I'll be voting Liberal tomorrow. I don't look at the party with rose-coloured glasses, but overall the Liberals have better policies than Labor, especially when it comes to the carbon tax, foreign debt and the economy.
Carbon pricing mocks the printing industry, given its long revolution in green technologies. Ending the carbon price – by far the world’s highest – means we lose less industry to nations with lower environmental standards, most of which have little or no carbon price.
The printing industry relies more on imported paper as we now lack wood mills in Tasmania due to Labor and the Greens. It would be environmentally sounder to use local paper. Well-managed forests are a renewable resource with benefits in carbon capture. A Coalition victory would boost our forestry potential.
The Coalition’s relief in company tax and superannuation levies will also aid industry. But rather than just delay increases in superannuation, the new government should be bold enough to cut it. Superannuation was part of the speculative funds behind the GFC. Its administrative costs exceed aged pension costs. It robs real producers of capital.
This year, I decided to upgrade my company, Centrum Printing, to save costs and energy relative to production. With less tax and levies I could have acted earlier and paid good staff more.
My printing business is a microcosm of many. It also relies on other types of businesses being prosperous. The big picture counts. The economy resembles an organism with all the cells interlinked. Changes in it – especially in morale – affect printing more than most industries. I draw on experience, also having a retail food outlet.
Labor’s election strategy skirts mention of sleeping nasties in the Henry tax review that could make owning property, even one’s own home, onerous. Who wants to be a modern feudal version of the serf 'renting' from government what they 'own'?
When Paul Keating dumped negative gearing, rents soared and construction dived. A more benign approach is to let first home buyers access superannuation but ban residential auctions. It would boost construction but contain the market.
To not get totally in pawn to international banks (Greece, anyone?) we must cut public debt. The Coalition is far better at it but its costly paid parental leave scheme is an exception. As for Labor, its broadband plans are far too costly in terms of interest payback.
Labor is a poor financial manager as it sees nature as finite but the servitude of small business as infinite (neither resource is a magic pudding). The small business owners our economy largely rests on are often grossly over-worked, underpaid, over-stressed and lack safety nets. Recently, my partner worked hectically for two months with glass in his body after a serious accident. He lacked time to get it all out but wouldn’t dream of treating his staff that way.
Ironically, careful tax cuts can cause positive ripples that boost both revenue and productivity. Today’s very low interest rates are no credit to Labor. They are a radical response to an economic basket case. And, historically, interest rates are lower under the Coalition.
Labor doesn’t grasp the word 'sustainable' as applies to tax or bureaucracy – which are mostly entwined and harmful to core business. A side example I find irksome is growing claptrap in official applications and tender requests, demanding we show in nauseating detail how we are all green, warm and fuzzy, when a straight list of certifications would do.
Labor is not clever in its gross contempt for, and erosion of, manufacturing. This is largely known as the carbon price and is statistically measurable in loss of manufacturing, regardless of rhetoric. And it’s over-confident in ability of service industries to compensate. They are quite auxiliary to manufacturing (try a barista without coffee or milk). Also, IT and administrative work is increasingly done from overseas.
The Coalition’s commitment to restoring and even increasing incentives for research and development in skilled manufacturing is more proactive than the crisis handouts Labor favours.
Even mining is not quite the big bad bunny the left suggests. Standards have risen out of sight (they needed to). When my father mined in the 1950s, companies didn’t even fill in shafts after gutting them.
Historically, the two main parties are reckless about privatisations that are broadly inefficient. It’s a myth that business owners think all privatisation is good. Neither side seems game to tackle basics such as regulation to protect common savings from high risk merchant banking, making the national interest a prerequisite for all foreign treaties or reversing the gala in mental health spending that wrecks health budgets. Still, Tony Abbott has the better economic balance.
[Related: More Industry Insider columns]
Linda Vij is the co-owner of Centrum Printing
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