Tree of Knowledge

During the dark days of the Labor Opposition there was always a long queue of basket-weavers ready to proclaim that Labor had abandoned its principles and didn’t stand for anything. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, a growing number of commentators are pointing out that the Howard Government wasn’t exactly the paradigm of conservative ideological purity that American think tanks have recently made out.

Andrew Norton (who has been a consistent voice in the regard for many years) picks up on Sinclair Davidson’s analysis of the ATO’s 2005-06 income tax statistics to point out the ’social democratic tendencies of the former Howard government’:

As it did every year except one since 1996-97, the top 25% picked up a larger share of the tax bill in 2005-06 than it had the year before. In 1996-97, the top 25% of income earners paid 60.8% of all income tax. By 2005-06 that had increased to 65.2%, compared to 64.3% the year before.

I’ve said it before, but is there a true Conservative left in Australia? If so, show him/her to me. They have a lot of explaining to do about why they stood silent while John Howard destroyed their ideology in this country.

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