The whining in corporate media over Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ modest changes to superannuation has been at fever pitch all week. What’s the scam?
The scam is breathtaking dishonesty and Coalition-fawning redolent of mainstream media scare campaigns about “big new taxes” which put Scott Morrison in office in 2019.
Chalmers proposes to cap, not to remove, one of several subsidies for wealthy retirees but the entire mainstream media is lambasting the proposal as a tax – rather than what it is, the capping of a subsidy for wealthy Australians. Who pays for this? Younger Australian workers.
MWM revealed last year that super tax breaks were almost as large now as the aged pension itself (see video). Chalmers has rightly said they will overtake the pension in coming years. Yet, rather than analyse it correctly, call it what it is, the lot of them have lurched into fear-monger mode. “The hidden sting in the brutal super tax” screeched Murdoch’s The Australian, adding to its lead story “Asset sales fear to pay for Labor’s super tax”.
“Super cap freeze will trap younger workers”, claimed Nine Entertainment’s government subsidised AFR, knowing full well that younger workers actually pay for all these freebies. That was one of AFR’s several super scare jobs today, capping off dozens for the week. “Extra tax” cried the SMH, knowing it was the removal of a subsidy.
The Tele and the Herald Sun did their bit with whinging Terry McCrann in full descant wailing “train-wreck”. If not as hysterical, The Age and the SMH were equally pathetic with their lamentations, citing billionaire John Gandel saying “it’s ridiculous”.
The facts are that super tax perks are so generous they allow people like Gandel to exploit them as a tax shelter to pass on their wealth – subsidised by Australian workers – to future generations of Gandels. And The Age is applauding this point of view. Moreover the $3m cap is only about tax breaks on their super balances, not their other billions.
Michael West established Michael West Media in 2016 to focus on journalism of high public interest, particularly the rising power of corporations over democracy. West was formerly a journalist and editor with Fairfax newspapers, a columnist for News Corp and even, once, a stockbroker.