CANBERRA: Despite two years of public campaigning, an advertising blitz by the Business Council of Australia and weeks of haggling with the 11 “crossbench” independents and minor party Senators, the government was unable to muster the votes to pass the bill.
Parliament is now in recess until it resumes for just three days for the federal budget to be delivered on May 8, when the government may try again. But there are growing doubts in ruling circles over the government’s ability to ever implement one of its main promises to the corporate elite—a tax cut worth at least $35 billion over the next decade.
In the end, however, the government’s horse-trading could only bring seven “crossbench” Senators on board. For all the posturing by the Senate holdouts, the setback reflects intense public hostility toward the tax cuts and the government itself. Opinion polls have recorded support for the bill running at less than 20 percent, while this week’s Murdoch media Newspoll showed the government’s primary support at 37 percent, behind the Labor Party on 39 percent.
The government lagged behind Labor for the 29th Newspoll survey in a row, just one short of the 30 such results that Turnbull cited in September 2015 to justify the move to oust his predecessor, Tony Abbott from the prime minister’s post. The tax bill setback could reignite the factional rifts that have wracked both the Liberal and National parties, especially since the government’s near-defeat in 2016.
The Business Council of Australia (BCA), representing the biggest companies operating in Australia, had sought to boost the government’s efforts by issuing advertisements and an “open letter” to Senators last week signed by 10 CEOs, pledging to reinvest the proceeds of the tax cuts, with the ultimate aim of increasing wages.
That operation backfired, however, when a leaked copy of the initial draft of the BCA letter revealed that the business chiefs had refused to sign up to any specific promises to use the tax bonanza to invest more, hire extra workers, increase wages or even pay tax.
After the government’s withdrawal of the bill, Turnbull assured a BCA dinner the government was “not giving up” on getting the tax cut through parliament. The BCA announced yet another expensive advertising campaign, designed to improve the public image of big business.
