Back on the agenda - the GRT: Get Richer Tax

Well, once again a federal election is almost upon us. And, once again, taxation seems to be the big issue.
This election has all the hallmarks of being a rerun of the 1993 poll. I well remember that election, since at the time I was acting as a special adviser to the then Opposition Leader, John Hewson.
Far be it from me to claim credit for a good idea, but I must admit I had more than a little to do with the development of the Coalition’s Fightback! policy package.
Then, as now, there were many in the Coalition parties’ ranks who suffered a bad case of cold feet when it came to the central plank of the package – the goods and services tax, or GST.
That nervousness went right to the top of the tree, so to speak. From the beginning John Hewson had an ideological and fiscal attachment to a GST, but was reluctant to run hard on it during the lead-up to the 1993 poll.
It is fair to say that I changed his mind on that score. Other voices – people who pretended to be political hard-heads – were cautioning Hewson against making the GST the focus of his Fightback! package. But I had other plans.
I do concede that I did give in on one point – the name of the new tax Hewson was proposing.
I believed we should label it with a moniker that was distinctive, memorable and essentially explained what it was all about.
For many years I had been a devotee of Reagonomics – the policy US President Ronald Reagan implemented in America under which the richest people were given tax breaks to encourage them to spend more. Their spending in turn “trickled down” to lower income earners through increased consumption.
This was also a key feature of what was to become known as the GST in the 1993 poll.
But, prior to the release of the Fightback! package I was pushing for us to call the tax the RGR, or Rich Get Richer tax. I felt this explained quite clearly how the new tax system would work.
Unfortunately, at an early strategy meeting I was overruled. From that time on I was determined it wouldn’t happen again. Hewson, I felt, was listening to too many “do-gooders” – people who didn’t have the extensive experience and knowledge of the public policy arena that I had gleaned over my many years in public service.
Prior to the finalisation of Fightback!, he was even going cold on the whole concept of a GST.
But, over a series of one-on-one meetings with Hewson, I convinced him that it was not only good policy, but good politics, to tell all to the Australian voters about the implications of the GST.
At first, Hewson was not convinced. He was still listening to voices from the past – people like Malcolm Fraser whose only claim to fame, as far as I was concerned, was winning three elections in a row.
Fraser, and others, wanted a “softly, softly” approach and were urging Hewson to tone down the Fightback! package.
”Not on your life,” I remember saying to Hewson one evening in the Non-Members Bar at Parliament House in early 1992.
”Look, the people hate Keating,” I told him, “they’ll vote for anyone but him. The ’93 election is unloseable for you. Listen to me and I’ll ensure your name goes down in history.
"In years to come,” I predicted, “students of politics will always link the name Hewson with unloseable elections.”
He brightened, and I believe it was at that meeting that Hewson capitulated. From then on, up until polling day, I was effectively his chief tactical adviser.
It was my idea for him to undertake the big rallies in capital cities and to generate as much angst – stopping short of outright violence – among the crowds that were bound to turn out.
I even personally briefed Mike Willesee on the GST package prior to his live, coast-to-coast television interview with Hewson. It was my idea to have him criticise welfare lobbyists and denigrate people who rent their homes. I knew in my heart of hearts that such tactics would strike a chord with voters.
They certainly did at the Queensland Club, where I had had honorary membership since 1963, albeit because of a typing error.
Unfortunately, on election day the voters succumbed to the Labor Party’s truth campaign and the Fightback! package and its GST was defeated.
I’ve never spoken to John Hewson since. More correctly, I’ve never succeeded in speaking to him, although I have tried on numerous occasions.
I tried on election night, as the results came in, to contact him, but found myself inexplicably locked out from what was to be his “victory party” in Sydney.
Since then he has not returned my calls. I don’t blame him for that, after all, he is a very busy man these days. I did see his wife Carolyn in the street one day, but she didn’t hear my greeting, although she seemed to be looking directly at me.

Rufus Badinage MBE, now retired, is one of Australia’s leading
experts on politics and public administration having worked as a
senior bureaucrat for various state and federal governments.