale and it is a shameful indictment on Labor’s class warfare agenda.
And within the Coalition, things aren’t much better as they tinker around the edges on energy policy.
As one Coalition person confessed to me on energy “The theory seems to be that if we drive all manufacturing out of the country, there will be plenty of green energy to go around and prices will fall.”
So too, their weakness has seen them embrace the full PC spectrum agenda and steadfastly refuse to discuss reform of our immigration program.
That’s not to say there aren’t some green shoots of hope on the horizon. Six months after being prompted into action by the Conservative Party, the Government delivered a future-looking personal tax plan. It is a big step in the right direction.
So too are the mooted company tax cuts although it looks like they will fail to ‘get the numbers’ to pass. Although they are much more politically contentious, lowering the tax rates for business is a good thing.
Businesses, large and small, generate wealth for us all. We benefit as shareholders, employees or indirectly as citizens of this great land. Some will say that big business doesn’t deserve it, often identifying the banks as loathed beneficiaries.
On the latter point, despite the poor behaviour of banks, they pay tax in line with our company tax rate (plus a banking levy). On the tax paid scale, they compare very favourably with some other large companies, most notably the multi-national tech giants.
Despite some ill –informed claims to the contrary, the Senate has previously passed world-leading measures to ensure multi-nationals don’t avoid paying tax in Australia, and the squeeze is being applied.
Providing Australian firms with a globally competitive tax environment, whilst closing some loopholes that are being exploited, will only benefit our country.
It might not be popular to argue that case but it is the right thing to do.
And that’s what our country needs more of – people doing the right thing. Whether that be in public life or our individual choices. If we all do the right thing, the benefits will be felt by us all.
Cory Bernardi is the author of seven books and has been a member of the Australian rowing team, a publican, an investment portfolio manager and spent nearly 14 years as an Australian Senator.
