NO.124

ALP NATSEM “ANALYSIS”

Late this afternoon the ALP dropped purported “analysis” of tax policy to selected journalists. Mr Rudd has not called a press conference to release it and take scrutiny on it.

The so-called analysis illustrates the principle of ‘garbage in, garbage out’.

The material does not compare the two tax packages. This is because the Labor tax package leaves middle income earners worse off – most by $600 per annum after 2010-11. Strangely, no analysis is offered of the tax proposals past 2010.

Why did Labor fail to model that? The reason is obvious – no amount of “modelling” can cover the hole.

Nor does the material compare tax and welfare measures announced by the Coalition to date against those announced by Labor to date.

It carefully excludes the Coalition’s utilities allowance increase because including it would show over 2 million pensioners worse off under Labor together with a quarter of a million self-funded retirees, 700,000 disability support pensioners, and 120,000 carers.

The “analysis” excludes the Coalition pension announcement but includes the ALP education allowance. When the Coalition announces its education policy, tables will include both parties’ education announcements and compare like with like.

Labor kicks an own goal on child care by showing that high income earners capture most of the benefit of Labor’s policy.

Is it not strange that there is no distributional table done on the child care measures?

The distributional table on child care would totally counteract the purpose of the selective table on education and tax which has been carefully designed to give the appearance of benefits for low income earners at the expense of higher income earners. A distributional table on the child care policy would show the reverse.

Too clever by half, Mr Rudd.

MELBOURNE

28 October 2007

Contact: Renae Stoikos – 0418 568 434