Independent Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie announced she would back the tax cuts. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer Take the Grattan Institute’s analysis, which found that by any measure, stage-three tax cuts would move the income tax system in a regressive direction. It will reduce the share of income tax paid by the top 20 per cent of earners – something government projections confirm. It will increase the share paid by the middle 60 per cent. It will do less to offset inequality in our society than the system currently does. It would make our system less progressive than the OECD average when it is currently more so. But the real kicker came when Grattan compared the average tax rate paid by people earning 2.5 times the average full-time wage with the same for those earning half that wage – a fairly standard technique for determining how progressive a tax system is. The bottom line? Stage-three tax cuts would leave us with the least progressive income tax system we’ve had at any time since the late 1950s. And it will do this with little compelling economic analysis to commend it. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Precisely what business does Labor have waving something like that through? The Coalition, sure. Its philosophical settings have no particularly strong affection for progressive taxation. It does not take equality as an organising principle, preferring instead the idea that taxing the wealthy provides a disincentive to work. That makes a regressive change to income tax something you can package as an economic policy in the trickle-down style. But Labor? How is such a regressive change to income tax consistent with its world view?

I understand that politics is not philosophically pure; that it’s dosed with pragmatism, compromise and nakedly political calculation. I understand that Labor has just suffered a particularly ignominious election defeat after pursuing a bold redistributive agenda. I can see how in those circumstances Labor might wish not to pick a fight with the Coalition on redistribution. And I must also concede that the major parties are full of people considerably smarter than me and with more access to more data about the election result than I have. Even so, I cannot escape the feeling Labor’s indecisiveness draws exactly the wrong conclusion from the election, and endangers it in potentially long-term ways. Loading Labor went to this year’s election with a suite of big policies, but no clear narrative to make them coherent. The Coalition, meanwhile, had a narrative (primarily of the risk Labor posed), but no policies. There are many lessons being drawn from this. Big-target oppositions get whacked by scare campaigns, for example. Or that Australians continue to see the appeal of aspirational politics. But allow me to posit a third: that a clear narrative will beat merely a set of policies every time. Indeed without a clear narrative, that set of policies becomes uncertain and frightening. Labor’s weakness for decades now has not been one of policy. The NDIS, the Gonski education reforms, even the NBN: these were all ideas that were at least initially well received and indeed have survived Labor’s demise in some form.

Instead, Labor’s shortcoming has been one of narrative; of a clear summary of what its purpose is. It got somewhere in the last term with its emphasis on “fairness”, but the sheer preponderance of big-ticket items made this convoluted. Throughout the campaign Labor moved from topic to topic, rather than hammering a single message in the way Morrison did. Already you can see Labor’s response in its ready embrace of the language of aspiration, indeed in the case of shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers, his assertive attempt to reclaim it as a central Labor value. But does anyone in the Labor Party seriously believe that a single vote deserted them because Labor didn’t support a significant tax cut for people on $200,000 in five years’ time? Changes on negative gearing and franking credits, sure. But stage-three tax cuts? Labor even admits the Coalition hardly spoke about this part of its policy during the campaign. This was hardly the aspirational heart of the election. Loading What was the risk here? Were the tax cuts to pass without Labor, it could have preserved its philosophical position without the political pain of holding up tax relief. If it turned out Labor’s votes were needed, it would have invited a debate where it wants tax cuts for lower and middle income earners sooner than the Coalition, without regressive tax reform. Whatever the case, Labor could have preserved some sense of what it’s about as a party – the starting point for a narrative, if you will. Seems to me the greatest risk was to abandon that.

Waleed Aly is a regular columnist and a presenter on The Project.