When the Turnbull government secured an eleventh-hour deal to cut the corporate tax rate for companies earning up to $50m last week, it was breathlessly portrayed as a home run.

While the Australian lauded the deal as a “grand tax bargain”, strategically it looks more like an own goal.

As the centrepiece of the government’s trickledown economics agenda, the tax cuts have been ushered in at a time of flat-lining wages, cuts to penalty rates and a heightened debate over the minimum wage.

Corporate tax cuts could finally turn Australians against big business | Peter Lewis Read more

The government’s partial success on company tax cuts has two immediate consequences. First, it plays into the storyline that it is putting the interests of businesses ahead of working people. Second, it ensures the issue of cuts to larger companies remain at the centre of the policy context.

We know from polling that the public oppose the tax cuts by a factor of around two to one, but politically, that’s not the half of it.

As one of Essential’s regular indexes on Party Attributes illustrates, the contrast of company tax cuts and record low wages growth reinforce key brand distinctions between the major political parties.

Take the top and bottom propositions and you get a clear sense that despite the orthodoxy that the major parties have converged, they still are perceived as serving different masters.

In fact, take the top three and bottom three propositions and you can almost write the ALP storyline for the next election. On one side is a divided government, out of touch with ordinary people and too close to the big corporate and financial interests. On the other, a party that has good policies, understands the problems facing Australia and looks after the interest of working people.

Policies that reinforce this narrative are gold and the pursuit of a corporate tax cuts comes close to political alchemy.

Another thing that stands out from these numbers is the extent to which the public has strongly formed views on party brand. When it comes to voting preferences, the split is roughly one third Coalition, one third Labor and one third minor party or independent.

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When it comes to the traits of leaders, the number of “Don’t Knows” tend to outnumber the numbers of people who have a view about the characteristics of the respective leaders. And on most contested policy issues, from negative gearing to climate change, there is still a large cohort of people who simply don’t hold a view.

But on these brand attributes the pictures are sharper. For all the noise people still know whose side the major parties are barracking for.

This representational frame has long been a counterpoint for the policy contests and battles of personality that dominate most election campaigns to the advantage of right-of-centre political parties.

As veteran Washington pollster Vic Fingerhut relentlessly points out, when the question is economic management, right-of-centre political parties win regardless of their actually performance. Make it about representation though and the debate shifts on its axis.

This week’s Essential Report reinforces this point when you explain this representational analysis:

The Coalition is seen to represent the interests of big business and the very rich, less so small business and the self-employed. For every other group identifier, progressive political parties are the champions.

Of course, if these figures are true the mystery is why conservative parties ever win elections at all? But that’s the crux of the Fingerhut analysis.

When progressive parties getting drawn into macro contests like economic management or national security, the representational frame is neutralised.

When contests become intensely personal, such as the Abbott v Gillard mud-fight, the representational frame is neutralised.

And when a candidate manages to distort the notion of representation to a crude contest of identity politics, as Trump did so skilfully during the presidential campaign, then the frame is not only neutralised but subverted.

Representational frames thrive when leaders are forced to make choices that favour one group over others, choices that reinforce their party’s brand perceptions.

That’s what’s happening now – a government choosing to make company tax cuts a priority; a government waving through cuts to penalty rates; a government refusing to take the minimum wage seriously.

This is the perfect storm that is set to define the political debate up to the budget and beyond; all Labor needs to do now is get out of the way and let the story unfold.