Taxes and politics

So, BHP has come out and said that it wants Australia to have a carbon price, even before there is any international agreement regarding same. As Mark Davis points out in The Age, given that Garnaut has changed his position, this means a carbon tax instead of an ETS. As the Greens seem to favour a tax too, there does seem a real hope that the complicated ETS of questionable value may be replaced with something better. Who said this election result was a disaster? (I’m looking at you, jtfsoon.)

Davis also points out that Turnbull sounding all responsible and economically reasonable on broadband sort of highlights the fact that it is his party that is the economically unreasonable on carbon pricing.

There is one other aspect of the current situation which I think is pretty remarkable: BHP also agreed in principle with Labor for a mining profits tax. So, now we have big business accepting taxes that aren’t in their direct interests, but are regarded by most economists (I think that applies to the mining profits tax) as beneficial to the nation.

And the party and leader opposed to these tax changes: the Coalition under Tony Abbott.

Labor may have a problem with the way it spends money, but it’s currently the party that makes more sense about taxes.*

* The same can be said about the Democrats and Republicans at the moment.